Random observation

[craobhruadh]

I've recently undertaken a side project to improve my Chinese in order to fight the ABC/twinkie syndrome, with some success and much frustration. If any of you are wondering why, let's just say that the more scientists/engineers one encounters (or really, the higher up in education one goes), the more likely one is to meet someone from some East

Comments

[sabournine]

I was also planning to renew my studies in Mandarin at some point, err, during novel-writing perhaps? I'm going back to Taiwan in December, and the last time I went two years ago, I told everyone I was studying Chinese and was going to get SO GOOD at it. Then I came back to the States and have barely touched a book since then.

;_;

Also, I didn't know you were trying to learn Mandarin! I wish I knew people in the area to study with, particularly to practice conversation with. I guess that is kind of an unrelated thought, as an LJ friend on the opposite side of the country can't do much to that end .p

[craobhruadh]

Heh, well, it's more complicated than I let on above. See, I took a year of mandarin while in college, and I'm still very much interested in improving it. However, my family all speaks cantonese, and more often than not chinese people I meet here speak cantonese (side note: is it just me, or are Chinatowns in general dominated by canto-speakers?) and as such I decided to learn cantonese as well on the side, despite everybody telling me that I should focus on Mandarin because it's more common. For a while I was going to study both cantonese and mandarin at the same time, but that's like really insane instead of just sort of insane, so recently I've, uh, been focusing on cantonese

[craobhruadh]

...so I should have probably advertised this on LJ back when I was starting this up, but remember that 1000 character LJ community that you and I are members of? Well, for the last several months I've been running a similar email-based one for myself and a couple of friends who are informally studying chinese. It's only one character a day because I'm not hardcore like that guy, and it's more focused on cantonese, but I do list the pinyin for each character as well just because. If you want, I can add you to the list...there are like only about ten or so people on it right now, of varying skill levels. Check out my archive here.

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I guess this goes for anybody reading this comment as well, let me know! I think most of my LJ readership are japanophiles and not chinaphiles, but then again who knows. I need more minions!

[sabournine]

I wanna join! Archive looks very useful. I never knew Cantonese had so many tones...