Getting into Chinese

Language Learning Chinese
1

Hi folks,

I am a native English speaker even if Taiwan never recognised me as such as I am from Singapore, a country deemed not to be of the class of native English speakers. But that is life.
When I first came and lived in Taiwan in 1990, I could not even utter a quarter coherent sentence in Chinese and Chinese seemed to be an impenetrable language to me notwithstanding I am Chinese.
In my family, via legacy of the old British Empire, we all conversed in English. That was the case in school and with all my friends as well.

Then I got to pick up Chinese in Taiwan from the shops and from the road side pavements. To a point when I realised I spoke chinese in my dreams, and could hold chinese conversations with a friend while simultaneously eavesdropping on 2 other conversations beside me, I thought I crossed the barrier. That was about 3-4 months after I started.

I am in this taoist forum where we do what we do best, to talk and talk and talk.
I called myself in there as the Idiotic Taoist or Taoistic Idiot, a handle that I used from even before the days of Internet and the world hobbling about on Bitnet.
Especially since all around and about me are experts and gurus and wisemen, I thought being the idiot suit me fine so I can jump in where angels fear to tread and ask away if that’s the Emperors cloths or if he is stark nekkid.

And in that forum is this interest in Chinese language. With threads after threads on how to learn Chinese. Which kind of upset me as I felt that they were all going the wrong way.
Which might be the right way if one chose to want to learn Chinese.

So I started another thread on getting into Chinese the way I did, and the way I continued on even just 6 weeks back after I decided to retire myself and came back into Singapore from Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
So if you want to learn chinese, I think enough threads here and everywhere with pearls scattered to help you to do that.
To get into Chinese and maybe even speak Chinese when you are sleeping and dreaming might need an approach similar to mine.

I walked that walk and not just talk the talk.

After writing what I did, and for folks who might not even want to get into Chinese, I thought what I wrote might actually be more meaningful for folks who might really want to get into Chinese and not just in that Taoist forum
Such as all you folks here that I found after a brief google search.

You might find out many things that you do not know of hanyu pinyin and jiantiji and which might just shock the hell out of you.
You might find what I wrote to be laughable and totally useless deserving of :roflmao:

And you might just like what I wrote and decide the path I was on, and currently back on again, might be your best path of getting into Chinese language, past the chinese barrier , and into the mindset of chinese itself

so folks, click and take a peek into

The Idiotic Taoist way of getting into Chinese

And feel free to send that on to your friends who might want to get into chinese or that you think might like some laughter in their lives

Shanlung
山 龍
Mountain Dragon

shanlung.com/

2

That’s one perspective. I’m afraid, though, that concentrating on reading older texts like that is going to get you into a place where the language in your head is mostly stilted and not very useful from a modern daily-life perspective. And if everyone could become fluent just by listening and “picking up” the language, then every expat in Taiwan would be fluent.

Most “how-to-learn-Chinese” posts worldwide are written by outliers – people who can learn a language by brute force and memorizing the phone book, or something similar. The problem is that the majority of ordinary people who want or need to learn Chinese (or any language, for that matter) aren’t like that. Most ordinary people are not going to read the freaking Water Margin (which I have never found compelling in any way, though others may) in the hopes of becoming literate in the modern form of the Chinese language as it is spoken in Taiwan.

I’d have to agree about the part about how the forum “talks and talks”, though. No way I’m going to read all that verbiage. Sorry, man.

3

I am very fluent in Chinese and can hold about any conversations with Taiwanese locals without even having to think but speaking straight from the heart and mind. From the time I started barely able to articulate a quarter coherent sentence in Chinese.
That was within 3-4 months from the time I decided on this particular road into Chinese that I wrote about when I was first in Taiwan.
After they spoke to me, they were surprised that I could barely read Chinese words (short of those stupid soap dramas on TV in addition to the Red Riding Hood and 3 little pigs I forced myself to read in Chinese )
I felt ashamed to tell my Taiwanese friends I could not speak in Wen Yen Wen either. They laughed and assured me that neither could they and I should not feel bad about that.

In any language, if you have to think of that language when speaking or reading, you are neither speaking or using that language. Much as if
you need to think of lifting and moving your left leg followed by lifting and moving your right leg when you decide to walk to a place. If you need to do that, neither are you walking which must be a totally sub conscious effort
dominated by where you want to walk to instead of the walking itself.

I was in Taiwan on and off, with the last departure on 2004 after I finished my contract and part of the team that constructed the Taiwan High Speed Rail. I do return to Taiwan on almost yearly basis as anyone here that kept parrot and also in major bird forums can tell you of.

I always felt I should get into reading of Chinese as well as I am a chinese who by the quirks of history and where my dad fled to, ended up as a native English speaker.
Anything that you want to do must have a pleasure element in it, if you do want to continue on into it and maintain yourself in it for any period of time.

tiny extract from what I written

[i]I chose the Zhuyin fuhao to totally eliminate any form of English when I am reading the chinese characters in time to the spoken Chinese from Google translate.

I started off with 2 laborous sentences by 2 sentences. Hearing that and reading the zhuyinfuhao and then reading that again by the hanyu pingyin as I had not got back my familiarity with zhuyin fuhao.

Then it got to paragraph by paragraph.

Then it got to page by page. Except I could get that repeated as often as I liked.

I cannot recommend short stories. In long stories, sequences will be repeated and important sequences repeated more often to drum into your head and heart the pattern of Chinese thoughts.

水滸傳 is a very beautiful book. Too beautiful I decided for getting into the language, but mind you, I got to chapter 20. The descriptions of mountains and forest sceneries were breath taking after I translate those word by word. With enough repeats, I need not even see those translations. The feats of martial arts were better then those you seen in Hongkong movies as those movies took their scenes from that book.

水滸傳 was also written 600 ears ago. What was bai hwa wen (simple chinese) to that writer would be considered as wen yen wen (serious classical formal chinese ) in our days

I decided to switch to the Count of Monte Cristo and read that in Chinese. I have read that book in English twice before. I found the Chinese equivalent
基督山恩仇記 or ji du shan en chou ji
or Jesus mountain gratitude revenge memoirs
Google the chinese words to get to your free book. Which I had to change into PDF and finally into doc so I could extract that into the google translate and mandarinspot.com/annotate

The chinese of that
基督山恩仇記
was a lot more like the current usage of Chinese. After the initial bit of reading para by para, I got to reading that by 2 to 3 pages at a time. And using the first click of google translate for speed of reading.[/i]

I also told folks they should pick their choice of books on matters that they liked very much.

[i]I suggest you try to get the chinese translation of Old Man and the Sea , 老男人與海 and use that as your entry point into Chinese. Or of course, do what I did in reading Little Red Riding Hood and 3 Little Pigs.

Or get Chinese sex stories if you inclined to those. Even be a class above by reading Ching Ping Mei 金瓶梅 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Ping_Mei
May your joy for lust propel you deeper into the Chinese world.[/i]

Since much of my path also talked of my Taiwanese friends who could not even string 2 coherent sentences in English despite the years and years they slogged in English in schools and bu si ban, and what I did to yank them kicking and screaming into the English world where they could and did string 4 coherent sentences in English when talking with you, Taiwanese who might like to get into the English world might find it good to get into what I wrote

That will be seen in the first post.
My road into Chinese is on a path of pleasure, as my road for my Taiwanese into English also on a path of pleasure. After the initial agony.
Any thing that you want to do cannot and must not be a grind for anyone to stay on that path.

I also want to make a correction here on what I written in my path into Chinese and touched on a friend.

I have a very very good American friend with me almost from the beginning in Taiwan. He is still there with Taiwan as his first home and California as his second home. I last saw him in Riyadh a few months ago and we decided we got better things to do than to keep working for money which will go to our wives boyfriends and toyboys. He graduated from Chinese language classes in Taiwan using hanyu pin yin written above Chinese and with beautiful certificates. He married a Taiwanese and they have a nice son. To this date, my friend cannot read a word of Chinese even though he could speak Chinese quite well. He could only read the Hanyu Pinyin, intended by Mao Tze Tung as burial shroud of Chinese. So if you intend to go the Hanyu Pinyin, you will definately be able to prance about in Hangyu Pinyin and impress your fellow expats no end with your mastery of hanyu pinyin and end up like my friend unable to read any chinese words after 25 years.

I had send that thread to him even if I had not used his name. He wrote back making me very ashamed I besmirched his ability in reading chinese with the poetic license I took.
He can read 10, a whole ten chinese characters instead of none!

This was his reply (redacted for focus )

[i]Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: getting into Chinese

To my immensely wonderful friend from the antiquity of time,

I am deeply humbled and gratified by your magnanimous reference to our enduring friendship toward the end of your text.

It is indeed true that, to this day, I can hardly recognize a character - well, maybe 10 or so, yet somehow maintain intermediate fluency in the spoken language, even though I have not opened a pin yin book in over 20 years.

I noted with interest your mention in the paragraph about me that Taiwan is my first home and LA my second. This is indeed a powerful conversation I am having with myself. As a native American who is not from LA, I find myself equally and squarely between two worlds, with distinct pluses and minuses for each. We have a lovely house here which we have refurbished and furnished very nicely, loads of indoor and outdoor space (just waiting for your visit!) - yet as the time draws near for us to spend the winter in Taipei, I find myself longing for that other home in Taipei which is still there for us, and the friends and places I have not seen there for so long. This is indeed another transitional phase in my life, almost as powerful as the one I experienced when I moved to Taiwan in 1990.

I fully intend to enjoy the fruits and pleasures offered on both sides of the Pacific Pond. No need for any ultimate decisions as to 1 or 2. As the famous Yankee baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.”[/i]

What I wrote here in this thread cannot even be said to be tip of iceberg as the tip will be 10% of the iceberg.
What I wrote might not even be 2%.
Taking you perhaps 5 minutes to read.
Might be double that time if you are a Taiwanese and trying to get into the English world.

But if you are native English users yearning to get into chinese, how long is that 5 minutes of reading my thoughts ?
At worse be a waste of time.
And might give you some laughter.
And it might well changed your approach into Chinese.
And not have to beg and beg for cheap tuition into Chinese and control your time as to when you can get into Chinese independent of any other human.

Shanlung
山 龍
Mountain Dragon

shanlung.com/

4

That input is important is just common sense, no?

5

6

Sez you.

7

I never could and never will figure out that expression common sense .
I found that to be an extremely rare commodity with most people and nowhere as common as that term implied that to be.
But then, maybe I mixed around with the wrong people, or that miasma was brought about by my presence.

To those who actually clicked on that link in my first opening shot here, I hoped you had not died of laughing yet.
To those who had not and had not want to laugh but want to have a go at what I wrote regardless either with a golf club or a blunt kitchen knife, be my guest.
I have been tarred and feathered enough at enough forums largely for flying my parrot in Taiwan and elsewhere in the open or with her
riding shotgun on my bike.


from shanlung.livejournal.com/134052.html

I continued on with my current saga into Chinese. But to spare you folks the agony of going into that URL to read, I thought I reproduce my latest below.
Some of which I plagiarised from my earlier mail in here.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Posted Today, 06:02 PM
I finished on today, 14 Nov 2015, chapter 117 and the final chapter of 基督山恩仇記 or ji du shan en chou ji , Count of Monte Cristo in Chinese.

At about the average of 10,000 characters (+ - 1,000) per chapter, I have been through over a million chinese characters spoken to me via Google translate , and with me following those written characters via mandarinspot.com/annotate .

In the last 20 chapters or so, I was reading those chinese words ahead of the spoken sound.

I have to confess I could not remember those 1 million chinese characters. For that matter, after you read an English novel, can you remember those hundred thousand words that crossed your eyes into your head?

I enjoyed that 基督山恩仇記 very much. It was almost with regret that I finished that last chapter instead of an event that I should look forward to.

Like saying farewell to an old friend.

I do hope I picked up sub consciously the sentence and structures of Chinese. In a way much more enjoyable and meaningful in trying to read any book/books on Chinese grammar written in English and dozens of them on sale in the Internet. As if a book on Chinese structure written in English can guide you on Chinese.

But a chapter must end for the next to start. Which will be the 鹿鼎記 , or Deer and the Cauldron.
That will have to wait for tomorrow as I am also a procrastinator and do not wish to do today what I can do tomorrow.

Finishing of that 基督山恩仇記 or ji du shan en chou ji is only the 2nd footstep of my path into Chinese. The first footstep was to speak Chinese when I was in Taiwan. Many many more footsteps in this path , lined with Pond’s cold cream and even better. I do think this path is better than whatever the destination this will lead to.

Much time was spend, about 3-4 hours a day on average. But the last 4 days about 2 hours or so. I had too many dinners and gatherings with fellow retirees and bums with nothing to do but to enjoy those dinners and drinks and laughing like little kids that we became. And of course, English novels (just completed Brandon Sanderson The Way of Kings )to read , chess to play and drinking when thirsty and eating when hungry and fornicating when horny, and roses to smell now and then.

I have a confession to make. I taken poetic license with what I wrote of my very very good friend when I said he could not read a single chinese word. I send what I wrote to him via the URL

I have a very very good American friend with me almost from the beginning in Taiwan. He is still there with Taiwan as his first home and California as his second home. I last saw him in Riyadh a few months ago and we decided we got better things to do than to keep working for money which will go to our wives boyfriends and toyboys. He graduated from Chinese language classes in Taiwan using hanyu pin yin written above Chinese and with beautiful certificates. He married a Taiwanese and they have a nice son. To this date, my friend cannot read a word of Chinese even though he could speak Chinese quite well. He could only read the Hanyu Pinyin, intended by Mao Tze Tung as burial shroud of Chinese. So if you intend to go the Hanyu Pinyin, you will definately be able to prance about in Hangyu Pinyin and impress your fellow expats no end with your mastery of hanyu pinyin and end up like my friend unable to read any chinese words after 25 years.

He replied to me making me mortified with horror at my dastardly representation of him.
That I besmirched his reputation.
I beat my breast and gnash my teeth in anguish and must hide my face in shame.

This was his reply (redacted for focus )

[i]Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: getting into Chinese

To my immensely wonderful friend from the antiquity of time,

I am deeply humbled and gratified by your magnanimous reference to our enduring friendship toward the end of your text.

It is indeed true that, to this day, I can hardly recognize a character - well, maybe 10 or so, yet somehow maintain intermediate fluency in the spoken language, even though I have not opened a pin yin book in over 20 years.

I noted with interest your mention in the paragraph about me that Taiwan is my first home and LA my second. This is indeed a powerful conversation I am having with myself. As a native American who is not from LA, I find myself equally and squarely between two worlds, with distinct pluses and minuses for each. We have a lovely house here which we have refurbished and furnished very nicely, loads of indoor and outdoor space (just waiting for your visit!) - yet as the time draws near for us to spend the winter in Taipei, I find myself longing for that other home in Taipei which is still there for us, and the friends and places I have not seen there for so long. This is indeed another transitional phase in my life, almost as powerful as the one I experienced when I moved to Taiwan in 1990.

I fully intend to enjoy the fruits and pleasures offered on both sides of the Pacific Pond. No need for any ultimate decisions as to 1 or 2. As the famous Yankee baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
[/i]
My very very good friend can read 10, a whole ten chinese words instead of none as assumed and so written by me.

I was very apologetic in my reply and the sincerity of my reply was underlined by my promise to buy the first round of drinks when we meet likely about 26 Dec 2015 in Taipei.

Idiotic Taoist all ready to read 鹿鼎記 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deer_ … dron%C2%A0, , but not today

8

Your written English is so stylistically grating, it’s unreadable.

Thus disproving your theory.

9

[quote=“Ermintrude”]Your written English is so stylistically grating, it’s unreadable.

Thus disproving your theory.[/quote]

Try to elevate your English reading skills.
Try joining any Taiwanese bu si ban classes in English

10

Bless you. Your English is full of mistakes and your writing style is awful. You aren’t ready to style yourself as a language expert yet because your content undermines your authority on the subject.

You will, of course, ignore this advice because it dents your pride. Good luck with your stuff.

11

Nice parrot, as long as it’s getting out and about enjoying itself … :thumbsup:
African greys are very intelligent and can Live for 50 years, they need lots of attention.

12

Try to elevate your English reading skills.[/quote]
Good on you for trying, and good luck with the English, but I’m sorry - I found the above hard enough to read that I only got a couple of sentences into it. Keep trying and all that.

And the parrot’s great!

13

Yeah, the parrot’s great.

Sorry for being a bit of a dick to you. :bow:

14

As long as we’re kind of on the subject – we do not cross-post or copy large amounts of text from other sites here at Forumosa.com.

So if you want to make a point about Chinese learning or teaching, please make your point here, in an original piece of writing, and keep it short and simple. That’s your best chance to stimulate conversation. This is a discussion forum, after all.

15

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Nice parrot, as long as it’s getting out and about enjoying itself … :thumbsup:
African greys are very intelligent and can Live for 50 years, they need lots of attention.[/quote]

Sorry to correct you. CAGs can live to 70++ years. Macaws to over 100 years.
They need to be feed appropriate diet, definately not just sunflower seeds, and not clipped or spend their miserable life entirely in a cage or chained to a pole.

People never realised how incredibly intelligent parrots, and especially greys can be.
Taking care of their physical needs aka food/drinks/cleaniless is about the most tiny aspect.
Their mental and emotional needs must be taken care of as well.
When I was with her, Tinkerbell been out with me all weekends in Taiwan from crack of dawn into late evening when we would go see the fireflies strobing in the trees.


Temple of Eternal Spring - Taroko Gorge

[quote=“Ermintrude”]Yeah, the parrot’s great.

Sorry for being a bit of a dick to you. :bow:[/quote]

Ha ha ha!
handshake

Peace brother!
I rather max happiness and min aggro (to myself or anyone else)
Nevermind if that brings karma points or not. But that will be good for you and you feel good too.

[quote=“ironlady”]As long as we’re kind of on the subject – we do not cross-post or copy large amounts of text from other sites here at Forumosa.com.

So if you want to make a point about Chinese learning or teaching, please make your point here, in an original piece of writing, and keep it short and simple. That’s your best chance to stimulate conversation. This is a discussion forum, after all.[/quote]

I have answered your earlier remarks perhaps indirectly.
I am not certain if you are making innuendoes at me in asking original piece of writing that I plagiarised from anyone else. If anything, i plagiarised from myself as that last bit I posted was first written by me, and then I plagiarised what I wrote here into the other forum, and then plagiarised that once more into here.

Thank you for your asking me to keep it short and simple as if I am a kid , or Taiwanese, who do not know how to use English. I try to bear that in mind.

The way you go about, with schools and tutors like you teaching lauwais Chinese, I almost felt that all lauwais in Taiwan be spouting wen yen wen and on editorial boards of Chinese Newspapers as well.

Unlike poor me who could just barely say hsieh hsieh and neu rou mien when I first started in Taiwan in 1990.
I should never be viewed as a threat from those trying to teach Chinese to Lauwai as haven’t I said that those who want to learn Chinese can go to the hundred and one threads on how to learn chinese and to schools and websites wanting to teach chinese. But I stronly suggest to those on that path to find out from those who taken that path if that is worth their time.

What I introduced is a thread on how to get into Chinese, mainly my own path of getting into Chinese.
Especially as I am not in Taiwan , other than for short 2-3 weeks yearly visits. I feared my lack of having native Chinese speakers to converse with will see my familiarity with chinese to stay at the plateau if not regress entirely.
Which was why I decided it was time for me to read Chinese books by myself and with help from Google translate (at least for voicing) and mandarinspot.com/annotate

That they can read and decide if perhaps the path I taken might also be one that they wish to take.
And find out a bit more of the sordid history behind jian ti ji and even more sordid history behind hanyu pinyin.
And find out the difference between using handful of wet coarse grit and Ponds.

But only if they read all that verbiage , which you said on the start that you will not do.

It is their choice. And I can see a choice that those here had made and thus got to know a different side of LiBai then what will be given at Chinese classes for Lauwais.

16

[quote=“shanlung”]
I am not certain if you are making innuendoes at me in asking original piece of writing that I plagiarised from anyone else. If anything, i plagiarised from myself as that last bit I posted was first written by me, and then I plagiarised what I wrote here into the other forum, and then plagiarised that once more into here.[/quote]

It doesn’t matter who it’s plagiarized from. Don’t re-post long things from other forums, please.

Um…it’s not for your benefit. It’s for anyone who actually tries to figure out what you’re saying.

You’re more than welcome to post here. Just keep in mind that the discussion should be going on here. This is not a place to point people to another site. Present your ideas at a reasonable length here, and see who answers. That’s pretty much the way it goes. :slight_smile: