Comments on: Chinese Project Notes 3: Environment-Building + The Laddering Method Reloaded

By: Critical Frequency: A Brand New Way of Looking At Language Exposure | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:35:07 +0000

[…] I saw it when I decided to make myself a little China in Japan — great for my Chinese…disastrous for my Japanese. And I’ve met my fair share of Chinese (college) kids struggling with their Japanese […]

By: Ernesto

Ernesto — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:13:19 +0000

omg…The Secret
<3!
Ajatt now has a new meaning

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:13:53 +0000

You’ll need a new, region-free DVD player. Or a program like “DVD Region+CSS Free” to make your laptop region-free…

By: Yun

Yun — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 05:15:53 +0000

i was thinking of using amazon.cn to order some movies since they have simplified characters. this might be a dumb question, but do you think I will need a specific player that can play Chinese DVDs, or will my american DVD player or laptop DVD player suffice?

By: GZ

GZ — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:12:42 +0000

Thanks for the heads-up.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 01:24:47 +0000

Negative. All fanti.

By: GZ

GZ — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 16:26:33 +0000

Hey Khatzumoto,

I’m curious to know if these videos tend to include the option to view simplified character subtitles (my chosen script of study). Unfortunately for me, the mainland isn’t quite the cultural exporter that Taiwan and HK are…

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:32:25 +0000

Thanks! I downloaded the software once but it didn’t work on my compy…I’ll try one more time…

By: David

David — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:11:17 +0000

Hi Khatzumoto,

While learning Chinese, did you already come aross this one software called PPLive? It’s basically a P2P Internet Television Network, featuring lots of Chinese channels, including one showing Disney films at 24/7!

More about this here:
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPlive
www.pplive.com/zh-tw/index.html

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:37:48 +0000

By the way, keep in mind that I watch these movies repeatedly. And then I rip the audio from the DVD, put it onto my mp3 player and listen to the movies like a radio play (but where I can picture every scene). Each time I re-watch, my understanding grows, I pick up something new.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:26:27 +0000

>How much of those videos would you understand without subtitles?
This is kind of a tough question to answer, but I’ll just give estimates. By the way, I’m assuming you mean Chinese subs, since I don’t use any foreign subs whatsoever. Since I’ve seen almost all those videos in either English or Japanese like a million times over (I have sizeable tracts of dialogue of the Japanese Toy Story (TS) unintentionally memorized; Powerpuff Girls (PPG) is also a victim of my repeat viewings on Cartoon Network), my understanding is essentially 100%. But of course, if I actually had to depend only on my present Chinese, I would not be able to follow the plot–10%-25% at best and probably less…much less. Since I know what’s happening in those videos, I can just focus on sentence-mining–I don’t have to figure out anything; I don’t get confused about what’s happening: I know WHAT people are saying, all I need to find out is HOW.

By the way, WITH subs my understanding jumps to like 25-40%. Since I know a lot of Chinese characters, subs really raise my game if they’re turned on.

Anyway, these numbers are suuuuuuper fuzzy. Sometimes I understand a whole line of dialogue, sometimes I’m totally lost, sometimes I infer stuff later on (I do a lot of inferring)…it really varies. Suffice it to say that I’m still a Chinese language baby, which is precisely why I’m busting my butt so hard.
>Are you able to have a conversation in Chinese?
A basic “conversation” about my family structure and the price of fruit in Japan, yes. A job interview? Politics? Even computer science? Not yet. Also, if the person speaks a slurring northen dialect, my ear is still not well trained for that yet.

Speaking of conversations, the other day, I telephoned a Taiwanese newspaper about getting a subscription from Japan…With electronic dictionary firmly in hand, I was able to fake my way through it, but I had the operator repeat herself quite a few times. Also, I found that I had this “lag” as I attempted to process what she way saying, it took me what seemed like several seconds to be like “oh she’s saying X-Y-Z”. As it is, I avoid random speaking and writing and focus on input; I do parrot funny dialogue that I hear in movies and what-not…especially PPG and TS: “別作夢!!!”.

Speaking of faking your way through it–a lot of times, just pretending/thinking you understand something actually helps you understand it.

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:44:35 +0000

Wow, interesting to see your collection.

Could you just remind us what your level of Mandarin is at the moment. How much of those videos would you understand without subtitles? Are you able to have a conversation in Chinese? Thanks.