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And one more slightly focused question from Terry is "How much should a Chinese learner
concentrate on chéngyǔ (成語, "idioms") as part of their study? Are they used frequently
in everyday conversations and are there any strategies for remembering these? We were
talking a little about this in the pre-chat--how was my pronunciation, by the way? "chéngyǔ"?
It's close. Chéngyǔ.
And this is idioms.
"Idioms", correct. Yeah, so it's a very good question. So they do use idioms a lot in daily
conversation, I find. Especially, older people. They'll use them a lot more then young people.
You know, there are many different sub-types of idiom in Mandarin. There's the four-character
idioms which are very common. But then there are others various lengths. It would behoove
you to try to learn the most common ones. Pick like the top fifty idioms and try to
learn them.
And how would you try to find the top fifty idioms?
There are lists. I mean, you just go online--
Google.
Yeah, Google "Top fifty Chinese idioms". And then hopefully find one that has the Chinese
relations. Or, have a tutor--if you have a Mandarin tutor search on Chinese sites for
you. Which, just real quick tangent That I think is one of the biggest advantages--an
under-appreciated advantage of a tutor--is that they can find resources for you. They
can search much, much faster in all-Chinese websites that you can't. So, I think that's
something that would be worth their time, worth paying someone to help you do. But anyway,
how to learn them I think it's like anything else. Learn them in context. Don't just learn
them by themself in isolation. Not only will it be harder to remember them, but it's also
hard to use them later on. And, do try to use them as much as you can. You know, just
passively studying them, you might recognize them on paper but when you hear the same thing,
you probably won't recognize it.
So, learning these does give you an insight in Chinese that you wouldn't otherwise have.
Yeah. They're almost little poems. They're cultural nuggets that do encapsulate a lot
of Chinese thinking. You look at English idioms, for example. A lot of idioms, at least in
America, for example, are based on baseball. Maybe idioms isn't the right word, but our
phrases, and--
That's an interesting example, though, isn't it? Because if you pulled out some baseball
idioms, right now, I would be completely lost. And yet, I'm a native English speaker.
But you're not a native American. Well, not a native speaker of American English.
So, I guess that goes to show that, okay, idioms; it would be great to understand all
these baseball idioms, but, "do I need them?" No. "Is it going to affect my life?" or my
ability to talk in any way if I don't learn them? No.
That's a good point. Yeah. If you look at how they're used in socio-linguistics, they're
shortcuts. They're shorthand. Instead of me explaining to some big idea or concept, I
can use a little tiny idiom, and that encapsulates a whole preconceived idea that I don't then
have to waste time telling you, you know? So, I think, yeah they're not mandatory for
daily conversation, but they can save you time. In my experience, there's two things
that really impress native speakers in Mandarin. One is that you can actually read and write
Chinese characters--they're really impressed with that. And, two is if you know idioms.
If you throw out the perfect idiom at the right time. People, their eyes will light
up.
Yeah, yeah.
And that, you don't want to go to your head. Don't let it fill your ego. But it feels good.
And that's going to give you extra motivation to learn more and keep going.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, , I'm gonna put you a little bit on the spot now.
Alright.
I want you to tell me, for someone that's learning Chinese from the start, what would
be the top three resources that you recommend they could get their hands on?
Ooo. There's so many good ones. Okay, so one of them is actually fairly new. I've talked
to the developer lately. They're actually working on expanding the service. It is fluentu.com.
I've seen this website, yeah.
At F-L-U-E-N-T-U dot com. And so far, they have the best video-based resource that I've
found anywhere. You know, there are others out there. You know, there's always YouTube,
for example. But what they do really well is integrating interactive subtitle menus.
So, as your watching a video, each character lights up. You can click on them, interact
with them, save them to your word list. They've got videos on almost every topic you can think
of; different levels, from beginner to advanced, so that's a really, really good resource.
And I wish I had that when I started.
Oh, tell me about it. And the great thing about video is that it's just so engaging
and makes you want to come back and watch it. Yeah, I wish I had video resources like
that for, when I learned languages before.
And the problem, traditionally with video is, usually you have the Chinese video and
then you have English subtitles, which is okay. It's better than nothing. But then,
you're just reading English and then maybe picking up a little of what you hear. So,
that's not very helpful, I think.
Which I think is the disadvantage of watching movies and dramas a lot of the time.
Right. And occasionally, if you're living in the country, you can find the video in
Chinese with Chinese subtitles. Okay, better. But, they're not interactive. You have to
keep pausing the video, look up videos you want to review later. Whereas with this tool,
they're right there, just click on 'em. And, I can't--there's a part I want to share which
I don't think allowed to talk about right now 'cuz I've been in talks with the developer,
but there's cool things coming soon.
Cool things in the pipe. We'll stick a link to that under the notes. Okay, number two.
Number two. I mentioned earlier in the video, which is Remembering--well, for Japanese,
it's called Remembering the Kanji. There's a series for Mandarin called "Remembering
the Hanzi". And, it's two books. The first one covers the first fifteen-hundred characters,
and the second book covers the next fifteen-hundred. So, all said in done, you'll have mastered
the reading--sorry, the meaning and the writing of the most common three-thousand characters.
In five months?
Give or take. I mean, you could do it--See, I actually didn't--I used the Japanese one,
which actually only had twenty--I'd say this is before they released about a hundred extra
characters a few years ago to the standard set. So, when I did that, it was two-thousand
forty-two characters. So, after that, I ended up having to learn another thousand, give
or take, in Mandarin. So, I can't promise how long it's going to take because I didn't
actually do it from scratch.
That's an awesome challenge for people. If they're feeling like they can give the Chinese
writing a real shot, then...
And, even if it takes longer. It might take 2 years. It doesn't really matter. I mean,
but the key is choose a method that is not based on rote learning. You've gotta have
it based on some kind of "imaginative memory", creative association, some kind of mnemonic,
something else that you can use to tie stuff together and help you remember.
And this system works by creating pictorial links, images.
It--So, what it does is it breaks down all the characters down into chunks. It's not
necessarily the actual radicals. Sometimes, he chooses little chunks that are repeated
in many, many different characters. A combination of one or two radicals. It makes sense to
use that chunk because it's used so many times. And then it gives that chunk a meaning. It
gives it a keyword meaning. Then, each new character that you combine multiple chunks
together, you then have one key word that is core meaning of that character. And, all
you have to do then is create some crazy vivid story in your head that combines the different
chunks. And so instead of trying to remember all the thousands of little strokes, you're
remembering a story. And you remember the story, then you remember the chunk, and then
you can write it all out. And, it's magic. It's just amazing how much easier it is to
do it that way.
Yeah, I used it a little bit for Japanese and I can vouch for everything you just said.
Okay, so we've got two so far. What's the last one?
Okay. Oh, tough one. There's so many. I'm gonna go with Lang-8. L-A-N-G dash eight dot
com. So, Lang-8 is a crowd-sourced writing site where you can go on there, submit a piece
of writing you've done--so, maybe you write a daily journal in Chinese as you're learning.
And, native speakers will actually correct it for free. The catch is, or the exchange
is, that you then correct things in your native language. So, if you're a native speaking
of English, you're gonna correct other people's submissions in English to provide feedback.
And that's how they keep it free. It's a phenomenal site.
You don't have to that, do you, but it's good karma.
It's recommended. It is good karma. This kind of service won't survive unless people kick
in, do their part.
Yeah, and I've used Lang-8 for Japanese and Cantonese. And one of the great things about
that site is that there's a fantastic community of people who gather there and help everyone
out. I imagine there's a big contingent of Chinese speakers there, as well.
So, that's my short list. I could go on. There's hundreds of--
I think we could go on for the rest of the evening.
I'll just add--I'll add 3.5--
3.5. Okay, controversial.
Which is, okay, okay, RhinoSpike. I was going to put Lang-8 and Rhino Spike in the same
umbrella 'cuz it's crowd-sourced. Yeah, so RhinoSpike is sort of the other side of it.
It's getting stuff that is written recorded into audio. So, if you have a piece of text
that you really like, or maybe it's something you've written, or your tutor has written,
or something that's only in a book, and you want to practice listening to it, you submit
that on RhinoSpike, and a native speaker actually records it spoken aloud. And that's also,
I think, a very powerful tool. I cheated, but I think it was worth it.
I think it was definitely worth it. Those two in combination--a magic combination, for
sure. , it's been an absolute pleasure. We've covered so many things... I think, when the
day comes that I start learning Mandarin, I'm gonna come back here and look in some
depth everything you've said. I hope some people have got some value from this. Before
we go, you've written an amazing guide to learning Mandarin. Tell people what it is
and where they should go to check it out.
Sure. It's called "Master Mandarin The Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide to Learning Chinese the
Fun Way," which is quite a mouthful. Basically, it is a collection of resources. So, we just
listed three of my favorites. 3.5, rather. But I list, literally, hundreds and hundreds
of resources, online resources, podcasts, all the kinds of things that I think the beginner
learner needs to get as much input as possible, but I also focus a lot how to practice output
online and using free or, at least, affordable tools. As I mentioned earlier, I mentioned
earlier, I talk a lot about the psychology of learning and how to wrap your head around
this huge undertaking and breaking it into smaller chunks, how to make good goals, how
to stay motivated day-in and day-out. It's really--it's everything that I have learned
over the last decade both learning and teaching languages. And, more importantly, it's exactly
what I wish I had when I started. Because even though I studied linguistics in school,
even though I studied languages a little bit in school, I don't think I was really prepared
for what it really took until I actually got my hands dirty and made a lot of mistakes,
you know. A lot of missteps. And this book is a way to help people avoid some of those
pitfalls.
And one of the most helpful things is having that list of stuff available to go to rather
than spending all that time searching for yourself and spending time on stuff that is
just no good or doesn't work. I mean, one of the things that I wanted to just add to
this is, which I really love, is the quality of guide. It just blew me away. I need to
talk to you about how you made something that looks so gorgeous on the page, but it's really,
incredibly well done. And where should people go if they want to check it out?
Yeah, so just go to LanguageMastery.com. It's my blog. And, at the top of the page, you'll
see there's a link that says "Language Guides". And you can check out--I have both my Master
Japanese guide there and also my Master Mandarin guide. And, eventually my plan is to do one
for English, as well--people that want to learn English. The problem is I need to translate
that guide into...
All the languages of the world.
World languages, yeah, so that's gonna be quite a push-up. Yah, so I'm intentionally
putting that off until I have more time and funds, so...
Well, can't wait for that to come out, either. Okay man, well listen it's been an absolute
pleasure. Thanks very much and until next time.
Cheers, man. Talk to you soon. Take care.