So I’ve already explained how I arrived in China with a decent foundation in grammar and characters, but some problems with my pronunciation. So what happened next?
Well, first I should explain my initial attitude. Two years previously I had had a great experience studying Japanese in Osaka. I enjoyed the process of learning a new language in a foreign society so much that doing it all over again had become central to my post-graduation plan. So when I arrived …
Over the years I’ve gotten quite a few questions about this, so I thought I’d write a series of entries that explain everything. I’d like to stress from the beginning that the method I used is not going to work for everybody. It’s not “the right method.” It’s simply the method I used. This post will focus on my formal education in the States.
I decided to start learning Chinese while I was an exchange student in Japan. When I …
Shortly after I arrived in China and observed the deaf community in Hangzhou, a beautiful thought struck me. Deaf people communicate in an entirely different way. If all the deaf people in the world use sign language, they could all learn the same sign language and communicate with each other regardless of race or nationality. No barriers. A truly international language!
But alas, that was not to be. You see, sign language doesn’t just “substitute for” or “imitate” human …
手语基础 cover
I recently picked up a book on Chinese sign language called 手语基础. “Practicality” was not a major consideration in the organization of the book; it seems to be written by linguists for linguists. If I needed the book to actually communicate in Chinese sign language I’d probably be pretty disgusted with it, but since my interest is primarily academic, I’m enjoying it.
In its second chapter the book talks about fingerspelling (also called manual alphabets). It runs …
My end of the term pragmatics/semantics paper looked at the use of the English word “my” in certain constructions and compared it with the corresponding “我的” constructions in Chinese.
When you say “my X” in English, it could actually mean a variety of things, but we generally expect it to mean something like “the X that belongs to me.” Such is the case for “my book,” “my blog,” my hand,” etc. When X is a societal unit or …
In Chongqing my wife’s cousin gave her a Buddhist pendant as a gift. On one side was a form which consisted of four Chinese characters blended together. Can you see them?
The four characters together actually form a (Buddhist?) saying. For the answer, see below.…
Love can be a motivation. I’m not talking about learning how to say enough for “one night love,” I’m talking about this:
I am learning [language] so I can tell you how much I love you and have it mean more than if I told you in English.
I wonder how many years of study it will take…
Post Secret is still cool.…
I may “hate” Chinese New Year, but it’s inescapable. We also do coverage of it at ChinesePod, of course. This year we did an Elementary lesson on Chinese New Year Firecrackers, but the one I especially liked was at the Advanced level, called 春节采访 (“Chinese New Year Interview”).
I’ve talked about the Advanced lessons on ChinesePod before, and one of the criticisms I got was that the dialogues (which are scripted) seem too fake. I …
I’ve been living in China a while now… long enough to observe the long-term deterioration of my own native language abilities, as well as those of my fellow English speakers. This deterioration can take different forms, one of which is a general decay of one’s vocabulary. Although it is a very real phenomenon (the other day I used “export” when I meant to use “deport,” which is really kind of pathetic), this kind of loss of mastery is due to …
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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