Sarpedon
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2002
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An unusual hobby, but does anyone else do it?
I have been rather bored and not intellectually challenged lately, and I also decided to give up (or strictly curtail) video game playing, so I found myself needing a hobby. I tried taking up leatherworking, but, alas, like all handcrafts, I have no particular talent, nor can I muster the patience to master the skills in the absence of talent.
So, I decided to do something more purely intellectual, which is my forte. And 3 months or so ago, I saw an ad that said that a popular free language learning app (Duolingo) had recently added Chinese! So I thought to myself, I had wanted to learn for a long time, and even had plans on learning it together with my ex (relationship came to an end before much progress was made), so I decided to go ahead on my own.
First off, the app is great, but not enough, so I got a great little book focusing entirely on learning the characters. (it includes pronunciation for each one, but that's hard to learn from a book). Between the two, I've been working hard for 90 days and I couldn't be more pleased with my progress. I've been concentrating on learning to read, which in Chinese you can totally learn independently from the spoken language. I have been using the app (which includes spoken portions) and chinese movies for help with the spoken part. I've learned at least 600 characters (minimum literacy is considered to be around 800 of the most common, with upwards of a thousand being required for true literacy) I still have a long way to go...there are zillions of compound words I have not delved into yet, still focusing on the monosyllabic foundational characters.
Anyhow, does anyone else do this sort of thing as a hobby? What sort of experiences have you had? The weirdest thing for me is that I've been around chinese characters my whole life...and suddenly they are starting to mean things. I ordered a chinese book a while back (entirely in chinese) and couldn't make head or tails of it for the longest time, and just last week, all of the sudden I opened it up and was able to read the first line. A magical experience. I don't remember what it was like to read for the first time, but I just this month experienced something very much like it.
I have been rather bored and not intellectually challenged lately, and I also decided to give up (or strictly curtail) video game playing, so I found myself needing a hobby. I tried taking up leatherworking, but, alas, like all handcrafts, I have no particular talent, nor can I muster the patience to master the skills in the absence of talent.
So, I decided to do something more purely intellectual, which is my forte. And 3 months or so ago, I saw an ad that said that a popular free language learning app (Duolingo) had recently added Chinese! So I thought to myself, I had wanted to learn for a long time, and even had plans on learning it together with my ex (relationship came to an end before much progress was made), so I decided to go ahead on my own.
First off, the app is great, but not enough, so I got a great little book focusing entirely on learning the characters. (it includes pronunciation for each one, but that's hard to learn from a book). Between the two, I've been working hard for 90 days and I couldn't be more pleased with my progress. I've been concentrating on learning to read, which in Chinese you can totally learn independently from the spoken language. I have been using the app (which includes spoken portions) and chinese movies for help with the spoken part. I've learned at least 600 characters (minimum literacy is considered to be around 800 of the most common, with upwards of a thousand being required for true literacy) I still have a long way to go...there are zillions of compound words I have not delved into yet, still focusing on the monosyllabic foundational characters.
Anyhow, does anyone else do this sort of thing as a hobby? What sort of experiences have you had? The weirdest thing for me is that I've been around chinese characters my whole life...and suddenly they are starting to mean things. I ordered a chinese book a while back (entirely in chinese) and couldn't make head or tails of it for the longest time, and just last week, all of the sudden I opened it up and was able to read the first line. A magical experience. I don't remember what it was like to read for the first time, but I just this month experienced something very much like it.