Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Mandarin Chinese

Today you will explore on your own, listening and practicing words made up of the initials and finals we went over in class on Tuesday.  Get some headphones, watch the following videos, and talk out loud when you need to repeat things.  Don't worry... everyone will be talking.  You won't even notice it if you're concentrating on your own learning.  Have fun! 

When you're done, leave a comment here about what you think is difficult about Mandarin Chinese so far and what, if anything, is easy.  Build on the comments of your classmates, and have a conversation.










24 comments:

  1. The toughest thing for me was pronouncing words because they like have a special kind of zing to it (if you want to call it that) like Xie Xie and remembering that it doesn't sound how it looks because it looks a lot like it would sound like Ks ks. Nope. Shyeh shyeh. Another thing was remembering what that meant... I said "You are fine. And you?" However, I'm really liking it so far! Thanks Mrs. Edlin
    Zaijan!

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  2. This unit on PinYin is hard. I'm bad with english let alone this language. I really struggle with memorizing what the letters and symbols mean. Anyone have any suggestions?

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  3. The most difficult part about learning Chinese is the simple remembrance of of each word. The accents are ok to remember, but just isn't sticking in my brain. But hey! I now know how to say I want coffee. (I'll be using that one a lot.)

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  4. I feel like the hard thing about learning Mandarin is that it's pronunciations are very different from our pronunciations.

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  5. The most difficult part of mandarin Is seeing the letters but pronouncing it differently. The easiest part of Mandarin is repeating what is said then saying it.

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  6. I think that the hardest part of learning Mandarin Chinese is when you look at the letters or the words, it's really hard to figure out how to pronounce the words. It seems pretty easy to form sentences together.

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  7. The hardest thing for me is remembering the pronunciations, especially when they are different from the spelling.

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  8. I like learning this language, but all the different tones are really hard to remember, but I think it will become habit soon. The letters also sound different from our language, which can be difficult to remember.

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  9. I think the first video did the best at explaining the way to say the words. l think the hardest part of learning this language is trying to remember what letters make what sounds, because many of the sounds are different than ours.

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  10. The most difficult part of learning Mandarin Chinese for me is having to pronounce words differently from what you read. Remembering the words is easy for me, but remembering how to pronounce them is the difficult part.

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  11. It's really hard to learn the pronunciations in Mandarin Chinese, but it's even harder to find out the combinations of words and what they mean together.

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  12. Nothing seems hard yet. It's obviously hard to match the meanings to words, but we don't know many words yet. I think that the pinyin being spelled different than it's pronounced is not a problem. It seems easy, to me at least.

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  13. I agree, I think the hardest thing about speaking Pinyin is getting the different tones correct and being fluent with them together and not sounding like a robot. And the worst part is, it just takes practice because there is no easy or quick shortcut to learning it quick.

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  14. The hardest thing about Mandarin Chinese is how to pronounce the words because you see it and want to say it a certain way but it's pronounced a whole different way. Nothing is really easy for me because it's really hard to learn it and remember it.

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  15. Just like everyone else said it's remembering the pronunciations that's the hardest. Other than that I'm really enjoying this unit.

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  16. The most difficult part of learning Mandarin Chinese for me is having to pronounce words differently from what you read. Remembering the words is easy for me, but remembering how to pronounce them is the difficult part. Delaney you forgot to log out which is why there is the same comment by her.

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  17. I think the hardest thing is remembering the words. Pronouncing them is also hard because their pronunciation is very different from ours.

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  18. I think it is hardest to translate the letters into sounds. After the words have been translated into english letters, it's hard to pronounce certain words because the letters have sounds that are typically not corresponded with that letter.

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  19. I think the pronunciation of letters is very difficult because they're different sounds than what we're used to. I also find it hard to make the same word sound different just from moving my voice.

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  20. I think it's hard to figure out the pronunciation and sounds, unique to each word.

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  21. What I think is the most difficult about pinyin is knowing what tones to use and on what words because the tone symbols really confuse me and I also think it's hard to pronounce some of the words because some of the mouth shapes I never do, so it's like I'm learning multiple things at once.

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  22. My biggest challenge for this unit and just this language in general is memorization. It's difficult for me to remember what the symbols mean, and notice the slight difference in them. This is an important but extremely difficult language to learn.

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  23. I think that the hardest thing in Manderain is the signs of the letters and adding the tones, it just through me off. One sign with a tone means one thing and the same sign with a different tone means something completely different.

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  24. The biggest challenge for me to learn mandarin is the sheer difference between how our languages work. People literally had to make another form of the language so that we could comprehend what was happening! The sheer difference of one letter in their language and how it sounds when they say it has me stumped. It's even harder for me to comprehend because I'm also taking Spanish.

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