global_jd

Routledge grammar

Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide, by Claudia Ross and Jing-hen Sheng Ma, Routledge, 2006. It's a large 400-page paperback, June 2006. I have enough grammars, but this one caught my eye because although the first part is the usual set of rules, the second larger part is about situational use... how do you express comparisons? refer to future events? how to refer to obligations and expectations? The latter section is organized by social need and topic.

This reminds me of the Nihongo Notes series, but less anecdotal, more organized. This book describes an area of communication, and how various means of expressing this vary. Recommended.

Chinese Character Fast Finder

Great book, from Tuttle Publishing.. the author, Laurence Matthews, doesn't have much of a search engine footprint... if you can't use Tuttle's site, then Amazon has ordering too.

It has 3200 characters, levels 1-4 of the HSK proficiency tests. The organization is dramatically simple: look up by either the left or right elements, or the top or bottom elements, or the few that aren't slit horizontally or vertically.

I like it because it permits multiple ways of learning. I can scan all the characters with a particular radical in the left half, or right half... see patterns. Definitions are only a word or two and don't get in the way -- for full meaning it should be buttressed by a more traditional dictionary. I can look for characters at the HSK1 level and focus on those, or just avoid the HSK3 or 4. I can quiz myself on the shapes. I can look for elements which are unique, whether the core elements (pp38-40) or the outliers (those with multiple radicals in a single row). The page design is simple, but smart, and allows great flexibility in learning styles.

This is a very good resource for a set of wide, shallow views into the common character set. It doesn't deal at all with compounds, but instead helps in getting familiar with the parts which make up a compound. I'm enjoying it greatly, and I appreciate the work and thought that went into making something so exhaustive, yet so simple.

Chinatown videos

At the intermediate level, look for travelogues, histories, religious programming -- some can be found on broadcast, and such television shows are often repackaged for sale as DVD or VCD. The prices can be quite cheap. But it's also a crapshoot, if you're planning on background use while going to sleep... some Three Gorges VCDs have great content and audio, but chapters are introduced by a loud fanfare.

Movies don't work as well, I think... lots of drama, confrontation, story gets old quick. Travelogues usually have some background music, as well as beautiful nature visuals.

Chinese video is usually subcaptioned in Modern Standard Chinese, so that it can be read even if not aurally understood. But the aspect ratio can get twisted around during the various production and distribution stages, and on the handheld Sunia VCD Player I use it's difficult to trace fine strokes... lot of aliasing. I've started reading more for the shape of the character... jumping up a level from trying to read character-by-character, instead scanning for the things I can recognize and use.

Nighttime speakers are always a problem. Some in-ear plugs also block external sound, but prohibit turning. The newer aluminum speakers are good for their size, but positioning is tricky. If I permanently mount speakers on the bed I'd always wonder how far they carry late at night.

KTSF channel 26 carries "A Path to True Happiness" from 2:00 to 2:30 weekdays... slow pace, accessible vocabulary... requires concentration, but useful.

KVTO-AM 1450 (?) AM carries multiple hours of Korean radio weekday afternoons. Mornings and evenings there's much Cantonese, although there is Mandarin news somewhere around 6pm.

"One Minute Putongua" is a series of TV shorts, explaining Chinese language points in Chinese. Very fast pace, but I was following it (without understanding the subject matter).

For shops, I most often use Asia Star Video (sp?) on Grant St., up near Broadway. They also have a shop in the Clement where I've found useful stuff. There are discount shops all along Grant, but who knows the artists' rights on that trade.

Travelogues, histories, religious programming... great learning material.

Great subtitling

Local San Francisco television station channel 26 has dramas in the evenings... usually Mandarin voices, then dual subtitles in characters and English translation. Reading the characters helps to hear the speech, and glancing over the translation provides the context.

Some books I like

Sometimes I can tell immediately whether a particular book will help me, but sometimes it takes me awhile to learn how much I can actually get out of a resource. In "comments" here I'll list a bunch that surprised me by exceeding expectations.

Penton VocabuLearn

The VocabuLearn series covers multiple languages and is purely focused on increasing vocabulary. As such, it's a good complement to other materials which focus on ear-training, speaking, grammar and the like. More material is available on cassette than on CD. Sets include a booklet with terms printed. The format is single-rep: a word is spoken once, than translated, and it then moves on to the next term. There's enough time to repeat. Sequence varies between source/target and target/source. Because there's no real sequencing or building of skills on previous terms, it's a good asset when attention may be fractured, such as when doing housework or working online... I catch the occasional term, and it seems like it would take many repetitions of the entire tape before the majority of material is retained. I had picked up a copy of Japanese 2 at Kinokuniya, and will probably invest in multiple sets from their online store. Hindi is, as usual, under-represented.