Apparently 黑线 (black thread) is a colloquial expression that means "a feeling of speechlessness or frustration" and when I looked up Pleco, it says that it has something to do with the Cultural Revolution. Man, I went to deep places with that sentence lol.
Asking Chinese Mastodon - does black thread really mean this in the Chinese context?
I've been a little suspicious that almost everything I wrote in Chinese, ChatGPT said was 👍 .
However, today my faith was reaffirmed when ChatGPT corrected me when I wrote 我出家。
ChatGPT: "出家" usually means to become a monk or nun, which might not be the intended meaning.
Bwahaha. Would've made an interesting diary entry though.
But what's encouraging though is that I seemed to have internalised Chinese grammar ... mostly.
I've been earwormed by this song a lot and I love the translation of the delightful lyrics, but I'm going to write the title as "Gender Queer" going forward as that is more faithful to the lyrics than the literal title "雌雄同體" (by 五月天/Mayday) and the English translation of that phrase is potentially offensive to intersex people.
Am continuing my practice of typing out Chinese words and using them in proper sentences. I suspect I'm able to do this only because I have a foundation in Mandarin, and have intermediate listening skills. So a lot of my sentences are based on instinct not on remembering grammatical rules. I plug what I write in ChatGPT/Copilot to check if they're right.
They keep saying I am.
I am feeling suss lol.
Anyway #Mandarin folks, do we say 风很大 ? (It's windy) It feels odd.
This journey through #Mandarin Chinese has got me wondering. Will there be a simplified English one day? Will there be some mirror image of me trying to learn traditional English as an adult, wondering how the hell people put up with this for so long?
今天我学很多字。雨，雪，都，用，可以， 找，那 etc。我要去花园，可是我太忙。
I wrote this without referring to grammar books etc but from memory. So，I plugged it into chatgpt and asked it if it was grammatically correct. It recommended a few changes:
I am charmed to learn that #Mandarin has a measure word for small things one has to be cautious with. The word is 枚 méi, and you can use it for eggs, grenades, and rings.
I've never heard it used myself, so I'd love to have this confirmed by someone else.
The first time I realised I had a superpower was when I was living in Australia.
I was at a party where there were mostly Malaysians and Australians, and a lady from China was there. She could only speak Mandarin, so I spoke to her in my not-so-good Mandarin, apologising for my subpar command of the language. She reassured me in the polite way Chinese people do when you’re trying your best but not hitting the mark.
Then, a friend from Malaysia came over, and I responded to her in a mix of Malay and English – Manglish, to most of us.
Then another person came over to talk to me, and I joked with her in Hokkien and then switched to English when her Aussie spouse came over.
When I returned to the lady from China, she remarked, “You Malaysians are so amazing!”
At first, I was confused, because I was just doing what many Malaysians do and take for granted – context-switching and adjusting my language to the person I’m speaking to.
Then she said, “You can speak Mandarin, you can speak English. I’m amazed that Malaysians can do this.”
This may sound like I’m humble bragging, but this was not the first time people said this to me. I’ve travelled around the world when I was younger, and I heard this often.
Once, in Japan, the guide and translator who accompanied us said that the Japanese people were intrigued by Malaysians due to our linguistic abilities. I had the same remark about Koreans from another tour guide when I visited Seoul.
I’m not sure if they’re flattering us Malaysians, but since both tour guides were originally Malaysians, maybe they were speaking the truth.
And I think, due to this flexibility, a lot of people are confused by Malaysians.
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I've got a seven-day streak going in both French and Mandarin on duolingo. Sadly, duolingo doesn't do traditional Chinese so I have to supplement with my textbooks from Taiwan but I'm enjoying it for listening and vocabulary. And the French is not Canadian! The app doesn't believe that 'bon matin' is 'good morning'.
If there's no stronger argument for the need to learn how to read Chinese, it is this! Two characters can have the same pronunciation and tone but mean slightly different things. I learned the character for person (rén) 人 and its radical version 亻as a kid, and now I know 仁 which means "humane", and the way the components fit together is rather poetic.
A habit I am starting is to write a short sentence, like a diary entry, in Chinese every day. My writing is horrendous but this is one of the ways I am trying to remember the characters.
On this beautiful sunny day, I discovered that if I look up stroke order for the traditional character 肅 in three different places, I get three different results.
The Pleco mobile app seems to represent mainland China. Why does China have official guidelines for traditional characters, you ask? I know not. Singapore certainly doesn't. But China does.
Have learned 100/1000 Chinese characters using mnemonics and memory palace techniques :). Apps I'm using to do this: Tofu Learn to write the characters and Du Chinese as a graded reader.
🐉 There are lots of Mandarin/English puns circulating for the Year of the Dragon playing on the Mandarin word for dragon: 龍 (lóng).
Another form of pun uses lóng 龍 in Mandarin vs lóng 攏 in Taiwanese which means all/everything.
The characters 龍賀 (lóng-hè) mean "congratulations for the dragon year" in Mandarin. In Taiwanese this sounds similar to "everything is good" (lóng hó 攏好)
So I guess if I understand this podcast I am upper intermediate when it comes to Mandarin? Unfortunately while I understand this podcast quite well, no way can I speak this quickly. It is so weird that my listening skills are soooo much better than my speaking skills 🤣
We're blessed to have so many tools to use to learn #Mandarin free. It has made learning the language so much faster and easier. Here are the apps and courses I'm using to improve my Mandarin.
It's interesting, what I'm seeing in the current Chinese Primary 1 textbooks. They're using Singaporean terms like 巴士 for "bus", but they're also teaching the formal pronoun 您 that nobody bothered with during my childhood, and so far I haven't caught a single concession to local pronunciation. #Mandarin