Bad Sign Number Six Million And Twenty

[bloodyrosemccoy]

If you have ever asked yourself, “What kind of crazy motherfucker picks up a ‘My Chinese Coach’ video game and plows into it headfirst because it looks like fun?”, then, well, I have your answer.

Yes, in a casual attempt to overcome my fear of tone, and because I had not yet done something this summer that was so fucking geeky that I had other geeks trying to push me down and take my lunch money, I have started learning Chinese through the extremely thorough and doubtless infallible world of video games.* And I’m treating it like a video game.

For the record, I’m on Level 9. Soon I will beat Chinese. I’m hoping that when I do, the last thing it teaches me is how to say “A Winner Is You.”


*Of course, this is coming someone who would pick a stack of Rosetta Stone programs over a vacation to Disneyworld if given the choice.

Comments

[mfb.livejournal.com]

... 'ey. How many languages do you speak? I always wanted to learn a second or third, but I'm not sure how to go about immersing myself ... I had plenty of exposure to foreign languages when I was younger (I switched about four times going through school -- french, then spanish, then latin, then german), so I like to think I'm still mentally flexible.

* also you're not alone disney sucks

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... Actually, I love Disneyworld. the point is, I love languages more.

I am actually, as a linguist, fluent in only one language--English. I'm conversational in Spanish and somewhat so in ASL and Swahili, and I can slowly form and parse sentences in Hawaiian and Japanese. But the bane of the linguist is that we often get too distracted to immerse in any one language.

It really depends on how you learn. Language software, books, and games can all help, but nothing really beats conversing. If you can take some sort of immersion class, or if you know a native speaker of the language you want to learn, take every chance you can get to practice it.

[mfb.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'm really qualified to talk I lived next door to it for years. euugh

Aww, you talk about it enough I was thinking you might've known some Danieljackson-fu. Ambling through language structure is all good fun... it's just irritating to know there's an entire cultural subtext one is missing.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I have never seen Stargate, but I'm guessing Daniel Jackson had the added incentive of immersion, as well as the advantage of being fictional. ;) If you want a good portrait of how linguists work with actual language, I'd look at Milo Thatch from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. They're pretty unrealistic about a lot of things, but the way Milo communicates with the Atlanteans and studies the language is a bit more like it--halting but enthusiastic.

I do pick up a lot of things from immersion, though--I can tell you a lot more about the difference between Kenyan and Tanzanian Swahili after I visited those countries, or a few interesting aspects of Spanish that it'd be hard to explain in a textbook. That's the best way to learn the subtexts.