bloodyrosemccoy: (Linguist)
bloodyrosemccoy ([personal profile] bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2009-07-03 06:30 pm

Bad Sign Number Six Million And Twenty

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.

[identity profile] mfb.livejournal.com 2009-07-04 07:09 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com 2009-07-06 03:50 am (UTC)(link)
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.