Bemused ramblings some dude says on the internet
Zhou Xiaogeng’s Essentials of Chinese Lexicology is a great vocabulary book for learning Mandarin. It focuses primarily on the rules and forms of word formation. This isn’t just a vocabulary book, and it isn’t a linguistic analysis of word formation, but it’s somewhere in between with a focus on practical learning. It’s a great tool for students of Mandarin at all levels.… Read the rest
I love learning new languages. There’s just something about working on a new way to communicate and explore the human condition. I also strive to make my life more efficient so I can do more of what I love. I’ve bought multiple copies of a book to avoid not having access to it on the go, but that’s not even close to as far as I’ll go.… Read the rest
Like every overachiever in high school, I had always wondered if there was some way to use sleep for something productive. You spend a third of your life asleep, is there some way to get an edge from it? The idea of learning in your sleep via dreams is ancient, but how much of the real world actually bleeds over?
Pretty much everyone has a memory of “learning” something in their sleep and recalling it later.… Read the rest
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis) is one of the most major breakthroughs in modern linguistics. It states that your thinking is effected or affected by the language(s) you know. How you see and experience the world is a product of your linguistic understanding of how to express it. Two people seeing the exact same sunset will have a different interpretation of the exact same experience if they speak two different languages.… Read the rest
The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (汉语水平考试, HSK) is a standard language test in the PRC for testing levels of standard Mandarin. While the test is largely accepted, it still has its critics and criticisms (such as being too standard). Even if you don’t bother learning for the test, knowing how the test is put together and what the levels mean can make a massive difference for learning Mandarin.… Read the rest
I love languages. There’s just something about the feeling of turning an idea into a linguistic expression. It’s an intimate way of understanding an entirely different way of thinking.
When I learn a language, I aim for perfection, or as close as I can get, but I hadn’t started learning a new language in ages. I decided to go back to basics and learn about Thai and Tibetan, two languages which have fascinated me for ages, but which didn’t really have a clear economic or career value.… Read the rest