amemulo

So….. I learned some basic Chinese in high school but I never took it seriously. Now many years later, since February I restarted my studies with Chinese. This time I’m a bit more diligent with it. I can read a good amount of characters, my listening skills could improve drastically, my spoken skills are just ok. My tones are more or less correct, but could use some polishing. In addition to the ultra-pompous standard northern accent, I’d like to pick up a relaxed Taiwanese accent. I cannot for the life of me write more than some 100 characters, although character recognition is around at least 1000 or so characters. Maybe in three years I could read a newspaper with ease. Meanwhile, I’d like to just improve my colloquial daily language to participate in all aspects of the sinophonic world. Anyone want to help ?

I’m going systematically through “Russian for Beginners” By Charles Duff. It’s a bit dated but thorough in it’s grammar, so not for the light-hearted. Since I have a few languages behind me and am well versed in grammar, I find it to be a great book. My goal is to copy one lesson a day into my notebook and hopefully slowly internalize it. Today I’m copying lesson 18 and reviewing lesson 16 and 17, so a new lesson everyday and a review of the two previous lessons. We’ll see how long I can keep this up, since the book is really dense. One line from lesson 18.

“вчера утром мы вас ждали на площади, но вас не было”
Yesterday we waited for you at the town square, but you weren’t there.

So I kind of put off driving as long as I could, but in two months I managed to pass my written test and then past the drive test. I’m pretty confident to drive on the streets now, not so sure about the freeway just yet. I got license Friday and my brother in law gave me the keys to his car today! :)So I just need to drive some more and gain more confidence and work on driving on the freeway! Keep scanning while you drive to avoid tunnel vision!