improve my Mandarin

I’m conversationally fluent-ish but still pretty limited otherwise. I’d like to focus primarily on vocabulary building until I’ve learned all the advanced HSK vocab, which will take a while, and then move on to idioms.

I felt that I had improved quite a lot after the BJ trip since someone there really understood what I was talking. But of course, there are still plenty of rooms to improve since my target is to use Mandarin at work and cna do a platform talk one day.

Cheer up everybody and let’s work hard together.

:)

so won’t really need it in the future.

“我中文有进步耶～”

nod nod nod

I’ve been getting a lot practice on my daily walks. I talked to a Hunan lady and she complimented me on my Mandarin after I told her I was a native English-speaker. It’s funny how no one can hear my English accent anymore but instead sense a Taiwanese style or tone. I love Taiwan Mandarin though, so I have no problem with it.

But yeah, the Hunan lady was so happy to have met me. She was close 50, but she acted just like a kindergardener waiting to be picked up after school! She even invited me to dance the Taichi dance with her. I kindly rejected but I would really love to in the future.

And today I met a cute security guard. Okay, I lie about the cute part but he was pretty young. I asked him if he was new and he said no. I must’ve intimidated him because he was so nervous about speaking to me. Then I asked him how old he was and he muttered 19. Only 19! So yeah, I would love to talk to him more. Next time maybe I’ll ask him where he’s from. Strange how he remembered me and which house I lived in when I had absolutely no memory of him. Poor guy.

Anyway, back to topic – my mandarin is really going somewhere. I’m getting excited. This is all going to be so worth it… Because I’m going to see him on the 18th… We’ll see how it goes. I hope I don’t get so nervous that I lose all my Mandarin skills. It might be the last time I see him before I move back to the States and I really can’t mess this up! I really hope everything works out okay.

You can do it, Jackie!

If all goes well, this goal will be accomplished by the 19th!

“你中文挺好的耶！“

I’m getting more and more comments about my fast improvement in Mandarin now. Although some phrases are still a little off-pronounciation, I am otherwise very understandable!

小杉 told me that I speak Mandarin like a Taiwanese yesterday. I was quite delighted because I never wanted to carry with me that strong Canto-accent. I’ve always favored the soft Taiwan-style mandarin over the strange Hong Kong one. And if not, my ABC-accent is not bad either! Hahaha. So yep, I’m making progress.

Hopefully I won’t lose this after I move back to the States.

我一定会回来的
我们很快就会再见面
Don’t give up.

So I’ve been practicing more and more. I just recently had a conversation with a mando speaker and she couldn’t even tell that I could speak English! WOOT! Well, in the first 15 minutes anyway. But that’s still pretty good. Haha. I can translate from English to cantonese to mandarin faster and smoother now. I’m proud of myself! Just gotta keep working at it! JIA YOU JIA YOU JIA YOU!

我要世界看到新的自己！

for the past three years, I’ve successfully mastered Cantonese – YES! Now I’m off to improve my Mandarin. Although my mom is Taiwanese, she’s become fluent in Cantonese since meeting my dad. I’ve never really had a Mandarin environment to learn. Now since I’m going to study in Beijing this September, I really must get it down!

I’m fine reading and writing most of the everyday Chinese characters, but when speaking, my strange American/Cantonese accent in my Mandarin makes me sound like a Singaporean. It’s understandable but at times inconsistent. Ontop of that, I really don’t know why but my voice becomes especially high in tone when I speak Mandarin. It annoys me when I’m trying to raise any kind of debate or arguement. Ultimately, I give up and change gears to my American-accented Cantonese instead.

On the bright side – I can understand about 85% total of all Mandarin, whether it’s in everyday conversation, TV (silly Taiwanese dramas!), or song lyrics. And although with a bit of difficulty, I can successfully hold up a chit-chat conversation with a fellow fangirl. Not bad, I think.

But yes, I must work hard! JIAYOU!

Easy….......Listen more and speak more.
If possible, put yourself in a manderin environment.
For me, all songs in my iPod are manderin songs. ^_

medicine makes it impossible to study language… it’s a language unto itself… it’ll have to wait for later…