Taiwanese - 19 April

Two weeks ago, I turned to Taiwanese. With Chinese, I'd already made a start on its written language. With Taiwanese, though, I feel inclined to work on its spoken aspect. That's because primers in that language utilize furigana-style pronunciation symbols alongside.

Consequently, I'm looking to become familiar with the Taiwanese alphabet as an entry point into that language. But I'm not sure just how to go about that at this stage.

Chinese - 18 April

I've only been doing Chinese since the first of March. I've concentrated on the written script, not the spoken. I started out using a pdf copy of Harry Potter (the first). However, it's quality isn't the best, and I've been looking around for a better resource.

And then I came across an old copy of H.R. Williamson's Chinese. It's a Teach Yourself Books. I like it. I believe that it's what I need to instill a feel for common words.

The way that it is set out, with a number of dialogues, with the hanzi explained on the facing pages, allows me to reconstruct the sentences with Chinese characters. (For example, this one: 進)

I'm still figuring it out, but I may be able to bring my alpha-kanji project back into play.

What do you expect?

I expected, upon returning to New Zealand, that I would have less time to devote to my language activities because I would have classes to teach. And yet, I dearly looked forward to kicking off Arabic, Chinese, Maori, Norwegian and Russian. Five more languages to take my total to 15 (let's include English in the tally).

If I can spare a couple of hours per day (I thought), or two hours and twenty minutes, then that amounts to 10 minutes per language (this time excluding English; it will just have to manage).

I don't think that this will be a problem. Ten minutes ought to be enough, if my method is indeed as good as an hour of traditional study. It's easily six times as efficient, I believe.

Therefore, I'm looking at 365 days divided by 6 number of hours per language, or 61 hours. If I set my age of retirement as the conclusion of this experiment - which is two years from now - then I'm spending, say, 125 hours on each of my 14 languages.

It will be interesting to discover whether the whole thing is doable. Whether it doesn't lead to too much strain. And whether the languages help each other along, rather than slow each other's progress.

Leaping into Chinese

Chinese, now. How the heck do I leap into that? Well, obviously, again, into its written form.

Chinese characters are world-renowned for being the toughest nut to crack. However, with a good bit of Japanese under the belt, I'm not daunted. Especially if I concentrate on the script rather than trying to pronounce it. No four tones for me! - at least not yet. But with kanji, I'm prepared to start on around 8000 hanzi. Let me at 'em!


Internet archive

The ABCs of multi-lingual-ism

It happens to be the start of 2020 as I put pen to paper (well, it was). The time feels right to start a new blog. It's time for a New Year's resolution. It's time for a challenge. A language acquisition challenge.

Initially, I thought of setting a 365-day goal. But I feel that would be too gimmicky - it doesn't feel authentic. Plus, I have life that I'd like to live alongside of this project. Life-work balance and all that.

So I'll take it fairly easy. I've no problem with that - I've already opted to work only part time (0.6). And in a couple of years I'll be eligible to retire. All in all, I'm not going to turn this into a big deal. I wish to spend no more than a couple of hours per day on this exercise. In terms of language-learning, therefore, I'll see how I fare with just a few languages, not too many. I'll settle for an even dozen.

I've selected them according to the alphabet. They each start with a different letter, so that'll make it easier to name and keep track of them.

• A is for Arabic
• C is for Chinese
• D is for Dutch
• E is for English (which I don't count as one of the 12)
• F is for French
• G is for German
• H is for Hindi
• J is for Japanese
• M is for Maori
• N is for Norwegian
• P is for Polish
• R is for Russian
• and S will be for Spanish

I think that's a fair swag.