One year of Chinese to go
Aug. 20th, 2022 06:30 pmIt is now less than a year until the 2023 Worldcon.
I've started using HelloChinese, which is giving me speaking and listening practice. The latter is what's giving me doubts right now. It features a couple clips per lesson of what appear to be random Chinese people on the street saying a sentence which you then have to transcribe. About half the time they speak nice and clearly for the camera. The other half of the time, they speak in what I presume is a normal manner, which is to say... super fast and mumbly. I am developing horrible doubts about ever being to understand streaming Worldcon panels in Chinese.
Still, I trudge onward. At my current rate, I'll probably finish the main sequence of Duolingo lessons in early-mid November. I'm going through HelloChinese extra fast thanks to the overlap in vocabulary and probably will finish its main sequence right around the end of this year. Then there's a lot of extra content to explore, especially in HelloChinese, which I will probably get the paid version of at some point.
I've started looking around for video or audio content in Chinese about science and science fiction-- I'm a long way from having the vocabulary to understand it, but it supposedly helps to just get used to hearing a language at length. I'm sure hoping it does.
I've started using HelloChinese, which is giving me speaking and listening practice. The latter is what's giving me doubts right now. It features a couple clips per lesson of what appear to be random Chinese people on the street saying a sentence which you then have to transcribe. About half the time they speak nice and clearly for the camera. The other half of the time, they speak in what I presume is a normal manner, which is to say... super fast and mumbly. I am developing horrible doubts about ever being to understand streaming Worldcon panels in Chinese.
Still, I trudge onward. At my current rate, I'll probably finish the main sequence of Duolingo lessons in early-mid November. I'm going through HelloChinese extra fast thanks to the overlap in vocabulary and probably will finish its main sequence right around the end of this year. Then there's a lot of extra content to explore, especially in HelloChinese, which I will probably get the paid version of at some point.
I've started looking around for video or audio content in Chinese about science and science fiction-- I'm a long way from having the vocabulary to understand it, but it supposedly helps to just get used to hearing a language at length. I'm sure hoping it does.