I’ve listened to a Mandarin radio station this week while I was otherwise occupied with something else that required my full concentration (e.g. work). I’ve basically done this for about an hour a day over four days this week. It’s not something I normally do as I don’t quite believe that listening to Mandarin in [...]
Over the weekend a tweet about an interview with Professor James Heisig caught my eye. Professor James Heisig is the co-author of Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters alongside Professor Timothy Richardson. This post will be short and sweet but I wanted to do what [...]
Since I’ve finished my Heisig book, I’ve had more time to give my listening skills some practice. This has been great for me – in particular I’ve been focused on lessons all related to food in some way or another. I’ve stumbled upon a few interesting discoveries – the most important discovery being that 来 [...]
I decided that being able to play the Chinese GuZheng (古箏 gǔzhēng) is something that will have to go onto my bucket list . Considering limited time I have, it is something that will have to happen a bit later in my life as there are a few other things that take bigger priority in [...]
COE or Chinese Ordered English is a term I only discovered about three nights before on Wikipedia. (I found it when I browsed the web instead of finishing my blog post which, at the time dealt with another topic entirely.) This “technique” is one I’ve been consciously, purposely and subconsciously using on an off ever [...]
I have finished working through my Heisig book – my closest non-human companion for the last 6 – 7 months. I have studied 1500 hanzi using the Heisig and Richardson book Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters. If you need a bit of history on [...]
Hijacking primitives – what’s that? As I’m working my way through Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters – I find that I am STILL changing the meanings assigned to primitives in the Heisig book. This happens rather naturally and I can’t really help it. I [...]
It’s been a while since I said anything about my progress working through Heisig’s & Richardson’s book trying to get a 1500 characters stored in my memory. I’m not one for inspirational, motivational books but of course one can always make an exception right? So around September of last year when someone talked me into [...]
At the beginning of February I spent a few days in Singapore and then moved on to South Africa. As I spent almost the entire month of February abroad, visiting family and friends, I didn’t really study much at all. I couldn’t exactly prioritise my Mandarin over spending time with family and friends I hadn’t [...]
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore this language and I love every waking moment I can dedicate to it. However – former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd one of my greatest Australian heroes – sums up – so perfectly – how I (often) feel about learning Chinese. Recently a video was leaked onto YouTube that [...]
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