EPTOn November 13 2010 14:44 Karliath wrote:
Yup. Born in Taiwan, I learned Chinese as a main language in school until fourth grade, when I transferred to an American school. Because my family and extended family spoke Chinese, the newspapers, magazines, and books around the house were Chinese, news on the tv was in Chinese, and the country I lived in was Chinese, I never lost the ability to speak or read. However, now in my senior year of high school, I can only write the most basic of Chinese sentences.
Yup. Born in Taiwan, I learned Chinese as a main language in school until fourth grade, when I transferred to an American school. Because my family and extended family spoke Chinese, the newspapers, magazines, and books around the house were Chinese, news on the tv was in Chinese, and the country I lived in was Chinese, I never lost the ability to speak or read. However, now in my senior year of high school, I can only write the most basic of Chinese sentences.
Huh. Most everybody I know that made it through around fourth grade in China all have really good reading/writing/speaking (at least compared to us raised-in-the-west kids D: ). Never knew one that couldn't write but could do the other two.
On November 13 2010 14:19 xMiragex wrote:
So like i said before, im not afraid to SOUND bad phonetically. It's more of saying the wrong word and/or using the wrong tone. Which isn't drastically different from learning another language.
So like i said before, im not afraid to SOUND bad phonetically. It's more of saying the wrong word and/or using the wrong tone. Which isn't drastically different from learning another language.
Really, if you don't want to become super-fluent with really correct pronunciation and everything I wouldn't worry about using the wrong tone. When we listen to people who don't have Chinese as their first language (ie. some cantonese, some foreign-born kids), we mostly ignore their tone because they never get it right anyway, and figure everything out from context
. It doesn't matter if you mispronounce "dumpling" as "sleep"
