Hi guys, if any of you kept up with my blog from last week, I want to simply make a short update on progress.
First and foremost, I want to be humble about my Chinese skills- I stutter a lot when I speak a foreign language, while this problem just comes and goes for me in English. I have made some slight progress and I have gained some popularity here as well. But it's nothing worth bragging about, I still feel I am rather mediocre, and I need help on improving my spoken Chinese because the last time I took a proficiency test, the part that I performed worst on was listening, and my best area of performance was written grammar.
(Edit): If you'd like me to cast a game of you in Chinese, then please by all means send me an email at eXeBreaker@gmail.com. (/Edit)
So, here's what I need from you guys: I need advice on casting, what I am doing wrong, and what I can do to make casting quality better. When I cast now, I tend to call units by their formal titles in Chinese, but I still call zerglings puppies and ultralisks elephants as usual.
Here's this week's cast, a typical master-level Protoss vs. a diamond-ish Zerg player:
Instant 5/5. I can't understand any chinese, but the people who bother to cast in other languages and also who have started translating Liquipedia into other languages deserve a lot of credit. One of the things that makes TL awesome is that it is a global community, and stuff like this is just helps grow it. Props to you sir!
Although I don't know any Chinese myself, this is quite impressive. Out of curiosity, what's your history of learning Chinese and how long have you been learning it?
On April 28 2012 20:36 Suc wrote: Although I don't know any Chinese myself, this is quite impressive. Out of curiosity, what's your history of learning Chinese and how long have you been learning it?
I'm American, many americans have no clue what the hell they are saying when they say, "I speak____ fluently." But let me show you a scenario that really tests someone's language skills: "I speak Japanese fluently." "How do you say 'nuclear reactor' in Japanese?" "I don't know." "..."
I don't want to encounter that problem ever in my life. So, I forced myself to sit down with a book for an hour a day, every day, for over a year. I have taught myself most of my Chinese, but I feel that if I took classes, it could actually be much better than it is now. I started studying in January 2008, but I lost pace with my studies around January 2011 and started slacking and focusing on other subjects in school more than Chinese. I tried to make sure I could read characters every single day.
On April 28 2012 19:43 T.O.P. wrote: Wow, your Chinese skills are admirable. Are you an exchange student?
Yes, I'm only here until June 25th, but if you want to change that, then you could help me out by spreading my channel to some of the Taiwanese teamliquid-esque websites. My traditional script skills are not as good as my simplified script skills, and frankly I don't know where else to look besides youtube.
I'm studying Mandarin as well, I lived in China last year for about six months while teaching English, and now I'm taking a Chinese class here in America. I hope to return next year so I can continue to study the language. It's difficult, so I'm impressed with your ability. Thanks for inspiring me and good luck with your casting!
I'm Chinese and I spent 10 years abroad, and even I have to say Chinese is fking hard. I can't view the video, because firewall, but well done and congrats, and good luck in the future!
Also an idea, put videos on Youku, our "netizens" love foreigners learning Chinese lol.
Some of your inflections etc sound a little off, but that may be due to your accent, that's fine. Oh and I second Mobius_1, you should post it on youku and maybe have a chinese microblog? Not sure what's hot there atm but yea.
Also, you could check out this site, they have tons of casting down in chinese and are up to date on the matches, maybe you could listen to the way they pronounce etc and learn from them.
On April 28 2012 20:36 Suc wrote: Although I don't know any Chinese myself, this is quite impressive. Out of curiosity, what's your history of learning Chinese and how long have you been learning it?
I'm American, many americans have no clue what the hell they are saying when they say, "I speak____ fluently." But let me show you a scenario that really tests someone's language skills: "I speak Japanese fluently." "How do you say 'nuclear reactor' in Japanese?" "I don't know." "..."
I don't want to encounter that problem ever in my life. So, I forced myself to sit down with a book for an hour a day, every day, for over a year. I have taught myself most of my Chinese, but I feel that if I took classes, it could actually be much better than it is now. I started studying in January 2008, but I lost pace with my studies around January 2011 and started slacking and focusing on other subjects in school more than Chinese. I tried to make sure I could read characters every single day.
On April 28 2012 19:43 T.O.P. wrote: Wow, your Chinese skills are admirable. Are you an exchange student?
Yes, I'm only here until June 25th, but if you want to change that, then you could help me out by spreading my channel to some of the Taiwanese teamliquid-esque websites. My traditional script skills are not as good as my simplified script skills, and frankly I don't know where else to look besides youtube.
thats a pretty crazy reason to learn chinese, though it did result in a useful skill
maybe you realize this but being fluent at a language doesnt mean you know all the vocab words!
I listened to like two minutes, but just a few pointers:
1. 游戏 means game in the literal sense of a video game. In the context of "This game is played between Player A and B", you actually mean this set. You should say 这一局.
2. When you are saying spawning locations, you should say 11 o'clock POSITION instead of just 11 o'clock.
So combining you would get something like, 今天这一局是谁谁谁跟谁谁谁。 playerA在大概十点中的位置，而playerb在四点半左右的位置。
Also, you have some direct idiomatic translations from eng to chinese, which doesn't work. Like, in Eng we would say "Here we have the spawning pool." But in Chinese you can't say 我们这里有spawning pool。You can say something like, 他在这里开始造一个spawning pool.
I don't play sc2 though so I don't really know the jargon :p Hope that helps!
On April 28 2012 20:36 Suc wrote: Although I don't know any Chinese myself, this is quite impressive. Out of curiosity, what's your history of learning Chinese and how long have you been learning it?
I'm American, many americans have no clue what the hell they are saying when they say, "I speak____ fluently." But let me show you a scenario that really tests someone's language skills: "I speak Japanese fluently." "How do you say 'nuclear reactor' in Japanese?" "I don't know." "..."
I don't want to encounter that problem ever in my life. So, I forced myself to sit down with a book for an hour a day, every day, for over a year. I have taught myself most of my Chinese, but I feel that if I took classes, it could actually be much better than it is now. I started studying in January 2008, but I lost pace with my studies around January 2011 and started slacking and focusing on other subjects in school more than Chinese. I tried to make sure I could read characters every single day.
On April 28 2012 19:43 T.O.P. wrote: Wow, your Chinese skills are admirable. Are you an exchange student?
Yes, I'm only here until June 25th, but if you want to change that, then you could help me out by spreading my channel to some of the Taiwanese teamliquid-esque websites. My traditional script skills are not as good as my simplified script skills, and frankly I don't know where else to look besides youtube.
I consider myself fluent but I don't know how to say nuclear reactor either...
Anyway, you can watch some Taiwanese soap operas with subtitles. Should improve your reading :3
On April 29 2012 00:45 rabidch wrote: thats a pretty crazy reason to learn chinese, though it did result in a useful skill
maybe you realize this but being fluent at a language doesnt mean you know all the vocab words!
I'm aware of that... I just find it insulting that someone thinks just because they were stationed in Okinawa or wherever for one year, they suddenly become "fluent." I have a totally different attitude towards that word. I remember the day I had that conversation, the guy said he could speak Japanese fluently, I also asked him, "Can you read katakana or hiragana?" And before I finished, he started blabbering away in Japanese. I told him "I don't speak Japanese, I want to know if you can read or write it." "I got no clue what you're talkin' about, man." "Have you taken the JLPT or the DLPT for Japanese?" "No."
According to some proficiency tests that I have taken, I have a "measure" of fluency, apparently enough to "speak" fluently and understand native speakers, or by CEF standards, my proficiency in Chinese is equal to B2- which is level four out of a possible six levels. My Chinese is good enough to study at any university in mainland China, but I only have this certification so that I have something to put on my resume.
My attitude is, just be humble when learning a foreign language. You see me stating here that I can speak Chinese well enough to study anywhere I want to in mainland China. But at the same time, you've seen some native speakers here in this very same thread tell me that my Chinese accent and my tonal inflections are flawed.
Oh, by the way, to the native speakers here I forgot to tell you that most of the units in the game I called by their formal names, like I called the immortal the 不朽者, but I called the spawning pool the 狗池 (dog house?), I said 水晶塔 a few times, I used 人口, and I'm pretty sure I said 蟑螂 as well.
On April 29 2012 00:45 rabidch wrote: thats a pretty crazy reason to learn chinese, though it did result in a useful skill
maybe you realize this but being fluent at a language doesnt mean you know all the vocab words!
I'm aware of that... I just find it insulting that someone thinks just because they were stationed in Okinawa or wherever for one year, they suddenly become "fluent." I have a totally different attitude towards that word. I remember the day I had that conversation, the guy said he could speak Japanese fluently, I also asked him, "Can you read katakana or hiragana?" And before I finished, he started blabbering away in Japanese. I told him "I don't speak Japanese, I want to know if you can read or write it." "I got no clue what you're talkin' about, man." "Have you taken the JLPT or the DLPT for Japanese?" "No."
According to some proficiency tests that I have taken, I have a "measure" of fluency, apparently enough to "speak" fluently and understand native speakers, or by CEF standards, my proficiency in Chinese is equal to B2- which is level four out of a possible six levels. My Chinese is good enough to study at any university in mainland China, but I only have this certification so that I have something to put on my resume.
My attitude is, just be humble when learning a foreign language. You see me stating here that I can speak Chinese well enough to study anywhere I want to in mainland China. But at the same time, you've seen some native speakers here in this very same thread tell me that my Chinese accent and my tonal inflections are flawed.
Oh, by the way, to the native speakers here I forgot to tell you that most of the units in the game I called by their formal names, like I called the immortal the 不朽者, but I called the spawning pool the 狗池 (dog house?), I said 水晶塔 a few times, I used 人口, and I'm pretty sure I said 蟑螂 as well.
as I observed in the Taiwanese casts, some of them just read out the unit names from the TW client interface, but the or idiomatic terms you need to learn from the ex-pro-gamer casts, which is usually with the game host.
狗池 = dog pool = spawning pool (because we call the zerglings 小狗)
Not bad. I'm pretty impressed. As some others have mentioned, your intonation could be better, but I'm sure that will come with practise.
Just as a note from me, the game sound is too loud. I had difficulty hearing you talk sometimes or could not hear you at all as a result (for example, the Void Ray attack sound is louder than you).
Alright, thanks for the feedback. Next time I will set xsplit to full microphone and half in-game volume. Sorry I didn't post this in the OP, but is there any chance I can get some people to sub and like me on youtube?
EPT
and good luck with your casting!
