Okay, I’m going to show off a bit.
My Mandarin homework at the Chelmsford Chinese Language School this week was to write a paragraph about Naomi. Most of this we have covered in class, but I got some help from my friend Shenghan to make sure the grammar was correct, and still managed to make one mistake in with the suì character, which I have since corrected.
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我 |
有 |
一 |
个 |
女 |
å„¿ |
。 |
她 |
å« |
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娜 |
奥 |
ç±³ |
。 |
她 |
五 |
å² |
了 |
。 |
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她 |
é•¿ |
ç€ |
黑 |
黑 |
çš„ |
头 |
å‘ |
。 |
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她 |
喜 |
欢 |
è·³ |
舞 |
。 |
娜 |
奥 |
ç±³ |
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是 |
一 |
个 |
亮 |
é—ª |
é—ª |
çš„ |
女 |
å© |
。 |
Here is the same text with the pinyin inserted:
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wÇ’ |
yÇ’u |
yī |
gè |
nÇš |
ér |
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tÄ |
jià o |
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我 |
有 |
一 |
个 |
女 |
å„¿ |
。 |
她 |
å« |
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NÃ |
à o |
mÇ |
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tÄ |
wÇ” |
suì |
le |
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娜 |
奥 |
ç±³ |
。 |
她 |
五 |
å² |
了 |
。 |
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tÄ |
zhÇŽng |
zhe |
hēi |
hēi |
de |
tóu |
fà |
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她 |
é•¿ |
ç€ |
黑 |
黑 |
çš„ |
头 |
å‘ |
。 |
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tÄ |
xÇ |
huà n |
tià o |
wÇ” |
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NÃ |
à o |
mÇ |
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她 |
喜 |
欢 |
è·³ |
舞 |
。 |
娜 |
奥 |
ç±³ |
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shì |
yī |
gè |
lià ng |
shÇŽn |
shÇŽn |
de |
nÇš |
hái |
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是 |
一 |
个 |
亮 |
é—ª |
é—ª |
çš„ |
女 |
å© |
。 |
Mandarin makes learning Spanish seem very easy by comparison. There are no Chinese-English cognates, and just learning the different tones is daunting. The “pinyin” phonetic aids help, but I still struggle with pronunciation, and, ultimately, need to memorize all the charcters. (Growing up in China, my teacher learned each character by being required to write it 1,000 times.) Of course, I occasionally have my rudimentary Chinese good-naturedly laughed at, such as a few weeks ago when I said, 我的太太ä¸å¥½ã€‚ My wife is no good, rather than 我的太太ä¸èˆ’æœã€‚My wife is not feeling well!
I’ll post a translation in the comments in a few days. In the meantime, you might have fun figuring it out. (Hint www.chinese-tools.com offers some excellent tools for working with Chinese, including a dictionary and input method editor.)
Cool! I’m really proud of you! Also the last sentence you add is very interesting! ä½ çœŸæ£’ï¼
Hey, I’m the one with the Chinese kid. Why are you learning Mandarin and I’m barely literate in my own mother tongue?
I’ve wanted to study a tonal language such as Mandarin for a number of years, and had a great opportunity to do so.
Plus, Isaac is studying it in school, so he and David took the class with me the first semester. Right now, though, Isaac is way ahead of where I am, so he’s only studying it at the ASD.
Even NaNi has learned to count to 20 and some basic greetings.
And to my patient adviser Shenghan, I should add 明师出高徒。
has ashish ever mentioned that my dad speaks chinese fluently? as in learned it in china YEARS ago.. and when chinese people hear him speak, they think he’s one of them!
I just learned this last night, from Ashish. I’m very impressed. Speaking that fluently and authentically is definitely my goal, but it will take a long time to get there.