#dongbei. but he does some of the same pronunciation stuff

[rigelmejo]

我说话很少，我可以小更加继续交流跟其他人如果他不知道英文。哈哈

但是我可以继续交流。很慢，很慢，多的问题从他和还从我。

I had a conversation today! It went slowly as I am bad at recognizing words I hear and they did not know any English except for a few words, so we both were often asking "x是什么意思” and 再说 and 你懂不懂，你明白了吗 ToT but we figured it out and talked for an hour!

I do feel I ought to listen to more podcasts and livestreams just more of regular conversations because topic is so much more random in them with so much less context and I'm just not as good at figuring out what the words are. I think part of that would come with more practice. Also I need to learn how to say "give me a moment" or "let me say that again" or "nevermind" not quite filler words but the words that mean forget what I said lol let me rephrase. I only know 没关系 for when I need to say nevermind I know i was incomprehensible djdjjd

I've also run into specifically accents from dongbei twice in two days and maybe I should get more familiar with it. I got confused for a whole minute because someone said 书吧 and I heard Shubar and had no idea what "bar" was. I also heard some shi that sounded like si and I'm used to that so that wasn't as hard to get, but the r at the end of a few things was not the kind of r endings I'm more used to so I kept getting quite confused over words I should have recognized.

I am happy to say my grammar was bad yes, so I did get some corrections (thankfully wooh), but it was Also good enough I was understandable. My grammar was bad but did not impede understanding, and they were able to say "you meant X right?" So I could say yes or rephrase to what I meant. My grammar could be so much worse considering I only did passive grammar study so ;-; I take it as a small personal success my chatting is comprehensible and not total confusing babbling.

Also a small personal success to me, I got a few pronunciation corrections (good cause I need them pointed out) mostly on saying the tone firmer on some words (xiao!). But my tones like the grammar did not prevent understanding. And just being understandable when i say something is a small personal success ;-;. (Also a personal note, I absolutely raised tone instinctively a Lot at the end of sentences, I do think this is that English accent of raise ur voice at the end of a question/when ur not sure, and I did it so much I know I'm absolutely fucking up that way and need to try controlling it better. It didn't impede understanding but it was a very frequent error and could be fixed by me just going 是不是 or asking some small confirmation words at the end of sentences I'm unsure of, its an error i can actually notice and can fix on my own.)

I feel if I did find a tutor, finding one that could teach by first sort of explaining a topic like "country has many places, places have local languages, local languages are called x" then having a few conversations using those many new words, would be a structure that would work well for me. If I have a more basic conversation starter so I know what the subject is then I do much better at figuring out what words I'm hearing and figuring out new ones. But when we just jump into randomly talking about say Travel after something very unrelated I sit going what is 旅行 even though I know the word, or jump to translations and hear 翻译 and don't realize it's a word I know cause I didn't realize we were talking about translations now. Mm so that sort of intro then in depth structure with a tutor I think might suit me well (future me keep that in mind).

Small bit on listening. My listening still isn't ideal (that will take timeee) but it was easier than a podcast obviously since I could ask about the convo. Hearing words wasnt hard I'm actually fairly okay at hearing words and repeating back to ask what X parts meant. So that part of my listening is MUCH better than last year. I struggled a bit to hear fast speaking but I think a decent portion of difficulty was just not knowing topic so not sure what word I was hearing (like again hearing shubar and not realizing it was 书吧), and trying to decide if a word I didn't understand is one I Should know (like 书吧 翻译 旅行) or actually a new word I don't know and need to ask the meaning of. Listening is still sure rough but eons better than this time last year.