#hsk4

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

Pondering whether or not to re-take the HSK4 exam (without the speaking this time) since I failed to meet the passing mark by around 10 points last time and I refuse to believe that the past few months of studying wouldn't be able to give me that boost.

[dorelia23]

I really like capturing memories of studying.

[simplechinese]

100 animal names in Chinese

[zvaigzdelasas]

I'd say I'm at about a light conversational level in mandarin @ this point 😄

[unforth]

Alright so my Press planned a meet up, and one of the people came is a friend who lives in Beijing most of the year and was in North America anyway. She knows I love danmei so she made me one heck of an offer: if I put together a Taobao shopping list, she'd be my danmei mule - order it for me and carry the stuff to the US so I could pay just cost, no mark up or shipping.

Needless to say I jumped on this like whoa and asked for more than she was physically capable of bringing me. 🤣 (I was very clear she could say "no" whenever, and she did.) As it is she went so fricken above and beyond...

Top to bottom, it's vol. 1 of the Global Examination manhua, a vol. of Daomu Biji, I Ship My Rival x Me, the TGCF revision (wanting that like whoa is what triggered all this), Those Years in Quest of Honor Mine, Mo Du, Little Mushroom, The Fourteenth Year of Chenghua, and the Global Examination special edition (I had. No idea this one would be this big. Oops.)

There are so many extras. So many. I laid everything out on my bed last night and in my head I just kinda flopped mentally atop it all and basked like a content cat, lmao.

All this adds to my existing collection (SVSSS in traditional, MDZS vol. 1 to 3 in traditional, TGCF vol. 1 to 4 in traditional, Thousand Autumns, Golden Stage, Guardian, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, TGCF manhua vol. 1 and 2, and The Husky and His White Cat Shizun vol. 1 to 3).

Anyway, now goals are to REALLY step up getting "reading ready" on my studying. Part of why I got I Ship My Rival x Me (...outside of "the manhua releases too slow and I want to know what happens") is I thought something modern and fluffy would hopefully be a bit simpler for me to read? And it's also a lot shorter than the others. So, after I read all the manhua (I'm way behind on posting TGCF vol. 1 cause this summer is kicking my ass, but I've read about half of it) I'm gonna sit my ass down with ISMM and see if just maybe I can't make my way through an actual damn book, and then if I can, use the vocabulary building that'll surely result in to springboard me into some other book (I'd been thinking Thousand Autumns but after seeing that post about "distinct character usage" stats for cnovels, uh, maybe not Thousand Autumns lmao, idk, I could try Fourteenth Year of Chenghua, that might be a "simpler" choice for historical vocabulary building but their both Meng Xi Shi so they might both be hard...maybe I should just do TGCF, heck knows I know the story which always helps...sorry, I'm just babbling cause I'm excited about my books and procrastinating taking a shower 🤣🤣🤣)

Anyway.

So many shinies.

So many EXTRAS.

I'll try to post pics as I go through everything.

(I've also got ShanGo pre-orders for Legend of Exorcism manhua vol. 1 and...something else my brain is crickets...and fuck I just realized I missed yesterday's ShanGo cut off, I'll have to get TGCF manhua vol. 3 and Erha vol. 4 some other way, and yes I really am this rambly scattered dumb rn, sorry not sorry, the point is. BOOKS. AH. SO MANY BOOKS. )

[lindwurmkai]

Two weeks of speedrunning Memrise community courses later, I certainly feel like I am making the most of this!! (There was a day where I did it shortly before midnight and didn't manage to finish going through all my courses, that's why the 3 at the top only have a 4-day streak)

I found a way to download these and imperfectly import them into Anki, so I did that with the Zhuyin/Bopomofo course once I had finished it. Today I'll do the same with the Chengyu course since I just finished it as well, and then I'll have to fiddle with those cards a bit before they're usable.

It feels weird to know these could be taken away from me any day without warning, but at least I am backing up the ones I finish? The IPA one probably won't take me that much longer, and perhaps I'll manage the shorter Polish course as well.

As for anything else, I'm counting on a bunch of people who are trying to transfer as many Memrise courses as possible to other websites. Fingers crossed that'll work out.

[therylez]

Just officially registered for the next HSK 4 exam in November!!!! No backing out of it now

[mydivinepunishment]

We're getting hit with a surprise HSK mock-exam tomorrow and I refuse to study today just because how out of nowhere way that it popped

[hunxi-guilai]

so I know that a lot of chinese names are references to specific poems. Is there a way to determine this (vs general auspicious meaning) and which poem specifically? I'd love to be able to figure this out for character names and I haven't been able to find any resources (in case it's helpful, I'd say I'm my understanding is maybe HSK4-level so I can clumsily make my way through the chinese internet with the help of a dictionary)

feel free to make this public so that others can benefit if you have any suggestions

oof... unfortunately I suspect that this, along with one's repertoire of chengyu, is something that one simply Just Learns with reading more. my personal repertoire of poetry is embarrassingly thin, so the horrible horrible process I've been going through is, well, throwing the name into a search bar and hoping for the best.

here's an example of how I (think I) went about doing this for Xiao Xingchen's name, way back when I wrote this post:

I went ahead and dropped "星尘 诗词" ("Xingchen poetry") into the search bar, which turned up this:

Generally speaking, I'll only put the name (minus the surname) because putting the character's full name into a search bar will probably turn up the character themselves, and if someone's name is being derived from a poem, it's usually independent of the surname anyway.

Xiao Xingchen's name is an interesting example because it doesn't quite come from a poem, but it doesn't not come from a poem. you can see that the search engine has automatically assumed that I am looking for poems about constellations, as "星辰" and "星尘" are homonyms, and one of these is more commonly seen. I usually consider that a solid indication that "星尘" (the name) is a novel formation of characters in a name, and not likely a poetic reference.

but! in for a penny, etc. I'm a huge fan of the first search result, gushicimingju, since it's a solid database of poetry and some prose. clicking into that listing informs me that gushicimingju is turning up. oh my. 119 possible matches:

note that these are matches for "星辰" (constellation), not actually our character's name. still! you can click in and peruse the selection if you'd like.

now that you're on gushicimingju's site, you can also use the search function within the site to search for more exact matches, without worrying that you'll accidentally activate the fandom itself.

looks like there's a few matches for "晓星," but nothing for the full name.

so! gushicimingju is a solid database I like to refer to most of the time. if for some reason I'm feeling particularly academically rigorous, I might also do some searches on ctext as sometimes names will come out of famous turns of phrases (a la Zhao Yun 赵云 / Zhao Zilong 赵子龙 from that post I linked earlier) rather than poems. searching the dictionary sometimes (Pleco, or zdic) doesn't hurt either. basically, I throw spaghetti at the search engine wall to see what results come back for these characters in this particular order to try and get the original referent (if any) to show up; I'll probably give up after a few permutations of search terms if nothing is actively jumping out at me

but back to the search results: sometimes, if your character is famous enough, straight up searching for "what poem is this character's name from?" will help you find like-minded people on baidu zhidao (basically yahoo answers):

although of course, take baidu zhidao result with all of the salt you would take with any yahoo answers (look for alternate sources to validate, good for a laugh most of the time)

best of luck!

[marilearnsmandarin]

These are the apps and links I currently have on my phone to study Chinese:

SuperChinese: my main study resource. There are currently 7 levels, level 7 (still incomplete, they are still slowly adding lessons to it) being HSK 5 stuff. Each lesson has vocabulary, grammar and a short dialogue where those are used in context (I love context). It has a few free lessons in the lower levels but after that you have to buy a subscription. There are many sales though. When I was a beginner I used HelloChinese instead, which has more free content, and switched to SuperChinese when I finished all the free content there. It also has social network features and chat rooms I don't use.

TofuLearn is like a flashcard app with many pre-made decks (you can also create your own on their website and import decks from Anki) and the option to practice writing hanzi. Anki didn't work for me, but I find Tofu very helpful. Practicing writing helps me with character recognition, and it also helps me remember the tones thanks to the audio in the pre-made HSK decks.

Dot is a reading app with new texts being added every day. It used to be completely free, which actually seemed too good to be true, and then they put practically everything behind a paywall and very strict limits for free users. After a couple of months they made it a little less restricted though - we still can't choose the articles but we can read as many as we want as long as we do the vocabulary exercises after each article (plus, during the Spring Festival, they made all articles available for free for 3 days and we could save the ones we were interested in to read later). It follows the new, not-yet-implemented (and harder) HSK levels, so you should start one or two levels below yours and if the texts are too easy move up.

Google Translator: not the best but helpful when I need to translate whole sentences, plus I can point my camera or open an image and it translates writing.

Pleco: best Chinese to English dictionary.

Stroke Order: not an app but a website, does what it says in the tin: shows stroke order for a specific character.

YouGlish: also a website, you can put a word or phrase and it shows videos where people say that word/phrase. Very cool.

Todaii is a graded news app that has only two levels: easy and hard. I'm around level HSK4 and the "easy" level is quite hard though (but I admit reading is my nemesis).

I also use YouTube and Spotify a lot.

[anxhelstudies]

110924

it’s been a while but i went in albania for 2,5 weeks, went to 2 weddings, go out with my friends since one of them was going back to ireland and i am going to london in 2 days.

so the rankings for the uni i applied got released (idk if it’s the correct therm for this but idc) and surprise!! i didn’t get in… so anyway i’m going to london as a consolation prize! i’m really excited and grateful for this opportunity because it’s all thanks to my aunt who invited me (and my mother who is supporting me since she doesn’t want me to give her back the money she gave me in advance for milan). i hope i will take the most from this opportunity, i’m going to the london design festival and have some days to visit the tourist spots while sending cv and portfolio hoping to do some networking and have some job interview (crossing my fingers). all of this because i applied for the passport in time!! and it’s my first time having a strong passport, i could go to a lot of countries and not worrying for a visa meanwhile in high school i was known in my class and an other class to be the girl who always has problems in international school trips because of my nationality.

anyway i decided to do the #100daysofproductivity challenge starting today, hoping i can finish it. so today i did some laundry and took my first chinese lesson with a tutor! i was a little anxious since i always studied alone but i went well. the teacher is very nice and i really liked her and the price per hour is good so i think i will be able to have 1h lesson a week. since i told her i already self studied something this first lesson was more of a recap this way she could understand my level and adjust the next lessons accordingly. we decided together the book that we were going to use and after that we started with reading pinying, i was really nervous because i never read in in chinese with someone listening but in the end my reading/pronunciation skills were actually good for someone who self studied and i didn’t make the errors some of her students at hsk4 level makes so she was happy and told me to practice more the fourth tone and the pronunciation of p and b because i make some mistakes there but it’s not a big deal since this are the same problem for italian so i just have to practice more. other than that she made me read some words and ask some question about words and radicals to see my situation. At the end she asked me to take a look at the textbook see what i know and don’t know and the text her to let her know what i wanted for next lesson: continue with the review or start something new. Next lesson will probably be a review for the things that i had difficulties studying alone and the few things in the firsts chapters i didn’t do. overall i really liked studying with a tutor, since it’s one on one the focus is all on me and it’s really good to have someone to tell u what u need to practice more. i can totally see the benefits of this and for me its money spent wisely and will be a really good investment for my future.

anyway if u have some good spot to visit or try in london leave it in the comments (especially for asian skincare and makeup and stationary!)

[duskofastraeus]

Language Goals 2024

{Chinese (Mandarin)}

Go through the Peking University lectures from HSK1 to HSK4

Go through the HSK official textbooks from HSK2 to HSK4

Watch more Chinese dubs in order to better my listening comprehension

{French}

Go to France for a 2 week long French culture and language intensive course

Revise my B2 notes and start delving into C1 material

Read at least 5 books in French

{Spanish}

Revise my B1 and B2 material + exercises

Improve on my daily exposure to European Spanish

Read at least 5 books in Spanish

{Russian}

Recover my Russian by picking up B1 and B2 textbooks

Better my weekly exposure to Russian (audio and translations)

Read at least 2 books in Russian

{Italian}

Do my university exam and pass with a decent grade

Revision + exercises from B1-B2 level textbooks

Translate/read Italian everyday for 20 minutes

Improve my Italian exposure by listening to podcasts daily

{Latin}

Pick up Latin again (study on a weekly basis)

Finish the ‘Reading Latin: Grammar and exercises’ series

{Catalan}

Read ‘Complete Catalan’

Delve more into the history of the language

{Galician}

Read a Galician Grammar and Vocabulary textbook

Read ‘A companion to Galician Culture’

{Others…}

Read ‘Origen y Gramática del Romance Andalusí’ and delve more into the history of Mozarabic and dialects spoken during the Andalusian Period throughout different Iberian regions

Maybe start studying Greek or Ancient Greek… Highly depends on how my summer studying will be structured.

These are quite ambitious goals but I do hope to be able to at lest cover 70% of what is present within this list (depending upon my university’s workload…of course…).

[simplechinese]

Percentages in Chinese %

PORCENTAJES EN CHINO https://masteringmandarinchinese.blogspot.com/2024/04/percentages-in-chinese-porcentajes-en.html

[zvaigzdelasas]

~15% thru my hsk6 deck....

[biglittleluobo]

萝卜's Essential Chinese Characters #1

大家好！

When spending time in China, there were several characters/words that I wasn't familiar with (as an ~HSK4 learner) yet seemed to pop up everywhere! Being so prevalent, I tried to take note of them and now can share them with you all over a series of posts! If you're planning to visit China, I hope you follow along and find these posts useful :)

Today's character is: 区 (qū)!

区, meaning "district", "area", "region", etc, can be found in a multitude of contexts. Some explicit examples from my experience are:

小区 (xiǎoqū) – home community, neighborhood. The apartment complexes/condos where many citizens live are usually in the form of several high-rises built around a central recreation/park area, sometimes also with a school, markets, restaurants, etc all right downstairs! Collectively, this living space is known as a 小区. You can find one of my pictures of a 小区 below!!

凉菜区 (liáng cài qū) – literally “cold dish area” aka where the cold dishes are located in a restaurant

NFC区 (NFC qū) – “near-field communication zone” aka where you should tap your card/phone to transfer information such as payment or identification

景区 (jǐngqū) – scenic area, related to the similar term 景点 (jǐngdiǎn) meaning “scenic point”

Other examples:

区号 (qūhào) – area code (literally “area number”)

城区 (chéngqū) – city district, similar to 市区 (shìqū) meaning “urban district” or “downtown”

地区 (dìqū) – local, regional, area; when used as a suffix to a city name, means “prefecture” or “county”

时区 (shíqū) – time zone

Have you encountered 区 before in your studies? Let me know if you have other favorite 区 words!

See you next time! 下次见！

(Picture of a 小区 under the cut)

[zhuzhudushu]

聊天的词 12

I started using Tandem again!

生词：( HSK4 / HSK5 / HSK6 )

魔幻 / mó huàn / magic; magical

力量 / lì liang / force, power

专辑（專輯）/ zhuān jí / album (of music)

东岸（東岸）/ dōng àn / east coast

重心 / zhòng xīn / center or main part, central core

硕士（碩士）/ shuò shì / master's degree

建议（建議）/ jiàn yì / to suggest

转换（轉換）/ zhuǎn huàn / to convert, to change

直视（直視）/ zhí shì / to look straight at

课程（課程）/ kè chéng / course, academic program

所能 / suǒ néng / according to one's capabilities, as one is able

协助（協助）/ xié zhù / to provide assistance

包括 / bāo kuò / to include

记忆力 (記憶力) / jì yì lì / memory (lit: memory + strength)

句子 & 翻译：

主唱的声音有魔幻的力量。The lead singer's voice has magical power.

整张专辑都很棒。The entire album is great.

你是在东岸，对吧？You're on the east coast, right?

不过我现在要把重心放在法文和英文，因��我之后打算去法国读硕士。But now I'm putting focus on French and English, because I plan to go to France for my Master's.

我建议可以用word繁简转换的功能。I suggest using word traditional-simplified conversion function.

我快不能直视这个课程了。I can barely watch this course.

我会尽我所能地协助你。I will do what I can to assist you.

好多欧美明星说 世界巡回 ，却不包括中国。A lot of European/American celebrities say "world tour", but they don't include China.

你记忆力真好。Your memory is really good.

Taglist: (let me know if you want to be added or removed!) @blue-grama @florphy @hope-and-sleep @mycatmybaby @nighttime-study @potentiallypolyglot @zeesqueere