#mandarin textbook

[chineseffect]

This is page 36 of the MAGIC PLAYBOOK 1

You can see that:

the design is minimalistic so you can focus on what matters

the grammar explanations are very simple and understandable

there are beautiful writing templates that employ the original Chineseffect font that was developed with learning purposes in mind

it is easy to understand the composition of every character

there is a QR code, that opens amazing digital content (you can see the demo of the Digital Layer HERE)

NOW YOU CAN GET THE MAGIC PLAYBOOK 1 FOR FREE HERE

[river-gale]

tagged to share nine books i'm currently reading/plan to read by @thelibrarybat (hi holly!!! 🫶) except i usually only read one book at once & don't plan very far ahead so it's mostly just all the holds i have at the library!!

also tagging @blue-glasses-dork @bluejay-07 @carovert @constantwords @so-much-purple and anyone else who would like to do it!!

[little-meowyao]

Okay but the way swords in danmei often represent/are associated with manhood and masculinity and the way hensheng is a soft sword and a sneaky weapob could very well represent JGY's position as "lesser" for his origins as a prostitute's son.

Like the way JGY is treated, in lack of better wording, as a woman, throughout the whole novel, (see: the way he's held up to higher standarts than everyone else, the way his standing will plummet with a single whiff of sex relating to him, the way he has to protect himself and take preemptive measures against everyone and everything and most of the time he's right)

I feel it kind of ties onto the way hensheng works, as an assassin's weapon, as something that doesn't require strenght per se, as something hidden easily, etc, and the fact that it's a soft sword— soft as women and JGY are expected to be, soft as they have to be to survive, but deathly nonethelesss

Idk. I'm just very into swords and very into the subtle themes of emasculation around JGY's character

[ctntduotism]

I thank my mandarin test for making me finish all my other work just to avoid studying for it

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

What textbooks do you use for learning Chinese?

I noticed that my current textbooks at my exchange uni in China are noticeably different from the textbook used back at my home uni, and now I'm interested in knowing whether the content varies drastically overall.

I'm curious to see what are some of the other textbooks that used for learning Chinese and how effective you would consider them to be, so please feel free to share your thoughts!

[etudelingo]

Honoryfikacja w języku japońskim jest kluczowym elementem komunikacji, odzwierciedlającym szacunek, hierarchię społeczną oraz relacje między rozmówcami. System ten składa się z różnych poziomów grzeczności, które wyrażane są za pomocą specjalnych sufiksów, zmian form czasowników oraz używania odpowiednich zwrotów.

Sufiksy honoryfikacyjne: - „-san” (さん): Uniwersalny sufiks używany zarówno do kobiet, jak i mężczyzn, odpowiednik polskiego „pan/pani”. - „-sama” (様): Bardzo szanowny pan/pani, używane w stosunku do klientów, gości oraz w kontekście religijnym. - „-kun” (君): Używane głównie wobec młodszych mężczyzn lub chłopców. - „-chan” (ちゃん): Używane wobec dzieci, bliskich przyjaciół lub w kontekście pieszczotliwym.

Keigo (敬語): System języka grzecznościowego dzieli się na trzy główne kategorie: - Sonkeigo (尊敬語): Język szacunku, używany do wyrażania szacunku wobec rozmówcy lub osób trzecich. - Kenjougo (謙譲語): Język skromności, używany do umniejszenia siebie w stosunku do rozmówcy. - Teineigo (丁寧語): Ogólny język grzecznościowy, stosowany w formalnych i uprzejmych kontekstach.

[draco-renn]

Man. All I do these days is fail to meet expectations and then get upset at myself for failing to meet those expectations. This sucks.

[cynosurus]

This small post is to celebrate I've now gone all the way through the Integrated Chinese textbook, level 1, part 2!

I just listened to the audio file of the last dialogue, and the cast also sounded pretty relieved to be done.

[petrichorpetals]

I've started hitting the level of language learning where my brain, when hit with the unfamiliar word in one language, will just happily fill in that gap with a word from another language. It's pretty easy to catch if I'm writing out something because trying to write something like 다시 will very quickly clue me in to nope wrong language.

That being said, I don't get that break with saying things out loud.

My recent experience with this was trying to mess around with my friend and ask him "why don't you want this?" in Spanish. Only, it's a running joke that I'm at 5 languages now that I know and none of them are Spanish. Two of them are, however, Latin and French, languages that are relatively close enough that, in my brain, I could reasonably BS out something relatively close to "why don't you want this?" and have it be kind of understandable.

What actually left my mouth was something close to "왜 tu 不 veux 这?" Which is the most bastardized sentence I've produced yet. Needless to say, he gave me a blank expression and told me to repeat myself.

[chineseffect]

This is page 49 of the MAGIC PLAYBOOK 1

You can see that:

the design is minimalistic so you can focus on what matters

everything revolves around useful sentences

there are beautiful writing templates that employ the original Chineseffect font that was developed with learning purposes in mind

it is easy to understand the composition of every character

with some characters you get to see their very interesting historic versions

there is a QR code, that opens amazing digital content (you can see the animation of the sentence HERE)

YOU CAN GET THE MAGIC PLAYBOOK 1 HERE

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Citric acid (below left) is abundant in oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits and mandarins. (...) For example, the esters of acetic acid are important contributors to the odours of banana (isopentyl acetate, below right, and butyl acetate), pear (pentyl acetate) and orange (octyl acetate).

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[insatiablebloodlove]

learning non-european languages is only difficult cuz there's so little info outside of schools and textbooks. except for Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. they get special treatment. where are all the Burmese instructors online? or the lengthy explanations of Vietnamese idioms? or the videos explaining Malayalam verse and rhyme? we need more sub-saharan african and non-east asian language learning material online damnit.

[archangeldyke-all]

POLYGLOT SEVIKA IS SO REAL TO ME

do u ever think she'll say idioms from another language that doesnt really work in english? like imagine overhearing her say "he's fart" when in her head she knows she's calling someone really drunk but the saying really only works in spanish, y'know?

this actually made me laugh out loud lmfaooo

men and minors dni

sevika grew up in a multi-lingual house. her mother spoke spanish, her father spoke hindi, and to one another they spoke in english.

by the time she was entering school, she was fluent in three languages. her little brain was so flexible and she loved learning so much that she took to new languages like a fish takes to water.

she excelled in her mandarin classes; while most students were struggling with the pinyin system, she was flying through the textbook and studying hanzi in her free time.

the little boy next door to her growing up spoke arabic with his family, and she picked up on the language with ease after years of playdates and shared dinners. that combined with her hindi meant that when an urdu speaking student joined her class in the third grade, she was able to act as a translator for them.

in high school she gets a job at a little mom and pop shop. the old couple who own it speak russian to each other, constantly yelling across the tiny store at one another. three months into the job, sevika finds herself cursing people out with slavic curses she didn't even know she knew.

so sevika grew up speaking a lot of languages. and she learned most of them through practical, every day use; not through textbooks and school. she's got a lot of sayings buried deep in her mind that she doesn't even remember learning, and sometimes, they don't always come out in the right language.

"aunt sev, did'ya know that i can do ten cartwheels in a row?" jinx asks as she hauls herself into sevika's lap.

sevika lets out a long sigh as she pushes her reading glasses into her hair and closes her book, turning her attention to her god-daughter. "wow." she mumbles tiredly. you chuckle from your chair.

"uh-huh! and i can do six back flips."

sevika snorts. "sure you can, kid."

"and i can dunk a basketball!"

sevika laughs. "okay, now you're hanging noodles on my ear." she says.

you snort from your spot. "she's doing what?" you ask.

sevika giggles. "shit, that's supposed to be in russian. veshat lapshu na ushi. y'know, like, uh... you're trying to trick me."

you giggle. "hanging noodles on your ear, huh?"

her little slip ups happen more frequently when she's tired.

"how was your day, sevi-bear?" you ask as you crawl into bed beside your girlfriend.

"ah. onions and honey, y'know." she mumbles.

you freeze, racking your brain to figure out what the hell she's talking about. you can't manage. "what?" you ask.

sevika blinks at you. "one day honey, one day onions, y'know?"

"so... you were having weird cravings?"

sevika laughs. "no, no, shit, i used the wrong language again."

you giggle. "what's it supposed to sound like?" you ask. you adore the sound of sevika's voice, regardless of if you can understand her or not.

"yom asal, wa yom basal. 's arabic." she whispers. you smile.

"your voice is like honey." you say. she snorts and leans forward to kiss you.

her mix-ups also happen when she's flustered.

"d-do you like it?" you whisper shyly.

sevika blinks at you, her eyes wide as she takes in your appearance. you've decided to surprise her tonight, buying a special set of sexy undies just for her.

"holy shit. you're beautiful." she whispers. you giggle.

"i read online that this color clashes with my skintone--"

"what do monkeys know of the taste of ginger, my love? you're gorgeous."

you burst into giggles. "sev-- what?!" you cackle.

she giggles and shakes her head. "bandar kya jaane adrak da swaad, fuck what those internet losers say, baby."

you're cut off from asking more questions by sevika's lips crushed against yours.

your favorite of all her slip ups happened when she was drunk.

you woke up to a thump in your home.

"sev?" you call. you can hear her giggling from the living room. you crawl out of bed and into the living room, laughing when you find your girl toppled over and struggling with her boots. "how was poker night?" you laugh as you bend over to help untie her shoes for her. sevika grins at you, wiggling to try to pull you onto the floor with her.

"baby. 'm so fart right now."

you blink, then sniff the air. "i don't smell anything, baby. you need me to help you to the toilet?" you ask.

sevika laughs. "no, no, baby. i'm fart! farted! whatever."

you shake your head in confusion, and then it hits you. "sevika, estas pedo!?" you ask with a laugh.

sevika grins and nods up at you. "yes! 'm fuckin' wasted! y'r so beautiful, i love y' s'much."

you giggle and haul your wife to her feet, gently guiding her toward your room. "i'll set a barf bucket and some painkillers out for you, okay?"

"mmm. wǒ ài nǐ." she mumbles into her pillow.

you giggle and kiss her forehead. "i love you too, you fart."

kofi

taglist!

@fyeahnix @lavendersgirl @half-of-a-gay @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner

@kissyslut @chuucanchuucan @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther

@lavenderbabu @emiliabby @sevikasbeloved @hellorai @my-taintedheart

@glass-apothecary @macaroni676 @artinvain @k3n-dyll @sevsdollette

@ellieslob @xayn-xd @keikuahh @maneskinwh0re @raphaellearp

@iamastar @sevikitty @mascdom @nhaaauyen @annesunshiner

@mirconreadzztuff22 @veoomvroom @lushh-s3vik4s @katyawooga @lesbodietcoke

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@blackgaladriel @nightlyconfusion @dancingqu33n17 @losernb @p1nkearth

taglist!!

@sevikas-baby @ghostscandys @sevikasllver @runawaybaby3 @lesbones

@chezze-its @lez-zuha @vikashoneybee @shanesevikasfuckdoll @imheadintothemountains

@nanajustnana-a @helaenabugmom @spookymomfriendtm @leeidk87

[what-even-is-thiss]

I started like poking around with mandarin. Not seriously studying. Spanish is my main focus still.

I was so caught up in the idea of mandarin having simple grammar that I forgot the big problem. I don’t know any mandarin words at all.

Also apparently the way they teach tones in textbooks is wrong or something.

[olderthannetfic]

Now I'm wondering how countries like Japan and China teach literacy.

Since kanji / hanzi don't really have that much in the way of phonetic elements, they kinda have to teach them by memorization and I don't think they have many reading comprehension problems over there.

(Although both countries do have supplementary phonetic writing systems in the form of bopomofo and pinyin for China, and the kanas for Japan)

--

FAVORITE SOAPBOX TOPIC UNLOCKED!

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

It's a little closer to teaching vocabulary than spelling, but the same kinds of principles apply: You teach the building blocks, like the traditional radicals, which aren't so different from teaching Latin and Greek roots in an English class for English speakers.

And, as a matter of fact, lots of those radicals do predict pronunciation, just not in every single case. They can also be clues to meaning, but again, not absolutely consistently. Many characters have a sound-cueing radical on one side and a meaning-cueing radical on the other. It's just that only some are still useful in the modern day, while others are more like the English word 'plumbing' where knowledge of Roman lead pipes explains why this word comes from the one for lead, but the root probably wouldn't help a kid learn the word in the first place.

One similarity to teaching phonics would be teaching students to tell very complicated and similar characters apart: you want to help a student spot all the little building blocks of the character and then spot the ones that are different, not just glance at the whole character and get a general overall vibe. If you do a whole look-based approach, too many characters are too easy to mistake for one another.

Remembering a bajillion Chinese characters is hard if you're trying to memorize them in a year and not all of elementary school, but I think people who don't read them underestimate how many component parts there are and how approachable they can be if you start by learning fundamentals, not just memorizing a few individual characters as though they have no relation to anything else.

They're actually pretty systematic, just in the way that English spelling is with its overlapping systems and historical artifacts, not in the way that highly regular Spanish spelling is.

Having taken a lot of Japanese classes, I will say that Japanese as a foreign language textbooks often do a piss poor job of this and totally do teach kanji in a sight words-y way... But my Mandarin class started with important foundational concepts that served me well in Japanese later even if I bombed out of Chinese class at the time.

Can you tell how irritated I am by all the foreign language learners who think characters are sooooo hard when, really, it's just their crappy textbook? Haha.

They're moderately hard in the way that learning a full adult spectrum of vocabulary is hard, but people do that for foreign languages all the time. The countries that use characters do tend to make sets that are smaller for certain kinds of applications, same as we have things like simple English wikipedia, but a literate adult will always know lots more, whether it's from their career in engineering or their predilection for historical romance novels.

Uh... anyway, the answer is "Bit by bit in elementary school, just like in any other country".

[dreamdolldeveloper]

back to basics

mostly free resources to help you learn the basics that i've gathered for myself so far that i think are cool

everyday

gcfglobal - about the internet, online safety and for kids, life skills like applying for jobs, career planning, resume writing, online learning, today's skills like 3d printing, photoshop, smartphone basics, microsoft office apps, and mac friendly. they have core skills like reading, math, science, language learning - some topics are sparse so hopefully they keep adding things on. great site to start off on learning.

handsonbanking - learn about finances. after highschool, credit, banking, investing, money management, debt, goal setting, loans, cars, small businesses, military, insurance, retirement, etc.

bbc - learning for all ages. primary to adult. arts, history, science, math, reading, english, french, all the way to functional and vocational skills for adults as well, great site!

education.ket - workplace essential skills

general education

mathsgenie - GCSE revision, grade 1-9, math stages 1-14, provides more resources! completely free.

khan academy - pre-k to college, life skills, test prep (sats, mcat, etc), get ready courses, AP, partner courses like NASA, etc. so much more!

aleks - k-12 + higher ed learning program. adapts to each student.

biology4kids - learn biology

cosmos4kids - learn astronomy basics

chem4kids - learn chemistry

physics4kids - learn physics

numbernut - math basics (arithmetic, fractions and decimals, roots and exponents, prealgebra)

education.ket - primary to adult. includes highschool equivalent test prep, the core skills. they have a free resource library and they sell workbooks. they have one on work-life essentials (high demand career sectors + soft skills)

youtube channels

the organic chemistry tutor

khanacademy

crashcourse

tabletclassmath

2minmaths

kevinmathscience

professor leonard

greenemath

mathantics

3blue1brown

literacy

readworks - reading comprehension, build background knowledge, grow your vocabulary, strengthen strategic reading

chompchomp - grammar knowledge

tutors

not the "free resource" part of this post but sometimes we forget we can be tutored especially as an adult. just because we don't have formal education does not mean we can't get 1:1 teaching! please do you research and don't be afraid to try out different tutors. and remember you're not dumb just because someone's teaching style doesn't match up with your learning style.

cambridge coaching - medical school, mba and business, law school, graduate, college academics, high school and college process, middle school and high school admissions

preply - language tutoring. affordable!

revolutionprep - math, science, english, history, computer science (ap, html/css, java, python c++), foreign languages (german, korean, french, italian, spanish, japanese, chinese, esl)

varsity tutors - k-5 subjects, ap, test prep, languages, math, science & engineering, coding, homeschool, college essays, essay editing, etc

chegg - biology, business, engineering/computer science, math, homework help, textbook support, rent and buying books

learn to be - k-12 subjects

for languages

lingq - app. created by steve kaufmann, a polygot (fluent in 20+ languages) an amazing language learning platform that compiles content in 20+ languages like podcasts, graded readers, story times, vlogs, radio, books, the feature to put in your own books! immersion, comprehensible input.

flexiclasses - option to study abroad, resources to learn, mandarin, cantonese, japanese, vietnamese, korean, italian, russian, taiwanese hokkien, shanghainese.

fluentin3months - bootcamp, consultation available, languages: spanish, french, korean, german, chinese, japanese, russian, italian.

fluenz - spanish immersion both online and in person - intensive.

pimsleur - not tutoring** online learning using apps and their method. up to 50 languages, free trial available.

incase time has passed since i last posted this, check on the original post (not the reblogs) to see if i updated link or added new resources. i think i want to add laguage resources at some point too but until then, happy learning!!