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To: marcusmaximus

Sounds like pandering, but then again probably a good idea considering the future “historical” backed “annexations “ that are about to happen.

Side question compared to learning to speak mandarin, how difficult is it to learn to write it?


7 posted on 09/03/2024 3:55:09 AM PDT by blitz128
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To: blitz128
Side question compared to learning to speak mandarin, how difficult is it to learn to write it?

Learning to speak is only slightly more challenging than other languages, because we share far less with that language than say Spanish or German or any Romance language... getting the "tones" correct is the biggest bugaboo for me. Flat, rising (as we do for asking a question), falling, falling-then-rising, and neutral (which is different from flat, LOL).

The famous line is "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma"... said correctly, those are 5 very different words... mother, horse, hemp, to scold, and the word that essentially replaces our question mark. (I THINK those were the 5 definitions... I could be wrong on the middle two, lol. It's been a while for me.)

As for writing, again to do it the right way, not only are their symbols really strange to our eyes, but the ORDER that you make the individual lines literally matters. It's weird, but it is what it is.

But in the end, just like anything else, as you spend time doing it, and reinforcing it through effort, it'll come to you. Chinese children learn it, your old brain can do it too... just not as fast. :)

At my best, I was up to 1200 spoken words, and reading about 800. My main test was newspaper articles and kids textbooks. I eventually went from highlighting the words that I knew, all the way to highlighting the words that I didn't know yet. Took less than 15 months. "Fluency" is typically described as 2000 words, so another 15 months, and I would've been there. But Life took me down yet another different path. Oh well!

21 posted on 09/03/2024 8:10:38 AM PDT by Teacher317
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