Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

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Allekanger
Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby Allekanger » 2021-01-02, 23:04

Kanger's TAC 2021

Hi all!

I've never done a TAC before, so I thought I'd try my luck this year. I'm going to focus on two languages primarily, and, if there's time and will, two more. Main focus are:


Mandarin Chinese
I took Mandarin for a semester in college like ten years ago, and a friend of mine and I decided to relearn it together. My friend's Cantonese, so he's a few levels ahead of me, because he knows the hanzi already, but I'll catch up! I'll be using the Hello Chinese app and I thought I'd maybe write and post small texts at the end of the week in Mandarin here based on what I've learnt to track the progress. So very basic, but I'm hoping it'll be fun. The app has been great so far, I really like it. Good amount of new learning, good exercises. 非常好!


Spanish
I like Spanish and it's what got me interested in languages in the first place. I have a novel of Isabel Allende in Spanish that I thought I'd read and learn from. We'll see how that goes. I will try to write summaries of the chapters (I'll add a spoiler cover, so nobody gets informed by mistake!). Any corrections or comments are very much appreciated!


The other two languages are:


Russian
Part of my family is from Belarus, and the father of my sister-in-law doesn't speak English, so I've never really had a conversation with him without my sister-in-law acting as an interpreter. It'd be cool to actually speak with him for real. Although I also think he could try learning English, when everyone else did (his wife is an English teacher!). :P Not sure yet what materials I'll be using, I found a good website before, maybe I'll use that one again.


Esperanto
My grandmother spoke Esperanto and she taught me some when I was a kid. I can read some, but I want to relearn it and be able to speak and write. I registered to the lernu! site, so we'll see how it goes. It'd be cool to speak this "heritage language" properly, but I doubt I'll ever get there.

Allekanger

Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby Allekanger » 2021-01-03, 9:40

你好.我叫萨沙.我是瑞典人.我喜欢吃芒果和平果.可是我不喜欢喝可乐.我也想学中文.咖啡多少钱? 两瓶果汁二百五十快.你叫什么? 你喜欢吃什么? :partyhat:


No he leído nada del libro de Allende esta semana.

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Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-01-07, 2:49

Allekanger wrote:你好.我叫萨沙.我是瑞典人.我喜欢吃芒果和平果.可是不喜欢喝可乐.我也想学中文.咖啡多少钱? 两瓶果汁二百五十快.你叫什么名字? 你喜欢吃什么? :partyhat:

你好, 我叫王建国。我喜欢葡萄、草莓,也喜欢芒果。

I think it might be better to say 我叫萨沙.是瑞典人, but I'm not sure.

Allekanger

Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby Allekanger » 2021-01-10, 22:21

vijayjohn wrote:你好, 我叫王建国。我喜欢葡萄、草莓,也喜欢芒果。

I think it might be better to say 我叫萨沙.是瑞典人, but I'm not sure.

Thank you for the corrections! :) Oh, you mean without the pronoun? I'll try to remember that. I haven't learned to connect phrases yet, I think, only nouns.

我爱草莓! 今天是二零二一年一月十号. 我有一个哥哥和一个弟弟. 没有狗, 可是我有一个猫! 他叫奥尔宾. 这杯牛奶二百五十九成快. 你的生日是几月记号?

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Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby dEhiN » 2021-01-11, 0:04

¡Buena suerte!

Pratar du svenska, ja? Would you be willing to help me? I'm doing 4 languages using Duolingo and one of them is Swedish. Unfortunately I can't really help you with any of your languages since I don't know Russian, Mandarin or Esperanto and your level in Spanish is definitely better than mine. But I will be following your TAC. Välkommen på ditt första TAC!
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

Allekanger

Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby Allekanger » 2021-01-12, 19:01

dEhiN wrote:
Pratar du svenska, ja? Would you be willing to help me? I'm doing 4 languages using Duolingo and one of them is Swedish. Unfortunately I can't really help you with any of your languages since I don't know Russian, Mandarin or Esperanto and your level in Spanish is definitely better than mine. But I will be following your TAC. Välkommen på ditt första TAC!

¡Gracias!

Well, you leave me no choice, we can't have Duolingo raise you on its own, can we? :P Jokes aside, I'll help you with Swedish the best I can. Not sure in form you'd like me to help though, did you have anything particular in mind?

dEhiN wrote:Välkommen till ditt första TAC!

Till as a preposition is usually unstressed, so it's pronounced without the L's. When it's an adverb (stressed), it's pronounced with the L's intact.

Tack så mycket! Jag hoppas jag kan hålla takten uppe :)

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Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby dEhiN » 2021-01-14, 19:39

Allekanger wrote:Well, you leave me no choice, we can't have Duolingo raise you on its own, can we? :P Jokes aside, I'll help you with Swedish the best I can. Not sure in form you'd like me to help though, did you have anything particular in mind?

I'm not sure; I suppose if I have any Swedish questions, I could either post them on my TAC or on here. I guess on my TAC would make more sense, if you're ok with reading through my TAC. I could post my questions with the Swedish flag to make it easier.

Allekanger wrote:
dEhiN wrote:Välkommen till ditt första TAC!

Till as a preposition is usually unstressed, so it's pronounced without the L's. When it's an adverb (stressed), it's pronounced with the L's intact.

Tack på rättelsen. (Is rättelse the correct word? According to WordReference, there's three words: rättelse, rättning, korrektion.)

Speaking of questions, I do have 2:

1) What's the difference between ingen/inget/inga and inte? For example, one sentence Duo used to teach ingen was jar har ingen häst, which they translated as, "I have no horse". In this case, I would more naturally say in English, "I don't have a horse" or jag har inte en häst. Obviously, both sentences work. But since both can translate to "no", when would one use one or the other? It seems to me that inte is used to negate verbs, while ingen is used for negating nouns?

2) With question words, does V2 sentence order have to be followed? For example, Duo I think only accepts something like vad dricker du for, "what do you drink", but would it be considered grammatically incorrect to say vad du dricker?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

Allekanger

Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby Allekanger » 2021-01-15, 21:30

dEhiN wrote:I'm not sure; I suppose if I have any Swedish questions, I could either post them on my TAC or on here. I guess on my TAC would make more sense, if you're ok with reading through my TAC. I could post my questions with the Swedish flag to make it easier.

Yes, that's fine, and perhaps quote me saying whatever and I'll get a notification :)

dEhiN wrote:Tack på rättelsen. (Is rättelse the correct word? According to WordReference, there's three words: rättelse, rättning, korrektion.)

Ingen orsak!

I think I'd say rättningen in this case.

rättning - The action of correcting and its result, i.e. what we just went through: me correcting your text.
rättelse - More noun-like, that which replaces what was wrong, erratum or corrigendum. E.g. a newspaper which accidentally printed 100 instead of 1000 might publish a rättelse in the next issue correcting their mistake/typo.
korrektion - I perceive this to be quite uncommon, but it seems to mean correction as well, yes. It's similar to the word korrigering, which is a bit more common and also has the sense of '(slight?) adjustment'.

dEhiN wrote:Speaking of questions, I do have 2:

1) What's the difference between ingen/inget/inga and inte? For example, one sentence Duo used to teach ingen was jar har ingen häst, which they translated as, "I have no horse". In this case, I would more naturally say in English, "I don't have a horse" or jag har inte en häst. Obviously, both sentences work. But since both can translate to "no", when would one use one or the other? It seems to me that inte is used to negate verbs, while ingen is used for negating nouns?

2) With question words, does V2 sentence order have to be followed? For example, Duo I think only accepts something like vad dricker du for, "what do you drink", but would it be considered grammatically incorrect to say vad du dricker?

1) Yes, that seems like a good summary for now. Inte is used for verbs and statements, while inga or inte några is used for nouns. Although talking about pets as a first have/not have example might not be the best, because they are sort of exceptions to your newly formed rule, i.e. jag har katt is perfectly fine too, if not actually better. Oh boy.

2) No, I'd say that's grammatically incorrect. It reminds me of some Norwegian dialects, maybe ka du drikkj? with the verb last. In Standard Swedish it's always vad dricker du?, or as in English, with the wh-word last for stress: du dricker vad? ('you're drinking what?').

Allekanger

Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby Allekanger » 2021-01-25, 17:06

我有侄女. 她的生日是十二月九号. 这是她的日常工作. 她起床七点 二十五分. 她早上去学校. 中午吃饭. 侄女和朋友下午去家玩乐高. 侄女和妈妈和爸爸六点吃饭. 现在是晚上. 侄女睡觉. 晚安小侄女 :hug:

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Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby dEhiN » 2021-01-25, 19:41

Allekanger wrote:我有侄女. 她的生日是十二月九号. 这是她的日常工作. 她起床七点 二十五分. 她早上去学校. 中午吃饭. 侄女和朋友下午去家玩乐高. 侄女和妈妈和爸爸六点吃饭. 现在是晚上. 侄女睡觉. 晚安小侄女 :hug:

This is how Google translated what you wrote:
I have a niece. Her birthday is December 9th. This is her daily work. She gets up at 7:25. She goes to school in the morning. She eats at noon. My niece and friends go to Lego home in the afternoon. My niece and mother Dinner with dad at six. It’s night. My niece is sleeping. Good night my little niece.
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: Kanger's TAC 2021 - Mandarin Chinese and Spanish

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-02-02, 18:34

vijayjohn wrote:
Allekanger wrote:你好.我叫萨沙.我是瑞典人.我喜欢吃芒果和平果.可是不喜欢喝可乐.我也想学中文.咖啡多少钱? 两瓶果汁二百五十快.你叫什么名字? 你喜欢吃什么? :partyhat:

I forgot to point this out earlier, but 快 here is wrong and should be 块 instead. Same pronunciation, different meaning (快 means 'quick'; 块 literally means 'piece'. These characters are much more different in traditional Chinese).
Allekanger wrote:Thank you for the corrections! :)

Varsågod.
Oh, you mean without the pronoun?

Yep.
我爱草莓! 今天是二零二一年一月十号. 我有一个哥哥和一个弟弟. 没有狗, 可是我有一个猫! 他叫奥尔宾. 这杯牛奶二百五十九成. 你的生日是几月号?

Technically, 'a cat' would be 一只猫 where 只 is pronounced zhī (not to be confused with zhǐ 'only', which is also written with the same character!), but I think 一个猫 might be considered acceptable for a foreigner, especially a beginner to Chinese.
我有侄女. 她的生日是十二月九号. 这是她的日常工作.

Did you mean 'daily routine'? I think that would be 日常活动. 日常工作 would mean 'daily work', as if you were talking about her day job or something.
起床七点 二十五分七点二十五分钟起床. 早上去学校. 中午吃饭. 侄女和朋友下午去家下午跟她的朋友回家去玩乐高. 六点侄女和妈妈和爸爸六点她的爸爸妈妈(一起)吃饭. 现在是晚上. 侄女睡觉. 晚安小侄女晚安 :hug:


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