石の上にも三年

"WorldStories is a growing collection of stories from around the world. The collection includes retold traditional tales and new short stories in the languages most spoken by UK children.

打鐵花 (da2tie3hua1; struck iron fireworks) is a traditional folk firework that began in Henan and Shanxi, first arising in Queshan county, Henan and later circulating through the whole country. It had first appeared during the Northern Song dynasty, and was most popular during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

For Queshan struck iron fireworks, a two-layer pergola is built and covered with willow branches for performances, under which the molten iron is struck up with two willow sticks to create a rain of fire.

[eng by me + edited an ad out]

(On top of the information in the video, I have some more about its recent history under the cut.)

Ever since two years ago when I saw the stunning iron fireworks, the notion of striking iron fireworks has always lingered in my mind, but I never made a firm resolution, scared that after an accident, I wouldn't have to ability to bear it. After communicating with Teacher Yang Jianjun's iron fireworks team, they never had much confidence that I could strike them successfully. Teacher said in the past thousand years, struck iron fireworks had only been passed down to men, never women, and he had never taken in a female disciple.

After seeing myself, he thought it was even less possible, and the kindhearted Teacher Yang was particularly afraid of the iron fireworks injuring me. The shixiong* in the iron fireworks team also particularly looked after me, and attentively instructed me how to strike so that the large chunks of molten iron wouldn't splash on my body. My camera operator was completely equipped with 1500 degree fire resistant protective clothing, and we had even searched up the closest hospital's address before starting. Under the pergola we prayed for Taishang Laojun** and grandpa to bless and protect me hahaha

The good thing is all of it went very smoothly, although my clothes now have a lot of holes in them, I have some small burns, and some of my hair was also burnt off, but all of this was worth it. I've finally become the first female disciple in the past thousand years, and a seventh generation inheritor of Queshan struck iron fireworks! I hope everyone who sees this video can be courageous, and I hope the iron fireworks blesses and protects everyone to be safe, sound, happy, and for all things to go smoothly!

*师兄 - older martial brother, used for men older than yourself who learned under the same teacher

**太上老君 - lit. The Supreme Lord Lao, one of the main gods of Daoism and the reincarnation of the philosopher Laozi

On Bilibili, OP expands on the significance of the pergola design:

Let me explain to everyone the pergola of the "National Level Cultural Heritage Queshan Struck Iron Fireworks".

The Supreme Ultimate: The whole pergola.

Yin and yang: The upper and lower layers.

The Three Powers: The two layers of the pergola plus the pole going through the centre. The three spaces are a total of 15 metres tall, containing the meaning of "Heaven, Earth, Humans". This type of expression can also be found in "Mawangdui Han Tombs No. 1 Silk Painting" (马王堆一号汉墓帛画)

The four constellation groups: The four directions.

The five elements: East is wood, south is fire, west is metal, north is water, and the centre is earth. At each of the five directions, five flags of green, red, white, black, and yellow are inserted to represent the five elements.

The eight trigrams: The pergola is separated into the upper and lower floors, and the two sets of four corners are staggered to create eight corners, the same shape as an eight trigram compass.

There are three dos and three don'ts for iron fireworks. Don't strike during bad harvest years, don't strike during national mourning, don't strike during war. [T/N: The three "dos" are do strike during good harvest years, do strike during happy occasions, do strike during prospering years.] In the recent past, natural calamities and man-made disasters have extended into several decades, and the chaos of war continuing year after year. The Daoists had passed away, and no one could build a pergola anymore.

The style of the pergola you see now is because of Teacher Yang Jianjun spending more than ten years doing textual research from all sides and reviving it from that.

[translated by me]

Pictures of the comments and a picture OP included with her comment under cut:

tl;dr use a monolingual dictionary, and translate the definitions with deepl.

As native speakers, sometimes we take words for granted.

“Busy means busy. It's an atomic piece of meaning."

That's the mono brain talking. Often a word in one language will correspond to multiple concepts, and therefore multiple words, in another language. It should be obvious, but not all languages group their concepts into words in exactly the same way.

Even when you look in the dictionary and see multiple definitions for a single word, you can sometimes be tempted to think “But those things are the same, the dictionary writer is really splitting hairs here.”

For example, I didn’t think of the concepts of “a person having a lot of things to do” and “a place being crowded” as separate. They were the same - "busy" just means "having a lot of activity". I didn’t notice the difference until I had a moment talking in Japanese, when I tried to use the word いそがしい (often translated in English-Japanese dictionaries as “busy”) to describe a train station. The person I was talking to was completely confused. They had no idea what I was talking about. That’s because いそがしい does NOT mean “busy”. It means “having a lot of things to do and no free time” and can only refer to a person being busy, not a location.

Bilingual dictionaries are bad for this reason. They often translate a word using multiple other single words in the other language, rather than an explanation of its meaning like you would find in a monolingual dictionary. The problem with this is when the dictionary says いそがしい＝"Busy", they can’t strip away the extra meaning that “busy” has. In fact, I’d go so far to call the below definition incorrect.

This definition even uses the words "occupied" and "hectic" which can also both be used to describe locations or situations. I don't think these bilingual dictionaries deserve to be called dictionaries. They're much closer to being bilingual thesauruses.

People often recommend using monolingual dictionaries from your target language instead. Unfortunately, this is not very helpful for beginners, and beginners are the ones most affected by this issue. Without a critical mass of vocab and a decent understanding of grammar, you won't be able to understand the dictionary definition at all.

What we really need is a true bilingual dictionary. It would have a word in one language, and a full sentence definition written in the other language. Such a thing doesn't seem to exist. However, you can kind of make one yourself!

Here's my tip: Use a big scary monolingual dictionary (like weblio.jp for japanese) and copy and paste the definitions into DeepL.

! click on website name to be redirected !

all websites can be used for free and without subscribtion (thats why japanese101 isnt included)

-> apps for japanese learners (soon)

1. JLPT Sensei

study guides (N5-N1)

includes grammar, kanji, vocabular, adjective, verb and other lists for orientation when studying

free JLPT practice tests

2. Japanese Verb Conjugator

automatic verb conjugator

verb database

kanji database & kanji tester

over 180,000 example sentences with sound

3. Tanoshii Japanese

japanese-english dictionary (with stroke order!)

pratice games & interactive lessons (Kanji Mahjong etc.)

learning resources (japanese novel, textbook, magazine, movie recommendations)

4. Jisho

fast and smart japanese-english dictionary

draw and radical function apart from keyboard search

searching by topic and categories by adding #[topic/category]

JLPT levels, sentences, particles, counters, names included

5. Map Quiz

world map quiz in japanese

divided into continents and north, east, south and west

6. Japanesetests4you

free JLPT N5-N1 reading and listening tests

free JLPT N5-N1 vocabulary, kanji and grammar lists + tests

7. Shiritori Online

Shiritori (しりとり) is a popular japanese word game and is ideal to exercise vocabulary for japanese learners. 2 or more players take turns saying a word that starts with the last kana of the previous word. The game ends when someone answers with a word ending with -n (ん) because there are no words starting with ん.

it is up to the players whether all forms of a hiragana (kana and its diacritics; は,ば and ぱ etc.) are allowed or not (e.g やぎ -> きよう).

Vlogs and Lifestyle

in living. - She does fashion videos, hauls or simply videos about her everyday life. Also has a bunch of different channels for specific things like eg games. Sorekara Travel - Ryo does travel videos in Japan with a very...ambient feeling? There is not much overlay with music. I don't know what I am saying. 5歳からの同級生とルームシェア - Kaito and Kouki basically showcase their everyday life as roommates and often make cooking videos. It's a good channel if one wants to here more casual conversation. Se-ya - Vlogs. Interior. The music selection is just top tier too with the jazzy&retro vibe he has going on. あっちゃん - Your typical vlogs with a chill vibe. I don't have much more to say what kind of videos he makes.

Cooking

Kiwami Meshi - Do you know 'The Way of the Househusband'? Yeah, that's basically this channel. Also made a few recipes already, really good!! ご飯が美味しいch - Because of the nature of the videos it is rather a reading than listening practice but they are incredibly soothing.

Gaming and Art

なんで　このことに　なったんだ？

ネズコ　死ぬな　よ！ 死ぬな！　

絶対　助けて　やるからな！　

死なせない！ 　

兄ちゃんが　絶対に　助けて　やるからな！　

タンジロ　

顔が　真っ黒　じゃないの？　

こっちに　お出で　

雪が　降って　危ないから　

行かなくても　いい　ん　だよ。　

正月に　なったら　

みんなに　腹　いっぱい　食べさせて　やりたいし　

少しても　炭を　売ってくるよ　

ありがとう。　

兄ちゃん！　

今日も　町に　行くの？！　

私も　行く！　

だめよ。　

タンジロ　みたいに　早く　歩けない　でしょう。　

母ちゃん！　

ダメ。　

今日は　荷車を　引いてはいけない　から　

乗せて貰って　休んだり　出来ないのよ。　

兄ちゃん！　

ついて行きたい！　

ちゃんと　お手伝い　するよ！　

ありがとうな、ハナコ。　

でも　今日は　お留守番だ。　

シゲルも　その代わり 　

うまいもの　いっぱい　買ってくるから　

ほんとう？！　

ハナコも　帰ったら　本を　読んで　やるからな　

いい子だ！　

ありがとうね、タンジロ　

じゃあ　いってくれ！　 タケオ！　

できる　範囲で　構わないから、　

少し　木を　切っておいでくれ。　

それは　やるけどさ…　

一緒に　やると　思ったのに　さぁ。　

よしよし。　

なんだよ！急に！　

タケ兄　照れてらぁ！　

うるせぇ！　

よしよし。　

だから、やめろって。　

早く　帰ってきてねぇ！　

気を　付けてね！　

お兄ちゃん！　

ネズコ。　

ロクタを　寝かしつけていたんだ　

お騒ぎ　するから　

お父さんが死んじゃって　寂しいのよね。　

皆、お兄ちゃんに　くっついてもおり ように　なった、　

いってらしゃい!　

生活は　楽じゃない　けど　 幸せだな　

でも人生には空模様があるからな　

移ろって動いていく　

ずっと　晴れ　続ける　ことは　ないし　

ずっと　雪が　降り　続ける　ことも　ない　

そして　

幸せが　壊れる　ときには　

いつも　

血の　匂いが　する。　

まあ、タンジロちゃん　 こんな　日に　山を　降りてきたの　かい？　

よく　働く　ねぇ！風邪を　引くよ！　

これくらい　平気だ。　

炭は　どうだ？　足りてるかい？　

おい、タンジロ！　

炭を売ってくれ！　

この間、障子を　張り替えてくれて　ありがとうな。　

こっちも　炭　ちょうだい！　

タンジロ！　

ちょっとよかった！　

皿を　割った　犯人に　されてん　だよ、俺！　

助けてくれよ！　

嗅いでくれ！　

猫の匂いがする。　

ほらー！　

ああ、はら、猫なの？　

俺じゃないって　言った　だろう！　

タンジロ　

ちょっと　荷物を　運ぶの　手伝ってくれ　ねぇか？　

遅くなっちまったな　 でも　全部　売れて　よかった。　

ほら、タンジロ！　

お前　山に　帰る　つもりか？　 危ねぇから　やめろ。　

俺は鼻が利くから、平気だよ！　

家に　泊めてやる　

来い、戻れ。　

でも…　

いいから、来い！　

鬼が　出るぞ。　

ごちそうさま！　

なぁ、サブロ　おじいさん。　

鬼って　どなた？　

昔から　人食う　鬼は　日が　暮れると　うるつき　出す。　

だから　夜　歩き回るもん　じゃねぇ。　

食うたら寝ろ。　

明日　早起きして　帰れは　いい。　

鬼は　家の　中には　入って来ないのか？　 いや、入って来る。　

じゃー、皆　鬼に　食われっちまう。　

だから　鬼狩り様が　鬼を　切ってくれん　だ。　

昔から。　

灯り　消すぞ。　

もう　寝る。　

サブロ　おじいさん、家族を　亡くして　一人暮らしだから　

寂しいん　だろうな。　

今度、弟達（おととたち）を　連れてくるから。　

怖がらなくても。鬼なんかいないよ。大丈夫。　

でも、そういえば…　

うちの　おばあちゃんも　死ぬ前に　　

同じ　ことと　言ってたな。　

気を　付けてな。　

うん　

幸せが　壊れる　ときには　

いつも　

血の匂い！　

ネズコ！　

どうした？！どうしたんだ？！　

何があった？！　

母ちゃん　

母ちゃん　

ハナコ　

タケオ　

シゲル　

ネズコ　

ロクタ　

ネズコ　だけは　まだ　温もりが　ある。　

医者に　見せれば　助かれかも　しれない　

なんで　こんな　ことに　なったんだ？　

クマかも？　

島民　出来なかった　クマが　出たのかい？　

息が　苦しい　

凍て付いた　空気で　肺が　痛い　

前に進め！　

もっと　早く　足を　動かせ！　

まだまだ　町まで　距離が　あるん　だぞ。　

急げ！　

死なせないから　な。　

絶対　助け　

兄ちゃんが　助けてやる！　

しまった！　

助かった、雪で　

滑ったも　雪だけど　

ネズコ　

ネズコ、大丈夫か？　

歩かなくて　いい。　

俺が　町まで　運んでやるから。　

ネズコ　

これは　

鬼だ　

サブロ　じいさんの　言葉を　今　思い出した。　

ネズコが人喰う鬼。　

いいえ、違う。ネズコは　人間だ　

生まれた　ときから　

だけど、匂いが　いつもの　ネズコ　じゃなくなってる。　

でも、あれは　ネズコが　やったん　じゃない　

ロクタを　庇う　ように　倒れていたし、　

口や　手に　血は　付いていなかった。　

そして　もう　一つ　

もう　一つの　匂いが！　

身体が　大きくなった　

力も　強くなっていく　

俺が　他所の　家で　ぬくぬくと　寝ていた間　

皆、あんな　惨いこと　に　

痛かったろう　

苦しかったろう　

助けて　やれなくて、ごめんな　

せめて　ネズコだけは　なんとかして　やりたい　

だけど　すごい　力だ、押し返せない！　

ネズコ！　

頑張れ、ネズコ！　

堪えろ！　

頑張ってくれ！　

鬼に　なんか　なるな！　

しっかりするんだ。　

頑張れ！　

頑張れ！　

なんだ　

誰だ？　

刀？　

なぜ　庇う？　

妹だ。　

俺の　妹なんだ。　

ネズコ！　

それが　妹か？　

ネズコ。　

動くな　

俺の　仕事は　鬼を　切ること　だ。　 もちろん、お前の　妹の　首も　刎ねる。　

待ってくれ！　

ネズコは　誰も　殺してない！　

俺の　家には　もう　一つ　　

嗅いだことのない　誰かの　匂いが　した。　

みんなを　殺し…たのは…　たぶん　そいつだ！　

ネズコは　違うんだ！　

どうした　今　そんなったが　分からないけど　

でも　

簡単な　話だ。　

傷口に　鬼の　血を　浴びたから　鬼に　なった　

人食うには　そうやって　増える。　

ネズコは　人喰ったり　しない！　

よくまあまあ　

今し方　己が　食われそうに　なっておいて。　

違う！　

俺の　ことは　ちゃんと　分かってる　はずだ！　

俺が　誰も　傷つけさせない　

きっと　ネズコ　人間に　戻せ　

絶対に　治します！　

治らない　

鬼に　なったら　人間に　戻ることはない。　

探せ！必ず　方法を　見つけるから！　

殺さないでくれ！　

家族を　殺した　やつを　見つけ出すから！　

俺が　全部　ちゃんと　する　から！　

だから！　

だから！　

やめてくれ！　

もう　これ以上　俺から　奪うの　

やめてください。　

どうか。　

妹を　殺さないで　ください　

おねがいします　

おねがいします　

生殺与奪の　権を　他人に　握らせるな！　

惨め　たらしく　蹲るのは　やめろ！　

そんなことが　通用するなら　

お前の　家族は　殺されていない！　

奪うか　奪われるかの　時に、　

主導権を握れない　弱者が　

妹　治す？！　

仇を見つける？　

笑止千万！　

弱者には　なんの　権利も　選択しもない！　

ことごとく　力で　強者に　捻じ伏せられるのみ　

妹を　治す　方法は　鬼なら　知っている　かもしれない。　

だが、鬼どもが　　

お前の　意志や　願いを　尊重してくれると　思うなよ。　

当然、俺も　お前を　尊重しない！　

それが　現実だ！　

なぜ　先　お前は　妹に　覆い被さった　

あんな　ことで　守った　つもりか？！　

なぜ　斧を　振らなかった？！　

なぜ　俺に　背中を　見せた？！　

その　しくじりで　妹を　取られている！　

お前事　妹を　串刺しに　しても　よかっただぞ！　

泣くな　

絶望するな　

そんなのは　今　すること　じゃない　

お前が　打ちのめされてのは　分かっている　

家族を　殺され、妹を　鬼に　なり　

辛いだろう。　

叫び出したいだろう　

分かるよ　

俺が　後　半日　早く　来ていれば　

お前の　家族は　死んでなかった　かもしれない。　

しかし、時を　巻いて　戻すすべは　ない。　

怒れ　

赦せないという　強く　純粋な　怒りは　

手足を　動かす　ための　

揺るぎない　原動力に　なり　

静寂な　覚悟では　　

妹を　守る　ことも　治す　ことも　

家族の　仇を　打つ　ことも、出来ない！　

やめろ！　

感情に　任せた　単純な　攻撃　　

愚か！　

斧は　どこだ？　

木の　陰に　隠れる　直前　

こちらに　石を　投げ　と同時に　

上に　斧を　投げた　

丸腰で　あるのを　悟られない　よう　　

振りかぶった　態勢で　手元を　隠す　

俺に　勝てないのは　分かっていた　からだ　

自分が　切られた　あとで　

俺を　倒そうとした　

こいつは　

しまった！　

食われる！

ネズコは

ネズコは　違うんだ

人を　食ったり　しない！　

昔、

同じような　ことを　言って、

鬼に　食われた　やつが　いった

飢餓　状態に　なっている　鬼は

親でも、兄妹でも、殺して　食べる

栄養価が　高い　からだ

今まで　そういう　場面を　山ほど　見てきた

この　娘は　怪我を　負わされており

それを　治す　ために　力を　消費している

鬼に　変わる時も

かなり　体力を　消費　する　はずだから。

間違いなく　今は　重度の　飢餓　状態

一刻も早く　人の　血肉　を　喰らいたかった　だろうに

守る　動作

俺に　対する　威嚇

こいつらは

なにか

違うの　かもしれない

置き去りにして　ごめんね、タンジロ

ネズコ、頼むはね

起きたか？

狭霧山の　麓に　住んでいる

ウロコダキ　サコンジ　という　老人を　訪ねろ

トミオカ　ギユウに　言われて　来たと　言え

今は　日が　差してしないから　大丈夫な　ようだが

妹を　太陽の　元に　連れ出すなよ

学校 [がっこう gakkou] = school

保育園 [ほいくえん ho iku en] = nursery school

幼稚園 [ようちえん you chi en] = kindergarten (1～3 years)

小学校 [しょうがっこう shou gakkou] = elementary school (6 years)

中学校 [ちゅうがっこう chuu gakkou] = junior high school (3 years)

※日本では、小学校と中学校が義務教育です。

にほんでは、しょうがっこうと ちゅうがっこうが ぎむきょういくです。

In Japan, compulsory education is elementary and junior high school.

高等学校 [こうとう がっこう kou tou gakkou] = high school (3 years)

高校 [こうこう kou kou] = abbreviation of 高等学校(こうとうがっこう)

※正式には高等学校ですが、高校の方をよく使います。

せいしきには こうとうがっこう ですが、こうこうの ほうを よくつかいます。

高校(こうこう) is used more often though it’s officially 高等学校(こうとうがっこう).

大学 [だいがく dai gaku] = university (4 or 6 years)

短期大学 [たんき だいがく tan ki dai gaku] = junior college (2 years)

短大 [たんだい tan dai] = abbreviation of  短期大学(たんきだいがく)

※正式には短期大学ですが、短大の方をよく使います。

せいしきには たんきだいがくですが、たんだいの ほうを よくつかいます。

短大(たんだい) is used more often though it’s officially 短期大学(たんきだいがく).

大学院 [だいがくいん dai gaku in] = graduate school (2 or 5 years)

修士課程 [しゅうし かてい shuu shi ka tei] = master’s course (2 years)

博士課程 [はくし かてい haku shi ka tei] = doctor’s course (3 years)

Elementary School in Japan (Japanese)

Elementary School in Japan (English)

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This article is an excerpt from my blog

漢字を書こう ～Let’s write Japanese～

The suffix ～たて can attach to the ～ます - stem of any verb to mean "freshly (verb)'d." The most frequent places you'll see it are in reference to food.

Ex. この焼きたて（の）パンがおいしい。 このやきたて　（の）ぱんが　おいしい。 This freshly-baked bread is delicious! However, it can also be used with some other verbs:

生まれたての子犬たちが可愛かった。 うまれたたての　こいぬたちが　かわいかった。 The newly born puppies were cute.

When a noun follows ～たて , then usually a の connects both words, though sometimes it is skipped, eg. 焼きたてパン.

【～たて ｖｓ～たばかり】

Now, you might have heard of the grammar point ～たばかり already, which expresses something similar.

The biggest difference between ～たばかり and ～たて, is that ～たて always includes the meaning 'new' or 'fresh' and has a positive meaning. Note that it cannot be used to express the passage of time. eg. ～したすぐあと (Just after I did [verb]) or ～してからあまり時間が経（た）っていない (not much time has passed since I did [verb]).

～たばかり on the other hand is neutral and focuses on the time after something has passed.

Hellooo! Thank you for the interesting question!

Tbh I think I do it fairly basically - I don’t use any particularly fancy software, but software like Language Learning with Netflix has certainly made it easier. There’s a whole video on how to get the most of it here: [on mobile, link didn't work - How to study Chinese with Netflix! by Chinese Zero To Hero] (I’d recommend checking out all of their videos actually, they’ve done a bunch of livestreams recently and they place a lot of emphasis on shadowing + the course they are trying to sell you is…actually phenomenally good)

(Also, I have to preface this by saying that I have been very lucky in terms of pronunciation: I learnt about 80% of my current vocabulary by ear without characters or pinyin. I have been in China for eight months in total, and while I didn’t speak Chinese for all of that, I was constantly soaking in info on natural sentence intonation. I still often don’t know officially what the tone of a vocabulary item is, especially if it changes tone like 教, 为 or 相, but I don’t get yelled at so I have definitely internalised a lot of those changes. I definitely would have more trouble with this if I hadn’t had that experience - my other areas are waaaay weaker because of this though- my reading SUCKS lmao and I can literally handwrite about ten characters)

Anyway. How I shadow:

1) Quite simply by playing the line, and repeating it with all the emotion it has!! I usually use Netflix or Viki for this. I try to do it as fast as possible, and if I can’t do the whole thing, I ‘chunk’ it: if I were doing the sentence 我们还不知道他会不会来, I would start from the end with 他会不会来, then 不知道他会不会来, and then the whole sentence. Notice that this isn’t breaking it down into words or even grammatical phrases, but intonational phrases: it would be perfectly sensible to just do 会不会来 without the 他 but realistically, since this is a question, it’s likely that a strong stress will be placed on the first 会, and you wouldn’t be able to replicate that without also included the more weakly stressed syllable before.

2) I locate (intentionally or subconsciously) the main locus of stress within the sentence, and I focus on that accordingly. Tones may become less extreme if they are not stressed, and may become more exaggerated if stressed. This is always a good exercise. I accompany this with physical actions - I throw my hands down, I sigh, I groan!

3) I put away the text, and don’t look at the tones or even my computer screen - more on this below.

4) Finally, when I think I’ve got it reasonably accurate, I’ll record them speaking the line into my phone with an appropriate pause for copying and play it back to myself at various points throughout the day.

5) I then go and find other words with the same tone contour to slot in, and copy it again. After that, I find words that are slightly different tonally and pop them in too.

6) I finally do fun things like hold a conversation with myself. This can be really simple phrases imbued with some kind of emotion - 这个女子到底是谁呀？为什么不认识我？应该是新手吧。You can do this either really informally, or very formally, or both - trying to speak in the latter way is very fun! So then it’d be idk something more like: 那位姑娘是何人，来自何处？This is fun because you can really slow down your speech and sound as elegant as you like!! (this will sound stilted if you do it for modern speech, but it’s a very fun exercise)

Choosing your media!!

1) Don’t use donghuas. Seriously. The voice actors usually speak at a ridiculous pace and not with the same range of ‘normal’ intonation

2) Your Chinese is definitely good enough to recognise when anyone is quoting poetry or speaking in a paricularly sexy literary way so, uh…don’t do that. That rules dramas like Nirvana in Fire OUT.

3) Modern dramas and reality TV shows CAN be great, but they can also be quite intimidatingly quick and almost too mushy at times. I’d recommend informal speech in guzhuang dramas more, because they have professional voice actors and extensive sound editing, meaning that although it might be fast and the vocabulary harder, it’s actually much more accessible and easier to copy. You don’t want to be stuck with the awfulness of 50% failed foreigner and 50% 12 year old boy who can’t enunciate properly!!

4) CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON WISELY. I try to find characters that speak in a dramatic, whiny or childish way. This is so important! There’s literally no use copying Lan Wangji unless you want to be able to have that particular cadence and tone of voice you get reciting poetry. Childish/whiny/dramatic characters on the other hand stress some words very strongly, and rush others together - this is great for hearing what actual real speech sounds like. Whininess wins. In The Untamed, characters like Wei Wuxian (not yllz!wwx but just…regular wwx), 一问三不知 Nie Huaisang, Jin Ling, and Jingyi are all great. Also Jiggy, who is just very extra constantly and speaks much slower as well, which really helps. In SHL characters like Gu Xiang are good.

5) CHOOSE YOUR VOICE WISELY! If you are really aiming to copy them 100% (which you should try at least sometimes), you want somebody with your pitch range to sound normal. I have a sort of party trick in Chinese that because I’ve spent so much time listening to women in guzhuang dramas I can change my voice and sound like a) a scheming concubine with honeyed words, or b) the voice of the Beijing metro. My teacher found it hysterically funny. But it’s not my natural voice, and if I speak like that for too long it hurts. The women usually are too high for me, and the big burly manly men too low - so I’d recommend finding a man with a higher voice, or an older woman (like some of the female characters in Nirvana in Fire). Again, sorry that this is mostly the Untamed (I’m just most familiar with it) but the voice actors for Wei Wuxian and some of the juniors (+jiggy) has a higher voice. Likewise Chengling in Word of Honour.

On intonation in general:

- The thing is that whilst shadowing is useful it requires prior ability in a whole bunch of other skills that you can train - it relies on your ability to accurately mimic pitch, emotion and other contrasts. Training this in ANY language, including your native one, will help your ability to do this in Chinese - so I’d recommend spending a fair amount of time practicing shadowing (or speaking just after somebody whilst listening to a string of text, like monolingual simultaneous interpreting) in your native language too. Any training copying accents or mimicking other people is going to similarly help, regardless of the language.

So, with that in mind, further tips:

1) Hum / try to copy the intonation without any words. What this does is force you to pay attention to what the intonation actually is, versus what you may think it should be.

2) Don’t look at the text! Do! Not! Look! At! The! Text! If you look at the characters or pinyin you’re telling yourself ‘ok this is a third tone here’ etc, but you want to override the part of your brain that has gotten into bad habits and is supremely self-confident in how you’re pronouncing the third tone, and actually just go straight back to mimicking.

3) Don’t be afraid to do it with vocabulary that is way beyond your level. Actually, I find this can sometimes be helpful, because you don’t have a prior idea about how a particular tone pair should be useful - and you don’t know which tone you should be producing.

4) Learn vocabulary by ear - listen to a vocab podcast or even make one yourself (I often do this; I record my daily Anki and listen back to it through headphones copying throughout the day - if you’re not confident in your pronunciation you can get Google Translate to do it). Similarly, pick unknown vocabulary out of a longer segment and remember it, trying to internalise the tones instead of figuring out which tone it is.

5) Find emotional sentences, and copy them with emotion. This is SO CRUCIAL!!! We remember things when we relate to them, and when we imbue them with emotion - and it also helps in hearing exactly how an angry second tone sounds, for instance.

6) When you’re copying, look up, and imagine you are having an actual conversation. Carry yourself with conviction and poise!! Really try to whine like wwx or slime like jgy. After a couple of turns copying them, try to turn off the audio and keep delivering it in the same manner.

7) Swap individual words out. Once you have a line properly figured out, swap a word or two that has a different tone pair, and focus on delivering it with the same pattern of stress.

8) Finally, practice doing this in your native language too!! It’s a skill that we don’t use often, and it can be trained. Some people are terrible at it at first go even in their native language, but you can work on it!

About intonation in general:

1) I think a lot of pronunciation problems with people sounding unnatural or stiff ultimately come down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what intonation looks like across different languages. In English we mark it by pitch: and we are so used to the rhetoric that Chinese has ‘tone’ and not ‘intonation’ that we try and focus on blindly copying every single word textbook perfect without listening to how it actually sounds.

2) Chinese does have intonation!!! Except that, unlike English, when you stress a word, the pitch doesn’t change, but the tone contour is exaggerated - basically the only time you will ever hear a full third tone is in isolated or very exaggerated speech. If you have a Chinese friend, get them to record a sentence like the English ‘I didn’t ask her to steal his rucksack’, and put stress on the different elements of it - I didn’t ask, I didn’t ask, I didn’t ask, and so on. Notice and copy how the tones change. When shadowing, you should always be paying attention to where the stress is in the sentence: when you speak by yourself, practicing saying a sentence neutrally, and then with stress on one component, the next, and so on. If it feels unnatural, it’s because you might not have practicised like this before - it’ll get better!

Hope that’s somewhat helpful / interesting!

1. For ‘easier’ immersion materials, pick things you have some familiarity already with. So: shows/books you’ve already read in your native language, or watched/read in the target language with some kind of context (seen subs before in your native language, a summary, you’ve looked up lots of words etc). I definitely find immersing in stuff I have some context for much easier, because at least sometimes I can place what certain unknown words mean/what is going on in the plot, even when I don’t actually ‘know’ all the words. 

Personally: I like using some absolutely new unknown materials for immersion, just because I like to test how much I’ve ‘improved’ with something I’m sure I have nothing to rely on ahead of time except for what I have learned. But when I’m immersing with something I want to find more comfortable/easier to immerse with, its easier for me to use things I’m already familiar with - otherwise I have to pick graded material/learner materials instead of using target language native materials. 

2. Once you find some study materials that work for you, stick to them. Specifically if they progressively teach new stuff - like textbooks, grammar guides, apps with lessons, teaching podcasts, flashcards that add grammar points/new words, etc. Anything that builds up knowledge over time. 

I used to have a bad habit of switching these kinds of materials often, and would keep ‘restarting’ myself in beginner materials, when really I should have been moving on and studying new things. I have found that even if my ‘book/guide/tool’ is imperfect, if I stick to it then I make more progress and improve at a more dependable rate.

3. For immersion material, feel free to pursue things based on interest. You don’t have to finish one material before moving to the next.

I’ve noticed that I tend to get demotivated or disinterested sometimes in materials (which happens in english with my hobbies anyway too), and its definitely better for me to just move to new material that’s interesting me in the moment (so a new show, new story, new audio). I’ve found that as long as its target language native material, its all exposing me to common things I should review, and new things I ought to pick up/learn, so regardless of the material its going to challenge me and solidify what I’ve studied already and teach me new things. Meanwhile… graded readers would fall into point 2 -  but with a special caveat - if the graded reader has a Subject i’m not interested in, I need to just switch to a new novel at a HIGHER difficulty level at a certain point. Basically - regardless of if I stick to a graded reader all the way through, or if I drop it and move to another, once I’m very comfortable with that reading level, I need to move to prioritizing higher difficulty level material. This might apply to immersion content a little - as in, its better for me to work in some dramas/audios/books with more words I don’t know, so I get more comfortable. But with target language content made for natives its less of an issue since pretty much everything made for adults is constantly teaching me new stuff right now. 

4. Its BETTER to do something consistently, than nothing. So better to study any minutes a day then never. Likewise - its better to study using ANY method that’s helping you make progress, than to not study at all because its not ‘the best way.’ 

I’m sure I’m not the only learner who’s had this issue studying languages, but its easy to wonder if you’re doing things right or doing ‘enough.’ And in the end? For me it boils down to ‘anything where I make any progress, and don’t give up IS enough.’ No method’s perfect for everyone, not everyone can stay engaged in the same methods, etc. Yeah some advice says ‘don’t ever speak before X time’ but some people only stay motivated if they speak from day one, so they might as well speak! I’ve seen plenty of advice for chinese to ‘focus on listening/speaking first’ instead of focusing on reading so early on. But I get motivated/interested by reading, so here I am doing more reading from day 1!  It’s worked well enough for me! It got me this far!

5. At some point, focus on all for skill areas because eventually you need all of them: listening/reading, speaking/writing.

This seems basic as can be but I’m guessing its still easy enough to overlook. There’s a reason good textbooks/teachers try to make sure they cover all these skills for the level you’re supposed to be comprehending/communicating at by the time you finish their class. I self-study mostly, and its easy to forget about one or multiple of these areas, especially if they don’t align as well with your goals/interest areas/preferred study methods. It’s just important to cover them all eventually, if you want roughly balanced skills in the language. I personally think its okay to have imbalanced skills - depending on your goals, and your preferences. For example: if you want to read but do not want to prioritize speaking due to low need to speak to anyone, it seems fine to spend more time on reading and work on speaking more later when its a goal or need to. Or, maybe you specifically need to speak regularly to people in your workplace/living situation/life, then it would make sense to prioritize daily needs conversation study and skills way before you bother dedicating a lot of time to reading etc.

Thankfully, there’s usually a variety of study methods to improve each skill. Though unfortunately, usually to improve in production you must eventually practice Producing language, and to improve in comprehension you must eventually practice comprehending materials. By this, I mean that even with textbook grammar drill sentence exercises and repeat-after podcasts, you must eventually practice speaking to people and writing messages/paragraphs. Even if you study sentence flashcards or read graded readers, you must eventually try to listen to real conversations/audio/shows and try to read materials you’re planning to one day engage with (newspapers/websites/novels/games/whatever your goals are). 

6. Prioritize learning the most common 500/1000/2000 words as needed. 

(Unless your goals and needs are very specialized on other vocabulary needs - who knows, maybe you only need X language for mechanical engineering words?) I ran into this tip when studying French, and then variations on this tip from a lot of polyglot blogs. I’ve also noticed a lot of the youtubers who try to learn a language in ‘x days/x months’ tend to cram in a lot of vocab early on - I saw two successful learners who studied 2000 words in the first 1-2 weeks. Then they moved onto reading grammar points, reading actual books, immersing in television, trying to speak their conversational requirements etc. What boosted their speed-run intro to the language is usually a bunch of common words - which will be their foundation for comprehending some gist when immersing, and their source of words when forming sentences as they work on speaking skills. Now, of course, these people generally get into maybe A1-A2 level-ish knowledge in a month etc. But they still make a lot of rapid progress in that first ‘uncomfortable’ hump, at least from what I can tell. There’s many a article out there about how for most languages 2000 words covers 80-90+% of words in everyday conversation, and in many media like shows (and sometimes books). 

Basically, usually at 2000 words you know enough words to start communicating anything you need to with at least basic words/ideas, and have enough words to start learning some new words from context in immersion (and will in general find immersion much less overwhelmingly difficult). I’ve personally found that it’s just a starting place - but its often a really Great starting place, at least for me. Usually its more than enough to make immersing in shows doable, and to make reading with a dictionary bearable. Its also usually enough, with a few months grammar practice/exposure too, to start expressing a lot of my basic thoughts/needs at least. I did this to some extent with French (maybe 1000 common words), then jumped into immersing and grammar books mostly. I do think if dropped into an all french country, I could read signs and forms/speak my basic needs if I were lost/needed help with X/thought something/wanted to speak with someone. I would probably sound like a wreck (since I didn’t work on pronunciation much and one day need to) but I think I could navigate having to go to a hospital/get a plane ticket/buy something/make a friend/ask how to get somewhere/read any book for gist main ideas/read the news. I could get by. And the foundation for that started with just around 1000 words to start me toward that. Ever since I’ve tried to learn common words with any language I study, and each time I’ve noticed it substantially make target language materials more % comprehensible, and make it easier for me to start having a foundation to express a lot of basic ideas (think maybe 5-8 year old that can start talking about a lot, but may need to ask for a lot of ‘what’s X word mean/what’s X thing about?’). 

Its not a lot obviously, since there’s still much that’s incomprehensible, and there’s still lots that’s hard to discuss/follow the details of. But its enough to build from more easily. And I think its a great way to direct self-study before you start specializing - it prioritizes a ton of useful words before you start moving onto words with less ‘payoff’ because they show up less frequently and not in as big a variety of situations/topics. Even if using a textbook, I find using a frequency list too helps - since some textbooks teach pitifully little like 200 words, and some teach very focused on topic-specific words like ‘my classroom’ and ‘my job’ and ‘shopping’ when you may need words that show up in ‘news’ ‘social media’ ‘shows’ too based on whatever your goals are - a frequency list helps make sure words that show up in more places get learned, even if they don’t always fit in specific topics.

7. Read through a grammar guide. (Adapt this depending on where you get the advice: read a grammar summary, or just look up grammar points once for reference when you run into one that confuses you, or just skim through a guide before you learn, or just read a grammar guide later on if you need a stronger foundation etc).

I don’t think everyone needs this. Lots of people really LOATHE grammar, or think its ‘wrong’ to study it at the wrong point in time, whenever they think that is (beginning, or later on, etc). I personally find my life gets way easier when I read at least a grammar guide/summary on AT LEAST the basic past/present/future tense way of expressing things, on adjectives, nouns, verbs, conjunctions/notable grammar particles and features, as soon as possible. Covering this stuff makes my attempts at producing language SO MUCH EASIER since I’ve got at least a rough framework of how to express things basically. And immersing likewise becomes just SO MUCH EASIER with at least a rough idea of what I’m looking at that I can break down into meaningful parts. Even if I don’t know 1 word to even 80% of words in a sentence: if I can tell which words are nouns/verbs/particles/conjunctions/what tense the sentence verbs are in/if there’s any gendered nouns/if there’s any plurals - then I can figure out a LOT about the meaning of the sentence. 

Take “Na no le mayy, ter le henent.” Here’s a sentence I just made up. Let’s say you know that ‘na’ means “there is” in this language. You know “no” is a particle meaning belonging like the japanese ‘no’ or chinese ‘de’ or english ‘s. “le” means masculine ‘the’ and is put before nouns that are masculine if a person, or objects/etc if another kind of noun. ‘ter’ you know means ‘is/are’ as a super basic verb, conjugated for a masculine person not object - now you know maybe this ‘le mayy’ is a person not an object - so the sentence so far means “this is my ‘person’.” You know le also goes before adjectives in this language to match the noun to which it refers, and ‘ent’ is a super common adjective ending in this language. So now you can guess the sentence means “This is my ‘person,’ (they) are ‘adjective describing them’.” Its possible the le henent is a noun spelled with this ending, so it could also mean “this is my ‘person,’ they are ‘noun probably describing them’.” This has narrowed down what the unknown 2 words in the sentence could mean by A LOT. Now if you understand some other context from the Surrounding sentences, you might be able to guess if the ‘person’ is a student/husband/friend/enemy, and maybe if the descriptor is something positive/negative more specific etc. Without any grammar study or overview ahead of time, the grammar pieces like ‘le’ and ‘ent’ and ‘no’ may have confused you or helped you less.

“Na shi wo de pengyou, ta hen hao,” might be how you say this in chinese, or, “Ill y a mon amie, ton est tres intelligent.” But this kind of grammar-helping-comprehension stuff translates to bigger more complex sentences, and sentences where you have less words you know and can rely on. This helped me a TON in french when i just dived into reading when I only knew a couple hundred words at first, and its constantly helped in Chinese - especially since i have no spaces to help me separate words, so recognizing how the grammar breaks down the sentences helps a lot. 

8. Don’t be scared to immerse in interesting things over high comprehensibility things, if you want.

While I do think, absolutely, that things with high comprehensibility will be easier for you to relax and enjoy, and MUCH easier for you to pick up new stuff from context - i think its possible to learn from harder materials if you want. I do it all the time. Like that higher up tip about any study better than none - if engaging with more difficult stuff keeps me interested, then it helps me more than a boring material i would give up studying and therefore stop learning from. Also, personally I really both enjoy occasionally challenging myself to really push what I can do and prove to myself what I’m capable of versus where my ‘safe zone’ is, and I think I personally learn better when I regularly get difficult bursts that challenge me. I do think for some other people, this may have the opposite effect and possibly cause them to burn out/want to give up studying. But for me, while it makes me sad I’m never as ‘competent’ with real material as I wanted to be, I’m always better at it then I was before or at least confident in knowing I’m practicing/studying something I actually want to do one day. (In comparison to me doing like podcast lessons or self-teach beginner books, where I often feel demotivated because it starts with a lot of basic convo drills, often a bit unnatural, whereas I don’t plan to have those convos much, and for my goals want to do other kinds of stuff that those podcasts may not prepare me for after months if at all…). I’d much rather get a quick foundation then be thrown into the deep end, then a slow foundation with baby steps where I have little new material regularly pushing me. 

Who knows how much this is a legacy of me being in all those honor classes/AP, and then being an engineering student in a bunch of accelerated/condensed courses taking way too many credits, studying too many hard classes at once ;-; - honestly studying anything I actually enjoy and am passionate is eons better than that past schooling. But I do think I developed a lot of my study habits back then around ‘do quick effective stuff to get basically competent then MOVE ON CAUSE THERE’S NEW HARD MATERIAL YOU GOTTA AT LEAST GET THE GIST OF IN LESS THAN A WEEK’…. aahhh. So um… I’m really skewed toward do bare minimum needed, and push difficulty asap constantly. NOT everyone is going to be able to do this, or even Want to do this. So, I’d say in general if other people apply this tip about immersing regardless of difficulty if you want to: you do not have to get the same benefits as me. I think even if the only benefit is that you’re enjoying the parts you do understand, or having fun even if its something you only do once in a while because you’re curious on how much you’d understand, that’s absolutely fine. A lot of people who do this focus on ‘comprehending the gist’ - which I guess would be me. And a lot of people who do focus on harder stuff sometimes, instead prioritize ‘focus on just getting used to it’ aka don’t worry if you can’t follow what’s going on, its okay to only catch a line or word once in a while, the familiarity you develop over time is also a benefit itself.

I do personally think, at the bare minimum, doing this does get you more okay with being dropped into situations that are harder for you and being okay with that. I imagine in language learning, eventually you run into a convo where you get lost, reading where you barely understand anything, or a show where you catch zero words! It’s nice to have the practice of not understanding but being comfortable, so that when you’re stuck in those situations you are less bothered and have possibly some other methods you’ve developed to help you cope/get by/tolerate it until you get through it or can grasp something comprehensible again or can find a way to redirect the convo/look up key words etc. In some languages there is just a huge amount of time you’ll deal with materials less than 98% comprehensible (which is comfortable level for most people), or less than 90% comprehensible (which is difficult but bearable in short bursts for most people). Also, the earlier you immerse/engage in conversation, the longer you’ll hit this ‘difficulty’ curve and either need to get used to it or else it’ll feel uncomfortable.

9. Write your GOALS down. Also, preferably, plan some SMART goals - or some study plan that roughly includes WHAT you plan to do, how you could measure it or it’s progress and test if its working or not-actually-helping-the-goal, how it contributes to your goal, and what smaller-step of your goal you want it to get you to in X time. 

Writing goals, and plans for smaller achievable steps, helps in any goal achieving process. Helps a ton with language learning too, especially when self studying if you’re not sticking to a textbook or course with very clear definited steps/goals you can just copy and aim for. There’s been studies that literally just writing your goals down makes it more likely you’ll achieve them. Its also just much easier to stick to a self study plan if you know what you’re doing, where you’re heading, why, how to check that what you’re doing is actually making progress, and have something to hold yourself accountable to study (since there may be no one else expecting you to hit your smaller-goals or bigger ones). Also personal goals will motivate you - what do you want out of this study? Personally? 

10. Make it enjoyable to you, again any study that you can keep doing and make progress is better than none. And any goal you personally will USE and Enjoy/will help you, is much better then some external goal (like oh X people will be impressed).

The enemy of progress is you giving up. Even if you Do give up - skip the being mad at yourself or feeling guilty, it is what it is and if you gave up there was a reason. Likewise, if you start studying or pick up from an absence, make sure you know what is driving you to study. Think about things you want to DO in the language - how do you want to engage with people, culture, language, that sphere of the world. 

If you are studying it for some external goal - say you want to learn it to ‘be more appealing as a job applicant’ make sure there’s something you’d DO with it (do you plan to speak to those language speakers at a job? translate? read articles in the language to improve your knowledge in the field? work in that country? do you also want to chat with friends/make friends? do you work with that country a lot and want more bg on the culture and want language to use social media/watch shows/chat online/read their news more etc?), or do you have no plans to actually use it concretely - if the second is the case, maybe a different ‘job skill’ would also help your resume and would personally be more valuable to you (maybe coding would help your job prospects, and you also think you’d use it to make an art portfolio website, for yourself or some fun little games or text-choose-your-adventure stories, maybe you would like a job specifically that codes as a part of the regular tasks, or you want to do website/portfolio coding commissions on the side even if you don’t end up getting a job that codes). 

If you’ve got some hobby reason - same things apply. Will you actually use the language if you could? How? These questions will help you form concrete goals, and possibly even help you pick the study methods you’ll want to use more. If convo and chatting is a big goal, conversation skills and practice will be way more important earlier on and also motivate you since you’ll be making friends sooner etc. If say chinese or japanese novels are a big interest of yours, and you even read painful machine translate messes of novels just to get updates or read ones never-translated that you’re into, it might really pay off for you to prioritize reading and maybe even be practicing translating yourself (for yourself) earlier on - since you may end up at the least, learning to translate fics you want to read a bit better than the machine translations you rely on (or at least so you’ll be able to double check the original writing when mtls are painfully incorrect). 

All these goals will have pretty clear smaller-milestones you’ll already know you want to aim for, and those smaller goals will make what study methods you’ll need to use for them a bit clearer. If your goal one day is to chat with people about all kinds of things, a good small step is to learn small talk, introductions, then start branching out one by one (or by depth of convo) into things you want to talk about. If it’s to connect with people, language partners might be a fantastic thing, and you might study a lot by helping someone else with your language, then they help you with theirs, the whole time you get to chat and share ideas and develop friendships. If its to read novels, small steps are learning maybe to skim novels for key information - so if a mtl novel is painfully wrong, you can pinpoint what line you want to word-by-word translate yourself for yourself. Maybe you prioritize learning a lot of words, and characters, and basic grammar, quickly, so that skimming gets easier - and so that picking up details gets easier piece by piece. Maybe you start with more basic topic novels (or comics), get to read novels you’d want to read anyway in that language, then move onto harder stuff as you progress. If you watch tons of dramas, and already know you sometimes watch no-subbed and just desperately try to follow it anyway because you want to watch it NOW or you wanted to watch THAT SHOW but it has no existing subs in your native language… now you know a major long term goal of yours, that you’ll use. You can plan smaller goals that build up to it, and also allow you to accomplish things you enjoy. Maybe first you work on following short fanmade videos with scenes, or following trailers, or watching youtubers/etc that you like watching and would probably try to watch without subs anyway. You compare the subbed versions to no subs or target language subs, you look up common unknown words that come up, common phrases etc. You work up to episodes of shows you’ve already seen and had subtitles for, and try to follow it this time without subs. Etc. 

I JUST GOT A NEW LAPTOP. JUST DOWNLOADED CALIBRE JUST DID A BUNCH OF NEW MODERN THINGS, VERY HYPE

ONE NEW THING, IS I AM USING MICROSOFT WORD ON WINDOWS 11 FOR FIRST TIME (I THINK ITS MICROSOFT 365 SINCE I LOGGED IN WITH MY WORK ACCOUNT SO IT WOULD BE FREE, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE THE APPLICATION VERSION OF WORD - BETTER THAN MY WORK LAPTOP WORD 365 VERSION)

AND THERE’S THIS FEATURE IF YOU RIGHT CLICK, OR GO TO “VIEW” ON THE TOOLBAR:

READ ALOUD

When you have it on, there’s a rewind, skip forward, play/pause, chose male/female voice, choose speed, choose lines viewed, it highlights the word it reads, it can split words by syllables, it can change colors. The machine voice it uses sounds NICE way smoother than any other machine voice I’ve heard. It seems to read according to the ‘emotional tone’ of punctuation/grammar, so the sentences seem to flow and slow down/speed up when you’d expect from a natural voice reading aloud.

IT IS AWESOME HOW DID I NOT KNOW MICROSOFT OFFICE WORD HAD THIS??? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME???!!!!

IS THIS NEW FOR WINDOWS 11???

or could I have had this feature this ENTIRE TIME, for YEARS, and never been made aware????

Anyway its fucking phenomenal.

As you all know, I made parallel reader texts for Faraway Wanderers, Sha Po Lang, and Qi Ye. I have English, Chinese, and Japanese languages installed on my computer (so I am not sure the voices will sound as nice if you don’t have your target languages installed). I didn’t know I could LITERALLY BE HAVING MY PARALLEL TEXTS READ ALOUD. (you have no idea how many fucking read-aloud tools fuck up if forced to switch between multiple languages).

Baffled such an awesome tool existed and no one fucking told me. ;-; You’d think the reddit languagelearning forum, someone would have mentioned this.

It arguably isn’t much fancier than what I was already doing on Moonreader Pro app on my phone (i’d open an ebook and Moonreader Pro could read it aloud in chinese with the sentence highlighted as it read). But this Microsoft Word version has a muchhhhh more natural sounding pleasant voice. And the visual options make things even more catering to what works best for me which is all quite nice.

I’m currently opening up my txt file backups of novels and just having an enjoyable storytime reading along to a nice voice!

I’m… really blown away something I actually LIKE, can USE, that’s a DEFINITE improvement in Word… exists and has existed and I didn’t know… if this is on Windows 10 then I could have been using this on my work laptop before and I didn’t even know… ;-;

—

ANOTHER COOL APP I FOUND TODAY:

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader - its on Mozilla Firefox as a free extension, works for a variety of languages. Works well and does what it should. A machine expected voice, but the pitch and volume are adjustable which makes the voices at least useable/tolerable to listen to.

ALSO, it does what many Text to Speech readers struggle to do: IT CAN READ IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES IN ONE DOCUMENT/PARAGRAPH/PAGE/HIGHLIGHTED TEXT. IT CAN ALSO WORK IN ANYTHING OPENED IN MOZILLA AS FAR AS I CAN TELL.

I tested it, by opening a parallel text The Rebel pdf in my google drive (so when its a document over a greyed out transparent google drive behind the document). I highlighted the first chinese paragraph. It read it, then had no trouble continuing to read the english paragraph next to it. 

It also works on a site like MTLnovel.com (where if you make an account, if you click a novel to read then in the chapter click ‘settings’ at the top, can view RAW chinese above the English-MTL, to make a quick bilingual reader).

This is the app if you go looking for it:

This is just me rambling so feel free to ignore uvu alrighty let's get into it. So I learn with the goal of reading in my target languages (usually that's my main motivation initially). So over the years I've figured out, what works best for me is SRS or studying a list of 1000-2000 common words (or reading thru a textbook/taking a class which covers this much or part of it), reading through a grammar guide summary (not to memorize but just for an overview of what to be aware of and consider looking up more later when I see it in practice and get confused). And optionally, looking up the basic ways to say someone present-tense verb, past tense verb, future tense verse, to be and to have verb conjugations. Because these particular features are helpful to know if I want to try chatting/writing with people later.

Sometimes I use different materials to cover the stuff above, but I'm usually doing the stuff above. For example for french: I learned basic past, present, future, basic conjugations from a French class and pronunciation, 1000 common words from a word list, and read a grammar guide summary my first few months. Then I read 300 pages of Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature which helped a ton (and still helps) for learning through context. About 5-6 months in I started reading articles, nonfiction, Wikipedia, graded readers, looking up a handful of words in a translator per page. About a year in I could forgo the word look up and just pick up words from context, about 1.5 years in I could move from graded readers to novels, and at 2 years I stopped studying as far as reading goes - by then I could pick up anything I wanted to read in French and it was doable. I noticed at 2.5 years in etc that reading got easier/felt faster and like less effort, noticed stuff id only managed to follow the main ideas or before i could now follow Most Details too. But after 2 years reading was like English in that I could improve just by doing it more, and it was good enough to do what I wanted. So after that I studied other things in French every so often (pronunciation, listening, grammar a few times for productions sake and I'll definitely need to AGAIN at some point).

Chinese study went similarly. Surprisingly to me, progress reading wise actually followed the same timeline. I'm maybe 2-2.5 years into studying now and I'm probably at a point I could abandon all word lookup, learn only from context (I did this at 1 year in French but cognates helped... in chinese I still had more hanzi to learn 1 year in), and get by knowing at Least the main idea of most stuff I want to read. So now I mainly just read to improve reading, like with English and French. Like French, my main focus when I study now is pronunciation, LISTENING (I want to be able to follow audiobooks better), reading Speed, and one day eventually improving production skills.

My point with all this is like. Well 1. I learn by doing mostly, and that activity I do is Read (also watch shows and listen and browse the internet but reading is probably over 50%). 2. I have a super high tolerance for ambiguity. I think the higher your tolerance for ambiguity, the "easier"/more tolerable you will find learning by doing.

So with extensive reading (reading extensively with no word lookup and picking things up from context), most people comfortably do it when they comprehend 98%. That is like me reading a sewing article - i don't know all the words, but I know enough words to figure out some sewing terms from context. Think of any novel you read in school where you picked up the word melancholy or desolate from context of a scene. Graded readers, for language learners, are designed to hit as close to that comfortable spot as possible.

People can actually still learn some new words/grammar from context clues at lower comprehension levels. 95% comprehension is comfortable enough for a large portion of people, and I've seen studies where even down to 90% comprehension some readers can tolerate the ambiguity and still have enough comprehension to learn some new things from context. They may not necessarily be comfortable at 90% comprehension but some people find it tolerable. (I think the lower limit may have been 80% on some study but it's not comfortable generally for most people). Usually 90% comprehension materials are used for intensive reading, using short texts where people look up a TON of words. Usually we read 95% comprehensible or more when we are reading "comfortably" (think an adult reading in their native language a reading material at their reading level, although not necessarily in a topic they're super familiar with - so me reading about some law proceeding with a lot of technical jargon).

Well as a language learner, at least me when i learn 2000 words, you don't start off with 95%+ comprehensible native material. You have some graded readers (which may be 95%+ comprehensible) Then you have materials for native speakers which are mostly less than 95% comprehensible to you. Because you just don't know enough words for reading native material texts yet! You can solve this a few ways: 1. Read INTENSIVELY, looking up words you don't know often, trying to learn them asap, so you'll improve your vocabulary enough to start to find SOME material 95% comprehensible. 2. Do a middle ground where you only look up 1-20 words per page (whatever is tolerable to you) aka enough key words to grasp the main idea of what is going on. It's intensive reading but you cover more pages faster, and since you don't look every word up you will have some chances to guess meanings based on context. I mostly do this one, but I also do periods of Intensive Reading especially when I want to improve my vocabulary faster (aka quickly push up my reading level significantly). Now with this method 2, I find it's easier if you pick relatively simpler writing to start so that you can AT LEAST follow the main idea with the aid of your modest word lookups. If you can't follow the main idea, even with the help of 1-20 word lookups on a given page, that material is too difficult to learn from. Likewise, with option 1 if you are intensively reading something, looking up Every unknown word, and STILL can't understand the main idea - that material is too difficult for you to use, find a lower reading level material. 3. Read extensively only. This one is hardest, as you will first be trying to find ANYTHING that you can at least grasp the main idea of. For me in japanesr, after 2 years I had to study more SRS flashcards, learn chinese for a year, THEN I finally found i could read some manga and follow the main idea without a dictionary. With french, this would have actually been quite easily achievable if i simply read the graded reader Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature all the way to the end, then switched to French translations of simpler novels I'd read before in English (aka lower level reading material I had prior context for to help me guess meaning of unknowns).

The flip side of option 3? As you learn more, it becomes the "laziest" option in the sense it requires no tools, no pausing to the reading flow. It fries your brain the most, especially at first, because you're completely relying on yourself to figure stuff out. But if like me you hate flashcards/SRS/drills, then making option 3 feasible asap is ideal. So I try to get to option 3 quickly, and switch to the other two ways depending on if I think it will help (option 1 intensive reading boosts vocabulary FAST so it's a good boost to help increase reading level or do with a first chapter of a book to quickly learn all the authors particular common words, option 2 you get detail clarified whenever you want and make relatively speedy progress but without the constant stopping of every-word-lookup-intensive-reading. I do option 2 and 3 the most, and only usually do option 1 when I notice a huge weak point in vocabulary and am trying to fix it quick).

So, how to you get to option 2 or 3 asap, if intensive reading and looking up Every Unknown word burns you out/bores you/demotivates you etc? Consider if you can become more tolerant with ambiguity! If you can accept that it's okay if you don't grasp every detail - you might not know if the floor is green or black, if there's a ball or sword in his hand, bur you can tell X is in a room and sad and holding an object he plans to use against someone. Can you practice accepting that level of ambiguity? If so, I recommend trying to practice accepting ambiguity asap. If you are a new learner, do it 3 months in, 5 months into study, hell do it 1 month in (even though it feels completely brain frying to try to understand ANY bit of a paragraph in month 1). Just try to watch a 2 minute chinese youtube video, 5 minutes of a slice of life cdrama, try to read 1 paragraph of a cnovel you've already read the translation of in English. Try to read a page of a graded reader before you are at its level. It's okay to fail!! Try regularly, and be okay with failing, with not understanding. Feel the brain fry and give up when it's too much. But you will discover that what in month 1 you only recognized 四 and 是, in month 5 you recognize 是光明路四号 as an address, as a clause you know all the hanzi in. You will discover that the show you watched 10 minutes of in month 5 just barely grasping the opening was a robbery, in month 8 you can tolerate watching 20 minutes and realize it's a robbery of jewelry and a WATCH, and a guy catching them in the act! You notice very quickly how much progress you ARE making. It's really cool to see that progress! And as you kept trying to engage with content, you built up your tolerance for ambiguity. You will NEVER understand as little as you did in Month 1 or 3 or 5 again. Unless you start a new language- but now you know what that stage feels like and what progress increments to expect. By the time you get to month 8 and try to read a simple comedy manhua strip? You are brave and try immediately, because you were trying to read full on NOVEL paragraphs since month 3, subtitles since month 5, and these are just some simple everyday phrases with pictures to give you enough context that you barely even feel brain fried. Then it's month 10, and you don't even feel it's extra effort to engage with challenging stuff. It's just a bit slower going, since it takes you more time to comprehend the main idea enough to continue.

What I'm saying is, the more you build up that tolerance for ambiguity, then later when it IS time to read, watch, listen etc you have PRACTICED part of the task. The part of "tolerating the ambiguity" and managing to apply regular reading strategies to material. Some people wait til they learn 5000 words to start reading in chinese. If they really didn't read anything before, then they haven't practiced word parsing, recognition of grammar patterns, identifying key information, guessing from context clues, or the actual act of simply Trying to read content which is likely less than 95% comprehensible to you. So it feels HARD, even though based on their vocabulary it should not be as hard as it was for me at 2000 words. But they still have to catch upon the practice of just practicing reading the Skill, regardless of vocabulary/grammar knowledge.