58 Days... umm, ok

Yeah, it's getting close... and still a long way to go.  The good news is that my major product at work has been completed.  I have my fingers crossed that nothing big will come up at work between now and my trip.

Wife just woke up... crap.

Time to pull the weeds, etc.

Times up!

93 days and counting...

Ok, another week has gone by and it is now Saturday again. During this past week, I only managed to study an hour. To put it bluntly, this sucks.

This weekend, my wife already has the following lined up for me:
- weed pulling in back yard (1 hour)
- mulching front yard flower bed (1 hour)
- garage cleaning (1 hour)
- transferring blueberry bush to a larger container (30 minutes)
- laundry (off and on for a couple of hours)
- who knows what else

Then, there's work I have to complete before Monday. That will take at least 10 hours of my time this weekend. So, basically, I'm losing yet another weekend to my wife and my job. No time left over for what I really want to do... study Chinese.

Anyway, I'm going to start now and at least try to get in a solid 30 minutes before you-know-who wakes up and asks, "Have you already pulled the weeds?"

The day is over...

Slept some, ate dinner, worked some, watched TV, and now I feel like crap and going back to bed. I managed to study only three sentences. I still have at least 8 hours worth of work to do, which means most of my tomorrow will be spent on everything except Chinese. I will try to squeeze in some study time in the morning before I get to tired. Ugh.

Make that 30 minutes... now I feel sleepy.

Can't keep my eyes open... short nap?

Round 4: Goal is one solid hour of studying...

Just finished watching a movie with the wife. Trying to get in at least one solid, uninterrupted hour of studying sentences.

Time to water the plants...

I made it just over 30 minutes of studying and it's now time to water the plants in the backyard. By the time I finish that, it will be time to eat. Then, I need to shower because later, I need to go to the neighbor's house to pick up a Taiwanese lunch box. One of our Taiwanese neighbor's takes her kids to learn Chinese every Saturday. Another parent there makes and sells Taiwanese lunch boxes. So my wife asked the neighbor to buy her one each Saturday.

Sometime this afternoon, I hope to return to my studies. I got through all of the vocabulary pages on the Daily Review PDF (linked off of my home page) and just started with the sentences.

I'm back for now...

Wife about to start making pancakes, etc. So, unless she needs my help with something, I should be able to get in at least 30 minutes of studying.

Back studying.. wife calling again

Just started back studying at 10:55am and wife is now calling me to come see her. It's 11:08am now and I get pulled away from my studies again.

Studied 45 mins... wife's awake now, which means I need to go wash the dishes

Only 45 minutes... a good start, but a long way to go.

101 Days before flying to Taiwan...

Where did the time go?

Right now, I'm working 80+ hours a week at my job. This will continue for at least two more weeks. Hopefully I can squeeze in time to learn more Chinese before my trip in January.

Today, for example, I do plan to study at least two hours. Since it's Saturday, I can push more of my work-related tasks to tomorrow (and will probably stress out then). Basically, I haven't studied Chinese in weeks. Ugh!

Time flies when you're working your butt off...

Almost two months since my last post and probably that long since I really studied Chinese.

Only 83 days left in the year.

Out of the initial five folks planning to join us on our trip to Taiwan next January, three of them have bought tickets and two of them have decided not to go. The good news is that the three that are going are very outgoing and willing to try new things. One of the two that decided not to go is not very adventurous, so it's probably a good thing he's not going.

Super Crunch Time: 128 Days Left in 2010

No comment... :(

Crunch Time: 152 days left in 2010

Here I am again... Seems like I always end up in this position. I was to do X in Y number of days and I'm always way behind schedule. My goals are just to grandiose I guess.

So, there are 152 days until the end of the year and I have a ton of Chinese to learn.

On the positive side, I finally have a good list of sentence patterns (including examples of each) that I can begin working off of. I'm comfortable with the first five patterns (out of 30 something).

On the negative side, my overall vocabulary is still in the range of several hundred characters.

Redeeming points for Chinese Help...

It sounds silly, but somehow my wife and I started this system where she'll help me with Chinese if I do more housework. For example, she'll give me a point for washing dishes. I can then redeem that point for up to 15 minutes of Chinese help. So, the two PDF's I uploaded were both reviewed by her so at least I know that I can safely study/memorize them and still be learning correct Chinese grammar and vocabulary.

Uploaded "Sentence Patterns" and "Daily Review" PDF's...

I created a web site on Google where I could stored my PDF's. Uploaded the "Sentence Patterns" and "Daily Review" PDF's and added links to them from my blog (the right rail).

June 3: 130 characters, 62 combos

Ended yesterday with the following:
- 130 characters (15 days ahead of schedule) or 9% of the characters I'm trying to learn by the end of the year
- 62 combos (3 days ahead of schedule) or 3% of the combos.
- Number of sentences or phrases used during the day: none

June 2: 104 characters, 45 combos

Still ahead of the curve...

Ended today with the following:
- 104 characters (12 days ahead of schedule) or 7% of the characters I'm trying to learn by the end of the year
- 45 combos (2 days ahead of schedule) or 2% of the combos.

As with past attempts, I typically start strong and drop off within a week or two. The only thing I have coming up soon is a one-week vacation in Puerto Rico (at the end of June). So, hopefully I will stay on track at least until then.

Frustrating...

So, I'm studying my new vocabulary that I picked up from the 食尚玩家 TV food show. I chose this as my initial source because so much of our time spent in Taiwan is spent eating or talking about food. Also, since the show interviews people on the street, I can learn conversation styles that probably won't be shown in any study guide I have. Since my wife's friends and relatives will also probably use the same informal language, why not try to learn it?

The frustrating part is that my wife doesn't want to help translate this for me. I already have the basic vocabulary translated so it's not like I'm asking her to translate everything. I'm simply asking for the proper context and some word grouping translation. I've known for many years that she hates teaching because she has very little patience. However, tonight, every time I asked a question to verify my understanding of a sentence, she said that it wasn't proper grammar or word usage and that people didn't speak that way. Well, I got it directly from the show, so people do speak that way. Of course it may not be perfect grammar because it's folks on the street speaking informally. We do the same here in America.

So let's say I learn perfect grammar, word usage, etc. Sure that will be very helpful and I do plan to speak correctly. However, I still need to be able to understand folks when they might not speak formally. Is that too much to ask? I'm the type of person that hates to ask anyone for help. The only thing I ask from my wife is to cook (she's great at that by the way) and to help me with my Chinese. She, however, rather ask me to help her with everything. Ugh...

I have some Chinese friends at work but they are all from mainland China and their word usage can greatly differ from what's spoken in Taiwan, especially when it comes to informal language and slang. Looks like I'm on my own with my Chinese dictionary and the various Internet language tools and web sites.

Only missed three things in my review...

Before starting on the next batch of characters and combos, I wrote all of the first section's text and only missed three items. I had the pronunciation correct except for the tones.

前 (thought it was 3rd tone instead of 2nd)
影 (thought it was 4th tone instead of 3rd)
而且 (thought they were 4th and 2nd tones instead of 2nd and 3rd)

Using a low-tech method, I wrote down these on a sheet of paper so that I can practice these three more so that I don't make the same mistakes in tomorrow's review.

Working from home today because I have to take one of my cats to the vet for a checkup this morning. A side benefit is that this saves me two hours of commuting time today. Hopefully, I can use this time to study more Chinese.

OK, onto the next batch...

Off to a good start...

我今天 got off to a good start and studied more than an hour this morning.

Total Character Count: 77 (10 days ahead of schedule)
Total Combo Count: 27 (1 day ahead of schedule)

To meet my goal of 1,440 characters and 1,825 combos, 我 need to learn 6.7 characters per day and 8.49 combos per day.

214 Days until 2011... Mad rush to the finish...

We'll be in Taiwan for Chinese New Year 2011 and will stay for two weeks before going to Japan for an additional week. On this trip, at least four 老外 will be joining us.

In an attempt to stay focused from now through the end of the year, I dedicated the last few months to build up my sources and collected 1,440 characters and 1,825 combination characters (two or more characters used to create a word or phrase). Until near the end, for some reason I really thought I'd have more characters than combos.

Although character count is very important in becoming literate, being able to order those characters into sentences is even more important. In the past, I've always learn individual characters and combos and could pretty easily pick those out of conversations and even use them in my own. However, being unable to verbalize a complete thought or even add additional context beyond a few characters was really painful.

37 weeks left in 2010... a little nervous, but still an optimist.

Still working to get a list of around 1,800 unique characters and 1,000 combination words. However, my list of combos is growing a lot faster than the uniques.

I'm about 10 pages away from finishing Chapter 2 of 實用視聽華語 2上 Practical Audio-Visual Chinese and I have over 600 combos already and around 770 uniques. Each chapter adds around 80 uniques and over 120 combos. If the average holds true (which it probably won't), then that means I would have to do 13 more chapters to reach 1,800 uniques. By that time, I would have collected an additional 1,560 combos which would take me to a grand total of over 2,100 combos. Yikes! That's a lot to learn between May and the end of December.

After this chapter, I actually plan to temporarily switch to collecting travel-related vocabulary (MRT stops, roads near my wife's parents house, bus info, various city names, and so on). This will rapidly increase my uniques (but at the same time probably adding the same number of combos).

Anyway... I'm trying to wrap up everything and reach my goal by the end of April (only 16 more days after today). Based on me spending a few hours a day on this and doing the math... it doesn't look like I can reach the unique glyphs goal. I may need to scale it back to 1200 or so.

Basically, I need a clean stopping point so I can spend 100% of the time learning the vocabulary and reviewing sentence construction.

So, in addition to adding the travel-related vocabulary after finishing this chapter, I should go ahead and do all the other miscellaneous vocabulary that I want to know before my trip to Taiwan next January. Here's the list:

- Names of all of my wife's friends.
- Colors
- Numbers
- Additional food items (may look back through my street market pix for vocabulary)
- Songs (we may go karaoke if our American friends join us on our trip)
- Famous people (may just limit it to musicians)

40 weeks left in 2010... progress?

Well... not exactly. Usual suspects... work is draining all of my energy.

However, I did finish making vocabulary lists for the 食尚玩家 TV show.

Total unique glyphs: 582
Total combo glyphs: 383

Hmmm, I really thought the unique glyph count was going to be a lot higher (like around 800 or 900).

Since my unique glyphs goal is 1,800 and combo glyphs is 1,000, I still have A LOT to do.

My main goal is to be able to communicate in full sentences, I'm not just going to go back to my 1st and 2nd grade kids books. They're great for simple sentences and vocab, but theirs no back and forth conversation in those books.

Instead, I'm going back to my Practical Audio-Visual Chinese books. I have three volumes, but I think just doing volume 2上 will get me to my goals as well as lots of sentence patterns. The book comes with a VCD (yeah VCD, not DVD), but the audio quality is not that good. But, the books are very well written with technical explanations of sentence patterns and word usage. I started with this book a few years ago and had my wife help me. The sentence writing is rather challenging... so I am probably going to need her help again. However, I may just take each go through each chapter dialogue, vocabulary, and the basic examples of each sentence pattern (instead of getting into full sentence writing). We shall see...

My current strategy (yes, I changes weekly I guess) is keep adding to my vocab lists and sentence pattern list until I reach my glyph count goals. Then... study like hell. The main problem is that to add vocab takes at least two solid uniterrupted hours, which I rarely get. However, when I do get it, I'm usually drained. So, I'm going to try really hard to finish it my end of April (wow, are you crazy?). So, that May thru December (nine months), I will just have to study each day (no more adding vocab, translating, etc.).

41 weeks left in 2010 and getting behind in my studies

It was bound to happen, but hoped it would have happened later. Maybe it's better that it happened now so I can learn from it and stay more focused the rest of the year.

Nowadays, I work pretty much seven days a week. This will continue at least until June, when the product I'm working on will be completed. Hopefully, the summer won't be too busy although we plan to release an upgrade of the product in September. The scope hasn't been defined yet, but... enough about work, I have glyphs to learn!

Tonight, my head is pretty clear which means that I will actually be able to remember what I study. I started back at the first set of glyphs and am going to work my way through part two (which is where I was about 6 weeks ago). Then, tomorrow I do hope to start on part three.

Blog predictions for 2010

My predictions for this blog in 2010... not much talk about retirement, only my progress on becoming literate in Mandarin.

Why?

Each time the topic of retirement comes up (which I usually initiate), the one sticking point she always throws in my face is that I don't speak the language (Mandarin).

So, I believe it's vital for me to be able to converse in Mandarin before she will fully agree to moving to Taiwan.  In a way, this actually helps me stay motivated!

Started my review today

Slacked off the last few days. [insert excuses here...]

I just finished practicing my writing of Intro Part 1 of the transcript.  I knew all but two glyphs. It just dawned on me that I should translate the text to English and then have my wife review it.  I basically understand what the text says, but she could give me pointers on the structure of the sentences.

Not sure if it will happen this weekend as we are preparing for our Chinese New Year party.  Lots of cleaning to do.  This is probably the third or fourth time we've hosted it.  The wife prepares around 20 dishes to the 10 to 15 guests.  Yeah... lots of leftovers.  Folks even bring tupperware containers because they know there's going to be a ton of food.

Back on track, but need to spend more time using the words I've learned.

I'm more than one week ahead of schedule, so I will take some time off from learning new words and spend more time on practicing the sentences from the transcript (writing, listening, reading) of the two sections I've completed so far.  I'm even going to record myself to see how well I pronounce them.

I keep having to remind myself that the overall goal is to be able to communicate with someone, not to just be able to read and listen.

Flat-lined...

Sick yesterday, worked overtime tonight. Plan to study 30 minutes to an hour tomorrow morning.

Translating Chinese-to-English is easier for me than English-to-Chinese

I find it a lot easier to translate from C-to-E than E-to-C.  However, for conversation, I really need to be able to convert from E-to-C very quickly.

Not sure if I'll get another chance to study today. Here's the status...  Milestone #1 reached!!

Decided to study today after all...

Wife was downstairs watching Cantonese shows on TVB.  So, I decided to be a good student and learn some more glyphs (and I wasn't happy that the graph was flat for three days in a row).

Daily Status

Getting a little behind, but still ahead of the curve. Plan to study a lot tomorrow morning.

Study Sheets for Intro (Part 1 and 2)

I finished my cleanup of the transcript for part 2 of the introduction.  See below for the combined study sheets for the parts 1 and 2 of the intro.

The part 2 section should keep me busy, hopefully until next weekend.  At that time, I'll be adding the first non-intro section.

Summary of First Two Intro Parts
- Unique glyph count: 141
- Combo glyph count: 68

Unique Glyphs Study Sheet

Combo Glyphs Study Sheet

Finished Learning Intro, Part 1

Just finished learning the unique and combo glyphs for Intro Part 1.

Tomorrow, do a thorough review of them. Then, on Saturday morning, prepare the study sheets for the next section.

337 days remaining, and I know...
- 77 unique glyphs out of 1800 (or about 4% completed)
- 27 combo glyphs out of 1000 (or about 2% completed)

Today's Graph

Almost finished with Intro, Part 1. Will wrap that up tomorrow and spend tomorrow and Friday doing a full review (Chinese to English, English to Chinese, similar-looking glyphs, similar-pronunciation glyphs).

Saturday, I will add Intro, Part 2.

Today's graph (so far, so good!)

Milestones and Checklist

Unique Glyphs
Milestone #1: 100 Glyphs by February 12 [currently ahead of schedule; should complete by Feb 1]
Milestone #2: 200 Glyphs by March 3
Milestone #3: 300 Glyphs by March 22
Milestone #4: 400 Glyphs by April 10
Milestone #5: 500 Glyphs by April 29
Milestone #6: 600 Glyphs by May 18
Milestone #7: 700 Glyphs by June 6
Milestone #8: 800 Glyphs by June 25
Milestone #9: 900 Glyphs by July 14
Milestone #10: 1000 Glyphs by August 2
Milestone #11: 1100 Glyphs by August 21
Milestone #12: 1200 Glyphs by September 9
Milestone #13: 1300 Glyphs by September 28
Milestone #14: 1400 Glyphs by October 17
Milestone #15: 1500 Glyphs by November 5
Milestone #16: 1600 Glyphs by November 24
Milestone #17: 1700 Glyphs by December 13
Milestone #18: 1800 Glyphs by December 31

Combo Glyphs
Milestone #1: 100 Combos by February 27 [on schedule]
Milestone #2: 200 Combos by April 2
Milestone #3: 300 Combos by May 6
Milestone #4: 400 Combos by June 9
Milestone #5: 500 Combos by July 14
Milestone #6: 600 Combos by August 17
Milestone #7: 700 Combos by September 20
Milestone #8: 800 Combos by October 24
Milestone #9: 900 Combos by November 28
Milestone #10: 1000 Combos by December 31

Checklist
1. Colors
2. Numbers (including months of year, days of week, and telling time)
3. Taipei subway stops
4. Friend's names
5. Geography; knowledge of the various Taipei suburbs (Google Maps can help)
6. Food vocabulary
7. Small talk

Ok, so much for leaving early each morning to beat traffic

My highest priority this entire year is to finally learn enough Mandarin to carry on a basic conversation. Yes, I want to learn iPhone app development, get in shape, yada, yada, yada. However, I know that if I try to achieve everything on my wish list, I'm going to fail and go on another trip to Taiwan not being able to really converse with anyone.

So, the new plan is to study between 60 and 90 minutes each morning.

This morning, I'm trying to finish up all glyphs and combos from the Intro, Part 1. That will give me 76 unique glyphs and 27 combos. This would put me 10 days ahead of schedule for unique glyphs and 5 days ahead of schedule for combos.

One thing that really helps me stay focused is the graph. Otherwise, I would always say, "Ah, you can catch up later."

Ok, back to another 30 mins or so of studying...

Really need to study at least an hour a day

The trouble will be, of course, finding a solid hour each day. Really, the best time is the morning. The wife is sound asleep, no TV blasting down the hall, etc. Right now, I'm trying to get up at 5:00 each morning. Today, I wasn't able to drag myself out of bed until 5:30.

To beat rush hour traffic, I really need to leave the house by 6:30. I also need to eat and shower. So, this makes my mornings rather hectic. Another reason to get to work early is so that I can spend at least one hour learning iPhone app development. Almost nobody is at the office until 9:30.

The other option, of course, is to spend some time studying Chinese in the evening. However, it can be rather difficult because of the chores I need to do when I get home in the evening, eat, spend some time with the wife. Her typical complaint is, "Why are you hiding up in the computer room?" Grrrr.

Gotta go... still need to wash dishes, eat, shower, and leave by 6:30? Ain't gonna happen as it's already 6:05.

Here's today's graph, assuming I'm not going to study tonight.

Updated Chinese Goals... Plus a Geeky Graph

Updated Goals:
- Changed the "end date" to 12/31/2010 (since I won't really have time to use what I've learned the first few weeks of January 2011 before I leave for Taiwan).
- Unique Glyph Goal: 1,800 (5.26 glyphs per day)
- Combo Glyph Goal: 1,000 (2.92 combos per day)

As you can see from the graph, I'm already way ahead on learning unique glyphs. Out of the first 40, there were only two glyphs I didn't already know. Over the next few weeks though, my daily average will decrease and probably fall back in line with the "ideal" 5 glyphs a day average.

(Click the image for a larger version.)

Goal: 3000 words (single and combo) with 1,500 unique glyphs

Yeah, that's my goal.

Period: 366 days

Total Words = 3000 / 366 = 8.2 words per day
Total Unique Glyphs = 1500 / 366 = 4.1 glyphs per day

Although I know a few hundred words, I'm going to treat it as I don't know any.

Current Status for Today (hope to study later tonight):
- Studying Introduction, Part 1
- Total Words = 4
- Total Unique Glyphs = 4
- Words Remaining = 3000 - 4 = 2996
- Glyphs Remaining = 1500 - 4 = 1496

Next trip to Taiwan: 366 Days from now

Ok... I have 366 days before our next trip to Taiwan. I really, really, really would like to be able to be semi-literate by that time. Otherwise, I'm stuck sitting there watching my wife's friends and relatives and only picking up the common subject, verbs, and adjectives (but still not enough to figure out what they're saying, much less respond to their questions).

Here's my current status:
1. I know several hundred words.
2. My tone pronunciation is not that good (damn, 3rd tone).
3. My brain is open and relaxed because I just came back from a 2-week vacation in Japan.
4. I AM VERY EAGER TO LEARN THIS STUFF ONCE AND FOR ALL.

食尚玩家 - Introduction, Part 1

- Video Length: 31 seconds
- Unique Glyphs: 77
- Glyphs with more than one pronunciation: 7
- Combo Glyphs: 27
- Total Glyph Count: 129

Host:

• 食尚玩家. 
• 這邊好多人. 
• 這邊是哪裡呢. 
• 我們今天來到了逢甲夜市. 
• 我們第二次來這邊了因為之前來過第一次有太多好吃的東西沒吃到了. 
• 而且我有聽到網路上的朋友. 
• 他們都是很多台中人他們很喜歡我. 
• 所以呢, 我今天特別來辦了影友會. 
• 外加也要介紹好吃的東西給大家. 
• 所以呢, 我們去看那邊到底有什麼好吃的. 
• 走!

Study Sheets (click on them to view full size):

English
食 "food","ㄕˊ"
尚 "to uphold; yet; still","ㄕㄤˋ"
玩 "to play with; to amuse oneself with","ㄨㄢˊ"
玩 "to joke; something to amuse oneself","ㄨㄢˋ"
家 "household or family; mw for stores","ㄐㄧㄚ"
食尚玩家 "(name of a TV show)","ㄕˊ ㄕㄤˋ ㄨㄢˊ ㄐㄧㄚ"
這 "this","ㄓㄜˋ"
邊 "border; edge; side","ㄅㄧㄢ"
這邊 "here","ㄓㄜˋ ㄅㄧㄢ"
好 "good; very","ㄏㄠˇ"
多 "many; much; more than; how","ㄉㄨㄛ"
好多 "so many","ㄏㄠˇ ㄉㄨㄛ"
人 "human; person","ㄖㄣˊ"
是 "to be correct; yes","ㄕˋ"
哪 "which; what","ㄋㄚˇ"
哪裡 "where","ㄋㄚˇ ㄌㄧˇ"
呢 "(particle indicating a question or emphasis)","ㄋㄜ"
我 "I; me","ㄨㄛˇ"
們 "plurality of persons","ㄇㄣ"
我們 "we","ㄨㄛˇ ㄇㄣ"
今 "now; currently; this; recent","ㄐㄧㄣ"
天 "day; heaven; God","ㄊㄧㄢ"
今天 "today","ㄐㄧㄣ ㄊㄧㄢ"
來 "to come or arrive","ㄌㄞˊ"
到 "to arrive; until","ㄉㄠˋ"
來到 "to arrive","ㄌㄞˊ ㄉㄠˋ"
了 "(indicating change or completion); (indicating a past event); (indicating imperative)","ㄌㄜ"
了 "to finish/complete; remarkable; (indicating capability)","ㄌㄧㄠˇ"
逢 "to meet or run into","ㄈㄥˊ"
甲 "a shell; armor; first heavenly stem","ㄐㄧㄚˇ"
逢甲 "suburb(?) or area of 台中","ㄈㄥˊ ㄐㄧㄚˇ"
夜 "night","ㄧㄝˋ"
市 "a market; a city","ㄕˋ"
夜市 "night market","ㄧㄝˋ ㄕˋ"
第 "prefix for ordinal numbers","ㄉㄧˋ"
二 "two","ㄦˋ"
次 "inferior; next; second; mw for number of times","ㄘˋ"
因 "reason or cause; because; according to","ㄧㄣ"
為 "for","ㄨㄟˋ"
因為 "because","ㄧㄣ ㄨㄟˋ"
之 "to go; (possessive particle, literary equivalent of 的); it (only used as an object)","ㄓ"
前 "front; forward; before; former","ㄑㄧㄢˊ"
之前 "before; in front of","ㄓ ㄑㄧㄢˊ"
過 "to cross or pass; to exceed","ㄍㄨㄛˋ"
一 "one; Chinese radical","ㄧ"
有 "to have","ㄧㄡˇ"
太 "very big; excessively; extremely","ㄊㄞˋ"
吃 "to eat","ㄔ"
好吃 "tasty/delicious","ㄏㄠˇ ㄔ"
的 "of","ㄉㄜ."
東 "East","ㄉㄨㄥ"
西 "West","ㄒㄧ"
東西 "thing","ㄉㄨㄥ ㄒㄧ"
沒 "to sink/submerge; to overflow; to disappear","ㄇㄛˋ"
沒 "(negative prefix for verbs)","ㄇㄟˊ"
而 "accordingly; otherwise; and; yet; but","ㄦˊ"
且 "moreover; and","ㄑㄧㄝˇ"
而且 "and; furthermore","ㄦˊ ㄑㄧㄝˇ"
聽 "to listen; to heed","ㄊㄧㄥ"
聽 "to let; to comply with; to submit to; to manage","ㄊㄧㄥˋ"
網 "net; web","ㄨㄤ ˇ"
路 "path; road; surname","ㄌㄨˋ",source, id);
網路 "a network; Internet","ㄨㄤ ˇ ㄌㄨˋ"
上 "above; upper; previous","ㄕㄤˋ"
朋 "friend","ㄆㄥˊ"
友 "friend; friendly","ㄧㄡˇ"
朋友 "friend","ㄆㄥˊ ㄧㄡˇ"
他","he","ㄊㄚ"
他們 "they (human male)","ㄊㄚ ㄇㄣ"
都 "all","ㄉㄡ"
很 "very","ㄏㄣˇ"
台 "platform; stage; table; mw for equipment; station or channel (TV, radio)","ㄊㄞˊ"
中 "center; middle; medium","ㄓㄨㄥ"
中 "to hit the target (like winning money with a lottery scratch-off ticket); to attain a goal; to be hit by","ㄓㄨㄥˋ"
台中 "the city of 台中","ㄊㄞˊ ㄓㄨㄥ"
喜 "happy; to like","ㄒㄧˇ"
歡 "joyfully","ㄏㄨㄢ"
喜歡 "to like or enjoy","ㄒㄧˇ ㄏㄨㄢ"
所 "a place; mw for places; which; (indicating passive construction)","ㄙㄨㄛˇ"
以 "to use; by means of; according to","ㄧˇ"
所以 "therefore","ㄙㄨㄛˇ ㄧˇ"
特 "a bull; to be special","ㄊㄜˋ"
別 "other; don't; difference","ㄅㄧㄝˊ",source, id);
特別 "to be special","ㄊㄜˋ ㄅㄧㄝˊ"
辦 "to manage, run, or host","ㄅㄢˋ"
影","a shadow or image","ㄧㄥˇ"
會","to meet; can; be able to","ㄏㄨㄟˋ"
會","a brief period of time; a moment","ㄏㄨㄟˇ"
會","to add/compute","ㄎㄨㄞˋ"
外","outside; foreign","ㄨㄞˋ"
加","to increase or add; addition","ㄐㄧㄚ"
外加","plus; in addition to","ㄨㄞˋ ㄐㄧㄚ"
也","also","ㄧㄝˇ"
要","to want; must","ㄧㄠˋ"
介","between","ㄐㄧㄝˋ"
紹","to connect","ㄕㄠˋ"
介紹","to introduce; to explain; to recommend","ㄐㄧㄝˋ ㄕㄠˋ"
給","to give or allow","ㄍㄟˇ"
大","big; large; Chinese radical","ㄉㄚˋ"
大家","everybody","ㄉㄚˋ ㄐㄧㄚ"
去","to go","ㄑㄩˋ"
看","to see, watch, or read","ㄎㄢˋ"
那","that","ㄋㄚˋ"
那","combined form of 那一; often used to indicate emphasis or contempt","ㄋㄟˋ"
那邊","there","ㄋㄚˋ ㄅㄧㄢ"
底","foundation; base; bottom; end","ㄉㄧˇ"
到底","after all; in the end","ㄉㄠˋ ㄉㄧˇ"
什","what","ㄕㄜˊ"
麼","what; (interrogative particle)","ㄇㄜ"
什麼","what?","ㄕㄜˊ ㄇㄜ"
走","to walk; to leave; Chinese radical","ㄗㄡˇ"

Finished transcribing the show 食尚玩家

Whew... that was a slow and sometimes painful process. Hope it turns out to be a good investment. I plan to use the transcript in a personal iPhone app that I will building over the next few months.

Basically, I'm looking for a fun way to stay interested in learning Mandarin. For the last 5 years or so, my vocabulary has stayed somewhere around 300 or so characters.

I logged each character and character-combination (multiple characters that contextually form a word or phrase) and have just over 1,000.

My goal is to learn around 3,000. So, if I can learn all of the ones from this single show, I will be over 30% done.

Finish show translation this week

Stuck in serious traffic so I thought I'd post an update.
Ok, just passed the accident... Gotta go.
Sent from my iPhone

Back from Japan

One of over a thousand pix I took during my trip.