Mandarin studies review after having changed my approach - 1 year

It's been quite a while, since I made a language related entry into my blog and since it's been around a year since I changed my approach to my Mandarin studies so I thought it might be a good time to review a little and see where I stand with Mandarin at this point in time.

It's almost unbelievable that I can say this, but I feel my Mandarin is finally getting somewhere! It's been more than a year and a half since I've been in Taiwan and more than a year since I've completely changed my approach and I think it has definitely paid off. When I speak Mandarin now, I am not tired at all, I don't think about pronunciation and often I can choose from more than a couple of ways of how to say the same thing. The sentences that I produce - since I repeat what I hear around me, are structurally Mandarin-spot on and after such a long time, I finally start getting the gist of the logic of Mandarin and can improvise in situations where I haven't heard or said similar sentences/sentence structures before. I finished reading a 12 book series of 死亡筆記本 and towards the end of the series (book 10,11,12), when I got used to the vocabulary I was reading it almost at natural speed, which made me incredibly happy. Now I'm reading a fat 400 page detective story (黑暗的回聲) and try to keep a pace of 40 pages a day without a dictionary. Well, see how that goes. I usually understand every word when it comes to direct speech dialogues in these books. When it comes to descriptive sections, sometimes I understand every word, sometimes just enough to get the gist and sometimes I don't get the entire sentence.

When it comes to oral comprehension, when talking to people it happens once every 10 minutes on average that I don't understand a word. I understand TV talk-shows pretty well, but it depends on the show. Movies are more difficult, but with Chinese subtitles it's not that bad. News broadcasts are still a problem. I can read newspapers, but the topic has to be international or something I know a little more about. If it's local Taiwanese politics, the article is usually full of names of politicians or institutions making it difficult for me to distinguish what is a name and what is a regular noun which I don't know the meaning of.

When it comes to writing, since I've been reading so much lately, it's been up a notch, but still not what I would like it to be. Per paragraph I write I usually have to ask once or twice to check a sentence structure that I wrote. Usually they are Ok, but every now and then the still look weird.

Since I dropped my conscious forced attention to tones, my pronunciation has turned out to be more and more natural and closer to the standard. There still are a couple of sounds that I am working on - especially the Taiwanese version of sh, ch and zh, since the way I pronounce it is too soft and I am still looking for the correct position of the tongue. When it comes to vowels, the one that is a killer for all the foreigners is the Mandarin "a". Who would've thought. It will give you away as a foreigner on the phone any time. Maybe it is the height of the neutral tone in 嗎 that should be a lot lower in 真的嗎 than I used to pronounce it and not the sound it self, but it is this vowel that I have to work on.

Because of my previous Mandarin instruction (explanation of tones based on graphs and the use of pinyin), even given my best effort I was pronouncing rather what I saw and not what I heard so now I am basically working on rebuilding my entire pronunciation base to make the words sound like they are supposed to and not the way they I was trying to pronounce them according to tonal graphs.

Also, forgetting is a very big part of my learning process. For instance the fairly simple word 先生 is not a very frequent word in my daily life actually but a very frequent word in my Mandarin scholastic life, since it was one of the first words I learned. After hearing and saying it less and less, I forgot the details of how I used to pronounce it and when my Taiwanese friend suddenly said it, I noticed a whole lot of things. For instance that I used to pronounce the 生 almost in a neutral tone and didn't give it it's proper length, that I used to pronounce the "ia" sound in 先 as if it were merged together whereas the "i" and the "a" should be quite distinct and fused through a "y" but still very distinct and this small discovery led me to upgrade my pronunciation in all other "-ie" , "ian", "-eng" finals. Fortunately I make these small discoveries all the time and do this little "word sculpting" to make my pronunciation better.

I dropped pinyin a long time ago as well and I don't feel "bound" anymore by it since I also forgot the associations between the pinyin writing and the way I used to pronounce words. Individual words are easier for me to "sculpt" to the way they are supposed to sound, because I can "forget" my wrong pronunciation of them faster and thus upgrade them to a more standard one, but the most basic of words or combinations, like 我, 我有, 不是, 不要 and so on.. I use them a hundred times every day, so it's difficult for me to "forget" the details of their pronunciation and then notice why exactly I was pronouncing them wrong.

All in all I am quite happy with my progress and according to the how-to-learn-any-language forum classification I feel like I am approaching advanced fluency, but I'm still not there. For advanced fluency I should be able to turn on the TV at any given time and be able to understand what they are talking about just as if it were English or Slovak, I should be able to read novels almost at natural speed, I should be finally satisfied with my pronunciation and while speaking I should be able to play around with expressions in every situation, having at least 2-3 possibilities to express the same thing at any given moment. When I get there, if I ever get there, maybe I will finally be able to compete with big boys like 大山 and the rest :))

Hiking in Taiwan - 陽明山 (Yangming mountain)

I went to Yangming mountain last week but took no camera and was later pretty sad, because there were some nice things worth taking pictures of. Since the place is not that far from Taipei city, I decided to go there again, just to take some pictures and try a different route.

陽明山 (Yangming mountain) is acutally a complex of hills and peaks with the main peak called Qixing peak which is 1120 m above the sea level and the view from it is quite nice. It took me around an hour to get from the Yangming mountain station tourist center to the top, but I was taking pictures and resting so I think it could be done in 30-40 minutes of active walking.

The last time I went there I started at the Miaopu entrance, hiked all the way up to the Qixing peak and went down the other side to Xiaoyoukeng  and then took the bus back to the Yangming mountain terminal station. This time I started at the same place, but then went to Lengshuikeng, because I heard there’s nice waterfall there. The waterfall was nice, but unfortunately tehre was a fence and signs saying that it was dangerous to approach it. Being as hot as it was, that waterfall could’ve made my day. The waterfall started a nice little stream which eventually turned into a river. The hiking trails were always far up high from the stream, so it seemed impossible to get closer to it at first,  but I managed to find a small entrance, got off the hiking trail and made my way through the jungle directly to the river. I was so sad that I didn’t have river tracing shoes, because I would’ve traced the stream right back to the waterfall. On the other hand, I was alone and pretty far from the hiking trail, the rocks were slippery so I think it’s a better idea to go there next time.

The route:  

I started off at the Miaopu entrance at around 11 am. The heat was already pretty intense and the humidity was high as always, which I personally enjoy very much. The trail first goes along a freeway and then turns left into the jungle and was turning steeper every 200-300 meters or so:

After I passed  a certain height, the vegetation around me changed to low, sharp-leaved bamboo. It also got much cooler:

 

View of the QIxing peak:

Qixing peak:

 

Again there were hundreds of butterflies everywhere. There was this very nice big black/blue one that I wanted to take a picture of, but it always flew away or had it's wings closed. I was taking pictures until I finally got a nice one while he was flying:

Some views from the Qixing peak:  

The wind was quite strong at the top. After a little rest I made my way down the south side of the mountain to Lengshui keng to look for the waterfall. 

After coming to Lengshui keng, at the tourist center I asked for directions for the waterfall. Maybe I was lucky, because there were no clear signs directing hikers to it, but I eventually found it. There were other very inspiring signs though:

I made my way through the trails. Along them a small stream started to build up that grew larger and larger, eventually I could hear the waterfall from a distance. When I arrived I was quite disappointed, because I couldn't go all the way to it, because of a fence and warning signs.

At the bottom of the waterfall a small river was starting to build up:

The stream slowly started to turn into a small river and as I said, I managed to get into it, even though it seemed impossible at first. I would definitely like to trace this river from the other end all the way to the waterfall. See how that goes:

Additional information:

Name: 陽明山 (Yangming mountain)

Location: Taipei county

Elevation: 1120 m

Directions:

Take the MRT to Shilin station and from there, if on a weekend, take the 111 bus right at the Shilin station, or on a weekday, turn right and walk to the McDonalds and take either 260 or 紅5. The 111 is better because it will take you all the way to the tourist center near the Miaopu entrance, the other two buses will take you to the Yangming mountain terminal station and you will have to walk for about 20 minutes to get to the Miaopu entrance.

Misc:

If you go in summer, take a lot of water. good shoes are preferable, although I've seen barefoot people again. I would rate the hike to be a solid 2 on a 0-5 scale, but again, only if it's really hot and humid. 

Hiking in Taiwan - 紅淡山 (Hongdan mountain)

In a desperate attempt to escape the Taipei city pollution and noise (and boredom), after my last week's trip to the wonderful 陽明山 (Yangming mountain) and inspired by the this fantastic blog by Stu Dawson, I decided to start discovering the Taiwanese mountains and jungle on a regular basis! A lot of Taiwanese would laugh and say that there is no jungle in Taiwan, but compared to where I come from, what they have here definitely IS jungle :) 

My plan is to climb a different mountain every week (well...... that's the plan) so hopefully I will write an article about 陽明山 later. My ultimate goal is to go to the top of the tallest mountains in Taiwan. There are 164 mountains/peaks that are taller than 3000 meters in Taiwan, with 玉山 (Jade mountain) being the tallest mountain in East Asia and the 4th tallest mountain on an island. There are so many things to see here, I can't believe I've been in Taiwan for such a long time and I've been missing out on all of this. 

My last week's trip to 陽明山 was absolutely amazing, but unfortunately I had no camera with me, so this article will be about a place not far from Taipei called 紅淡山 (Hongdan mountain). It cannot be even closely be compared to 陽明山 (except for the heat and humidity maybe), but it was a very relaxing trip and a good exercise nonetheless. I am a zero hiker, but on a scale from 1-5, where 5 is the toughest hike, climbing 紅淡山 would be a 1+ (the "+" is there only if it's hot and humid). It is a perfect place to go with your grandparents that come to visit you on your exchange trip from overseas. Just joking. It wasn't all that easy and given the fact that it was very humid and around 35 degrees in the shade, the initial steeper climb was a bit challenging so if you're going to go there in summer, be sure to bring a lot of water. There is a nice Buddhist temple at the beginning of the hike in 三坑,lots and lots of big butterflies and Keelung city at the end of the trail.

The route:  

The initial stages of the trail were a bit rough but once we got to the Buddhist temple 寶明寺, the road wasn't that steep anymore. I found this very nice tree though:

There was an incredible amount of really big and colorful butterflies along the way, but unfortunately I didn't manage to take pictures of any of them. Instead there were some very nice flowers:

Getting to the top took us maybe 30 minutes and the view was not that bad given the fact that it was a bit cloudy. In the distance you can see a small island which looks like a promising diving destination:

View of Keelung port:

Some more flowers on the way down:

Everything nicely paved, no need for special gear:

There are many many trails on the hill, so I guess you could spend half of the day just wandering around and relaxing, but we took the 劉銘傳路 straight to Keelung.

Additional information:

Name: 紅淡山 (Hongdan mountain)

Location: Keelung city

Elevation: 210 m

Directions:

We took the train from Taipei main station to Keelung (台北車站 - 基隆) and got off on the before last stop at 三坑站 (Sankeng station), then walked up perpendicularly from the station a bit, turned right on the main road and walked around 10-15 minutes until we came to the entrance of the trail which was called 寶明寺.

Misc:

If you go in summer, as always take a lot of water. Good shoes are not necessary, the entire trail is paved. Some of the pavement is actually much better than the one in Taipei city! Some Taiwanese folks were walking with bare feet. Even though it is not a very difficult hike, in good heat and humidity it can be a nice workout.