Duolingo Mandarin

I have gone as far as I can in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi on Duolingo & reached Level 25 out of a potential 160 levels (about 15% of the way to fluency).

Since I have reached that point in my ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, I have decide to learn Mandarin since I am watching Chinese TV series from Mainland China where the official language is Mandarin. After about 6 months of watching, I have already picked up 4 words that I am using as commands with Moʻo; I guess I can now say she is somewhat bilingual! (I know several other words that are repeated a lot like "thank you", "Iʻm sorry", & "I must be punished, kill me!" Actually, I don't really know that last one, but they say it a lot in the historical dramas so I will eventually learn it.)

Apparently you get to Level 5 just by clicking on start button!

I am still going to continue the refresher lessons in ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi on Duolingo because I do not want to lose what I have learned while I wait for Duolingo to release the next set of lessons in Hawaiian. (According to Duolingo I know 930 words in ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi. I find that hard to believe because I can't really have a conversation with what I "know".) I would like to find an online source where I can find a bunch of movies or TV series in ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi so I can hear the language & try to interpret in my head & understand what they are saying. But I have been unable to find anything like Rakuten Viki for ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi; I guess that's part of why it is considered a dying language.  

So I am turning towards Mandarin. It may never come in handy for having conversations but it will help exercise my brain! A lot ... The Mandarin section of Duolingo has 2 different writing systems, Pinyin & Hanzi. Pinyin uses English letters with diacritical marks over the vowels. Apparently there are 5 different tones for each vowel! I listened to the Pinyin pronunciations & realized perhaps when I talk to visitors at Lapakahi & try to explain the difference between a Hawaiian vowel with a macron & one without that they are feeling the same sense of, "It all sounds the same to me!" that I am feeling when listening to the Pinyin! Auē! 

The Hanzi system are the ideographic characters that are like what is called Kanji in Japanese. It is those beautiful calligraphy words with multiple brushstrokes. I'm not sure what I will need to do to begin to remember the Hanzi characters. My only hope is that the Kanji characters that I know from Japanese are used in Hanzi with similar brushstrokes; at least I will know the numbers for counting & my last name! Life must be really tough when you need to remember all the Hanzi & you are starting down the road to dementia!

Made a little progress with Mandarin!

The window for the next eruption episode for Kīlauea has now been narrowed to between the 22nd & the 25th. 

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Gary & Jessica!