For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about the Gary Larson cartoon on the 4 personality types. When it came out, I circulated a copy in our grading section asking people on our team to identify which personality type they were. Interestingly, all 4 of us grading inspectors chose the cheeseburger one! And even more interestingly, none of the other staff did. I guess that's why we became grading inspectors; we wanted results! (FYI He is now on the web!)
I was awakened last night by some really bad nocturnal cramps! It started in my left leg but then my right leg started to cramp as well. I think it was because I did not hydrate during class as well as I normally do. I even came home & drank some of my home-made Meyer lemonade & Pedialyte sports drink; but apparently not enough to make up for missing out on the electrolytes earlier in the day. It resolved itself after about 10 minutes, but it was a rather harsh 10 minutes! 😫
The sauerkraut spewed out some fermentation gases last night. And blew some of it far enough it did not land in the plastic tub it is sitting in! Fortunately the other plastic tray caught it. I have repositioned the jar so the vent now points towards the center of the tray & not towards an edge. The kim chee just showed a tiny dribble down the side; perhaps it is the capsaicin in the crunchy garlic with chili oil affecting the fermentation bacteria.
I am making progress in my pronunciation of the Mandarin words. Mainly because I am listening closely to the inflections & just repeating as closely as possible to what I hear. They give you 3 tries to get it right or close to right. I think I am using the bird call ID part of my brain for this. But it would still be helpful to work with a Mandarin speaker to really know what I am supposed to do & why rather than just trying to imitate a speech pattern. Especially when I can't figure out how to say it right. Although imitation is the main way children learn to speak whatever language it is that they speak; it would still be nice to have someone point out to me how to say it right.
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| Could use some help on this one. |
Another part of the learning is to "complete the chat" or "complete the sentence," aka fill in the blank in the spoken conversation. I can understand some of the words being spoken & I can recognize some of the Hanzi. How I have been completing the sentences is figuring out what might be an appropriate response to the comment, then searching for the Hanzi or Pinyin in the 2 phrases that are presented that will give me a clue as to which might be the proper response. So it takes a long time; it would not be appropriate for a conversation.
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| I was able to identify the Hanzi for "basketball". |
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| Other options were words I knew & did not fit the sentence. |
For the "select the correct translation" exercise, an English word is shown; you must choose from the 3 Hanzi/Pinyin options offered. I can usually get this fairly easily; its like I see flash cards in my brain for the different words. I just need to be able to find them faster so that they become more automatic like about 400 or so of the 950 words that Duolingo says I "know" in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi; sometimes I am trying so hard to think of the word that I have to force myself to relax & when I do the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi word just pops into my brain! I also need to remember both the Hanzi & Pinyin; right now I am relying heavily on the Pinyin.
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| Recognizing radical for "water" made this easier. |
For the "tap what you hear" exercises, a phrase is spoken, then you must choose from the 6 to 8 Hanzi/Pinyin options offered at the bottom. This is fairly easy since the Pinyin gives a clue as to what the correct ones are.
The "translate this sentence" exercises are like the "select the correct translation" exercises but includes making a sentence out of the word options given. Something that I have noticed is that I can fairly easily recognize the radical for "water" (shuǐ, 水) which I have now seen in "ice" (bīng, 冰) & "swimming" (yóu yǒng, 游泳). That has been helpful; now if I can only do that for more nouns!
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| I also learned that "hái shi" means "or". |
And finally there are the ones that are flashcards in English, that you must say in Mandarin! This is the most difficult for me since I have not yet gotten to that same level as I am in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi where those 400 or so words just pop in to my brain. I would say there are perhaps 10 or so words that I can remember the Hanzi &/or Pinyin for & that I can correctly pronounce to pass this part of the lesson. I have never gotten more than 2 out of the 5 correct.
Because I start my day by doing Duolingo while I lie in bed after my alarm goes off, I frequently get an attaboy for extending my practice streak so early! Although I am a little curious, I am in the 2nd to the last time zone of the day. Are they only comparing me to people in my time zone? Or are they looking at the relative times that Duolingo users around the world are extending their streaks?
Episode 50 of the eruption of Kīlauea started this morning at 10:10 & ended at 5:10 p, after about 7 hours of activity.
Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Anne!
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