Last night, I dropped some coin on a purchase of some software called "Rosetta Stone". Now, if you remember from your World History class, the original Rosetta Stone was a stele (slab) of rock that was inscribed with three sets of scripts in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek. Because each different script was basically saying the same thing as the others, this allowed for someone knowing Greek or Demotic to figure out what the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were saying. The stone was discovered by a soldier in Napoleon's expedition in 1799. It took scholars until 1822 to fully translate the hieroglyphs. Before then, Egyptian hieroglyphs was a mystery to scholars, as no one knew how to read or translate them.
Read more about the Rosetta Stone here: Wikipedia - Rosetta Stone
So, this software, aptly named after the stone in question, has a system that teaches you a new language. It basically throws you into the deep end. Everything you see and hear in the lessons are in the language that you've chosen to learn. So, the software may start out showing you a picture of a man, with the Chinese characters 男人. The software will also pronounce the characters for you. In this case, it's pronounced "ny ren" (phonetically). Speaking of "phonetically", each of those symbols has a phonetic sound associated with it that's written in a system called "pinyin". The pinyin shows how to pronounce the Chinese character by including little marks that tell the speaker what "tone" to use. So, in pinyin, the 男人 characters are sounded out as "nán rén". The little tick marks indicate a short, rising tone like saying "what? what?" in English. So, when you say "ny ren", say it like you're asking a question: "ny? ren?".
Anyway, the software starts you out with simple picture/character/sound associations and moves you into simple sentences. I started my first lesson with Rosetta Stone last night at 9 p.m. I finished at 12 a.m. midnight. I was having a blast! It's neat, because the software will ask you to repeat or read a sentence or word, and it listens to how you sound, giving you feedback on making your pronunciation better.
So, with this software, the Chinese pop music that I'm already listening to, the language apps on my phone, and video lessons on YouTube, I should be well on my way to knowing enough written and spoken Mandarin by the time we get to go on our trip in 2017.
Learn Chinese: Rosetta Stone Chinese (Mandarin) - Level 1-5 Set
3 comments:
I've heard Rosetta Stone is pretty weak. I'll be interested to hear what you think as you progress.
Hey, Scott! So far, Rosetta Stone isn't too bad. You get out of it what you put into it. One of the main things I like is that I can speak out loud and the software will analyze my speech and let me know how good my pronunciation is. It also includes daily 15-minute live chats with a native speaker. But, I'd also caution that using only the Rosetta Stone software isn't the optimal route to learning a new language. I've combined listening to music, watching native t.v. shows, using mobile apps, flash card, etc, with the Rosetta Stone software and it's working like a charm for me. I was actually able to have a small conversation with the owner of a dim sum restaurant in Orlando last night! So, yeah, some people may think Rosetta Stone isn't that great, and I can see their points (I read a lot of reviews on Amazon). But, for me, it appears to be a solid learning tool so far.
I was watching Sherlock Holmes (2009) and this made me think of you.
"Say cheese" is an instruction used by photographers who want their subject to smile. By saying "cheese", most people form their mouths into what appears to be a smile-like shape.
Perhaps because of strong Western influence, especially in the realm of photography, and perhaps because of increased numbers of Western visitors after photographic equipment became widely available, the phrase "Say cheese" has also entered into the Japanese language. However, the word "say" is almost always dropped from the phrase, resulting in the phrase simply being "Cheese." This is usually pronounced in Japanese (and written in katakana) as "chiizu" (チーズ).
In China, the word used is 茄子 (qie2zi), meaning "eggplant". The pronunciation of this word is notably similar to that of the English word "cheese". In Hong Kong, the phrase is "一,二,三" ("yat yi saam") meaning "1, 2, 3."
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