Wednesday, November 19, 2008
TV method goes DVD
As I noted earlier, I have been watching Chinese TV online. However, given the reliability, quality, and continuity problems of online TV, I will be using DVDs as much as possible for the TV method. I will still call it the TV method. You can watch anything on TV, including movies so I won't call it the movie method. Also, I won't call it the DVD method because I'm not restricting myself to DVDs. I will still watch online TV whenever I want. DVDs are more convenient. I can watch whenever I want. I also don't have to miss any episodes if I own the whole series. That is why yesterday I bought a TV drama series in Chinese. I bought it used, so it was not expensive. I bought the longest one that was available. It is 2200 minutes and has 44 episodes. It's set in the 18th century. I can understand only about 1 percent of it. Since I bought it here in Japan, it has Japanese subtitles which I cannot turn off, so I try not to look at those. Yesterday, I watched all of disc 1 which has 5 episodes. There is less that I can understand compared to a drama set in the present day. But at my level, it really doesn't make much difference, now does it? The other Chinese dramas at the store are also of this type, so as long as they don't sell, there will be more that I can buy. There were some shorter, modern dramas in Chinese but I suspect they are from Taiwan. On those, the language is stated as Chinese, whereas the dramas like the one I bought, the language is stated as Peking or Beijing-language. I hope I can buy one of these box-sets once a month. They are a really good value.
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About how many hours of input are you getting a week?
ReplyDeleteUntil now, not enough. Online TV sometimes leaves you with nothing worth watching. I just finished watching the 2nd disc. 5 episodes, each about 45 minutes long, so that disc lasts about 3 hours and 45 minutes. I should be able to watch 15 to 20 hours a week I suppose. 30 hours would be better, but I have to work sometimes.
ReplyDeletemy friend told me tonight that there's a mandarin dub of Friends...i'm quite eager to get my hands on that, since i already know everything they're supposed to say.
ReplyDeletei'm also looking for the mandarin dub of the batman animated series, and several of the pixar disney movies. all easy content, but available in mandarin.
That sounds good, Mr. I-can't-read-your-name. Antonio Graceffo also likes sticking to stories that he already knows. He says it removes the necessity of having knowledge of the foreign culture. His story about learning German is very interesting. You can find it here: Learning Languages in Your Pajamas, Eating Captain Crunch
ReplyDeleteHi Keith!
ReplyDeleteI've found your Japanese-language blog by sheer chance this morning, and from there, I've followed the link and came to this blog.
I'm a 35-year-old Japanese male, currently living and working in Singapore.
I am also a language enthusiast, and I speak Japanese, Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, English and French.
I am currently focusing on French learning, and that's what I mainly write about at my Japanese blog site.
It's really cool that you're learning Japanese and Mandarin at the same time. I think I can learn a lot from your blog about the effective methodology for language learning.
Going forward, I will make sure to check your blog from time to time.
Looking forward to reading your next posting soon!
Thank you for visiting my blog, Uncle Polyglot. It is really rare to find a polyglot, especially a Japanese one, so I am very glad that you found my blogs. If you have written about how you learned your languages, please tell us where to find it. Your English is really exceptionally good! I think English can be extremely difficult to get perfect, especially for people coming from languages that don't have some of the tedious features of English, but I find your written English to be flawless. Did you attend an international high school? If not, you must write a post and tell us the difference between you and your peers. I look forward to finding your secrets. Thanks again for reading my blog and commenting.
ReplyDelete