breaking the silence

Here it is! My first time to speak after an extended silent period.
I'll refrain from criticizing myself and let you all criticize me instead.

Of course, I've kept my promise to record the first conversation. I will record more when I can.  This video is what I call a language time capsule. I'd like to thank Rony Gao again for allowing me to record and upload my very first Chinese conversation. You'll be seeing him again. I should also mention he is a tutor at LingQ.

Yes, LingQ saved the day! I could not find many new contacts on Skype. The search function of Skype has become useless for finding new friends, as you cannot limit it to online people only. I sent out a bunch of hellos, and all of them went "pending..." because the people in the results list were not online even though I set my search function to search for people in SkypeMe mode. In fact, I learned that Skype has recently removed SkypeMe from it's PC version.

The reviews are already pouring in on YouTube (sort of.) I look forward to someone bashing me and telling me they aren't impressed. I haven't put this video up to impress anybody. It just says this is where I am on January 24, 2011 with my Chinese. Let's see what the next few months bring. Happy New Year!

Keith speaks with Steve Kaufmann

I had a conversation with Steve Kaufmann in Japanese. This is the first time I have ever spoken directly to Steve and we did it face-to-face. Well, it was through the help of our webcams and Skype. For those of you who don't know, Steve Kaufmann is a super-polyglot.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to record myself speaking Japanese as a record of my Japanese level before the up and coming self-improvements. This is that video of me speaking Japanese. I will make some more but I don't know if anybody wants to be alerted to them. If you do, you could just subscribe to my YouTube channel.

The video is in 2 parts. The total time is 16 minutes. You can watch the video below if you want and when it finishes I'm sure you will be able to choose the 2nd part. Else, you may go to my YouTube channel. Oh, and I must say. The microphone on my headset is really bad. Sorry about that, but the sound on my side is not clear. Steve's side is very clear. I'm going to have to breakdown and buy a microphone if I can find one or else buy a new headset.

A few comments about my Japanese speaking ability. As you will be able to see in the video, I almost always need to think about how I want to complete a sentence. So many options come to mind while I'm speaking that I just get overwhelmed with what I should do to finish my sentence. I just want to get to where I know what I want to say and I just say it straight through without stopping or pausing. Another critique about my Japanese is that I do not know how to say everything that I need to say. I don't know all of the grammar. I think I will be able to discover a lot by watching TV.

And last but not least, I do want to improve my pronunciation. This has mostly to do with vowel sounds but also with intonation as well. I would like to sound the same as a Japanese person. I want to be indistinguishable. And why not? I live in Japan so it would be to my advantage. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to improve my pronunciation or not but we'll see.

I would like to speak with some more people in Japanese and record it and put it on YouTube. Even if you don't have a webcam, but you have a microphone and Skype and a good connection, we can still record me in the picture with our conversation. If we have a noisey connection then it won't be worth recording and putting up on YouTube. Anybody who can speak Japanese. You don't have to be a native speaker. Just contact me via email. You can find my address in my blogger profile.

Japanese Time Capsule 02

Here is my second recording speaking Japanese. But can we really call this speaking?!! I'm not very good at speaking in Japanese. I used to think my Japanese pronunciation was really good, but now I know it's not. At least I never fooled myself into thinking that I could speak Japanese.

Maybe I will do this more often since I need the practice. The problem is that I don't know what to talk about and even if I do want to say something I don't know the best way to say it. But I think I might be getting better!

I'm not afraid of making mistakes! I am afraid about ingraining them. But mostly, I just don't know how to speak. Oh well, someday, someday I'll get there.

Japanese_Time_Capsule_02.mp3

Japanese Time Capsule

This morning, I attended a company meeting. We have a meeting like this twice a year. There are about 30 people in the company and almost everybody showed up. Some of us were told to prepare a speech. Although, we were not given much of an advanced notice. I recorded my speech with my pda.

So, if you are interested in hearing me stumble through a speech in Japanese, then by all means go ahead and listen. I made mistakes. I omitted some words I meant to say. I didn't finish some of my sentences. And I forgot to say a couple of things I wanted to say. The pressure of trying to speak in front of people makes me lose my train of thought.

I'd appreciate any and all feedback on this one. If you have any ideas that might help me, please leave a comment. If you noticed any weakpoints of mine, I'd like to hear about it. Thanks in advance for listening.

The mp3 file is 6.7MB and the audio lasts 5:47. I begin talking on the recording after 15 seconds.

Japanese_Time_Capsule_01.mp3

Mandarin time capsule

Here is my first time capsule! It is me reading some FSI Chinese sentences. I've been listening to Mandarin for 4 months, but only listening, no speaking. So this is my first attempt to say these sentences out loud. There are 64 sentences and it takes approximately 5 minutes. I listened to them a lot at the end of May, and I may have listened to the FSI lessons and drills a couple of more times after that. I have not listened to any of them for over a month now. In this time capsule, I am just reading the sentences in pinyin with no tone marks at all. I do not think about the tones at all when I say the sentences, except there are a couple of sentences I repeated once or twice because I knew they sounded way off when they first came out of my mouth.

I do not think I am "good" at Chinese. I just wanted to make this time capsule. This is how I sound now speaking Mandarin without any speaking practice, just listening practice. Though, my listening of these sentences is not really fresh. I am just reading the sentences and this is how they come out of my mouth. My study now consists of only listening, not speaking, so my voice is not used to saying any of these words.

If you have any honest comments that you would like to leave, you may certainly do so. I am not looking for any praise. I do not think I deserve any. I am not looking for any encouragement either. I do not need any. But if you want to leave a comment, then go ahead. If you think my Mandarin is really bad, which is probably the case, you may say so if you feel the need to. I will be fine if nobody leaves any comments. That's ok too. So I only ask that if you do leave a comment, please be honest.

Mandarin_Time_Capsule_01.mp3

Time Capsule

A language time capsule is an idea which I have recently come up with. I want to record myself speaking my target languages. I want to know what I sounded like at the beginning of my language study. And then how did I sound a year later? I want to hear how much I have improved and how much better I can speak. Do I speak more easily? Am I still making the same grammar mistakes or did I take care of those? Has my pronunciation gotten better? Do I sound more natural?

With a language time capsule, I'll be able to go back in time and listen to myself. This will allow me to judge my progress. I will also be able to compare my rate of progression between two different languages, such as Chinese and French. Chinese is supposed to be harder for us English speakers than a European language. So will I be able to learn French much quicker than Chinese? With time capsules, I would be able to actually compare how I sound in two different languages after having studied each one for the same amount of time, even though I may be presently at different levels in each one.

What do you think about my Time Capsule idea? Have you recorded yourself?

Vox09.mp3