oops! I spoke Chinese today

I can tell you that my order for 2 Chinese TV dramas arrived on Sunday when I was about half way through 雍正王朝. So I just need to finish watching that drama and then I'm going to watch the new ones.

I bought the two new ones from a website which is available in 3 choices, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and English. They ship from several locations in Asia and my order should have come from China but the package came from Singapore, so I don't know what that means. One of the two DVD cases is kind of damaged. The cases are made from really cheap plastic. The kind of plastic that gets brittle, not the shiny good plastic. Also they are cases that carry 4 discs with 2 on each side, one above the other. While that makes it thin, it's also tall. I don't know if that is a common case type for DVDs from China or not, but I don't like them and I'm not going to store my discs in them. They hold the discs too loosely.

Just recently, perhaps last week or maybe it was during the weekend, I don't remember which, I discovered Amazon China. The prices there are just so cheap! The only downside is that the website is only in Chinese. This might be expected, however Amazon Japan has this link 'see this page in English' that you can use to get the interface in English but of course not the product descriptions. Anyway, the Chinese-only interface of the China site is no deterrent for me! After all, I am Kanji Keith! And I also have the Firefox plug-in, Chinese Pera-kun which looks up words for me when I hover the mouse over them. But, don't worry! I'm not using it to learn any Chinese. Just to cheat when looking at the Amazon China site. I ignore the pinyin and just look at the English so I don't inadvertently learn anything. I mean, I don't want to get translations stuck in my head.

So I had no problem creating an account. I browsed through the TV dramas and put a bunch on my wishlist, or whatever it's called in Chinese. Then maybe the next day, I decided to place an order. Here's where I ran into a problem. I wanted to pay by credit card and the only option which looked like it could be credit card payment was already checked. It basically says bank card, I guess. Since it was already selected as the payment type, I just clicked the button to continue. Then to actually make the payment, you need to click a button on another page. It's different than the normal order process that I'm used to because placing the order and making the payment are separate. So I had the order placed but I didn't have the payment made.

Then I press a button to make the payment and I get taken to joyo.cn for payment processing. Well, the form there did not seem to be for credit cards. So this is where I was stuck for a couple of days. I didn't know how to get to the credit card processing form. So I asked my coworker/friend to find out how to do it. He sent me a link to the help page for paying by credit card. From there, I could see on the payment selection type that there were many option buttons for selecting type of cards. So all I needed to do was to actually click on the bank card payment area and then those option buttons become visible. Then I could select Visa or MasterCard.

So that is how I was able to set up my order so that I could go to the correct payment site to pay by credit card. So then I clicked the button to make the payment, went to the right page and filled in the card info and then the transaction failed! I had no idea why. Well, there was the actual failure message in English but it was not specific enough for me to understand what was wrong. It said something like, 'verify enrollment failure.' I tried doing the payment several more times and on different days but I kept getting the same failure message.

So today, first I called the card issuing company to see if anything was wrong with my account. That was my chance to speak Japanese. But I don't look forward to such chances to speak Japanese on the phone. The phone is the most difficult situation because the other party cannot read my face to see how well I don't understand. I always get nervous about speaking on the phone. Anyway, there was no problem with my card and they had no data about the transaction that I was trying to complete so my only other option was to contact the company that processes the credit card payments for Amazon China.

For that, I used Skype. I bravely called the Chinese payment proccessing company. Since I wouldn't expect the first person that you reach to be able to speak English, I spoke a little Chinese. It was probably stupid, but this is all I said. "Sorry. I can't speak Chinese." She said in Chinese, "Hello?" Then I said, "Would you speak English for me?" I don't know what the tones for the words Chinese and English are supposed to be, so I think I said them wrong. I'm pretty sure it was wrong. I don't hear these two words in the dramas that I'm watching. Upon listening to the recording again, it sounds like my tones on 'give me' are not good. I was almost laughing after she had said hello in response to my first statement. Anyway, I believed the answer I got was that she could not speak English. Upon listening to it again, I can understand it better but not perfectly. It sounds like she says she doesn't hear well. I don't know if that's in reference to English or if she meant that she doesn't understand what I'm saying! So then I said in Chinese, "I speak English." I didn't know what she said next, but now I think she asked me, "Who are you calling?" but this not the word 'who,' it's the direction word, 'which way,' if I now understand correctly. I didn't catch what she said so I didn't answer that and so she said again, "Hello?" and I said, "Hello" and then she asked me the same question again. So I start over again and say in Chinese, "Sorry, I can't speak Chinese." She says, "Don't worry about it" in Chinese. And then she said something in Chinese but I'm not quite clear on what the meaning is. She probably just asked why I'm calling. Then I ask in Chinese, "Is there someone who can speak English?" And she responds to me in Chinese, "It's possible. You may speak English." (My translations are kind of literal. The correct translation probably sounds more natural.) So then I ask in English, "It's OK to speak English?" She says, "Yes." Then I confirm with her that I have the correct company to which she answered "Yes." Then I try to confirm that they process payments for Amazon. After that question she told me, "hold on please."

Perhaps it was naive of me to expect that the second person would have been told that there was an English speaker on the phone and for me to expect that person to start off in English! So you can imagine my amusement when the 2nd woman taking the phone answered in Chinese and again I had to spit out my horrible Chinese. This time I mistakenly said, "Sorry. I... I can speak Chinese. English--. Can you speak English?" I didn't even know I left out the negative! I just realized it now after listening to the recording. I probably started the question with the word 'English' because of Japanese syntax. Either that or I was thinking about the words 'Chinese' and 'English' because I just knew that the tones weren't correct. Then she answered my question. I think her response means that she can't speak English, but not in those exact words. Then the next statement she said I didn't catch it at the time, but now I understand it. She said, "I can't clearly hear what you are saying, right now." That sentence pretty much passed over my head at the time, so next I asked, "Can you speak English?" She answered back, "It's not possible." So then I asked, "Is there someone who can speak?" I inadvertently omitted the word 'English' in my question. Then she asked me something I didn't understand so I said, "What?" Then I think she rephrased the same question. The wording is almost identical. She asked me, "Please, what is your question?" Then, not knowing what else to say, I said, "I can't speak Chinese." which made me laugh because here I am calling a Chinese company about my paying for my order at Amazon China to buy DVDs of Chinese TV dramas and I can't even speak Chinese! So then she said in Chinese, "well then you just speak English and I'll speak Chinese."

So I said to her in English, 'OK, I don't know if I will understand you.' Then I heard her gasp. I can only imagine what ran through her mind as she heard me speak English. Then she said something in Chinese which I still don't understand. So from there I tried to explain in simple English. After that she did her best to speak to me in English. She couldn't explain well but eventually I got the idea that I needed to activate a new verification feature that the credit card companies are using now. So at the end, I told her, "OK. Maybe I understand" and she sounded so relieved.

Then I called the credit card company again and I found out how to enroll for the special security feature. I had to go to a website, in Japanese, and fill out the form there. I waited a while for it to process and then went back and successfully paid for my Amazon China order.

Now I just need to finish watching the drama I'm on now so I can start on my new ones. Any commentary on my funny phone call to China?

too few learners of Chinese

Even though many more people have taken up the study of Chinese, there are still not enough doing so, according to this article. It says there are 40 million foreigners learning Chinese. But how many will actually become speakers of Chinese? I think the drop out rate is very high. And what percentage of learners reach a decent level of reading skill in Chinese?

For reading, it really helps to know what word to expect next. If you know what words are likely to come next then you can read much faster with only a glance at the words or characters. Just like a cloze test, if you can't fill in the blanks then you are not familiar enough with the language so while reading you have to do a lot more work. In Chinese and Japanese as well, it becomes much more critical because there is often no clue to the pronunciation of the words. A strong knowledge of the language will make reading much easier which is why I would recommend learners to put off learning to read Chinese or Japanese until they have a good command of the language.

To me, it does not matter how many learners there are of Chinese if the success rate is low. If, for example, you have 100 million learners of Chinese but only 10 million of them are successful, that is worse than having 40 million learners where 20 million succeed. What we must consider is the final outcome and not just the number "in progress."

My formula for success is listening, then speaking, then reading, and finally writing. Each one reinforces the next. If all aspects of language learning are undertaken at once, then where is the reinforcement?

heroic Chinese dramas

I checked on my online order of new Chinese TV dramas a couple of weeks ago. Since it had been 3 weeks since I had placed the order I emailed the site and asked them to investigate. I was told that one of the two dramas was out of stock so I had to replace that one with another one so I could still qualify for free shipping. Since my order was not on its way here by March 1st, I went to the local used bookstore and I was lucky enough to find another drama series that was in my price range. But before buying it I asked the store clerk to test it to see if the Japanese subtitles could be turned off or not. Since the publishing company was not the same as the other ones that I had bought before, I figured it was worth checking. I didn't want to buy another Chinese TV drama series with hard-coded subtitles and I wasn't about to buy it if that was the case. At first, the store clerk said he thought the subtitles could be turned off, but I knew he wasn't sure so I asked if they had a DVD player to try it on. Then another clerk took over the task. She put one of the discs in a player and hooked it up to a small monitor. It started playing and then she proceeded to tell me that the subtitles would have appeared in the beginning and since they didn't appear right away she took this as evidence that the subtitles were off. However, from the moment I saw the video display, no one had said anything yet. So I just waited and watched. Sure enough, as soon as someone spoke the subtitles appeared. For whatever reason, they said that player was set to show the subtitles, so the clerks then got out a used game console and played the disc from there. On that console they were able to turn off the subtitles so I went ahead and made the purchase.

I bought Heroic Legend (DVD-BOX❶ ６枚組) on Sunday, March 1st. I only bought box one at first. They had box 2 as well, but I waited until I finished the first one before buying the second half of the series. Each box has 6 discs and there is a total of 35 episodes. This drama is filmed just like a movie. It looks very good. The other ones I bought before look like TV shows, but this one feels like a movie. It looks very good at full screen as well. One of the main actors, Huang Hai Bing, is from the 2nd drama that I was watching. It's interesting to note that he looks exactly the same but he sounds very different. I felt like it was someone else's voice.

Besides the excitement of having a new TV drama to watch, the reassuring feeling I get from this one makes me feel good. This is the first time I have watched the series and there are a lot of things in it that I can understand only because I had watched the other dramas. This drama is like a testimony to me that my understanding of Chinese is growing. I can recognize all of the words, phrases and things in it that I would not be understanding if this had been the first drama that I watched. I hear them and I can say to myself, I know that word because it was in the other dramas. It is a building process.

When I watched my very first Chinese TV drama, I could say that I don't understand Chinese. But now I would say that I can understand a little Chinese. I don't feel like someone who is sitting there not following the dialog, not understanding the story, not knowing what's going to happen next. I feel like I understand enough of the words to know what to watch for next. I'm following the dialog to some extent. I'm not completely lost. I'm not only looking at the pictures. Again, this was the first time watching this series so I had no previous knowledge of what's going on, so I know that my understanding is coming from the spoken language and confirmed somewhat by what can be seen happening on screen.

I watched the first half from Sunday to Thursday and then Thursday evening I bought the second box. I finished watching it early this morning.

don't use flashcards!

You do yourself a great disservice when you use L2-L1 flashcards. Studying with flashcards is only training your brain to respond to the language you are trying to acquire by giving you the language you already know. That is how you are checking your supposed knowledge. And yet you don't know the word in reality. So you are just fooling yourself.

Let's say A and B are words. B is in your target language. A is in your native language. If you look at B and you don't know what it is until you've brought up A, then you still don't know what it is. You'll only know the word when you see B and don't need to think about A. However, if you're using flashcards then you are training your brain to give you an automatic response. When you see B, your brain will respond with A. It takes a number of repetitions or reviews in order to shorten the response time. Most learners feel that a short response time means they really know the word. But again I say, you don't know the word if you need to think about it.

You may think that with enough training you won't need to think about the word. But that thinking is flawed. You've trained yourself to come up with the translation! You're like Pavlov's dogs. It's going to happen without your will. It's going to be hard to break as well.

Besides the trained response that will keep you plodding along slowly, the other bad thing about flashcards is the speed at which you accumulate all of this false knowledge. I call it false knowledge because it's a translation. It would be the same as if I told you about some magnificent place on earth. I could give you all the details and you could paint a pretty picture in your mind. And then you go around telling people that you know this place when you have never even been there. You have never experienced it for yourself. In order for you to tell other people what that place is like, you have to recall the words I used to describe it to you. That is a completely different process than if you had actually been to the place and you could use your own words to describe what you experienced and what you remember about the place.

Now compare that to all of the false knowledge you have about your target language. All the words that you can translate because you have trained yourself to remember something the dictionary gave you. And every time you hear one of those words you have to go through a process to recall the meaning. And not because you want to, but because you are trained to involuntarily respond. Reineke mentioned in a comment to my Feb. 9th post about

results show that the Chinese-English speakers, who'd describe themselves as fluent English speakers who access meaning directly from English without word-by-word translation in Chinese, are in fact accessing Chinese subconsciously.

I think that's because, even though they've gotten past the stage of needing to translate, they have trained their brains to do this. Or it could simply be that the researchers misinterpreted what they found and what's really happening is that those speakers just like to use their native language for thinking and analyzing. Just because you may be having a discussion in a foreign language, it doesn't mean you need to think all of your thoughts in that language. Or, perhaps another reason that the researchers are wrong about the findings is that they assume you can only process a foreign language in a different area of your brain than you do your native language.

I know somebody would comment and say that they can first learn the translation and then later get the experience. They believe it is better and quicker to do both. But in that way you are still not replacing your training. First you will be comparing. You will say, how does my experience compare with what I have learned? You will be like the man with two clocks, always looking at both of them to make sure they agree. You may try to make one of them your main clock but you know you've always got that backup clock. Ever heard the statement, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression?" First impressions are strong. They don't disappear easily. So you want to make the right first impression. You want to acquire words the right way, the first time.

Now, while I'm watching Chinese TV dramas, I do have a tendency to think, "oh this word must mean such and such." But what I'm not doing is sitting there drilling it into my brain and reinforcing a translation which would be the truth. What I mean is that when you have looked up the translation you unquestionably accept it as the truth. B = A; case closed. Instead, I keep a very open mind. I'm willing to adjust my understanding of the words in the target language. I want my associations to my native language to be as weak as possible. I want what I see and experience to form the meanings of the words. I just want a feeling for the words.

Language is something that requires not a thought process but a feeling. Just like what I need for a perfect serve in volleyball. I want to serve the ball so that it is as close to the net as possible. If I hit the ball too high, it will go out unless I reduce the power. But if I hit the ball so that it goes just above the net then I can turn up the power because I know that after it goes over the net it will fall into the court. But I can't stand there and be thinking, "ok throw the ball up just the right height and then swing exactly 1.5 seconds after releasing." No, I can't be thinking about the process at all. But once I have the feel for it I can toss the ball and swing to hit it and make it go just over the top of the net. If I were to do any conscious decision making then I would never be able to get it right. Instead, I have to get a feel for the toss and also have a feel for how good that toss was because I can't always toss it exactly the same height. I have to hit the ball without ever looking at the net.

If you have a feeling for the language, you'll be able to go to a level that you aren't able to by thinking about the language. People cannot speak a language fluently while thinking about grammar and words. The more you train yourself to think about the language, the harder it is to break that habit and to get a feeling for the language. Flashcards just reinforce the associations of the target language to English or your native language. You do them and create those connections quickly but you'll have trouble truly getting rid of those associations.

Pierre J. Capretz, author of French in Action says,

"French is not a translation of English. It is not English that has been coded into French. French is French. It is not a code of English. So that you cannot just replace a French word with an English word. It does not really work. When French people say something in French it is not that they really mean something in English but say it in French because they don't know better or to show off or out of perversity. No. When they say something in French, they mean something French. So to understand what a French word means what you have to do is observe the circumstances in which it is used. That's what will tell you what that word means."

Another reason for not using flashcards is simply that you don't need them. When I watch Chinese TV dramas I hear the same words over and over. The words I learn from one drama will be used again in the next drama. I get all of the exposure that I need without any of the labor. I sit back and take it all in. The highest frequency words are the ones I'm going to hear the most often. Plus, I hear them spoken by native speakers with the correct prosody instead of hearing them in my head or from my mouth. If a word is brand new to you, you don't know exactly how it sounds. You don't know which syllable is stressed. It doesn't feel natural to say it. You need to do some mental work to read it, think it, or say it. All of your conscious effort could easily affect your pronunciation. There's really no need to put yourself through learning a bunch of new words. I easily get tons of exposure by watching the drama series. All of my review and reinforcement comes naturally. I eventually learn the meaning of words in the way that Pierre Capretz describes. I observe the circumstances in which the word is used.