Thursday, September 17, 2009

Communication Barrier

Making my first attempt at breaking the language barrier between Mandarin and English. Although, this does little for the communication barrier that exists between most of my family and myself. After all, my family speaks Cantonese. Thankfully, 2 members speak Mandarin since one of them is from China and the other is married to her. ^_^ So, even though learning Mandarin does little, a little can go a long way. =]

My Mom and I are planning to travel to visit family in Hong Kong and China this Christmas (YAY! I can't wait for the time to come already!) so, as I should've done ages ago, I'm learning Chinese (Mandarin). And Rosetta Stone is my learning companion.

I started coming down to the end of summer and I haven't really gotten particularly far. I just finished lesson 2 and I'm ready to start lesson 3. I haven't really gone through anything in over 2 weeks so most of the information was temporarily forgotten. I completed lesson 2 this evening and most of the stuff came right back to me =D

I'm also learning Japanese and started lesson 4 but I haven't been back at it in a couple of weeks either. Mandarin is taking current priority since China is in a few months. After all, Japanese is merely a hobby language because I love watching anime and it would be nice to not be totally dependent on subtitles.
Rosetta has been fairly fun all the way so far. It's actually quite wonderful. Sometimes I'd like to see worded translations of some terms but I figure out the images after a few examples...guess that's really just one way to learn. Either way, it's been pretty fun and I'm hoping it will continue to be. If your thinking about using Rosetta Stone, go ahead...I know it's costly but I think you can get a good set out of it (once you keep at it).

1 comment:

Mario said...

I did have that but I removed it from my pc since i didn't use it. I'm seeking to improve my french which i haven't been practising at all lately and i'd like to learn Greek, Chinese(either one) and Jap. That'll make a total of 5 to 6 languages i know including english if i do learn both chinese.