User talk:Yacht

Hey Yacht. Thanks for the welcome. It would be great to collaborate on this. I've had a ton of ideas about what could be done with this, but I'd like to be able to bounce around ideas with the rest of the crew. I've been really impressed with the level of organization at the Japanese Wikibook. Although their lessons aren't too developed, they at least figured out how to talk to each other and plan together.

I've been trying to emulate that, so I copied their idea for a Mailinglist. So far no signups though. It would be good to have a centralized place for discussion rather than have it scattered among the various modules' discussion pages (so join!). We need a good debate over stuff like the splash page and Traditional vs Simplified.

Personally, I agree with you that having both in an intoductory text is confusing. I suggested to have parallel development of two texts with a crosslink for every page. For now I've started with both, but in separate columns in the dialogues and only showing the traditional in the vocab when different. I wouldn't want traditional beyond that b/c it would just get cluttered having it for the examples and everything else too.

I'm only a second-year student of Chinese, but I have some grand ideas for this Wikibook. Of course, the time I did any real work on it was only when I should have been studying for my Chinese final (in two days:<). But then, Winter Break, so I should have a good month of time to put into working on it. Hope to talk later. --Everlong 09:35, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Yacht, I'm flattered that you could have thought that I was a native Chinese, though I think if you heard my pronunciation the illusion would not last very long :).


 * I've used two introductory Chinese textbooks and looked at a couple more, so I have a little perspective as to what is good, especially for a native English speaker. What really made the best ones were clear grammar explanations and lots of examples. If we follow up all the lessons with a page or two of phrases/sentences using the words of the lesson it will clear up a lot of questions.


 * I wouldn't worry about intermediate or advanced students just yet. If it's too easy for them they can always skip ahead. What we need to do now is plan out the base and build up from there. I've been looking at the order in which my textbooks tackled different sentence patterns and been trying to draw up the first few lesson plans. I made something like your Unit lesson plan, but only for lessons 1 & 2 over at our planning page. It basically has your Units, but instead of 1-2-3, in the order 1-3-2.


 * About your points:
 * I think your Unit grouping is a good idea. Every few lessons there should be a recap of what was covered with extra examples and problems. This is especially good if the text is used for a real class with midterms as it gives review for the big test.
 * I also think that consistant characters (Aimei, Ouwen, etc) are important. One book I used made no attempt at this and it was very confusing meeting new actors every lesson.
 * New point. I think that even more than character constancy is a smooth buildup from stuff learned before. In an Introductory course, any student is going to be overwhelmed with the number of characters and such. It makes no sense to barrage them with even more words they haven't learned yet. Maybe by Intermediate when they want to build up their vocabularies, but not to start. Any words or grammar structures that show up in our lessons should be taught when they first show up. That means we have to be creative during the first few lessons to not overstep, but I feel it will make things much simpler for any students using this book.
 * --Everlong 18:21, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * P.S.--I copied the text of our conversation to the Yahoo Group messageboard. If anything, discussion spread out over two users' talk pages is less useful than running it in module discussion pages. We should continue discussion there so that others can easily access the archive of what was said. --Everlong 18:42, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * About your Yahoo! login problem, I hadn't considered that there might be blocked-website problems. You at least got the emailed messages, right? You could just use it by mailing in your responses and without the website at all.


 * I had also been considering using Google Groups as they have a cooler interface and no banner ads, but in the end I settled on Yahoo Groups. Although Google has a lot more potential, as of now they don't support features like filesharing, polls, or chat like Yahoo! does, which we might need. Also I figured more people would already have a Yahoo! account, so it would be easier for them to join.


 * But anyway, we're just started, so I made a Google Groups account too and added you. See if this one works and we'll decide later which one to keep.


 * And if you're interested in a Gmail email account with a 1GB mailbox and super-snazzy interface, I have invitations.


 * --Everlong 06:31, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I'm not sure if this is the proper way to send a message, tell me if it's not. Re: your message to me - I actually started by just reading through the Chinese book and touching it up as I saw fit. But it looks like it could really use a lot of work, so I was considering at least contributing some grammar notes to Lesson 2 and maybe a second dialog. --Aaron Jacobs 20:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hey Yacht, I'm not sure I understand your latest message to me, especially the last sentence. Are you saying that you don't want to have both traditional and simplified in one book and would rather have separate ones for each? If so, then I think that's a bad idea. If you learn to write only simplified, you should at least be able to read traditional, and having them separated out would impede this. Additionally, the book is definitely not only about learning characters, but also grammar and spoken Chinese. If you separated the two writing systems into two books you would have a ton of duplicated information about grammar and such, since the characters would be the only place where the content differs. --Aaron Jacobs 19:30, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * A couple of responses to your message.


 * I am a native English speaker (which I think is the intended audience of the book) who learned/is learning Chinese at an American university. The way that my school does things is to mix traditional and simplified characters.  We are required to choose one system to write with, and have to master the writing of that system.  However, we are required to be able to read both systems.  This has been wonderful for me - I can hand write simplified characters decently, and type them very well.  But because I can read traditional, I am even able to type traditional Chinese pretty well using Pinyin input since I can recognize the characters.  The way I achieved this proficiency in both systems was by being taught with materials that had both systems interspersed.  We had two versions of our reading materials, and I always chose the traditional version to read since I was already learning simplified characters by writing them.  More importantly, on our tests half of the questions were in tradition and half in simplified, and we had to do all of them.  This mixing made me able to read both systems, which has been a great thing for me.  And it wasn't even very hard to do, because the way things were mixed in the learning materials made it very natural to pick up both systems.


 * If we make the point of telling readers that they should choose one system to write and only write with that system while attempting to read both and moreover make our materials emulate the style of education that I just described, our readers can have the same experience of easily picking up both systems as I did. And since the reader is only writing with one system, it would be impossible for him to make a mixup like the one that you described: why would he write 書 instead of 书 if he didn't know how to write 書 in the first place?


 * You say that learning both systems is not required, since a learner would be studying exclusively either for mainland China or for Taiwan. But what about someone like me, who is looking to interact with Chinese speakers in America?  Depending on what region of America you are talking about, you will find groups of people who use traditional and groups of people who use simplified.  I have friends from both groups.


 * Moreover you say that the Chinese themselves don't like having the two mixed systems and cite the Chinese Wikipedia as an example. This is an interesting point, but I don't think it applies here.  The people who frequent the Chinese Wikipedia and those who are arguing about the issue are presumably native speakers who have been raised with one system or the other.  To them, one is familiar and the other is foreign and maybe even ugly.  To go further, there is some political charge to the issue, with Taiwan using traditional and much of the mainland using simplified.  None of these issues exist for a beginning learner who knows nothing of Chinese characters.  This beginning learner would be better off to learn to read both systems now, while both are still equally fresh and foreign to him.  I said that learning to read both systems was no extra challenge for me, and that is precisely because I was not yet used to one or the other. --Aaron Jacobs 21:55, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Since you asked me about my major, let me just give you my background real quick (would you do the same?). I'm a Math major, not a Chinese major. My girlfriend's family is from Taiwan, so I got into Chinese in order to be able to speak with her grandparents and was originally planning on just taking the first four lower division courses.  However, I enjoyed Chinese and some Linguistics classes I was taking so much that I switched to being a double Math and Linguistics major with a minor in Chinese. So I'm not a completely hard-core Chinese student, but I do enjoy it quite a bit. I'm not aware that my school (the University of Texas at Austin) has such a requirement of Chinese majors, but if they do it does not apply to me as a minor.


 * As for the rest of your post, I truly believe that you are worrying a bit too much. You do, however, have a point in saying that the two character sets might be overwhelming to the average beginner and that they need to be warned. But I think that if we add to the beginning of the book a thorough explanation of the situation surrounding the two character sets as well as the advice I presented before of choosing only one set to write then the reader will be fine.  We can definitely also say that if the reader is interested in only one of mainland China or Taiwan then he can ignore the irrelevant character set to simplify things.


 * The situation in America is that there are tight groups of Chinese speakers in many different regions. Each one of these groups seems to mostly be composed of either speakers from China or speakers from Taiwan, without too much mixing.  So in one place traditional characters are dominant while in another simplified characters are.  Additionally, printed materials and TV/movie subtitles are just as likely to be printed in simplified as in traditional, depending on where they come from.  Overall, I think it is useful for an American to be able to read both sets, even if they only write one.  And again I'll stress, if the educational materials are well-designed, I don't think it represents a significant extra amount of work for a beginner to learn to read both systems when compared to only one.


 * As for your examples, it was made very clear to me that the mapping is not 1-1 (another good example is 只), and I feel that it's not a big issue if our aforementioned introduction to the two systems also makes this clear as a pitfall. Your example of 電腦 versus 计算机 is interesting as well, but that actually has little to do with character sets; rather it's a question of dialects.  That can be dealt with by presenting both words, and designating one as Taiwanese usage and the other as mainland usage.


 * Finally, you say that maybe the problem of the two sets is only actually a problem for native speakers. I won't say that it's not a problem for foreigners but, as I pointed out in my previous message, native speakers generally have the considerable disadvantage of having been raised all of their lives with one system, never dealing with the other. This makes the other system strange to them and, subconsciously or not, they may think it's ugly and 'wrong' (I would guess that this probably would happen more for Taiwanese raised with the traditional system). I don't believe that foreigners have this problem. --Aaron Jacobs 05:13, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's pretty funny; you're sort of the inverse of me. Are you from Taiwan, China, or somewhere else?

Anyway, I don't think either of us are going to change our opinions on which way is better. My opinion as an English speaker is still that mixing the two systems provides a benefit at very little extra cost to the reader. But of course it is very possible that I am just an exception. The thing to do would be to query some additional English speakers who have learned Chinese my way and see if they also found it easy.

The text I learned from comes in three volumes. The first volume has thirty chapters. Most chapters have two reading texts and some grammar information. The following grammar topics (in this order) are introduced before measure words:


 * Chinese word order
 * the 吗 particle
 * adjectival sentences (such as 我很忙)
 * 是 sentences: 那是我的书
 * possessive 的
 * interrogative pronouns (谁，什么， etc)
 * verbal predicates (你吸烟吗？)
 * affirmative-negative sentences (他是不是你的弟弟？)
 * verbal constructions in series (我去图书馆看书)
 * word order of 也 and 都
 * possession with 有
 * 给 and 在
 * Chinese numbers

This was just a quick skim, so I probably missed some topics. Also, I'm not sure what the copyright considerations are of copying that order, though. --Aaron Jacobs 18:01, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to comment on Lesson 7. Its English prose definitely needs some cleaning up, but the structure is pretty good. I like the lengthy grammar explanations.

For stroke order, it would be easy enough to add a separate diagram for traditional in the cases where the characters differ. Every Chinese book for Americans that I have ever seen uses Pinyin. As an English speaker (and Linguistics student) I think it's a good choice, since it seems to correspond better with English orthography than the other systems (in my limited experience with them). If we did make a separate book for traditional Chinese aimed at Taiwan or somewhere else one of the other systems might be a good idea, but in a combined book I think Pinyin is definitely the best choice. I've read that even Taiwan is attempting to switch over to either Hanyu Pinyin or another variant.

To tell you the truth, I know next to nothing about Cantonese. I have a coworker who's a native speaker, and he said that he's not aware of any standard romanization - it seems to be very fragmented in that respect. Also, what does 'TC' stand for? --Aaron Jacobs 05:26, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for contributing to the Japanese Language wikibook, but please read the contributer's guide. Section 5.1 CLEARLY STATES that you should not number lessons. GoodStuff 06:54, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox
I took the liberty of moving your draft edits under "Elementary Chinese" to User:Yacht/Sandbox/Elementary Chinese, and your "Elementary Chinese Lesson 1" page to User:Yacht/Sandbox/Elementary Chinese/Lesson 1. hagindaz asked for them to be moved in an effort to clean up orphaned pages. You can continue editing them in your sandbox and bring out your experimentation whenever it's ready for prime time.

Hope to see you back on Wikibooks soon! We could use more help with the Chinese Wikibook.

--Everlong 06:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)