Mandarin lessons
Sep. 27th, 2024 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alterkrmnNext monday will be a month since I started my Mandarin lessons and there hasn't been a single class where I feel like I'm idle or that it's pointless. I always end up feeling a bit dizzy because it's a lot to take in: hanzi, tones, meanings, structures... I particularly struggle producing the first tone, but the teacher makes us practice every class and that helps with the self-consciousness of not getting it right on the first try. But all in all it doesn't feel impossible to learn. I feel like learning Japanese has helped somehow, not regarding phonetics, because japanese phonetics are way easier (at least from the perspective of someone whose first language is Spanish).
I love that the teacher respects our intelligence and challenges us.
I am relly enjoying it, even though Wednesdays are a bit frantic because I have to take the kid to his Python classes, so first I have to take 30 minutes of my class on my phone, in the cab, and then the rest in a café, where the wifi sometimes is... not the best. This Wednesday I had to solve some exercises in the car and it was hell, haha. You can imagine how those sentences looked in hanzi *grimacing*
Something I like a lot are the handwriting exercises. I find them particularly calming, even though they're homework. But focusing on the stroke order and direction of every line reminds me a lot about why I like practicing kata. It's almost meditative. It also reminds me of my early childhood, when I loved the handwriting excersises in cursive. I could spend hours on my notebooks.
Anyway, I wish I had started my language learning journey earlier (I did, with English, but it's a bit different, maybe I can talk about that sometime, in another post), but I'm still glad I started it now.
I love that the teacher respects our intelligence and challenges us.
I am relly enjoying it, even though Wednesdays are a bit frantic because I have to take the kid to his Python classes, so first I have to take 30 minutes of my class on my phone, in the cab, and then the rest in a café, where the wifi sometimes is... not the best. This Wednesday I had to solve some exercises in the car and it was hell, haha. You can imagine how those sentences looked in hanzi *grimacing*
Something I like a lot are the handwriting exercises. I find them particularly calming, even though they're homework. But focusing on the stroke order and direction of every line reminds me a lot about why I like practicing kata. It's almost meditative. It also reminds me of my early childhood, when I loved the handwriting excersises in cursive. I could spend hours on my notebooks.
Anyway, I wish I had started my language learning journey earlier (I did, with English, but it's a bit different, maybe I can talk about that sometime, in another post), but I'm still glad I started it now.