News to me, he died in January of this year. He was a giant in Chinese language studies, and helped shape some of my understanding when studying Mandarin.
Mandarin
So many features. Handwritten character recognition, audio in both a male and female voice, phrases suggested and rated by users. Hard-to-remember name, though.
I found it coherent and useful when learning Mandarin, says the white guy who only knew English and French beforehand.
After buying my second iPod, a svelte nano, I subscribed to some podcasts, unsubscribed from others, which I listen to while commuting from place to place. (And while ironing.) Here are the podcasts I'm listening to these days:
- Dave Thorvald's Canucks Outsider podcast [podcast feed]. Recaps of recent games and analysis of the local hockey squadron.
- ChinesePod Intermediate [podcast feed]
- My Daily Phrase German: I'm finally trying to learn, after working with at least 3 German-speakers. The only phrase I remember, though, is Schluß fur heute, which means "that's all for today". That's the only phrase that's consistently repeated throughout the episodes. Found this one through the iTunes podcast directory, which you can subscribe to directly.
- KEXP's Music That Matters and Sonarchy Radio [podcast feed] podcasts. The SXSW MTM episode, which introduced new bands that played at the music festival, was a particularly good one. I find Radio Sonarchy challenging, but after listening to field recordings of electroaccoustic soundscapes and sound sculptures, I feel better attuned to the aural beauty and ugliness that surrounds us on a daily basis.
- Serious DJs, if only it worked properly in iTunes. I subscribe to it normally in ye olde aggregator.
- vanmega.com's faux-podcast [podcast feed]
- Deftone Fake DJ [podcast feed]
- The MetaFilter Best of the Web Podcast [podcast feed]. I don't even participate in MeFi, Ask MetaFilter or MetaTalk anymore, but this is a good weekly recap of the stuff on the web that I would normally be interested in.
- Fresh Lime Soda [podcast feed], by Suw Charman and Stephanie Booth. I know both through the #joiito channel, and like the MetaFilter podcast, they recap another part of the Web I'm interested, specifically social software.
These days I'm wearing headphones more often, trying to listen to Fake DJ sets, weekly recaps of the Internet, and language learning, so I apologize if I'm not paying attention to you. If people don't support this podcasting thing, it might not make it.
If I was younger and knew I had an interest in China, I'd have been all over this.
Powered by Drupal, it has a few rough edges.
That's out of 435,000, making it less than 1% of students.
And they're using Drupal to do it.
Pinyin and Wubi, basically. I use pinyin when I need to type out Chinese characters.
I found it challenging but fun to learn.
Thinking of learning Chinese as helping "understanding the competition" won't help Beijing's support of the programs.
About half of Chinese people can't speak the official dialect.
