Fresh from Social Media Camp and one of the most interesting talks we attended was about Chinese social media (talk was by Paul Salo — full video embedded below). So today, Shawn and I got our feet wet by joining weibo.com — China’s answer to Twitter.
You might be wondering “Why?” but why not? I think it’s great to be able to find a new audience for my writing and my photos; and inside China, they can’t see Facebook or Twitter or many other websites we use regularly.
If you want, you can have a look at my profile: weibo.com/victriviaqueen — and if you have Google translate built into your Chrome browser you’ll see that a good chunk of it will translate, but not all of it. So it’s a little like pushing buttons in hopes that web usability is close enough to standard to make sense — and for the most part it seems to be 🙂
In some cases, where it doesn’t translate, the actual name of the link gives it away, e.g. …/signup.php or similar. That’s how I figured out how to set my specific domain to read /victriviaqueen instead of the assigned alphanumeric string (if you hover over that second one from the bottom (circled) it links to account.weibo.com/set/domain).
I am trying to keep track of all the little things that are not obvious for someone not able to read Chinese and will put together a how-to through Those DeWolfes Creative.
However, all of this made me realize I have wanted to learn Mandarin for a long time and would love to read simplified Chinese. Apparently, the average 8 year old in China knows about 200 characters which equates to about 40% of what you need to know to get by. Most literate adults know 1000 characters (90% of what you need) or more — 1000 is still not quite enough if you aren’t learning phrases though. There are over 80,000 characters but it seems like about 3500 covers close to 99% of what the average reader needs to know.
After some searching, I found Chinese Tutor (fastchinese.org) through the Google App Store and plugged it in. On and off all night I have been practicing characters. I started with 5 then as I mastered those it went to 9 then 12 then 14.
It’s addictive — perfect for educational software!
The flashcards are characters. You type in the pinyin (luckily, when inputting you don’t need to add the tones). Then it tells you whether you got it correct or incorrect. If you continue to get them correct, it unlocks more new words. I got to 24 “unlocked” words by 10:00.
I even tried pronouncing some, though the only one I got right out of the gate every time was the word for “hello” — which I know because Shawn says it frequently! I also got the word for “airplane” right by complete fluke twice, then flubbed it the third time. This isn’t going to be an easy thing.
Bonus: Kiddo got very excited and wants to learn, too!
So… 24 out of the 200 an eight year old might know and the at least 1000 that I need to get a grasp … this could take a while…