Well, my family moved over the mountains to Tennessee, and I was born and grew up in Illinois. But when I was learning Cherokee I went with the Western dialect, as it had more speakers and more available resources. The dialects are pretty much mutually intelligible anyway. Just slight pronunciation differences in most cases and some vocabulary differences.
It’s a very challenging yet beautiful language; has its own script, polysynthetic grammar, and more tones than Mandarin! Wish I could learn it fluently, but with the serious lack of resources, and being in China, there’s not much hope for me beyond a certain level.
@ColinJohnstone
Indeed, it really depends on where you are. It is a little bit tricky and difficult to predict the people behavior in the international cities
Sorry for your experience, but I think you were in the wrong city. (LOL) If you visit other cities apart from Taipei, you most likely will have totally different experiences, especially in the middle or southern cities, or even in the countrysides
@LFJ
I think the girl should say something like, ありがとうございます, nep?
@Paule89
Thanks, if you are patient enough with my German
Nop, I don’t live in Berlin, although not far from it. I have a few Asian friends in Berlin. Some of them have quite good commands in German, and some just go by with English. I don’t know the statistics, but more than 80% of them speak German quite well. But I don’t mean specific to Asian groups. I know quite a few people in Berlin from different countries with different backgrounds, some of them just go by with English because they told me it’s not so necessary to learn German in Berlin. However, I guess this is one of the reasons that Berliners are not so happy about these foreigners
By the way, the LingQ should have something else for the chatroom, e.g. IRC channel :-p
Actually I only spend a few hours in Taipei. Enough time to go to the top of the giant pencil and look around. I spent the rest of the time in Hsinchu, Pingtung City, and Kaosiung City.
@ColinJohnstone
mmm, it’s hard for me to believe the citizens in Pingtung would do what you described above as “when they saw me, even if I was on the other side of the street!” although they are quite welcoming. They must be the tourists from other cities, I guess.
Of course I exaggerate. The vast majority of people ignored me all together and I don’t remember who did what where. I remember quite a few times people speaking to me on the street in English when I walked past. It was always young people, and they would say things like ‘hello, how are you? how do you like Taiwan? where are you from?’. Nobody ever said anything bad of course (at least not in English).
I do remember I went for one night to some town on the very south coast, but I forget the same. It is some amazing paradise town that people call “Taiwan’s Hawaii”. Maybe you can help me with the name.
@cgreen “I actually have around 40 or so imported lessons with lyrics and youtube links.”
Can I access them somehow? That´d be neat.^^
Talking 'bout imported songs…
I imported a German song today and someone on the German forum basically wrote “I wonder if you have to be mentally challenged to listen to this non-music. I wonder if these guys are nazis… and I also assume you´re too stupid to understand copyrights, Paule”. The same guy complained that the forum “moved into a bad direction”.
Anyway. I wonder why people have to complain about music.^^
You don´t like that band? Well, listen to one of the 3 million other bands then^^
That feel when (do you know the idea of TFW?) a native French speaker makes fun of me for listening to Sexion D’assaut, telling me that it’s too mainstream, just after they had just got finished telling me about how much they love the latest Miley Cyrus hit…
@Paul - I don’t think you’ll be able to find my shared lessons in the library. The one’s I’ve shared, I did so by clicking the ‘rose’ button for the lesson. I believe you will have to go to my profile to see the lessons. Make sure the lessons filter is checked so you can see them. Tell me if you still can’t see them. Maybe I’ll have to send you a direct link or something to the lesson. I only have maybe 8 or so of these lessons shared so far. I have to go into each and share them individually.
I don’t think LingQ wants lessons like that actually added to the library. I’m not quite sure what the difference is to them, but whatever. Since I’ve got links back to the webpage I found the text at and the audio is just a YouTube video link, it really isn’t much different from someone sharing a link to something on Facebook.
Good to hear. By the way, I listened to that German song you imported… seemed kind of tame to be honest. There is definitely more avant garde music out there so I’m not sure what that guy was complaining about. Here are some Japanese songs that come to mind:
Qomolangma Tomato - Through Your Reality
^I might have an imported lesson for this. I’ll have to check.
ミドリ ゆきこさん (music starts @ 1:20) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm22279309
^Unfortunately you’ll need a nicovideo account to see this. You can create one for free.
0.8秒と衝撃。 - NO WAVE≒斜陽"
^This one isn’t so angry sounding but is still probably pushing more music boundries than most can tolerate.
