Review of some FREE Chinese language resources

Alright, so I’m going to look through some of the podcasts and see if there’s anything good.

Mind you, this is all the free stuff.

iMandarinPod.com - Maybe I came in too late in the game or something, but it’s completely in Chinese, maybe it never taught chinese, I got the earliest recording iTunes (January 2010) would let me and it’s in total Chinese. Though it seems like it’s slowed down. So I went to the site, and yes, the website is iMandarinPod.com it says ‘learn Chinese’ on the site and there are a few English words on there. But if you need to learn Chinese, it’s probably because you don’t know it already, and seeing how most of the site is in Chinese, I find it rather counter productive. Once you know a bunch of Chinese I think this podcast would help you see how much you can understand keep you on top of your game. But as far as actually learning Chinese, this doesn’t help at all.

PopUpChinese.com- The oldest one is from 2008. And the first one is I guess about a short story of a cat. It’s completely in Chinese, and the second one is a practice run for those planning on going for the HSK (which is a Chinese Proficiency Test).
The 3rd one, is actually beneficial. They seem to have a native Chinese and a native English. Which is really good because you have a native speaking and then you have a native English speaker speaking perfect English (it’s great for those who have trouble understanding accents). There are bits of humor in it, which is always nice. They had a little story and then they broke it down, which really is more helpful than random Chinese that beginners can’t even begin to assume what it means.
The 4th one is a film review, they play a clip and then they talk about it, mostly English, they explain difficulties and things that are used in the movies that may not be taught in traditional Chinese classes.
They have Premium services on the website (which means you need to pay for it)
as far as the Podcast goes they have split it up into several levels, (this isn’t necessarily in easiest to hardest level) Absolute Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced. It looks like they have several HSK practices and several different “Film Fridays” which is the film review that I explained above. They have short stories (like the cat one I talked about) and they also have speaking practice on the podcast. The series is still going today, so that’s a lot of lessons, which is ALWAYS wonderful.

Chinese CSL Pod- May I just say the fact they included Japanese in the opening really through me? It did, it shouldn’t have thrown me as much as it did. But it did. Seeing as it said it’s on #1000 I’m guess I might have missed a lesson or two (or 999, wow, what a feat) It still went pretty slow. But if you didn’t get the first 999 this isn’t going to help too much. I was listening to it and was like I KNOW THAT WORD! 两 But really… that’s still a fail, especially seeing as it was an Elementary level course. It looks like this is also to help those who speak Japanese learn Chinese too. So I had a bit of an issue with the accent, which surprises me a little. Their website is http://www.cslpod.com/ Registration is free. Signing in it has some ads for (what I assume are it’s own) books. They’re $7.  each. (and it comes with audio! I’m really tempted to buy one） On average there is about 30 minutes of audio and 44 pages. For $7 this is a pretty good deal. Though the description provided for them, while easily understood, doesn’t seem like fluent English, so it makes me wonder whether the book has fluent English in it or not. Granted, it’s still very understandable. The tabs at the top of the website are in Chinese, but they also have English tabs. There is a forum section and they have a section for Beginners, that said, it looks like there are many views with few replies.
As far as the lessons on the site goes, it seems pretty well organized, you can choose between Beginner, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, and Advance Lessons. Pick a lesson, click on the “content tab” THEN press the button that plays the lesson, if start the lesson THEN press the content tab, then it’ll restart. It breaks down the words with English, the Hanzi and the Pinyin, you can also pick certain words for them to say alone. They’ll say it 3 times, once very slowly, then a little faster, then the speed of a native. It’s quite clear and very helpful. At least when it’s just vocabulary based, when there are sentences, they’ll break it down by sentence,but they still say it 3 times from slower to faster. There are also translations of some of the lessons (They seem “student volunteered”) but it looks correct from what I know of the other languages (not much, but more than most Americans)

Conclusions-

iMandarinPod.com -This should be used for those who just want to listen to Chinese, or those who already know the language and just want to keep from being rusty.

PopUpChinese.com – I liked it, it’s helpful with teaching, along with some insights to the actual culture.

Chinese CSL Pod - While I’m not crazy about the podcast alone, registering for the site (which is FREE) actually is pretty helpful when it comes to learning the language.

That’s all for now, I don’t wanna say I’m going to do another one, because whenever I say that, I never follow through on it XD

I never keep my promises

It’s true.

I’ll try to update this every other day… didn’t happen

I’ll try to update it with movie reviews every week… didn’t happen.

Oh well. This is just going to end up my own personal dumping ground for now.

For now I’m gonna see if I can add a page to the blog to keep a list of places to learn Chinese. I dunno, it helps me, I’m sure someone else out there will be helped by it.

For Tokio Hotel Fans

A blog that translates the German songs into English, it’s started up again recently, you can submit requests if you want a speedier translation of a favorite song or something like that.

I just thought you might enjoy

http://tokiohotellyrictranslation.blogspot.com/

Talk about Spiraling to your Death

So I just finished watching a movie called Uzumaki, it was awesome!! I loved it! Totally disturbing though.
Uzumaki, Spiral. At first it seems like a simple plot line and at first you don’t know how the author does it. But it freaked me own. A spiral. The story from the point of view of a basic girl in a normal school. But very quickly in the film you start to see things go awry. A simple bowel, then stairways, miso soup, eyes. Even the simplest of things make you react.  I’m not really crazy about the music, it’s scary, but in an almost comical way, and i’m sure it has it’s purpose, and while it does raise the incident of what’s going on, it’s still a little annoying to me, or maybe it’s unnerving, and in that case the music is perfect. It sounds dated, but the movie’s from 2000 (9 years ago) so in a sense it is dated. They used a green filter as part of the filming to give the image similar to the manga version, which i haven’t seen, but plan on picking up… eventually… when i get money… so potentially never but it really does enhance the seen, whether this is necessary in manga form, i’m not sure, but it really does play a rather important role in the movie. It gives off an almost dirty, used look, it’s hard to describe, but it fits well with the plot and setting, and even the characters.  I really enjoy how they put spirals into everything, but they don’t over emphasize it in every scene like you think they would. One of my favorite parts of the film is how they change the camera angle, the bottom isn’t always on the bottom and the top isn’t always on the top. it looks like they had a fun experimentation with it, but it does add to the curiosity of the film. i love the foreshadowing in the film. The spiral becomes an unescapable shape. It’s everywhere whether you notice it or not. And the parent’s obsession with the spiral soon becomes his own. I personally hate happy endings, so the fact the couple’s ending isn’t the prettiest certainly made my day. But the transition from attack to her aged, rotted body with that crazy spiral hair just got me. I loved it though because it spiraled up the pole, almost like a telephone pole providing signal, and how it ends the way it begins is a nice touch, but how can she be telling the story… if she died in the story?

The Happiness of the Katakuris & Visitor Q: Personal Movie Review

This is the start of hopefully many more movie reviews, this one just happens to have two movies, I don’t know how often this’ll come out, but ideally there will be at least two a month, so one every two weeks. I will try to aim higher, but if I think I’ll be busy I’ll probably be a lower count. anyway, Enjoy

 

These are both films directed by Miike Takashi. He’s probably one of my favorite directors of all times.

I’ll start off with the film The Happiness of the Katakuris, I watched a rather poor quality of the film, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it. In some respects it’s a classic Miike Takashi film, it’s weird, disturbing, and yet quite funny at the same time, but, and maybe I’m not a seasoned enough fan, I think it’s still wonderfully unique. The idea of hope in a hopeless situation, the dancing zombies. My favorite part of that movie was the Sumo and the little girl, “we haven’t seen the little girl since this morning,” my first thought was ‘haha XD watch her be stuck under the dead sumo’ and then… O.O OMG… I LOVE YOU MIIKE!! Because that wasn’t possible for a film to be that perfect. But think about it, it’s sick, the sumo is dead, and the girl died under his weight… but the way Miike plays out the scene you can’t help but laugh, it’s a terrible thing to laugh at, but even know I still can’t help but chuckle when I think of it. Then when they’re trying to get the sumo out of the window and everyone’s complaining how heavy he is, and then some one is like “well, he’s dead anyway,” and they just drop him, and of course the guy at the bottom has no clue they decided to drop him. I kind of wanted the sumo to fall on the guy, but I think the sumo had already squished enough people for that scene. Though every time they start singing I just never know what to think. When it first happened I kinda died a little, in the sense that I thought someone had destroyed the film and replaced it with something else. But they were the same characters… and very quickly into the scene I went from shock to absoloute adoration for the “musical numbers”. Especially when they go all Karaoke style, I really wish I could’ve read kanji, just so I could sing that ridiculous song with them. I think the whole scene with the daughter dancing with the con artist while the little girl just sits there looking absolutely bored is just awesome. If there’s anything I can relate to in that movie, it’s gotta be the boredom of the little girl. Her expression is priceless.  Another scene that I love is how the father at the end gives this big dramatic, almost musical-like sacrifice was awesome. Especially at the end when he’s got his hands ready to be taken to jail and they just walk right through him. The lava scene was ridiculous, I loved it, it was just so incredibly ridiculous.I think what really threw me was the fact I was going into this not knowing the genre, and since the last movie of Miike Takashi’s was Audition, I figured it’d be something to that effect.Needless to say the claymation at the beginning really threw me for a loop. I did at one point pause the movie to figure out the genre of the film, and once I did all of the pieces were put together and I stopped trying to figure out the horror of the film and just went for the psychotic roller coaster ride. This movie should be offensive, but Miike really knows how to make even the worst things in like funny. Despite this being crazy, musical, and hilarious, it’s definitely not for kids. I would say 17+ simply because there are some incredibly racy scenes in the film.

 

Visitor Q

Eh… what can I say… it’s… disturbing and provocative to say the least, the movie itself is about an hour and 20 minutes (roughly). I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure I could even stomach the movie. I did pause at times, it’s there to disturb. For quite a ways into the movie I didn’t really understand what was the point of it all. I simply thought it was to freak people out, to scare them, make them nauseous or something along the lines of making the audience react in a rather potent way. But probably an hour into the film it went to horrible disturbing to hilarious. So the hour was worth it.  It’s not for the faint of… anything? It’s not for many people. It’s a matter of not eating before you see it, and being able to just roll with the humor without diving into it too deeply. Because I think if you over think this movie while it’s playing, you will get sick. But It wasn’t sooo bad, it’s just taboo after taboo after taboo. But the Visitor is great. I think if you don’t mind really disturbing things, this could actually be quite an enjoyable view. The end with the mother’s milk situation and the father’s…. stuck in a dead corpse situation is hilarious… but not for the faint of heart. Other than that, the film is clearly meant to make its views uncomfortable and I thought it was a great film… 18+ for… nudity… sex scenes and… yeah… pretty much, I’d say violence, too, but it fails in comparison to the other issues of the film. I like how it addresses certain taboos and the role of a Japanese family and the troubles of it. It’s not realistic in the least, but it does make you think. I loved it. I’m not sure I could stomach to watch it again though… hilarious… but like I just said..

Okay, a REAL fail

Haha, so my last post was about how I totally failed with updating this. I’m going to try again… not to fail again… to keep up with this. I’m going to be reviewing random film and posting my opinions on them.

I WILL Spoil the movie… it happens…

Anyway I’ll figure out a rating system… if I like it… you’ll know

Okay so…

my new years “I hope i actually post” thing kinda fail as school ended, but maybe this will only be temporary? i really haven’t had time, it’s funny, the more time i get, the less time i have. It’s strange

Anyway, I found out about amigurumi and it’s the cutest thing ever. Anyway I learned to corchet, i can’t do anything useful yet, but in due time…

anyway I’m gonna post some adorable pictures I’ve found

Beware, pool made teenager pregnant?

Read the story, it's hilarious

“A woman is suing an Egyptian hotel, claiming that the hotel pool is responsible for impregnating her daughter while on vacation.

According to several published reports, Magdalena Kwiatkowska returned to Poland after her vacation, and found that her 13-year-old daughter is with child. Kwiatkowska is convinced that her daughter came in contact with a “stray sperm” while swimming in the hotel’s “mixed pool,” TheSun.co.uk reported. She wants compensation from the hotel as a result.

Kwiatkowska maintains that her daughter did not meet any boys while staying at the hotel, and the story said she has already filed a complaint with the Warsaw, Poland tourist authorities and is determined to pursue the case.”

first of all, assuming a single sperm could survive in a pool (that was most likely chlorinated, so in other words-not possible) the chances of it making its way into the girl and still not get killed and then impregnanting her? That’s total bull. “Well she didn’t meet any guys” obviously none that she knew about. Clearly the woman is nutso. I have nothing against 13 year olds getting pregnant except for the fact it’s ridiculous (it’s call birth control people, i don’t care what the catholics say about it, sex wont kill you, birth control isn’t killing, really, we dont’ need more people running around having little kids [especially when they're kids themself.])

I mean really, just punish your kid already (or figure out if she was raped) because POOLS DON’T GET PEOPLE PREGNANT!

Wookey Hole witch?

“Wookey Hole, a popular tourist attraction in Somerset, England, is in need of a witch and they’re willing to pay handsomely for one.

For the equivalent of $100k, the Witch of Wookey will become the famous face of Wookey Hole, greet visitors and go about “the everyday life of a witch,” the job description said. The witch will also be expected to spend the night in the famous caves, some of which were used to film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”

i dunno, it just seems Wookey Hole would have a wookie… not a witch.

Check it out

The Silver Moon it’s a personal website, but it’ll get interesting eventually. I figure I might as well point the finger at what’s been taking up all of my energy… except for the fact that I just made it a few minutes ago…