Glossika method

[Snuggles]

 

roddy

Posted 8 minutes ago

姊 is zǐ as far as I know. Not aware of a different pronunciation, but they do things differently over that way...

This is what I said.  I asked around (I live in China), and I only found one person who said that is could be pronounced jie mei (although they said only if  you are lazy).

 

However my level is low and I thought I read that Mike from Glossika is quite advance so I didn't want to belabor the point. Mike responded to my email very quickly and I appreciate that.  And there are indeed differences from location to location. 

 

In going through the first 50 sentences of basic 1, I only came across this zi mei/jie mei, and 计程车 which perhaps vary from where I am in the mainland.  I don't think people here really ever say 计程车 but they understand it and think I have been to Taiwan if I use that instead of 出租车。  Everything else seems to be great for my usage.

 

Below is Mike's response to my email about 姊妹/姐妹

 

“

 

The two are interchangeable and native speakers recognize it as the same thing that has alternative ways to write. Same with 裡 and 裏. Also when typing "jiemei" using my MS Pinyin Input Method, both 姊妹 and 姐妹 appear in the dropdown list with 姊妹 in the first position. The staff that wrote our Chinese are all native speakers and input it themselves, and our text has been revised several times since published last September. But I thank you very much for pointing out any errors you may encounter and we make every effort to improve them as soon as possible.

 

Here's a little about our work process. Our staff automatically converted the characters to the simplified text version and I took over for pinyin and IPA. The problem with traditional>simplified conversion is that words are often translated (that's usually a benefit), so in our case our first edition had a few words that were different, but we want everything to match our voice recordings, so we weeded out those differences by proofreading by 3 different people. Then with my job, I used an automatic converter for the pinyin (which gets about 80% correct) and then I typed the IPA manually fixing the pinyin as I went. 

 

We have had some hiccups (or do you prefer hiccoughs) in developing our processes in the final typesetting phase where our layout designer who doesn't know foreign languages inadvertently got languages mixed up or put pinyin and IPA in reverse position. But we have mainly eradicated any problems there so that all content is accurately tagged in our database and now with better explicit instructions on the specific layout in the books, so our typesetters can focus all their attention on layout typographical beauty regardless of language.

 

Reading the character 姊 as zi3 is accurate to the phonetic that appears in this compound, as you can compare with the super-big number 秭 zi3, so I would assume that this is an original or older reading that is not common today. In 20 years of speaking Chinese all over China and Taiwan I've never heard someone say "zimei" in Mandarin or in a way that I would recognize. I would have to consult my dialect dictionaries to find if that reading exists somewhere. For example I speak Southern Min and we would say sisters as "jimue", and that would be a more accurate character for that pronunciation.

 

I just found it on page 3015 in volume 2 of the giant Fangyan dictionary. Transcribing to approximate pinyin, are the following pronunciations:

●Meaning little sister (not including big sister)

Jin (Xinzhou, Taigu, Yuci, Qinxian, etc): zimei

Wu (Shanghai): zimei

●Meaning brothers and sisters big and small

Central Mandarin (Xuzhou): zimeh

SW Mandarin (Wuhan, Kunming): zimei (tones vary)

Wu (Suzhou, Jinhua): zimeh (tones vary)

Gan (Nanchang): zimi

N. Min (Jianning): jimei

Hakka (Yongding): zimoi

 

”

[OneEye]

姊姊 is another way of writing 姐姐 in Taiwan. They're both pronounced jiějiě. 姊姊 is probably more common here. The mainland has defined 姊 as being pronounced zǐ, so in Mainland dictionaries, it is. I doubt people actually say zǐzǐ or zǐmèi in daily life, but I'd imagine a mainlander would probably pronounce it that way if they saw it in writing. A Taiwanese person reading the same thing would say jiě because that's how it's pronounced here. In normal speech, however, both would most likely say jiě.

[hedwards]

I assume it's an accent thing as the first few sentences have quite a few pronunciations that are new to me. I've never encountered you pronounced as yao before. There's enough language variety in the PRC alone, without including Taiwan and any place else where there are Mandarin speakers, that I'd be hesitant to declare it wrong.

 

As a side note, I've started to run the MP3s through WorkAudioBook for when I do the transcriptions and that seems to be working out well.

[etm001]

I assume it's an accent thing as the first few sentences have quite a few pronunciations that are new to me. I've never encountered you pronounced as yao before.

Is the "you" and "yao" above pinyin? Could you provide an example sentence? I'm curious because I'm comfortable with standard Taiwanese pronunciation, so I'm curious to see where/how we hear things differently.

So far I have encountered a few sentences where the speaker's pronunciation of a word grated on me a little. For example, there's a sentence or two early on in the Basic Fluency 1 module where the speaker's pronunciation of 渴 sounds, at least to my ear, like ke4. Having said that, I'm reasonably pleased with the product overall.

[gato]

(1) 这个女人是谁？她是我的姐妹。-- It sounds to me like saying "She is my sibling." But please correct me if this is natural.

姐妹 is what women call their female buddies, not blood relations. That's why there is both a 姐 and 妹. It should be noted that a guy would not call a girl his 姐妹 (except maybe a gay guy). The male version of this is "他是我的兄弟".

 

See this ad from Adidas, where the slogan is "以姐妹之名，全倾全力“.

[renzhe]

I agree with OneEye. The Taiwanese write 姊 instead of 姐, the pronunciation and meaning are equivalent to 姐. From my limited exposure to Taiwanese materials, this is the preferred way to write jie3 there.

姊 is read zi3 on the Mainland, and is rarely used. I believe it's considered archaic. In fact, I seem to remember running into it in a Ba Jin novel, but it's too late to check tonight.

Mike Campbell did all of his Chinese learning in Taiwan, and uses Taiwanese native speakers for recording and double-checking, so he probably never noticed this, the same way people concentrated on Mainland Chinese don't notice it's written differently across the strait.

[hedwards]

@etm001, it's definitely you3 as in have, unfortunately I haven't gotten around to reinstalling my Chinese support so that'll have to do. I listened to the tracks again and it seems to vary a bit, some of the time it's more clearly correct than others. The IPA and the Pinyin both look correct, but the pronunciation seems to vary a bit.

 

I'm not sure how much of it is because I'm not used to listening to a Taiwanese accent and how much of that is the actual pronunciation. I'm noticing it the most on sentence 2 with that last you3. I had a bit of a hard time finding it again this afternoon, so I suspect that it might just be a matter of my inexperience listening to Taiwanese speakers. Most of the speakers I was dealing with were Hunanese  and Cantonese, so my listening is probably based upon the mispronunciations that they commonly make.

 

EDIT: I just remember where it was. sentences 2 and 5 both seem to have the you pronounced more like a yao and I'm not quite sure why. I'm pretty sure at you3 and peng2you3 should both be more of a you than a yao. By the way, this is in Basic 01c of the GMS recordings.

[xiaokaka]

I haven't noticed that you as 有 yǒu or 朋友 péngyou are pronounced in a non-standard way. However the péng of 朋友 do differ, which Mike also explains in the Pronounciation Manual:

 

In Taiwan, the syllables {beng, peng, meng, feng} are also pronounced with this vowel. 

Meaning -ong [ʊŋ]. As opposed to the mainland standard of pronouncing {beng, peng, meng, feng} with -weng [ɤŋ]

[Snuggles]

Going through the materials a little more I have noticed some more things that might vary from Taiwan and the Mainland.

 

BUT, I just realized my Chinese Basic 1 (not the bundle) is 1000 sentences.  That is a good amount of sentences.  The mp3 are convenient to split as you can see in the picture.

 

Even though it might vary in pronunciation or content from your desired dialect , it still might be a handy tool. 

[hedwards]

xiaokaka, I think it depends what you mean by standard way. I don't know if you're a native speaker or somebody that learned later, but it's something that I'm hearing quite a bit of. It wouldn't surprise me if most native speakers would just ignore the variation as the meaning is clear.

 

On the bright side though, I think it's easer to justify the price tag because they went through and recorded the lines more than one time, so there's quite a bit more material than the 3000 or so sentences would reflect.

[fabiothebest]

Glossika has a new YouTube channel and they started doing some weekly Google+ Hangouts and uploading the videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/glossikatraining/feed Check it out.

[wibr]

I uploaded my script to github:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/45014-glossika-pdf-slicing/

[etm001]

The following tidbits are from the latest Glossika newsletter. I thought I'd share them since both items have been mentioned in this thread:

 

1. The Glossika Spaced Repetition (GSR) files may feel a little easy or too repetitive on the first few days, so this is why Mike usually skips ahead to Day 5 or 6 when all the spaced repetition review starts to kick in.

 

2. The Goal of Glossika is not for memorizing or moving sentences around or extracting stuff into Anki. If you're already spending this time, you might as well do dictation which gives you immediate results, or listen to another day of GSR. Do your daily dose and let the system work for you.

[wibr]

I wonder how a fixed spaced-repetition could be any better in than an adaptive system provided by pleco or anki? I mean the whole point of SRS is to keep the repetitions at the sweet spot just before you start forgetting too much, so any additional practice would be a waste of time.

[JustinJJ]

I think the benefits of the glossika SRS is that you really beat the phrases into your head well enough that you don't need to bother with anki as you pretty much memorise phrases and patterns without realising it.

 

Sometimes I think the drawbacks with anki is that it's easy to just learn a word superficially, put your daily quota into anki and then forget about them for a while when the reviews start to space out more, so words put it anki might not be learnt well enough to use the words automatically in conversation without hesitation. 

[hedwards]

@wibr, Pimsleur has been doing fixed SRS systems for decades and it seems to work OK. I think the main issue is that they aren't as aggressive as they might be with a more customized option. I'm liking the GRS files, but I wouldn't recommend them as a way of learning to speak. They do, however, do a fine job of working on listening skills as the sentences rotate quickly enough that you don't get dozens of tries without a new sentence and the pronunciation varies somewhat throughout the tapes.

[wibr]

@hewards I also use the GSR files and they do work, but I am not convinced by the argument made in the newsletter. Some sentences are just easier to remember than others and everyone has different weaknesses. Many sentences use words which I already know so naturally they are easier for me to learn and excessive repetition can become annoying. On the other hand there are also sentences with new words which I would like to repeat a little more often...

[hedwards]

The main problem I see with their GSR files is that there isn't really any time to produce them before the next sentence comes along. The files are still useful for listening, but they probably ought to have a cue file or similar to add longer spaces between so that you can try to produce the sentence before getting the next one.

 

I suppose that probably wouldn't be too hard to automate seeing as there's nice separation between the sentences and workaudiobook seems to do a fine job of selecting individual phrases.

[JustinJJ]

 

The main problem I see with their GSR files is that there isn't really any time to produce them before the next sentence comes along.

 

Why don't you say the sentences at the same time as the Chinese?

[hedwards]

Justin I don't do that because that's a waste of time.

 

In order to do that you have to first master the sentence. If I've mastered the sentence then I should be moving on in the near future. You can gain a bit by saying the same sentence at the same time, but you don't really learn much like that after you've done it a few times. The prosody is something that people tend to pick up on fairly quickly when they know the words in the sentence.