Singapore: My General Impressions

Blue skies are the perfect background for the Marina Bay Sands hotel.

"What a fun city, but it's so...small." I thought in my hostel bunk on my last night in Singapore. 

Well, to be fair, great things can come in small sizes. Quality over quantity. You know all the bumper stickers sayings that back the little things in life. 

In terms of size, Singapore fits right in with those sayings as the core area of the city sits on a physically small area of space. But as all the David over Goliath phrases tell us, small things sure can pack a punch. I knew Singapore was a small city before, but I didn't realize that it was literally possible to visit all major districts and tourist spots in only two full days.

Night view of part of the Singapore skyline.

Visitors to the Republic of Singapore should know that it is a sovereign city-state, which means the city has its own government and therefore functions like it's own country.

In my opinion, one should not fly halfway across the world for the sole purpose of exploring Singapore. But if you you live in Asia and need a weekend getaway, or if you're planning a trip to Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, ect., Singapore is worth two days in your itinerary. It's honestly one of the best places I've been to in terms of food and history, a place where Chinese, Indian, Malaysian and imperialistic British culture collide in an amalgamation of color, taste, and expressions. The diversity of Singapore is apparent as there are four official languages: English, Chinese, Tamil, and Malay.  

Reading in Chinese: Choosing Materials and Tackling Unknown Vocabulary

Pages from the popular Japanese comic Card Captor Sakura translated into Chinese.
Source

Last month, I finished teaching a summer Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) course. At the end of the course, I asked students if they had any general questions for me regarding English learning. Some asked pretty much the question many other English language learners I meet in my daily life ask:

"How should I study vocabulary? Should I memorize? I heard memorization is the best method."

Indeed, in China and other Asian countries, rote memorization is used not only to cram for tests, but to tackle any content thrown at students in the variety of classes they take. I believe there is a time and place for rote memorization (i.e., math formulas), but if you want language to be memorable, memorization is the wrong road to take. 

As an English teacher who loves to use the principals of cognitive linguistics or logic to tackle language, I believe vocabulary, grammar, or any other facet of language is only retained when it's contextualized, and/or when we know the etymology or background. Whether you're learning English, or Chinese and Japanese in my case, this rings true. I remember words and phrases from memorable conversations or interesting books. Naturally, when words and phrases are heard or read in context, they make more sense. 

I'll make a post about listening to Chinese in the future; this one concerns Chinese reading. (I don't know enough Japanese yet to read books, only short comics and signs!) Again, no matter the language you're learning, I think these tips will help you. 

Record five unknown vocabulary words per page

Recently, an employee at my local Walmart (yes, they're here in China!) struck up a conversation with me. He asked the typical memorization question, and I told him a better way to brush up on English is to read and write down about five words per page that you don't understand to check the definition later. 

"But what if there's more than five words I don't understand on a page?" he asked.

I replied, "Ignore them!"

4 Ways I Use Chinese to Study Japanese

Chinese Foreign Minister Jiechi Yang shakes hands with
Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura.
Source

While I am not a Chinese or Japanese language expert (far from it), I did commit almost three years of my life to the study of language learning, specifically cognitive linguistics (CL). Accordingly, when I teach English or engage in language learning myself, I tend to use cognition-based techniques; they are logical as they relate to how the mind works. I also love that CL centers around semantics; meaning is the focus, not syntax or grammar rules.

Nevertheless, although it is CL-based, this post is not meant to be an exploration of CL. I'd simply like to share my thought process and some of the methods I use now that I am trying to reinforce and learn more Mandarin while acquiring the basics of Japanese.

Naturally, I've written this post as a person who studied Mandarin first, then Japanese. However, if you're only studying Chinese or Japanese, you might find some of these methods useful as well. Hopefully, this will encourage you to pursue both languages. As ancient Japanese was derived from Chinese, if you're currently learning one of those languages, you have already built a great foundation for the other.

1. Pay attention to on-yomi readings of kanji, they will be easier to memorize

As anyone studying Japanese should know, kanji（漢字）are identified as either on-yomi（音読み）or kun-yomi（訓読み）readings. The former are extracted from Chinese (not just Mandarin, but the many regional dialects in China), while the latter are derived from Japanese meanings. Thus katakana, the writing system for foreign words and onomatopoeia, is used to write the pronunciation of on-yomi because they're not from Japanese. Of course, there are sub-classifications under each, but they're not important to know in order to understand how to read kanji.

Chinese learners know there is a Simplified and Traditional writing system. Simplified as its known now began its development in the 1930s as a response to illiteracy (some Chinese characters are so elaborate they have over 10 strokes). It's used primarily in Mainland China and the Chinese departments of Western universities. Unfortunately, much of the meaning behind Chinese characters are stripped away in Simplified, but luckily, the two systems of writing have an overlap of over 50%; there are several characters that look the same in both scripts.

Now, for those of us who'd like to learn both languages, we get to be utterly confused as Japanese kanji uses both Simplified and Traditional Chinese writing. Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating. I actually find this double-dipping as a reinforcement to my Chinese as I learned Simplified in college and Traditional in Taiwan.

Still, when studying, you have to be conscious of the differences. On-yomi sticks in my brain almost immediately because of its closeness to the original Chinese words. However, not all on-yomi is Mandarin-derived, so there's more brainpower needed to remember the ones formed from other Chinese dialects.

Take a look at the chart I made below:

Japanese (kun-yomi)	Japanese (on-yomi)	Chinese (Simplified)	Chinese (Traditional)	English
病 （や.む、-や.み、やまい） (ya.mu, -ya.mi, yamai)	病 （ビョウ、ヘイ） (byõ, hei)	病  (bing4)	病  (bing4)	ill; sick; sickness/disease
試 （こころ.みる、ため.す） (kokoro.miru, tame.su)	試 （シ） (shi)	试  (shi4)	試  (shi4)	test; try; attempt; experiment; ordeal (Japanese);  fit (Chinese)
学 （まな.ぶ） (mana.bu)	学 （ガク） (gaku)	学 (xue2)	學 (xue2)	study; learning; science (Japanese); subject/-logy (Chinese)
n/a	不 （フ、ブ） (fu, bu)	不 (bu4)	不 (bu4)	negative; non-; not; bad (Japanese); ugly (Japanese); clumsy (Japanese); neg. prefixes (e.g., "ir-"; "im-"; "in-") (Chinese)

4 Ways I Study Chinese

Yes, during language study sessions,
I sometimes have this many books open!
Source

Here's some sage advice regarding language learning:

"If you don't use it, you'll lose it."

I see you rolling your eyes, but believe me, it's true! It's why I can't speak a lick of Spanish anymore!

I do language study one to three hours a day. Sometimes more. Often it involves hitting the books, but sometimes it might be reading comics, watching a drama without subs, or listening to a radio show. 

At the moment, I'm focusing on studying two languages: Mandarin and Japanese; my skills in each language are quite far apart. 

Beginner. Intermediate-advanced. Business level. Those are some of the many levels and labels people use to describe a person's language ability. I don't know which I'd use for myself. For expediency, I'd say my Chinese is a Business/Intermediate-Advanced level and my Japanese is solidly Beginner. 

While my Chinese vocabulary is large and I can respond without thinking much, my tones (I'm tone deaf) are not the best. I can read Chinese subtitles almost as fast as English ones, but always run into a character I don't recognize. I can write slowly, but still make grammar mistakes. I feel comfortable saying I have advanced listening skills, and writing characters isn't much of an issue for me.

I'd also say my Japanese listening skills have passed beginner level and are somewhere in the lower-intermediate category; I can listen to a 1-hour radio show and comprehend 50-60% of the content most of the time. My reading is nearly intermediate as well as I recognize several kanji without having to study them, and have at least the main On-yomi readings down up to mid-level proficency or N3 (thanks Chinese!). I'm working on solidifying Kun-yomi and On-yomi derived from Chinese dialects. But my writing isn't great at all because I'm just starting to study grammar rules (which are way more extensive than Chinese), and I'm still building my speaking confidence.

Anyhow, this post will focus on four of the several methods I'm currently using to improve my Chinese and maintain the skills I have. I think if you're just beginning to learn Chinese, these are things you can do in the now so you don't fall behind later. Keep in mind that I'm not a Chinese teacher (pahaha, faaaaar from it). These are simply things I do to study, and what I've noticed since I started studying Chinese in 2008.

This is the first part of a language learning series on my blog. In the future, I'd like to share more Chinese study methods, and elaborate on my progress in Japanese, especially how Chinese has helped.