SaySomethingin Chinese (Beta)

[welshspringbok]

Looking forward to the arrival of the Chinese course. Won’t be doing it myself but I have a candidate who is very happy to start paying for this once it arrives.

I’m already on Italian, Welsh and French and will be starting German as soon as it becomes available. Need to try and get back to Spanish as well - got a little lost on that one.

I would also be highly interested in knowing when the first Slavic language will become available. I noted recent comments about Russian which may start at some point next year. I’ll be on the guest one that becomes available. Czech, Croatian, Serbian, Ukrainian would all be particularly useful.

[aran]

It looks at the moment as though 2025 will be a year for continued publication of languages which are well supported with translation and voice services, while we continue to fine tune the app, the schools version, and content creation so that we can start to get clarity on how much each new language will cost us outside of the automated options.

I think by the end of 2025 we should be able to map out a pretty clear way forward for new language production

[thomas-cassidy]

Chinese for English speakers just passed Alpha stage and so it should appear in the app anytime in the next few days.

[thomas-cassidy]

Oooh! Big news. Chinese is out!

[mintonman]

I’ve started to give this a go - I’m maybe twenty minutes in. I’ve begun to learn Mandarin a little in the past, but not much - enough to have a little confidence in recognising, remembering and reproducing tones. I’ve been looking forward to SSiMandarin for a long time - I will be giving it a good go

Just writing with some beta feedback so far, while I remember:

For much of the first ten minutes or so, it asked me to produce variations of “I want to speak Chinese with you now” (having previously taught “speak Chinese” as a phrase). A few shorter combinations of elements, but mostly the whole phrase or almost all of it.

Then it added “but” and “and” on the end of that phrase, without first introducing either word; and introduced the initial long phrase as if it was new; and is now mainly repeating the initial long phrase, alternating with the “but” and “and” additions (still not actually introduced, though).

This seems like a lot of one long phrase, plus two variations with not-yet-introduced conjunctions - and other than the recent introduction of “I speak” there has been rather little making of shorter phrases from the same words compared to how I remember other courses beginning.

I like a rollercoaster, though! I’ll carry on and try and note feedback regularly (especially where words are asked for that have not yet been introduced) - do let me know if that’s not useful and/or if feedback through a different channel is better …

Thanks again for all this new course creation work!!

[thomas-cassidy]

This is all great feedback. It shouldn’t really be asking for words that haven’t been introduced

But I think you’ll be able to work it out. And you can just skip ahead if you’re finding it a bit repetitive

Seriously though, we used to be fanatical about being asked to say words that hasn’t been previously introduced, but it turns out that people get used to it. And it prepares them for when they start to hear words in real conversations that they don’t know

And they can start getting used to being out of the comfort zone

I’m quite a long way through the course now and I think it’s one of our best. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after a while it really starts to come together

My advice is to just keep going, but do let us know if there’s anything else bizarre in there.

[thomas-cassidy]

To follow up on this with a little more depth.

We know there are some problems with the beta courses, which is one of the reasons they will stay in beta for a while.

We used this heuristic as a way to work out when to move a course to beta:

1. Does it play?
2. Will the errors prevent learning from taking place? (ie. provide so much interference that learners can’t progress)

And provided we’re happy that the answers to both of these questions are satisfactory, we will release the course and let people play with it

Having said all that, we are extremely grateful for all the feedback, so please keep it coming.

[thomas-cassidy]

We’ve identified an error with the very first sentence. Which does add the words

‘but’ & ‘and’

in English without having previously introduced those.

Most of this is an error, but there’s one interesting thing.

Chinese doesn’t really use ‘and’ the way we do in English

and the way they use

和

which we translate as ‘with’ as part of

和你

with you

is used mostly when we might say ‘and’

you and me

I want to speak with you

kind of translates as

I want to with you speak

with/and

I want to with/and you speak

so, you already have been introduced to the Chinese word

和 (sounds a bit like ‘her’)

just not the English prompt for it

‘and’

these aren’t hard and fast rules because #languages

the Chinese do have a different word for ‘and’ when it means, furthermore, or moreover

which is most commonly

而且 (sounds a bit like ‘our chair’ which is very natural in speech and is probably the most conversational option. It flows well in daily talk.

well, of course they have tons of ways to say things

but

而且

is used by us in the course

But the reality is we don’t believe grammar is really worth explaining

Because then people will start thinking about grammar rather than just going for it and trusting their instincts

so, my broad advice would be

just plough on and after about 30 hours in-app you’re speaking Chinese confidently

[ingridjukes]

I noticed the same things. It was very repetitive and didn’t introduce the words and & but.

[mintonman]

A new one: “is spoken very well” is introduced with the woman saying shou de hen hao, and then the man says something completely different.

[thomas-cassidy]

Thanks for that.

shuo de hen hao

is one of the ways to convey the ‘speaks well’
‘is spoken well’
etc.
dependent on the context

“说得很好” (shuō de hěn hǎo) means “spoken well” or “speaks well.”

For example “你的中文说得很好” (nǐ de zhōngwén shuō de hěn hǎo), means “Your Chinese is spoken well” or more naturally in English, “Your Chinese is very good.”

Breaking it down:

• 你的 (nǐ de) = your
• 中文 (zhōngwén) = Chinese language
• 说得 (shuō de) = speak (with 得 as a structural particle)
• 很好 (hěn hǎo) = very good

This is a common compliment in Chinese.

but since the voices are generated independently, they’re not ‘coupled’ to each other and so there can be instances when one or both are garbled

We thank you for all this type of feedback.

When the voices are different from each other in the target language, you know that at least one of them is wrong

possibly both!

[julia-treen]

I wanted to try the Chinese course (having previously done lots of Welsh). I listened to the first two phrases to check the app was working (a few days ago) then came back to it today and can’t get it to skip any further back than “I want to speak Chinese with you but” but I don’t know any of the words yet! Is there a way to get it to go back to the very start?

[thomas-cassidy]

Actually, if you just continue the words will get introduced again and again in very slightly different configurations, so if you managed Welsh, you’ll find the Chinese absolutely fine.

It’s a little different in the new courses in that single words are introduced as well as phrases with quite a lot of variation as introduction items.

eg.

I want to speak
to speak Chinese
I want to speak Chinese
I speak
I speak Chinese
speak Chinese with you

etc.

So, if you go ahead you should make it fine.

We are trying to fix the behaviour of the skip and revisit buttons so that it’s more logical to people.

The next version will go backwards to the previous introduction item upon pressing revisit

and forwards to the next item on pressing skip

In the meantime, have a go and see what happens.

I’m pretty confident you’ll like it.

If you still can’t get anywhere sensible, then please message @rich and he’ll be able to help you

[daimorgan]

I’m not sure how useful my comments will be, but I’m having a serious go with the Chinese, so I’ll try and give at least general feedback, though for the.moment at least I think it would be too much of an intrusion on the learning process for me to try and record all the little hiccups in the course, and now that we can’t go back in the course with any sense of controlling where we’re going, it’s that much more difficult to do.
But as a general comment, for what it’s worth, though this system of learning goes against all my instincts, I’m willing to keep giving it ago and trust to Kai’s confidence in it and enthusiasm for it, and perhaps by now I’m beginning to believe it might work for me. General comments: I’d prefer more meaningful chunks of language and certainly fewer of the meaningless word combinations such as “enough more” ( I don’t think that’s an actual one) or “if and”. I’m finding it hard to remember the cue phrases anyway, no doubt partly because of my age (80 this year) but I’d appreciate a little longer to absorb the cue meaning, i.e . a slightly.longer gap between the English-language cues and the Chinese version.
I would appreciate more smaller chunks so as to be clear (when it is clear!) what the parts of the longer phrases are, but I’m beginning to appreciate the value of the greater length. A percentage (maybe 30%) of the vocabulary is already familiar to me, and without that I think I’d be struggling.

I very much would appreciate being able to review the material I’m supposed to have been / be being learning in text form - though the intake is aural, I’m still visualising the words in pinyin, and the characters are of some help but not very much since I only recognise a few - useful sometimes to work out what the English cue was!

I recognise the difficulty of selecting immediately “useful” or “relevant to the real world” semantic material because of the phased repetition process, but it does require trust in the process to persist with the method. The phased repetition process necessarily reduces the bandwidth of the vocabulary.

One other thing: I do find Aran’s little homilies problematic - not only because the ideas are already familiar to me, or because I disagree with them, because I don’t, but because they are in English. The effect is to divert the mental environment away from the Chinese language and back to “normal life”. I feel a short musical interlude - if there has to be a programmed break - maybe some Chinese-language singing would be more useful than any commentary in English, however meaningful.

Ok, sorry if I’m wittering on. I’m sure most of this is familiar to you but I hope there may be the odd useful comment among the verbiage.

[Kai]

I’m writing a very short note because I’m putting all my time into this right now, but I thought I’d let you know that I’m currently very actively working on improving the quality of the phrase-making-script, which I can then apply to all courses!

[daimorgan]

oddities: in the Chinese course:

Cuan gou (woman)
Huang you (man) =still have

And later,

But I still have:

Heng yai gou geng (woman)
Hai you hen. (Man)

[martin-harte]

I might hazard a guess that the female audio for these two is in another dialect, such as Cantonese.

The male audio is Mandarin. The first one is a mistake IMO. I think it should be hai(2) not huang.

The second one could be a chunking error. Maybe the “hen” is part of whatever follows in the full sentence. I guess it might be that the full sentence is something like, “I have a lot to…” and they’ve chunked “hen duo” wrongly, since “duo” alone can mean “a lot”. I’m basing this guess on something similar that happened in the Italian course, where they chunked “as much as possible” incorrectly for similar reasons. If I’m right, it’s not a big deal and your brain will figure it out. At least that was my experience with the Italian example.

That’s just a guess, though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

[daimorgan]

Thanks Kai,
Yes, no problem for me to wait for any changes that you may be plotting. I just thought you might find my drivel of use as customers ’ comments.

[daimorgan]

@martin-harte

was

Many thanks for your comments, Martin. I’ve no idea how or from where the language material has been sourced, but it seems unlikely to me that this is a dialectal mistake .And the “ai ai” thing sounds like a kind of electronic error, as does the extended “ssss” sound the woman makes a few phrases ahead.

I’m assuming like you that the “hen” is part of a truncated sentence - which calls into question the value of using truncated sentences at all. If longer sentences can’t be built up from known material, I don’t see the value of offering part-sentences for the sake of forcing us to produce longer utterances even if those utterances don’t have any practical use.
I think I see the rationale behind it but I’'m finding it very irritating not to be able to go back over the course, including to easily locate stuff to check with a native speaker. Not to mention the trumpeted nonsense about martial arts which I guess is supposed to be some kind of measure of where you are in the course. (And sadly, having never progressed beyond yellow belt level in karate myself, the coloured belts stuff is for me not a measure of where I am in the course but just a reminder of my own martial inadequacy!). But yes, as a long-term supporter of the SSIW method but with only a notional experience of it, I’m reasonably happy to give things a chance, and I hope to come round to the position of convinced supporter rather than a sceptical potential user.

[daimorgan]

I do have my doubts about the tonal quality of the male and female versions, the male seeming fed up and perhaps cavalier about his tones, where the female seems possibly more accurate. Only a guess, and again I’m willing to see how it pans out in terms of my picking up the correct tones through just parroting.