173. Making Immersion Automatic

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The Mandarin Blueprint Podcast focuses primarily on The Mandarin Blueprint Method online curriculum. Creators Luke Neale & Phil Crimmins answer questions and comments, discuss topics related to China and Mandarin learning, and have special guests.

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8:40 Comments & Emails

Reem Alshaikh on Mandarin Syllables: The “Null” Initial

Best course I’ve tried so far. Love the work, keep going!

12:23

Kairi Shikari on Building the Chinese Habit (This Video is Life-Changing!)

Just seeing the part about not viewing the end goal, but rather who you want to be made me sure that this was going to be exactly what I needed ! It already explains a lot of my issues in the past, and the successes I’ve had were ones where I didn’t really have concrete plan in mind, I just wanted to be ‘a person who accumulates knowledge and connects with people around the world’. This seems to make sense and has been confirmed by watching this first video. I am excited to continue! Once again – another course off to a great start.

18:16

Lily Lok on (BONUS) Principle vs. Reality in Mandarin

I was born and raised in South Africa and I speak fluent English and colloquial Cantonese. I would like to move back to China in the future and learning Mandarin would be an essential. When I do visit Guangzhou China, I am able to communicate with my family in Cantonese, however, Luke and Phil are right in saying that it is an added benefit to be able to speak other chinese languages, but understanding Mandarin will open up so many more professional opportunities. Mandarin is the universal language China and will allow one to travel between districts and still remain relevent. Mandarin AND English will eventually become essential languages in China and if anyone is also planning to visit or stay in China, definitely go and learn Mandarin.

21:25

Christopher McAnally on 18. Learn Mandarin Bottom Up & Top Down

I have a Chinese bf and also a Chinese ex, who I met here in Australia where I’m from. When I decided to learn Chinese with my current bf, he told me to just focus on speaking, however, I’m not satisfied with just that. I ascertained that Chinese has no English-equivalent Alphabet, per se, but I refused to believe that the characters were randomly created with zero structure, either on their own or to create words, but I couldn’t seem to find the right way to express this to my partner. I was trying to say “Speaking isn’t enough, I want to read it as well”. He already told me not to rely on Pinyin and I understood why from some easy examples he gave me, though I had no idea until you guys mentioned it that it was actually more for Chinese people than anyone learning Chinese. Makes even more sense! So in short, I resonate with this video 100% because I want to be fluent, but I don’t want the standard way of learning because it is heavily flawed from the textbooks we bought for me from a Chinese bookshop here in Melbourne. It is rote learning (also a term I’d never heard of) and I lose interest immediately despite wanting so badly to learn Chinese. So thank you for this video alone! It affirms everything about my approach to learning and my desire to do it successfully, whilst explaining the best method to do so in a way that I can instantly grasp and immediately apply. Now I intend to spend the next 6 months with you guys secretly learning and listening without his knowledge so I can surprise him one day. Every night after work he facetimes/talks (at a million miles an hour, it seems) to his mom and children who are still in China, so I do constantly hear Chinese spoken out loud every single night, so it will help as well. And I do ask him what certain words mean if I hear him say them often enough, which is how I learnt to say happy (kuai le, I think) but nothing more… not the characters or the pinyin or anything… just something phonetically similar to kuai le, which looks half Hawai’ian :p

26:38

Robert on Make a Movie 角

Any tips for english speakers on how to practice hearing and pronouncing the characters 角 (jiǎo) and 找 (zhăo) ? I find myself using my mouth the same way on these words and they almost always come out sounding like the same thing.

30:24

Annette Bicknell on 听写 in Context

If a teacher simply reads a list of independent of each other characters, how does a student know which one with all the homophones?

34:07

Nick John on Word Structure Part 2 of 8 – Verb-What 述宾式

Why aren’t there cards to help us remember these rules?

36:33

Jaimee K on Pick a Prop for 丨- Gandalf’s Staff!

Is it better to go with the first thing that comes to mind or it look for something that might have more significance?

Because ‘flag pole’ struck me first, but then hearing that it actually meant stick led to ten minutes of trying to think of any noteworthy stick/staff that I didn’t have to look up to remember.

I feel like the answer is obvious, this is all about rapid recall. Plus the prop isn’t the meaning, that comes with the action.

Sort of answered it myself, but I’ll post in case other people are wondering the same thing

37:58

Jaimee K on Problem Initials ZH, CH, SH & R Overview

I’ve seen in other pronunciation videos that the r is pronounced like the s in asia

38:52

Nick Charleston on New Vocabulary Unlocked! 一下 & 下午

If I use a picture of someone napping for xiawo,
won’t it be an issue later down the line when learning the actual word for ‘nap’.

same for if I used ‘afternoon tea’ etc. wouldn’t all these images have a more directly/specifically related word that I’ll need to learn later?

40:57

Hussein Abdulqadr 侯赛因 on Vocab Unlocked from 证

It looks like 证件 和 证明 和 证书 差不多都有一样的意思，例如：

你为什么没带证书呢？

你为什么没带收入证明？

我要看一下你的证件。

我要看一下你的身份证。

43:05

Christopher Weeks on Habit Building APP Tutorial

As an Android user, I have been using Tick It . You can also change the language to Chinese for more immersion. You can set up habits for repeating in the same day (e.g. morning/evening) and it also splits habits into morning, afternoon, evening or just daily habits. It has many achievements, and trackers and is free to use. Their are over ‘journeys’ for improving other areas of your life, but I haven’t explored this yet.

44:01

Melissa Niesen ?? 倪茉莉 on 汉字 in Context

I actually have a paper dictionary that I use when I don’t want to or can’t be on my phone or computer. The way we’re learning characters in MB makes it pretty easy to get the hang of looking up characters. Sometimes it’s even faster than drawing it out in Pleco, when I’m looking up something that is in print or in an image.

45:10

Ceri Woods on BONUS: “How Does What” – Adverbs of Frequency

Just had to leave another comment to say your explanations are always so clear! I have an absolute mental block around grammar terms in English (my actual grammar is fab but as soon as someone says ‘verb’ ‘noun’ ‘adverb’ my brain panics and switches off) BUT you are curing me of this and I am actually understanding things *claps* thanks you!

49:30

Mark on Start “Shadowing” in Phase 4

Do you think shadowing would work while walking on a treadmill?

50:51

Annette Bicknell on Make a Movie 邦

Is 邦 interchangeable with 国?

52:49

Andy Williams on 下来 in Context

In the sentence 他的电话你记下来了吗？can 来 be replaced with 到？Will the meaning change?

53:41

Andy Williams on 中间 in Context

I have a follow up question to the one above about 到。 In this question 你看到了吗？ Will the 到 loosely translate to “at” as in Have you looked at it?

谢谢你

55:05

Kolia on Vocab Boost 校园 校长 班长 家长 市长 院长 所长

How is 并 working in this sentence: 班长的工作并不简单，请同学们多多支持 ?

55:50

Andy Williams on Level 14 Complete

In the sentence 我只想起来我下午说的话, what is the purpose of 的? Is it indicating past tense?

56:42

Melissa Niesen ?? 倪茉莉 on Vocab Unlocked from 比: 比如

I’ve run into this before, but I’ve also run into 例如 a lot, too. Is there any difference in usage between the two, or are they interchangeable?

57:30

Lauren Gathman on Make a Movie 银

Is 银 only for the metal silver or, like English, can it also be the color silver? 银色？