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Inspiration
I was always interested in Japanese films but naturally I never thought I'd learn Japanese: because hell, Asian language, you know roundeyes can't learn Asian languages. Then my stubbornly anti-academic sister got into anime- something I'd never even heard of- and went off to night classes in Japanese and soon was reading manga. Which is why I too started studying Japanese twenty years ago. Because hell, if she could do it then it must be doable, right?
Now she has a new hobby: handbells, something I'd never even heard of. This being now and not twenty years ago, there are youtube videos of same, to which she sent me links:
Finlandia, which everyone seems to do, but this is a solo;
Pirates of the Caribbean which is rather fun;
El Condor Pasa;
And a bunch of Japanese kids learning to play handbells: in two hours before being whisked off to play at a concert, in the grand Beat Takeshi tradition of make 'em suffer for other people's amusement. (Finished here)
The reason I mention this, actually, is as necessary background for Nix's Abhorson series-- which I didn't have when I read them but is nice to have filled in later.
On a totally other topic, I never understood why various reviewers slagged Hadamitzky and Spahn's kanji dictionary because H&S devised a peculiar system of radical classification. It's no more idiosyncratic, from a beginner's POV, than Nelson (yes this radical is always written with three strokes but really it's a four stroke radical so look for it under 4.) Whatever weirdnesses they have, S&H give you all the compounds where the kanji appears, whether it's in second, third, or even fourth place: meaning if your mystery kanji occurs in a compound where you know the first kanji, or even what radical the first kanji has, you can find the kanji you want. This is a vast improvement over Nelson's system where, if you can't figure out what the radical of that first kanji is, that's it, you're screwed.
Now however I've found a reason for cursing S&H's departure from traditional radicals. It's impossible to find Chinese hanzi there. Which I must do when mandarintools starts behaving like Nelson's: no, the radical is not what you think it is, no we will not search on total strokes (which would be difficult, I agree), yes you're screwed. If I can find the equivalent Japanese kanji I can get the radical from that: but not if it's H&S.
I need a Chinese wordtank.
Now she has a new hobby: handbells, something I'd never even heard of. This being now and not twenty years ago, there are youtube videos of same, to which she sent me links:
Finlandia, which everyone seems to do, but this is a solo;
Pirates of the Caribbean which is rather fun;
El Condor Pasa;
And a bunch of Japanese kids learning to play handbells: in two hours before being whisked off to play at a concert, in the grand Beat Takeshi tradition of make 'em suffer for other people's amusement. (Finished here)
The reason I mention this, actually, is as necessary background for Nix's Abhorson series-- which I didn't have when I read them but is nice to have filled in later.
On a totally other topic, I never understood why various reviewers slagged Hadamitzky and Spahn's kanji dictionary because H&S devised a peculiar system of radical classification. It's no more idiosyncratic, from a beginner's POV, than Nelson (yes this radical is always written with three strokes but really it's a four stroke radical so look for it under 4.) Whatever weirdnesses they have, S&H give you all the compounds where the kanji appears, whether it's in second, third, or even fourth place: meaning if your mystery kanji occurs in a compound where you know the first kanji, or even what radical the first kanji has, you can find the kanji you want. This is a vast improvement over Nelson's system where, if you can't figure out what the radical of that first kanji is, that's it, you're screwed.
Now however I've found a reason for cursing S&H's departure from traditional radicals. It's impossible to find Chinese hanzi there. Which I must do when mandarintools starts behaving like Nelson's: no, the radical is not what you think it is, no we will not search on total strokes (which would be difficult, I agree), yes you're screwed. If I can find the equivalent Japanese kanji I can get the radical from that: but not if it's H&S.
I need a Chinese wordtank.
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Try http://www.zdic.net/. paleaswater pointed me at it and it's very handy. I think of all the web sites, I like it best.
Also, new versions of the dictionary I sent you have a 'hard to find characters' section. I'll see if I can photocopy mine for you.
Simplified characters, on the other hand, give me spasms. I've found a program out there that is a teaching tool that lets me toggle between traditional and simplified characters and is very handy, but the free version is old and requires linux and the commercial version isn't available on windows yet, and I learn by writing, so being on the computer doesn't really help.
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Which one are you thinking of?
It probably is written with 4 strokes, if you want to be formal about writing it, but there are lots of radicals which are written with less strokes in penji.
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Far as I can see zip.dic only works if you a) already know Chinese and b) have Chinese hanzi enabled on your computer. If nothing else, you note that the instructions are all in Chinese? ^_^ I need something that lets me search by radical and stroke number (it gives me radicals but I can't find the lower bound place for stroke number), or by pinyin (the pinyin page gives me lots of boxes where vowels should be and no encoding seems to work) or- what I use often at mandarintools- English meaning.
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Hmmm...I guess I started out with H&S. ^__^ SO far No complaints yet...well I guess because I don't know much Mandarin Chinese. So so far no cursing yet!
The lower primaries here learn the 'modified' (or should that be 'simplified') version.
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Yeah, H&S is the perfect intermediary kanji dictionary. And yuck for simplified hanzi.
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But he did a TV show too??? hmmm thanks for the link. *goes off to check it out*
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I went to look at the handbell playing youngsters. Very cute, they did well though. Hee!