Winners to first giveaway~! ^^

Hi guys~! Writing this post  to announce the winners of my first giveaway! Received some interesting and touching replies to my question. And there is one which I particularly love and I had sent an email to her, asking for permission to publish it here on my site.

To all that participated, thanks for sharing with me your love for the languages! I learned a lot about your passion just by reading your answers. Indeed, I have to thank all of you that there are positive spillover effects after reading your answers. ^^ Thanks for being SO inspirational!

Here are the 3 winners:

1) Alodia

2) Zach

3) Telly

Congratulations to the above winners! Please check your mailbox as I had sent an email to you! Will be sending the items to all of you real soon!

For Zach, just to let you know, I didn’t have your email so please send your mailing address to creativityjapanese@gmail.com~

Anyway, thank you all for supporting my first giveaway~! I’ll be doing more cultural-related giveaways in future! ^^

Till then, good luck to your language studies!

Lunar New Year for the Chinese in Singapore (part 1): Food~

Hi all! Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year. I hope everyone had a good day!

I’m going to do a special Chinese New Year special  since it’s the Lunar New Year! SO~ I’m going to talk a little about how the Chinese in Singapore celebrate their Lunar New Year. So, the next few posts will be on this topic.

The first post will be on food! LOL~ This post is rather specific to the food that my family usually have before and during Chinese New Year so I can’t exactly say that this is how all or most of the Chinese eat during Chinese New Year.

On the eve of the Lunar New Year, the Chinese will gather to have a good dinner with their families. During such reunion dinners, many delicacies can be found. However, in the case of my family, we usually have hot pot and several other dishes (like curry~ it might sound funny to some, but yeah, my family do enjoy spicy food n curry is a must-have dish during this occasion).

Anyway, having hot pot is quite common in Singapore for reunion dinners. I’m not too sure if this has got to do with the fact that less preparation is required? But from what I know, quite a few of my friends have hot pots for reunion dinners as well.

I only managed to take a pic of just some of the food we had (as I was getting in the way of my mum :p) Actually we had more! ^^

There are also other families who choose to whip up their own dishes or go to a restaurant for their reunion dinners.

Next~

What I really wanted to share, is this dish that we, Shanghainese (Shanghainese is a rare dialect group in Singapore since the main Chinese dialect groups in Singapore are Hokkien, Cantonese and Teochew) eat during the Lunar New Year, 年糕 (Nian Gao). It’s almost similar to the Korean 떡국 . I just had this today, and for my family, it’s almost a must that I eat this during Chinese New Year.

However, not all 年糕 (Nian Gao) look like the above. In fact, most of the 年糕 in Singapore looks the ones in the picture below. They are round brown things with the red paper (with a Chinese character).

These are chewy and sweet. You can eat it on its own or fry it (both are just as good).

There are also 年糕 in the shape of a fish! If you are interested, you might want to check out this site. Due to how exclusive such 年糕 are, they can be quite pricey as compared to the above 年糕.

That’s about it for the the part 1~ I’m going to talk about food again tomorrow~ however, other types of food. Today is just a starter! ^^

 

Creativityjapanese’s first giveaway!

Hi guys~! Today, I was out and saw some cute stuff with regards to the Chinese Lunar New Year and wondered if anyone of you will be interested if I do giveaways related to the Chinese Lunar New Year? In any case, I realized that I have never done a giveaway even though I have been having this blog for a while~ SO I have decided to go ahead with the giveaway. The things that I’m going to give away are: 2 dragon-themed wall decoration and a Chinese packet (used by elders to put money, and they’ll pass these to the young, usually people that are still single). Anyway, my choice for the packet is simple cos of the Chinese characters, I know most of you who read my blog are language learners so I hope in the coming lunar year, you will become even better at the language you are learning! ^^

I’ve actually done a short video on the items so that you’ll have a good idea of what they are as I thought these items may seem rather foreign to many of you . It’s the first time I recorded a video~ so hahaha~ bear with me for my complete lack of~ shaking hands, bad lighting, and what have you… And I thought I sounded weird, I have no idea what I was talking about cos I was too nervous… (LOL)

In case you need clarifications on the items I’m giving out, just leave me a comment or send me an email ^^

Anyway, the entry requirements are really simple. Since what I’m giving is related to culture, the entry requirements will be related to culture~

Do you appreciate the culture of the language you are learning? If you do, all you have to do is leave me a comment below this post or email me at creativityjapanese@gmail.com to tell me which aspect of the culture you like the most or which aspects of the culture you would like to experience in future.

I will choose 3 persons randomly and send the individual item to each person! On top of that, the winners will also receive a handwritten postcard of Singapore!

Deadline: 26th Jan 2012 (I apologize that this giveaway is only valid for those who do not live in Singapore since these items are readily available here~)

Good luck!

Updates on learning Korean

Hihihi~! I’m back again! LOL~ I think I’m getting the hang for blogging. I’m actually quite glad with the time I have on hand and I had used it for reading linguistics and Korean. Since I still don’t have a good understanding of linguistics, I was actually spending time to catch up on my lack today. The good thing about having a lot of free time is that, you get to choose what you want to do and at your own pace. And that was exactly what I did. Reading up on things that I want to read and moving onto other things when my attention span died.

It’s not that linguistics is boring, at least not to me. But understanding it requires a good amount of brain power so when I know that I can’t concentrate so well, I just gave it up for something else that would keep me going.

Seriously I am EXTRAORDINARILY happy that I’m back to learning Korean!

Yet I still wouldn’t say that I’m actively studying Korean since “studying” is such a heavy word, rather, I’m just spending my free time immersed in the language.

As mentioned in my earlier entry, I finished reading on 韓国語能力試験：[1級.2級]初級対策単語集. So today I started on 韩国经典口语9000句.

Recently, I got this book from the library. I started on two chapters today. The chapters consisted of dialogues, practice questions, and passages. Personally reading the passages was a challenge to me. It’s very different from reading dialogues. I find that dialogues are easier to understand, maybe it’s because the speech patterns are casual. However the passages are written in a formal manner. On top of that, there were a lot of terms that I didn’t understand. Therefore in order to understand, I read it a couple of times and relied on the translation. It was tough but I enjoyed the moments of moving out of my comfort zone to read things that I don’t understand.

There are A LOT of chapters in this book. The thickness is almost of that of a dictionary. Hahaha~ So I have no idea how long I’m going to take to finish reading this. Regardless, I’ll do a review of this book once I’m done with it.

By the way, there’s also a CD with this book, I’ve yet to listen to it. I’m still listening to the Super Junior podcasts.

In some ways, I’m clearing the backlog of Korean podcasts which I have yet to listen to. I’m happy to say that I think I’m on track. Seriously, I had thought I was going to take a REALLY long time to finish listening to them but strangely the number diminishes faster than I thought it did (or it could mean that I’m spending a lot of time using my PC~ Wahaha~) Anyway, seriously, I wouldn’t say I’m making a conscious effort to listen to them, rather I’m immersing myself with the language. I can’t say how much doing this is making me happy.

Anyway, I realized that I’m glad that I can move on quickly to read other things as I understand a couple of things. Yet what makes me happier is reading the slightly more difficult materials and listening to podcasts. I realized I can only learn when I do the difficult stuff. I guess this is an important learning point for me so I’m going to try and keep that in mind and continue to do the difficult stuff.

That’s about it from me for my update on learning Korean! Take care everyone, and for those who are experiencing winter now, please keep yourself warm and not catch a cold!  Till the next post! ^^

Special Series and Event by Shanna~

There’s a lot of catching for me in terms of languages since I have been missing in action for a long while. Sadness for not having enough time last year since I had too many things on my plate…

Anyway, I just found out that Shanna (whom I think a lot of you are familiar with) is coming up with a special series, that is to having guest bloggers on her blog.  Basically one or two bloggers will be featured on her blog each week, and bloggers can share their Korean learning experiences, how they learn Korean and what motivates them to learn Korean and so on. If anyone of you is interested, please visit Shanna’s site for more information! I’m really interested to read about the other learners’ experiences! Can’t wait for this series to start!

AND~ Shanna is also organizing a casual meetup for Korean learners! What a great way to start the Lunar New Year with! If you guys are learning Korean and are free for that particular weekend, do visit Shanna’s site for more information. I went for one meetup organized by Shanna last year and managed to know quite a few Korean friends. It’s a great opportunity to also get to know other Korean learners just like you! I really want to go for this meetup but unfortunately I have something on that day so I am unable to make it. So, if you are free, do go for it! And yes~ visit Shanna’s site for more information!

In any case, Shanna has an awesome blog on learning Korean~! Do check out her blog!

Till the next post! Have a great weekend, guys!

Book Review: 韓国語能力試験：[1級.2級]初級対策単語集

Hi guys! I’m back with a review of the book that I mentioned in my earlier entry.  Today, I’m going to talk about this book that I got recently, “韓国語能力試験：[1級.2級]初級対策単語集”.

I had just finished reading this book and thought that it is a rather good book, therefore I wanna share this title with all of you. I think this might be a slightly long review so please bear with me! And I want to apologize that the pictures are not so well taken… so please bear with me for that as well.

For starters, this title is written in Japanese  for beginners. As you can tell from the cover, it contains 1,700 words/terms/expressions.  It is also useful for those who want to find a book to prepare for S-Topik level 1 and 2.

It is extremely easy to refer to since it’s almost like a dictionary, from the arrangement, you might notice that it is arranged according to 名詞, 動詞, 形容詞, 副詞, 付録. From a beginner’s view, this division is really useful since it helps the beginner to differentiate between the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

From the contents, the book is arranged according to the different nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, expressions, particles, endings, conjugation, a short vocabulary list, and an index.

The book gives the reader an idea of the things to note about the S-Topik test, how the test is like and examples of the questions as well. I find that the explanation is very useful since it really gives the readers a very good idea of the questions to expect for the test, like how many questions will be on expressions, writing, comprehension and so on and forth.

Now let’s move onto the contents~

Here, you’ll find that the text has two colors, black and red, Korean in black and Japanese in red. The circles with numbers are when these terms appear in the test. If you are to look at the image carefully, you will realize that other than the term, the author had included how this term when put with other terms has a different meaning. I personally find this helpful since learners (especially elementary learners are quite clueless at this!). Other than that, the author has also provided other terms which have the same pronunciation but different meanings. For some of the terms, synonyms and antonyms are also provided. You’ll also find how the word is being used in context.

Ever encounter problems with the pronunciation, or conjugation? This book is useful for learners for that! Next to the term, you’ll find the pronunciation of the term and whether the term falls into the range that doesn’t conjugate “properly”.

Speaking of the irregularities, the author had also given explanations on that. The explanations are provided with a number of examples to help readers understand how to deal with the irregularities.

Other than that, there’re also different ways of saying the same thing to people of different hierarchy status.

Of course, not forgetting the particles! Particles is something that many elementary learners struggle with. Here, the author provides examples on the usage of particles.

And with all good Japanese language learning books~ this book comes with a see through red card~ Purpose? Revision! In the event when you want to revise what you have read, you can use this card to determine if you understand the meaning of the term.

Seriously I didn’t think this book will be so helpful initially. However I have to admit that I am SO wrong. This book is the right book to get me back to learning Korean. It’s not a very thick book (excluding the index, it’s only 215 pages). However I do wish the text is longer so I can practice on my reading. Yet this is a vocab book so I guess it’s a good vocab book after all! And as you can see they are so many extras like grammar and expressions, particles and so on. I guess there’s nothing about this book that I’m not happy with, so all in all, it’s a good book!

I’m going to provide the details of the books here in case any of you who understands Japanese wants to get it for yourself:

Title: 韓国語能力試験初級[1級・2級]対策単語集

ISBN: 9784411030474

Price: ￥ 1,995

Publisher: 駿河台出版社

Anyway, for the price, as I got it free but for local readers who are interested to get this book from Kinokuniya, the price is a hefty S$45.40. I’m not sure if I want to pay for a book of this thickness at this price. I guess I am just plain lucky to be able to get it for free. Still, you might want to consider getting it in Japan if you happen to be in Japan since that will be cheaper.

That’s about it for my review. Hope it’s helpful! Do leave me comments about what you think of this, or comments of any sort, like what you like to see or wish I will do. I’ll be most glad to hear from you! ^^

Till the next post~! Take care everyone!

Newspapers~ who says they are boring~

Hi I’m back with a post. Last week, I did a post on my plans for this year. I’m going to work hard so as to make sure the plans come true. So here I am making those plans come true.

Today, I’m going to talk about a site that I think is quite useful for language learners. This site is especially useful if you are a member of the National Library Board. The reason why you need to be a member is that you need to log into the page before access is allowed. (I’m so sorry that foreigners readers aren’t able to access this but do check with your local library, who knows they may allow access to their members too~!) Local language learners can go to the eResources page to log in. After logging in, click on “eNewspapers” and select “Library PressDisplay”.

I have been visiting Libary PressDisplay for a while and I really enjoy it for many reasons. I can access other countries’ newspapers on this site and read about their happenings be it in English or those languages that I’m learning. Well, Library PressDisplay is a site provides recent newspapers around the world in digital format. So how exactly is this useful for language learners you may ask?

For example, you are learning Korean and may want to practice your Korean reading. Here you can select the “Titles by Country” on the left. So in the case, you might want to select “Korea (South)”.

Then a new page will load and you will be directed to the catalog with Korean newspapers. Here you can select the newspapers you are interested to read. Of course, since you are learning Korean, you might want to select a totally Korean one.

After you clicked on the one you are interested in, the newspaper will load. Here you see JoongAng Ilbo. And tada! You can start reading!

You can zoom into the news that you are interested in and then you will see the zoom in news. LOL~ I chose this entertainment news to catch the attention of Super Junior fans! It’s an article about the Golden Disk Awards in Osaka Kyocera.

The same can be applied to other countries. Say, if you are learning Japanese, you can select “Japan”.

And again the list of newspapers is listed.

I find that out of these newspapers, the “毎日小学生新聞” is quite useful for Japanese learners. And since it’s a newspaper for elementary school students, there are several good points about it:

1) You can find that furigana next to the kanji. This is especially good for those who are trying to figure out what is the hiragana and pronunciation of the kanji.

2)  Another thing I like about this newspaper is that that’s not SO many words so it doesn’t scare those who are starting out to learn the language.

3) The newspaper is quite colorful and has quite a few illustrations and images. All in all, it helps to make reading the news less tedious and more fun.

Not only can you learn foreign languages with this resource, you can also learn about the happenings and culture of the country while you read about them. Personally even when I’m not reading it in foreign languages, I also read it in English. I read the Korean newspapers in English often to have a better understanding of Korea and the culture. So not only can you learn languages, you can also learn more about the society! So it’s really killing 2 birds with one stone. On top of that, you can read this as and when you are free

So do check out this brilliant Library Pressdisplay website today to start learning more about languages!

Of course, I’m not going to be mean to foreign fans~ I will make up for all of you in the next entry!

Return of the Fang~

Hihihi~ I think I probably got all your attention with my title~ YES~ I said that I’ll be back, and yes, here am I, finally back with a real entry. It’s been the longest time. I have to admit that I feel a bit rusty when it comes to blogging again… lol~ this only means that I’ve not been conscientious about it! I apologize for the lack of entries and will do my best to keep this blog going. I really thank all those who are still reading this!  Thanks to all of you, I managed to learn a lot about languages and learn about my love for languages and all of you do give me the motivation to blog and strife to work harder. So seriously, a big thank you to all who have stuck onto this site!

Here, you’ll find the highlights for me in 2011 in terms of languages~

Yes~ my translation texts~ Anisong concert with Flow in it~ n YES~!! TVXQ fan party~ (this is really the highlight of 2011 for me! Woohoo!)

Anyway, 2011 had been a great year for me. One of the best parts for me is taking an interpretation module and realizing how it actually pushes me out of the comfort level and relearning about the Chinese language. I probably spent most of the time I had in 2011 for translation. And thanks to this blog, I managed to get to know some translators! I never thought translators would read this cos I’m still so green in this field.

I don’t think I should dwell too much on 2011 since I think readers will be more interested in what I have for them for 2012 or perhaps what I intend to do in 2012.

Just about a week back, I received confirmation on my application for postgraduate studies in linguistics.

In fact, I have been struggling with whether to pursue this for a long time. I know doing a postgraduate requires a great deal of commitment and was unsure if I could do it and whether my determination and stamina are good enough to last me through the course of study. After months of consideration,  I figured that at the end of the day, I still love languages a great deal and think that if I don’t do what I love, I seriously have no idea what I can do and therefore I decided to go for it. Of course, I know clearly how doing this postgraduate will mean that I will have even lesser time for many things, especially my personal language studies, especially Korean. (I still love learning Korean a great deal!) I’m not exactly sure how that is going to work out when my semester starts but thankfully, my schedule for the studies will only be 8 months. That means I will have like 4 months to relax and do my own stuff and of course, language studies! So right now, I’ve already started on doing things languages~!

This year, I intend to do more updates on my language learning, translation processes, and perhaps interesting observations about my own learning journey. Occasionally if I do come across interesting materials on learning languages, I will do a post on that as well. So it’s still pretty much the same as compared to 2011. However, I think I’ll have more opportunities to expose myself to languages since my postgraduate is linguistics. HA~! So I’m hoping to show a more varied view of languages on this site and challenge myself to know about languages so that I can show those aspects over here on this blog.

Anyway, I have just gotten back to the everything languages this month, just finished translating an editorial for Watching America and am still enjoying myself when it comes to translation. Translation to me, is an extremely intimate process cos every time I do it, I feel like a beginner to the language and it gives me that feeling that I should never forget about my love for languages. Anyway, I learned some new vocabulary and learned a couple of things about stealth aircraft and UAV (that’s unmanner aerial vehicle, if you are wondering what that stands for)

How can I forget about Korean?

Recently I got these 2 books! Thanks to the organization that I work for, I got them for free!

They are probably not the best learning Korean books but I appreciate that they are free. LOL~ I’m going to leave the contents as a review in another entry, if you guys are interested. For starters, you might like to know that they contains vocabulary and the books are arranged by sections, into nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on.  I love it for the fact that I can use it to read Korean and Japanese at the same time.

You might realized that these books are to be used for S-Topik preparation. At the moment, taking a Topik test is not in my itinerary cos I just want to keep the learning process going though I am thinking of taking the KLPT. I wanted to take it last year but my tight schedule just didn’t allow me to do so. I’ve checked my schedule for this year and think that maybe I’ll have time to do so since I’ll have about a month’s time to prepare cos of my semester break!

Since reading on it’s own ain’t sufficient, I’m back to listening to podcasts. I still enjoy those podcasts by Super Junior. I mean I don’t really understand much of what’s going on but I just have it in the background (just like right now when I’m typing this, I’m listening to it). I still get a random joy when I’m able to make out what is being said. I’ve also gotten back to watching videos from Talk to Me In Korean. It’s quite fun to start learning Korean again and I’m going through all the basic stuff and building from there.

I’m not doing anything for Japanese~ currently I’m only exposing myself to the Japanese variety shows with Korean artistes performing. I wouldn’t say I understand everything completely but it helps to maintain my interest. It’s quite fun to watch Korean artistes speak Japanese. I have to admit that I just want to make up for my Korean lack-of since I’m been deprived of it for almost a year…

I’m going to work much harder in 2012 as compared to 2011. 2011 was a blast n I hope 2012 will even be a bigger blast. I hope 2012 will be a blast for all of you as well~ it’s the year of the dragon according to the Lunar Calendar and that means a great deal to those celebrate the Lunar New Year (soon in less than 2 weeks!). I really hope that in the year of the dragon, all of you can reach greater heights! ^^

Till the next entry~ 今年もよろしくお願いします！올해도 잘 부탁드립니다 ! m(_ _)m

2011 in review

Hi all! It’s been a great 2011~! Especially when it comes to languages! Just gone through my annual report and am glad for all the support that all of you have been giving to this blog.

I have already some plans for 2012 for this blog but since I’ve yet to come up with anything concrete as yet. Still I’ll  keep you all updated on what I intend to do for this particular blog really soon!

Anyway, here’s just some stats on how I did for 2011~ Thought I’ll share the stats with all of you~ Have a look! ))

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,800 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Translation Panels

The past week or 2 has been extraordinarily fulfilling. Thanks to my festival pass to the Singapore Writers Festival, I was able to attend the 2 translation panels! The first panel (also known as “Deconstructing Babel: Challenges of Operating in Two Languages) that I went to consisted of Tan Chee Lay, Jacques Rancourt and Prabda Yoon (most famous for his screenplay, “Last Life in the Universe). (No pictures for this unfortunately… cos no photography was allowed). Still, it was an interesting session with the constant debate about many things on translation. One of the most interesting questions I heard from the floor was about being faithful or otherwise to the main text. I personally think this is a constant inner “battle” that translators have.  There can never be a right or wrong answer to these as translators always have to ponder about SO many questions when they are translating. Things like time, text types. audience etc. have to be taken into consideration.

During the panel discussion, there was a mini discussion on the difference in personalities when the translators are operating in each language. It is interesting to hear from Prabda Yoon that he curses more when he’s in the English mode. I just had to burst out laughing to it. I couldn’t help but wonder that we can in fact be quite different when we are operating in different languages.

Some interesting points that were brought up during this panel were:

1) Translation should be done every generation since every generation has a different set of experiences. => It was the first time I heard this interesting point. I couldn’t help but wonder that many of our translations may probably be obsolete since many of them were done some time back. Hmm~

2) When translating, the translator should put contents in the first place, followed by form, then quality and finally sound and rhythm => I have never considered these since what I was taught was considering text types, audience and so on.  Still I think this point might not be entirely true since translators have to really gauge and balance the factors when translating.

Here’s how Jacques and Prabda look like, in case anyone is interested:

Jacques Rancourt

Prabda Yoon

I had more fun attending the second panel discussion (From China With Love: The Challenges of Translating Chinese Writers). There were a couple of guests in this panel, Chen Xiwo, Murong Xuecun and Martin Merz and a Chinese lady (whom I can’t remember her name….) And the session was facilitated by Harvey Thomlinson. I have to admit that I felt odd for an instant when I was looking at the description off the programme booklet and thinking to myself, hmm… it says that the session is in Mandarin but the facilitator is Caucasian. And yes! Harvey spoke Chinese though I found it hard at certain parts to decipher his accented Chinese.

Anyway, some background information about the panel – Chen Xiwo is a lecturer from China who specializes in comparative Chinese and Japanese linguistics . Murong Xuecun is a pretty famous blogger in China and writes some awesome stuff on his blog. Due to his fame on the blogosphere, he became an author. And Martin Merz is the winner for this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize for translation. I choked the moment Martin spoke cos I have never in my life heard a Caucasian speak such good Chinese, so much so that I was greatly ashamed at my own proficiency of my mother tongue.

During the session, the facilitator and guests did some readings of Chinese and English texts and discussed a variety of topics like literal translation, translation of cultural themes/items and so on. Of course, since this discussion is about the challenges of translating Chinese writers, most of it focused on translating the Chinese cultural elements.

It was interesting to hear Chen Xiwo talk about literal translation. He brought up the famous translator, Lu Xun who was a big advocate for such translation. It did help a great deal to have studied about Lu Xun and know some Japanese since Chen Xiwo’s focus is towards Chinese and Japanese linguistics. The Chinese lady spoke of taking text types into consideration when translating. That need to adjust one’s writing style to the specific text types. Murong Xuecun, though not a translator, has good knowledge of English. He brought up certain interesting cultural aspects, be it for English or Chinese. One extremely interesting point he mentioned was Chinese’s love for rhythm in their texts. I didn’t study much about this so I was glad that I learned about this. The substitution of cultural items/themes was discussed greatly between the guests and facilitator. Here, the guests liken this to translators being a bridge as they can be seen as introducing foreign cultures to the readers. Though translator are seen as that bridge, it is also important for translators to consider that readers maybe turned off with too many footnotes (direct/literal translation).

All in all, I learned a great deal from these experienced translators from these sessions. Here are some pictures I took from the panel. Didn’t take that many since I was really into the session.

Chen Xiwo

Martin Merz

In case you are interested to know about Martin Merz, here’s a great radio programme he did with Phil Whelan. I love the part when he said that translation is an addiction. Well said!!! ^^