I have been sick the past few days and have not done too much, but decided to give an update on my language learning progress.
So, as I have mentioned before, I am trying to learn at least one language this year. I have worked with a little bit of Chinese, but Livemocha is actually a tough place to start for that language. It requires you to learn the characters in a very difficult way, so for that I have been getting help from my current roommate Mu. He has been showing me some characters and how to put them together. It is very interesting it is almost more of an art to me. They are made with various types of stokes, and almost resemble pictures. The type I am learning is simplified, and if you look at the original is really is like a little drawing of what it represents. But moving on, I did a little work learning some characters and practicing drawing them.
After the fact, I realized I should probably draw them in photoshop or gimp, to show off on the site. To make up for not doing it the first time, I am going to add an image of a few characters I did in my notebook the other day while I was learning.
I am just learning so some of these may not be very good. Hopefully everyone will get the point though. 
As I worked through the order and such I got better at making them look a little more recognizable. I still don’t know many words yet, and am more concentrated on learning the characters and sounds to make Livemocha more easy to use for me.
Today, however, I took a break from Chinese to go back to my Spanish. Since the Chinese is going to be something I will have to work on over a longer period of time on my own, I visited Livemocha to go through their Spanish lessons. I think I mentioned before that I have learned a decent amount of Spanish before in high school, but I am not very fluent so hopefully doing these will help me remember what I vaguely learned in the past.
I do not like the regular lessons as much as the “Active” lessons as they are called on the site. The active lessons remind me of how I learned in high school, and are almost like a textbook. They are very helpful but cost coins. These coins are either bought or earned by helping others, so it looks like I will be helping some people out for a while :p
I already know a bit of Spanish, so this first lesson was very easy. I have made a list of things I have been going over so far.
*Forgive me for not including the accent marks or other correct punctuation for these. It just saved me time and helped insure I didn’t incorrectly add them in the wrong places and stuff. If you have any questions about these, however, just comment them in and I would be glad to help figure them out *
Hola. – Hello.
Como esta/estas? – How are you? (esta is formal, eastas is informal. In other words, esta is like to an elder or someone you don’t know)
Buenos dias. – Good morning. (used in the morning)
Buenas tardes. – Good afternoon. (used in the afternoon. It says before 6:00pm, but it is basically just to signify that it is different from night)
Buenas noches. – Good evening. or Good night. (used after 6:00pm)
Hasta manana. – See you tomorrow.
Que tal? – How are you doing?
Bien, gracias. – Good, thank you.
Hasta luego – See you later.
Hasta pronto – See you soon.
This is the gist of what I went over in the first lesson. Hope that you learned a little bit :p If you curious these are like greetings and initializing easy conversation. This is pretty basic as far as Spanish goes, but allows you to practice meeting someone for the first time.
So I will end this post here. I think the Spanish will have more updates then the Chinese, just because of the circumstances of learning each one. If you want to learn a language I recommend going out and trying it! It just takes a couple minutes of practice a day to gradually edge your way in. It can also be pretty practical for many people, or just fun to do for yourself. Thanks for reading!
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