User talk:MAP91

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Contents 1 Mandarin tips 2 Adoption 3 Learning Norman 4 Right justification & IM clients 5 Norwegian & Wikipedia 6 Keeshonden 7 Merge Proposal 8 Formatting of profile 9 Profile

[edit] Mandarin tips

MAP91, I applaud your interest in Mandarin Chinese. Oddly enough, I grew up on Long Island many years ago, studied German (and Latin) in high school, and listened to many of the same bands you say you like. In my first year of college (at Brown University) I took intensive Mandarin. The class met six days a week (including Saturday) at 9:00 a.m., and we had mandatory daily sessions listening to tapes in the language lab. It took dedication, and I earned a good grade, but by the end of that year of hard work, I could barely say the most basic things and knew maybe 300 characters. My progress in European languages was much faster. There was no way I could have made even that feeble progress in Mandarin without daily immersion. Therefore, I urge you not to attempt to learn Mandarin through self-study alone. I think that it is a recipe for frustration. The tones alone are nearly impossible to get right without frequent coaching from a native speaker. Then you will need to commit to studying the language for at least five years before you can begin to follow native speakers in conversation or to read any text other than teaching materials. If you really want to master the language, you will need to spend a year or more in a Chinese-speaking environment, such as a Chinese city or Singapore. I have made a couple more suggestions for learning Chinese on the Language Reference Desk, so please take a look. Good luck! Marco polo 01:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Marco, Thank you very much for the help. I know you are right regarding learning Mandarin. Hopefully, someday soon, I'll be able to take an extended vacation to China (maybe 6-12 months) and take some language courses with a native speaker before I go. Regarding Long Island, where exactly did you grow up? I live in Franklin Square, about 2 miles south of Garden City. Also, where did you take Latin? I am curious because they teach Latin in all the Catholic schools, and maybe you went to a high school that I am familiar with. Are you familiar with Chaminade HS in Mineola? As you probably saw in my user page, I'm a sophomore there. I've always wanted to go to either Brown or Dartmouth for college, so in that regard, congratulations on attending Brown. I've been up to Providence two times, but on those days I happened to see the bad side of the city. My grandparents, parents and I went to Newport for a week, and we took the RIPTA shuttle to Providence. The only good area of the city I saw was the Gallery mall. I'm sure this is not the true character of the city, but I just wanted to share those thoughts. I've also been up to Hanover, NH to see Dartmouth. It is a totally different environment than Brown. They are both excellent colleges though. I would like to major in Engineering or Architecture. So far I'm undecided. I know both colleges are very tough to get into, but I'm going to give it my best shot. That sounds like an excellent Mandarin course you took. It may be time-consuming, but I think it will be well worth it if I ever get the chance to take it. Are you fluent in Mandarin now? Have you ever honed your skills in China? I won't be able to visit there for a while, so I guess my learning Mandarin will have to be put off for some time. I guess German is enough for a while :-). Thanks again for your help!

MAP91 22:01, 5 March 2007 (UTC) Mike

Mike, my real name is Mark, though some friends do call me Marco. I grew up in Bay Shore (South Shore, Suffolk County). I was on the debate team and remember that Chaminade had an excellent team. They were our rivals. I have never visited Dartmouth, but I have a friend who teaches there. She doesn't like Hanover much, because there is not much to do, and it is rather boring for her. If you like skiing, though, or hiking in the warmer months, I'm sure it's nice, and the upside might be that you have little to distract you from your studies. I was very happy with my education at Brown, and I also mostly enjoyed Providence. It has a lot of the advantages of a bigger city but is very contained and walkable. Downtown is a bit drab, except during WaterFire. But the area around Brown is quite lively. Wikipedia even has an article on Thayer Street. Near the beginning of my senior year in high school, I took a tour of colleges that I was interested in (all in the Northeast). I had a blast, but my best impression was of Brown. The best things about Brown are 1) It is big enough to have the resources of a university but small enough that you have much the same experience as at a small liberal arts college. (I think the same is true of Dartmouth.) 2) It attracts a lot of very intelligent students. I think that at any college, you learn as much or more from your fellow students as you do from instructors. (Dartmouth is probably similar.) 3) The New Curriculum requires you to take responsibility for your own education and encourages creativity and experimentation. (See the section on the New Curriculum under Brown University.) In this, Brown is different from Dartmouth and all of the other Ivies and indeed from the vast majority of colleges in the United States. It is really the New Curriculum and the Providence setting that give Brown its special character. As for Mandarin, I am embarrassed to admit that I gave it up after a year. I did well, but I realized that I would need to commit to five or more years of hard study to begin to be competent in Mandarin, and that I would need to spend time in a Chinese-speaking place to acquire the mastery that I already had of German at that point. Also, I wanted to pursue other interests. From time to time, I think about taking it up again. Best wishes. Marco polo 01:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adoption

Hey there, MAP91. I responded to a few of your comments at the Language reference desk (go look, quick!), and I'd be more than happy to adopt you, if you're interested. Head on over to my talk page and tell me what you think. The Jade Knight 06:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I am sure that The Jade Knight has a great deal to offer, and I will not mind if you want to be his adoptee. But since you invited me to adopt you, I thought that I would make myself available, too. I'd be happy to help in any way that I can. Marco polo 01:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok Mark, thanks for the support. I am happy knowing I have you there if I need any help. Regarding Brown, I took a look at the new curriculum, and it seems like an excellent program, one which I would enjoy using. Thanks again!

MAP91 02:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC) Mike

Well, consider yourself adopted. If you have any questions about Wikipedia, or need any help with anything at all, or just want to chat about language or video games, leave me a message and I'll get back to you. The Jade Knight 04:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Learning Norman

There is actually not currently a full course in Norman online anywhere on the internet. There are, however, a great many learning materials available—glossaries, games and quizzes, grammar charts, vocab lists, all sorts of texts, etc. The two most represented dialects that I have seen are Jèrriais (which is the dialect I am learning) and Cotentinais (most of the materials for which are all at www.magene.com). I know that they're developing a course on Norman at the Magène site, but it's more the sort of "short and sweet" thing you'd find on BBC, not a full-fledged course designed to give proficiency. It's also, now that I think about it, designed for francophones (and is thus in French). If I ever forget and assume you can read French, forgive me and remind me that you're an Anglophone. Just about everything on Cotentinais will be in French. Most things on Jèrriais will be in English—though a lot of the older materials (such as the gigantic Dictionnaire Jersiais-Français) are in French. There's also a (fledging) Wikibook on Norman, but that is also written in French.

If you eventually decide to get serious about Jersey Norman (Jèrriais), you'll probably want to buy some of the materials available for purchase—"Learn Jèrriais" (a multimedia CD) is excellent for learning pronunciation and some vocab, and there is a Jèrriais-English dictionary out (and they're supposed to publish the English-Jèrriais dictionary this year). The standard "lesson book" on Jèrriais is Lé Jèrriais Pour Tous, which I would not particularly recommend—while useful, it is not particularly well-written, and I expect that it would likely confuse a new language learner such as yourself.

So, in short, there is no course for Norman online that is accessable to you. I would, however, like to develope one. If you want to learn the language, I'd be glad to write up materials for you—and maybe that'd motivate me to work on this course. Otherwise, my plan would be simply to teach you via the medium of Instant Messaging, aided by the many materials available online. I find that this is a fairly effective way to learn because you get instant feedback on everything, and a chance to practice the language immediately. Anyway, do you have an instant messaging client? (AIM, MSN, GMail, Skype?) The Jade Knight 04:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

OK Jade Knight, thanks for adopting me. I think Jèrriais is the way to go for me, after reviewing the details about each dialect. I think that learning materials from you would be excellent regarding learning. I can also use instant messaging. Would you be able to make a short introduction sheet for me, if you were already going to do it? I am not in a rush, and as you said, it will get you started on the course anyway. For now, I am going to go over the various internet resources there are for Jèrriais. Thanks.

MAP91 01:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC) Mike

Why don't you email me, and I'll write up and email you back something. (If you've not used it before, the email feature can be found on the "toolbox", to the lower left side of my user page.) Also, if you happen to already have MSN, Skype, AIM, or Gmail, tell me your screen name—otherwise, we may want to create an account for you using one of these. The Jade Knight 07:16, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Right justification & IM clients

I'm no expert on some of the more nuanced elements of Wiki-formatting, but I went and looked at a few other user pages to try to figure out how to do it, and your current user page is the result of my research. Take a look, see if you understand what's going on, and if you don't, tell me, and I'll try to figure it out, myself. =þ I've added two ways of doing right-justification. One is a more standard format, and the other seems to just add stuff to the same box that contains the Babel info. Oh, and BTW, the Babel template ({{Babel}}) automatically justifies to the right. So you didn't do anything to get it to do that. You may also want to check out {{Userboxtop}} as another way of doing things.

As for IM clients, I tend to prefer AIM, though any of the others I listed are good. I don't actually have Yahoo, however. The Jade Knight 08:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Just email me your SN when you have it (or post it on my talk page, if you prefer.) And, FYI, I'm working on throwing some Jèrriais materials together. The Jade Knight 22:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Norwegian & Wikipedia

How's the Norwegian coming, BTW? Any progress? Also: How are you doing with Wikipedia? Doesn't seem like you've been editing much. The Jade Knight 07:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello Michael, I have been very busy, but now that school's over I plan to learn more about editing and Wiki Markup so that I can edit more. Also, I've decided to hold off on the Norwegian for now. I will be concentrating on German. Have you developed any Norman materials? I would still be interested in the language. Thanks for the hello!

MAP91 02:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Keeshonden

Hello Mike, and thank you for the kind words. To answer your questions:

• As you probably know, breeding and showing dogs is not a self-supporting proposition financially, and a few years ago we found we needed to choose between going on breeding vs. supporting our daughter, who has turned out to be a rather good classical singer. She is off to university starting next year.
• Yes, we still have Kees; nine of them at this time. In particular, we still have Carmen, who Salem's mother. It's rather amazing to realize that a Best in Show dog (a female Kees, no less) was born and raised here!

PKT (talk) 15:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Proposal

There is a discussion going on about whether or not to merge WikiProject Dogs and WikiProject Dog breeds together. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Coaster1983 (talk) 18:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. There is a new proposal to make WikiProject Dog breeds a task force of WikiProject Dogs. Coaster1983 (talk) 15:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting of profile

Hello, Mike :) I played around with your profile like you asked me. Hopefully it's kind of what you wanted? I'm far, far, far from a Wiki formating expert, but it seems to have done the job. If you want to reverse it, no problem!! Talk to you later. AffirmationChick (talk) 03:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Profile

I see you got it taken care of. I'm sorry I didn't respond quicker; I've been very busy with RL lately and haven't had much time to spend on Wikipedia. The Jade Knight (talk) 02:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem, Jade Knight.

MAP91 (talk) 16:53, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

FYI: It's usually better to respond on people's own Talk Pages; that way they're much more likely to notice (though some users choose to handle this differently). The Jade Knight (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the info. I will do so from now on :).

MAP91 (talk) 15:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)