What's your favorite thing about Skritter?

Here's mine: I'm living in China and not taking any formal Chinese courses, but doing my best to study on my own. Sometimes, when I'm out and about living my life, I pick up a new vocabulary word. Like the other day, a Chinese friend asked me what color my fingernails were painted. (He was being helpful and giving me some Chinese practice.) I ended up learning the words for fingernail AND toenail!

Now I probably would have forgotten those words already, but when I got home, I got on skritter and dropped both words into my queue! Even though toenail wasn't already listed, I could add it. Now I get reminded regularly and I won't forget! I love doing this with all my "random" vocab acquisitions. Stick 'em in my head with skritter!

What about you? What makes you grin with glee?

Incidentally, what is toenail in Chinese :)

I like the effectivity of Skritter.

I have been learning Chinese on and off for the last years on my own in Switzerland (not a place you get a lot of exposure to Chinese as you can imagine) and prgoress was there, but it wasn't what legends were made of. But after having fought my way through most the HSK1 list, I can actually switch on CCTV4 and I recognize a great deal of the characters. Of course, when I watch the news I still understand virtually nothing (to me that has always seemed as the top of the mountain...), but I am getting there...and seeing it work does really help with the motivation.
What makes me grin with glee is that I have a two friends who both are part Chinese. They both have a superior level of oral Chinese but you will get three guesses to guess who can now read and write the most characters :)

Incedentally, it's 脚指甲. And they are painted 蓝色!

Congrats on your superior character abilities!

Might just add that myself:)

Elite strike! I just added 脚指甲 and 指甲, too. Perhaps Skritter will create a trend of Chinese learners going around and strangely writing 脚指甲 at every opportunity. "Hey, what's up?" "Nothing much, my 脚指甲s are rockin'. Oh hey, I will now write 脚指甲 on my 脚指甲!"

I'm always most glad to hear when people are learning well. That's my favorite thing about Skritter. That, and the way I can now 进步 without 努力.

"and the way I can now 进步 without 努力" Now that is real Chinglisch.

If I wrote it all in Chinese, many readers wouldn't get it, and I'd also show off my awesome mistake powers. I don't want to be a showoff, see.

On the ChinesePod forums they write in Chinese all the time, though. What do you think of posting in Chinese here?

喜欢!

I also am hesitant to show of my mistake powers, but I don't see any reason to shield Chinese learners from Chinese.

Even in English I can show of(f)!

I'm not sure how much I would actually post in Chinese...the power of mistakes is great in me (that is probably what Yoda would tell me).
But I do often complain that I don't get enough exposure to Chinese....bring it on (把它送上面) (if that doesn't scare you off :)).

Its strange, whenever a word that I have learnt but not frequently used is mentioned, I can always remember the exact location where I first studied it.
I remember learning 指甲 in 五道口, 北京 in a cafe called "The Bridge". It was late a night and my friends were studying for a test. I saw one of them had painted her fingernails like Nicki and so I decided to learn the word.
Even though I couldn't quite remember the 甲 character, I remember my surroundings along with the pingyin (and 指 from 手指 and 指路 of course).

So bizzare!! Does anyone else get this??

So my favourite thing is how Skritter helps me remember my time in China better than photos.

My favorite thing about Skritter is Nick. Mmmm.

JK (kind of), but having also known Skritter since conception, it's really hard to pick just one favorite thing. Having words from my class's textbooks is definitely a plus.

What I like most about Skritter is seeing a random word I've learnt in Skritter somewhere other than Skritter and being able to read it, and being able to write random things in Chinese in the office when I'm thinking.

I'd really like it if Skritter had it's own Skritter list one day - a list that built up from simple radicals to the characters that use them and the words that use them. This is what my first (and only) character writing textbook does ("Reading and Writing Chinese" by William McNaughton) and I think it's really effective.

I think in the future Skritter will take the place of this kind of textbook, so more and more people will want some logically structured introduction to writing Chinese beyond what the textbooks give, and will choose the "Skritter Learn Chinese" list first.

Hey ZachH

That actually happens to m eregularly. With Chinese characters not as much as with stuff I had to learn for exams. I know exactly where I could find the information in the textbook, what color I marked it, but I can't remember the thing itself :)
Chloe can probably back me up on this: the reason for that is that the brain has lots of these concepts (some involving something small like how to open the door and others involve really a lot). These concepts are connected and more often they are used, the stronger the connections get. So if a connection is strong enough, just thinking about one part of it, will automatically remind you of the other part. So if you have learnt one character you will start connecting things with this character such as how to write it, what the pronounciation is, where you wrote it, what sort of music you were listening while writing etc. The connections are then there but they are not necessarily strong enough to automaticall remind of the rest of the concept (doesn't meet the threshhold).
There was one cool experiment where they showed that if a diver learnt a list of words under water, he would be able to recall that list a lot better under water than above water (because there were so many things there to remind him) and vice versa.

David

ximeng - I love that too. I call it "seeing it in the wild" and it is a thrilling feeling seeing a character you've studied and learned and really reading it in context somewhere for the first time.

Zach H - me too! There are still words that if I hear them, take me back instantly to that "first time" I really "got" them. I wonder if it will be like that always or one day we will be so fluent that those memory "flashbacks" won't trigger?

我最喜欢的东西是我能检查我的进步跟skritter的统计图表！！ 然后， 我也喜欢帮助发展Skritter.

can I get a vote for translating your own comments, at least loosely?

speaking of mistakes, my powerfully imperfect powers of comprehension tell me that he said something about appreciating the ability to see the graphs of statistics/progress, helping with the development of Skritter, and the fact that Skritter usernames support accents so he can pretend to be french.

Paz.

Thanks Hobbes! I'm the Japanese student here so that flew over my head. Guess I could have asked Nick though.

I get the opposite feeling, now whenever I see too many character I don't know I beat myself up and go home to study. :(
I don't mind it if I know all the characters and don't understand the sentence meaning, because at least I can guess and I know how to pronounce it.

@Hobbes:
Elie said "The thing I like the most is being able to check my progress with skritter's statistical graphs! Afterwards, I also like to help develop skritter."
(But don't study the sentence too much as it has traces of direct from english translation :D )

Isn't that what I said? :)

Probably if it is english in chinese form, that is why I could comprehend it at all...

@ZachH 不是一直从英语翻译的！ 是从法语翻译的 :) 我们应该开始一个用汉语的论坛题目, 你们觉得怎么样？