renaissance poisson

Although, I have to admit, the Chinese people on the last trip were very entertained by me.

hey, whatever gets you in contact with the natives, if you don't mind being gawked at. :) i hate that, but admire it when people can just do it.

yeah, i've had the experience of learning some phrases well, and having sufficiently good pronunciation that natives would reply with rapid fire responses, and i'd just look dumbfounded. *heh*.

there's always some stuff that simply has to be learned by rote, but rote alone does IMO not do it, and overall, it's not a good method for a lot of aspects of a language (like grammar). i tend to use a mix; i'll learn verb conjugations by rote, but i also practice them in context, over and over and over. vocabulary i once learned a lot by rote, but not this time; i am learning what i come across instead. i am not sure yet whether this will work as well or better or worse; my subjective perception is that i am picking up a lot of connective tissue terms casually, but not quite enough otherwise.