User Comments - AuntySue
AuntySue
Posted on: A New Home Page
September 2, 2007 at 1:07 AMIt's also nice to see the latest conversations on the home page. Does anyone else like the idea of making that list twice as long, if that's possible?
Posted on: Where are you from?
August 25, 2007 at 3:06 AMDon't worry too much about ren, we all have trouble with that sound because it's not like anything in English. There are two different "jen" sounds in Mandarin, and this isn't one of them. It's a really strange "r". I've found if I pronounce "ren" the way it would sound if it were an English word, provided I use the correct tone, people can understand me. If you curl your tongue up and back a bit, it will sound more Chinese, try it! Chinese people often add a bit of vibration to the sound, so you get something a bit like the English zh sound that you hear in the s in pleasure. This effect seems to happen at the same time as the normal ren sound, making it sound very complex and mysterious and hard to copy. And then you hear regional differences in pronunciation as well. So my suggestion as a fellow student is to find a simple pronunciation that you're comfortable with for now, in your mind just think of it as "ren", and over the next few months your ears will become more experienced in picking out and copying the sound more exactly.
Posted on: I can't write it
August 24, 2007 at 9:02 AMSorry, I'm with Mike. When I copied and pasted the character into another program, it looked correct, so sure, it is logically the correct character. However its appearance is quite wrong. The component on the right hand side should be a 己 shape, however in the PDF that component is a distinct unambiguous 巳 shape, or at least that's how it displays for me. It looks wrong, and confusing. Talking about confused, you guys had me going for a while. Because I didn't recognise 會 above, it wasn't until I started thinking about 不 and 能 that I caught on what that funny looking character was! :-) Silly me, I should have just read the pinyin which most of you took pains to include. Thanks much for that, especially in newbie and elementary zones, it helps to make everyone feel they can follow along.
Posted on: Pretty Ugly
August 21, 2007 at 8:08 AMI'd hate to have the more recent comments at the top, it destroys the flow of the conversation, turns the whole thing into disjointed grunts of individuals. I can read sideways and vertically, but not backwards. If you only want to read the comment at the end, that's what the End key is for. To read backwards, keyboards have a PageUp key and an up arrow key.
Posted on: 你好 (Nǐhǎo) is a Many-Splendored Thing
August 17, 2007 at 11:45 PM:-) Nah, it's just automatic, no need to force it. I don't need to have people ask about my eating in order to eat, but I would welcome that in China, and think it presumptuous elsewhere. We can't expect the whole world to be the same, even if they speak a similar language.
Posted on: 你好 (Nǐhǎo) is a Many-Splendored Thing
August 17, 2007 at 10:31 PMTo me, "have a nice day" is a crass Americanism. When I hear it it sounds so shallow and insincere that I almost feel insulted that this foreign conning sales pitch phrase was thrown at me. Once I responded "you don't mean that at all, so don't bother saying it". Someone who doesn't have an interest in my day has no right to pretend they do. It is a disrespectful flasehood. I hate hearing it, unless the person knows me and my day pretty well and there is a sincere reason for saying it, for example I've just finished describing an exciting intended outing. I become especially hostile when the insincerity is emphasised by rapid speech with a borrowed accent "heffa naaahs dare!!" Spew. So no, it's not a universal English language phrase at all.
Posted on: 你好 (Nǐhǎo) is a Many-Splendored Thing
August 17, 2007 at 11:39 AMUmm, what does that mean? What did she say?
Posted on: 你好 (Nǐhǎo) is a Many-Splendored Thing
August 17, 2007 at 9:00 AMYes Henning, will this, finally, cause her to overlook your pronunciation and accept your sweet words without correction? Do let us know. I learned pretty early that ni hao ma isn't used. Then after I told some local Chinese people that I was learning Mandarin, they were delighted. From then on they have greeted me every time I enter their shop with "Ni hao MAAAAAAA!" even though I've never said that myself. Could it be a Cantonese influence, perhaps?
Posted on: 自闭症
August 11, 2007 at 8:29 AMMaybe unrelated, but I've had all sorts of strange character conversions going on over the last few days, on every site. For example, the other day 嗎 came out as something totally unrelated every time it appeared. It wasn't exactly 后 but something similar shaped. If I did a copy and paste into my word processor (try that test) it displayed properly, which proves that it was the correct character, just a display problem. Quitting Firefox and restarting it fixed the problem... and then a few hours later a different character was in drag. For now I'm putting it down to something to do with the latest Firefox upgrade, maybe a memory bug, or coincidence, dunno.
Posted on: It's Not Hard to Say Goodbye
September 2, 2007 at 1:07 AMIt's also nice to see the latest conversations on the home page. Does anyone else like the idea of making that list twice as long, if that's possible?