User Comments - RCK

Posted on: The Pickup Artist

Here is a great pickup line I got from cpod...I was using this in hong kong last weekend when I was walking around lang kwai fang with a friend drunk off my face holding a half full bottle King Robert's Vodka (cheapest crappiest brand you can buy at 7-11)  

I was offering random shots to girls on the street or in exchange for a cigarette....and when they inevitably say no, I say (thank you Lao Wang) 别不吃敬酒吃罚酒。Yes, my friends (and enemies) that is the benefit of listening to cpod lessons on repeat for hundreds of hours, you get flashes of chinese brilliance where you pull out a phrase that just hits at the right moment.  And even though it isn't a difficult phrase it is probably pretty impressive for a foreigner to use it this way.

Anyways, I will no doubt be wandering around Lan Kwai fang drunk off my tail again tonight as I have friends in town, and I will definitely try out the 似曾相识 line tonight.  Anyone in the area PM me!

RCK

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

hahaha I just got home and listened to the recording. The ci2zhi2 pronunciation is fine :) But good god the intonation is very poor. Why does cpod only seem to push southern style mandarin as opposed to Northern Mandarin (which is considered throughout China as the best sounding Mandarin and most standard of all regions)?

I know actually owning up to the problem would mean having to re-record over 1,000 lessons and that would really suck, but I think if you just started fresh with native northern chinese (read haerbin) who spoke good mandarin and didn't sound like foreigners then you could just press forward and leave the past behind. I listen to 10-15 hours of dialogues on repeat every week and the thought of picking up a southern accent and the improper intonations sends shivers through my spine.

Also, we need you guys to start producing pdf lesson notes with key grammar breakdowns. This way I don't have to listen to the whole lesson just to waste my time sifting through half the stuff I already know to get to the half that I don't know. This way I can choose to listen to the lessons I want to listen to and skip the ones where there isn't a lot of material I feel I need to go over - I can just access the notes and get key grammar breakdown and explanation of the one or two things I may need to focus on in a given lesson. Have you guys seen Japanesepod101.com? Initially I didn't like the layout, but the lesson notes are superior to what cpod has. It is great because I can read the explanation on the notes in addition to listening. And if I need to refresh the main points I just glance at the notes and don't need to go through the whole long dialogue on my ipod, god that is tedious. I know it sounds like I am being a flaming nutjob (yea just a little) but I have used cpod forever and am fiercely loyal to you guys and these issues have been boiling up inside for 2-3 years now. Seriously...that long! I will continue to pay for your site for years to come. I am the type of person who normally just signs up free accounts over and over so I can avoid paying for things, but I sincerely love cpod so I actually pay for it. Unbelievable huh.

Is there any reason you guys can't fix these 2 BASIC points after all these years? Peace out. End of Rant.

Oh yeah except one more point, I just googled cpod bad mandarin and it seems there are a bunch of other people who agree with my critique, it is just that I word everything in a much more offensive way because I don't give a hoot.

Peace

RCK

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

Taipei speech is not standard mandarin. there is standard mandarin and then there is everything else. 唐山大地震 havent watched it but I am guessing it is about the earthquake and features people speaking atrocious mandarin b/c they probably dont speak good mandarin there.

as foreigners studying chinese we should strive to study anything other than "artificial" standard mandarin?

chinese tv, sure there are tons of crappy accents, but listen to the announcers, they generally have a much clearer nicer sound. again, standard mandarin sounds like it does in mandarin dubbed western movies, because it is clear and is understood by virtually all chinese. you have been in china this long, you should know this. unless you have an agenda to push. I actually am amused people are arguing this point because it is such a clear cut argument for most chinese.

what makes you so sure I would complain if you added dongbeiren into the mix? there is some horrible dongbei speech...Im sure youve visited shenyang. it is atrocious. again, I know you know better, you are a nice guy, but you clearly have c-pod's agenda to push, which I understand...but the mandarin in the dialogues is not standard. Standard mandarin on the whole is considered to be closest to north eastern chinese...or would you not agree? and if that is the case, why doesn't cpod have any voice actors that speak anything close to NE chinese?

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

Oh and Bodawei, I havent learned anything (learnt :p) but I have hopefully taught you a thing or two about standardmandarin and hopefully others as well, because clearly there is a big elephant in the room that noone wants to talk about. There is a lot of ignorance on here or a lot of denial to defend a product. Just listen to some western movies professionaly dubbed into mandarin this weekend and tell me if it sounds anything like the voice actors here....长见识了吧 哈哈哈哈阿

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

JasonSch, sorry to keep this alive as I am bored of it already (as you probably are too) but when you say your actors are speaking accurate putonghua or with only a slight accent, you are flat out wrong. I don't say that as an attack, but you can ask any chinese newscaster this and they will say so. Again, listen to officially dubbed western movies. This is standard mandarin, and the intonation of your voice actors is very very different from this. Heck look at Dashan, he speaks very standard mandarin, and it doesnt sound anything like cpod voice actors.

Also, Haerbin is considered to have the purest regional accent in terms of being close to putonghua. Definitely not shanghai of all places. And Northern Chinese on the whole, despite of course being accented, intonation wise is much much closer to standard mandarin than any other region in China.

For example, I could (but I won't) go through lots of lessons and pick out lots of little mistakes, such as pronouncing z instead of a zh. b ut whatever, I love cpod for what it is. I just don't know why you guys can't get proper voice actors. It would be great if the lessons didn't always have such weird intonations and would have people speaking proper mandarin, like they do in Chinese movies. That would be such a treat, but anyways, cpod is a great learning resource, otherwise I wouldnt pay for it!

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

I never said your voice actors are like ghetto punks or uneducated hicks, I was just using that as an example for comparing different types of accents in china to accents in america. in no way was I attacking you guys. but there are lots of mispronunciations in your dialogues and I would love it if you would clean themup. This issue from what I can tell HAS NOT been addressed by cpod and seems to be swept under the rug every time someone brings it up. Seriously, I did not attack any of the individuals who write or record these dialogues. I love cpod and recommend it to everyone, all the time. I am seriously like a walking billboard for you guys. I was drunk out of my mind screaming at fake monks and hitting on chicks on the street in mandarin in hong kong last week and when people freak out when they here me bust out my mandarin I tell them I learned in northern china but also I listen to cpod all of the time.

So since you have people from all over China, why don't you feature any northern chinese accents on your shows? is there actually any arguments that other dialects are more standard than northern mandarin?

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

OK and I have ranted enough about this and realized I could have reviewed like 5-8 lesson dialogues in the time I have wasted ranting!!!! urrrgggg

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

Well listen to Dashan speak chinese on youtube, that is standard mandarin. or that chick at chineseclass101.com or whatever the heck the webpage was has pretty good mandarin for the 2 min I listened to her. It has nothing to do with the difference between actors injecting emotion into their speech in contrast to newscasters speaking without emotion. It is more like a newscaster in America speaking normal english, and then getting some ghetto punk from the hood, some uneducated hick from texas and having them read the news without emotion. the latter two will not speak with proper intonation or pronounce everything correctly. Of course they will both argue this is how people speak in their environment, which is correct. But that doesn't mean it doesn't sound attrocious to a upper middle to upper class educated person... that is all I am trying to get across. A lot of times on these lessons the actors don't even pronounce the syllables perfectly. My last trip to shanghai I took my Chinese brother who is my teacher's son, a newscaster's son, who speaks standard mandarin very well. Oh yea his mom was also a newscaster. We were taking a taxi in shanghai and my Chinese bro had to ask the driver to qing ni gen wo shuo putonghua, because he couldnt be understood. then we got out of the cab and he started making fun of the driver saying how stupid he was he cant even speak mandarin. snobbish? absolutely, and I dont think it is very nice, but at the same time do you want to learn to speak clearly and pronounce every syllable perfectly, or would you prefer to speak with a bunch of mistakes and sound like that taxi driver??? ok that is an extreme example but it kind of rings true. As a side note, look at Barak Obama...his English is much better than George W, who has that unpleasant drawl. Note that Hu Jin Tao doesnt speak good mandarin, crazy huh?

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

You can call it rubbish but ask any Chinese broadcaster or person who has seriously studied putonghua and they will ALL agree with what I have said.

Posted on: Job Shopping in Modern China

So what does gao3si3diao3 mean? Does it mean to bang your d%#k to death?

gao3si3 could mean screw to death, and diao3 is slang for d#$k, just my guess. I've never hard the expression before so just guessing, but I would think you would be more inclined to use cao4 instead of gao3 as that is a much rougher word.

If this comment is innapropriate please delete. I didnt start it, just trying to get to the bottom of this.

And there does need to be a section with lots of filthy language on cpod.