User Comments - auntie68

Posted on: 输入法

So changye, how many different yojijukugo have you done with four keystrokes since this afternoon? ;-)

Posted on: 输入法

Hello. I don't dare speak for "native English speakers", but I do in fact know the "IPA" ("International Phonetic Alphabet"). However, this is not taught in Singapore schools. Here in Singapore, we are relatively fluent in English, but we don't pronounce English words correctly. It's a pity.

Btw, the primary school I attended in the UK when I was 6 - 7 years old didn't teach it either. 

Posted on: 输入法

@goulniky: Thanks. I agree with changye. And a very important reason why overseas Chinese are poor at pinyin (generally), is that their pronunciation (发音) per se is wobbly, 不太标准. Their grasp of hanyu pinyin is of limited use if they don't know how to pronounce the words correctly in the first place. 

Posted on: 输入法

Aiya, changye! Without this predictive function, I would be lost at sea. Btw, it works particularly well with yojijukugo (成语); try "rsrh". Even the more exotic things like "plpl" work well with ITABC. Enjoy!

噼里啪啦！劈里啪啦！They have both options!

Posted on: 输入法

Hello goulniky. Please let me offer you an overseas Chinese's perspective on that passage which puzzled you.

The reason why pinyin input can diminish one's mastery of 发音, is that many 华裔 are very careless about their pronunciation.

We often fail to distinguish between 平舌音／翘舌音 (non-retroflex vs retroflex sounds), and 前鼻音／后鼻音. With pinyin input methods such as ITABC, which have predictive features, it is easy to get away with not knowing the exact pinyin. So 中国 can be keyed in with the simple keystroke combination "zg". The user doesn't have to be able to distinguish between zhong1guo2 and zong1guo.

HTH. Thanks for posting in such excellent Chinese; I hope to emulate you one day, you are one of the users who inspires me and gives me something to try and work towards. Thanks for that.

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

To Ken Carroll, CPOD: You stand to lose nothing if you will keep the idea of a possible return to a partially-free model under continual review. Even the NYT was able to find a way -- after two years -- to reverse its own decision to charge for access to certain parts of the online paper:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nyt%20online%20chargs&st=cse&oref=slogin

The very idea of advertising revenue is probably repugnant to some of your users, but to be absolutely frank I wouldn't mind going through some adverts (*with a "skip this ad" option) in order to permit at least the podcasts to be accessed free of charge. Paying subscribers will be able to view the site ad-free, of course.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing reasonably discreet Chinese-language pop-up ads at the Upper-Intermediate/Advanced levels where Chinese nationals might lurk. In fact, exploring such ads is not such a bad way of putting my newly-acquired vocab to use, especially if the copy is well-written and meets CPOD standards. And some of them might even be useful to CPOD users who are expats living in China.

Since CPOD is going into EnglishPod, surely there must be a way to make this work and harness cross-advertising between these two different -- but related -- demographics. English speakers like me would be moving freely in EPOD, native Chinese speakers would be free to circulate in CPOD and help the more advanced learners.

To those who abhor the idea of advertising, I'd like to list out some potential sources of revenue who aren't so bad (surely?):

• Good online bookstores
• MBA programmes
• Executive Recruitment
• Academic Recruitment
• Banks
• Airlines
• Good English-language publications based in China
• Hotels/ Hostels
• Stock photography agencies
• Copyediting and publication services
• Carmakers (*not dealers!)
• Arts Festivals
• Film Festivals
• Shanghai GP. Singapore GP (*for sure)
• Banks
• New film releases (*I would LOVE to see Chinese-language ads for films that I am going to see anyway in my home country!!!)
• Quality press (*Eg. Economist, Timeout, Salon, National Geographic etc)
• International schools in China
• Special Economic Zones, Business Centres
• Charitable organizations (*how many Chinese charitable organizations can CPOD users name?)

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

To Ken Carroll, CPOD: You stand to lose nothing if you will keep the idea of a possible return to a partially-free model under continual review. Even the NYT was able to find a way -- after two years -- to reverse its own decision to charge for access to certain parts of the online paper:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nyt%20online%20chargs&st=cse&oref=slogin

The very idea of advertising revenue is probably repugnant to some of your users, but to be absolutely frank I wouldn't mind going through some adverts (*with a "skip this ad" option) in order to permit at least the podcasts to be accessed free of charge. Paying subscribers will be able to view the site ad-free, of course.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing reasonably discreet Chinese-language pop-up ads at the Upper-Intermediate/Advanced levels where Chinese nationals might lurk. In fact, exploring such ads is not such a bad way of putting my newly-acquired vocab to use, especially if the copy is well-written and meets CPOD standards. And some of them might even be useful to CPOD users who are expats living in China.

Since CPOD is going into EnglishPod, surely there must be a way to make this work and harness cross-advertising between these two different -- but related -- demographics. English speakers like me would be moving freely in EPOD, native Chinese speakers would be free to circulate in CPOD and help the more advanced learners.

To those who abhor the idea of advertising, I'd like to list out some potential sources of revenue who aren't so bad (surely?):

• Good online bookstores
• MBA programmes
• Executive Recruitment
• Academic Recruitment
• Banks
• Airlines
• Good English-language publications based in China
• Hotels/ Hostels
• Stock photography agencies
• Copyediting and publication services
• Carmakers (*not dealers!)
• Arts Festivals
• Film Festivals
• Shanghai GP. Singapore GP (*for sure)
• Banks
• New film releases (*I would LOVE to see Chinese-language ads for films that I am going to see anyway in my home country!!!)
• Quality press (*Eg. Economist, Timeout, Salon, National Geographic etc)
• International schools in China
• Special Economic Zones, Business Centres
• Charitable organizations (*how many Chinese charitable organizations can CPOD users name?)

Posted on: Pretty Clothes

@jennyzhu, frances: Could I say, alternatively：

A（跟 B／和 B 之间）（有些什么／有哪些）不同的地方？

for "What's the difference between A and B?"

Thanks!

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

Thanks for the decent and kind words, izus. I'm not a native speaker. But as long as I'm here, I'll do whatever I can to make the "learning curve" less steep, whenever I can. I'm a newbie in Arabic, and have nothing less than total respect (and sympathy) for anybody who is in the same boat as I am. 加油！

P/s: And if I can moderate what I posted above, I learn so much Mandarin from the bilingual posts by non-native (but native-fluent) CPOD teachers such as Amber and John, it's just that the un-programmed, spontaneous, and voluntary, input of native speakers means so much to me that I know I'd miss that if it got squeezed out somehow by the changes. Again, thanks.

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

Hi izus, I'm a "legit payer", have been a Basic Subscriber all along. But as a legit payer, I can't help worrying what these changes mean for me. I am a more advanced user -- maybe "Upper Intermediate" by CPOD standards --, and I really appreciate the all-Chinese posts by native speakers who have (so far) been made to feel welcome here, as non-paying (but also unpaid) volunteers.

I've just felt the impact of the changes for the first time, after visiting ItalianPod and FrenchPod and finding the door to be firmly closed. I wonder whether CPOD actually imagines that native speakers of Chinese will be willing pay for the "privilege" of helping to guide learners.

To be fair, it's a concern which is only felt by the more advanced learners. Every now and then I read a deliriously happy and excited post by a very satisfied Newbie/ Ele/ Intermediate learner, including Chinese sentences, but I won't be able to understand any of the "Chinese". I don't mean to be insulting, my point is that learners may not know what they don't know, and that's where the native speaker volunteers come in and are so valuable.

I don't mean to discourage any learners out there. It's just that (unfortanately for me) I don't learn any Chinese from all-Chinese posts by learners who aren't native speakers, no matter how big their vocabulary may be. They might as well post in English.