User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 1:08 PMRJBerki, for what it's worth, what has been very helpful to me, in learning Mandarin, is hearing and reading sample sentences which illustrate a new "lexical point"/ language pattern, rather than some complicated explanation with symbols like Adj or Adv or N (Obj? Sub?) etc etc expressed in some formula. It's naughty to compare, but JapanesePod101 has recently raised the quality of the "sample sentences" in its transcripts (they include basic "grammar notes" in their pdfs as part of their "Basic" package), I'm really benefitting from that, and --- well... ahem... -- I wonder if CPOD might be willing to consider including some "grammar notes" in THEIR pdfs for humble "Basic" subscribers like me. Nothing fancy, just a handful of good example sentences to help consolidate whatever usage points were being introduced in that lesson. It doesn't even have to be explained in detail, the sample sentences will do the talking. ???
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 12:51 PMDear changye, thank you for your thoughtful analysis of the road safety situation in China. Statistically, it seems much safer than I had imagined, although the "kill rate" for accidents involving motorcycles was quite stunning to me. It's a good thing that China's motorists and bikers don't have the same access to "yaabaa" (thai illegal amphetamines) and rough Thai hooch, as their counterparts in Thailand. The road carnage in Thailand around holidays -- eg. songkran -- is quite staggering. Most of it is down to DUI, compounded by a relatively new "motoring" culture.
Posted on: Getting Your Hair Done
January 21, 2008 at 10:44 AMHello uncle changye. Thanks for your kind reply. It was full of the kind of juicy information that I was hoping for! I trust you use the word "mercilessly" in an ironic sense (good for you!). I have been to the Netherlands several times as a hungry university student studying in Belgium (mainly for the bami goering and to stock up on sambal oelek, but don't tell aert that!), and then twice on business. I'll never forget my first business trip to the Hague. Our business then was with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and we junior ones (the "bag-carriers" for our bosses) were babysat by equally junior Dutch bag-carriers. So we had an informal, low-status lunch at the staff canteen one day. Imagine my surprised delight when I saw that the MFA's canteen served beer! Woo-hoo! At lunch-time! What a wonderful, developed country! But when I tasted the beer, it was... non-alcoholic beer. I wish I knew the Chinese characters for "pwui pwui pwuipwui pwui!". Hope you feel better soon.
Posted on: Extreme Chinese - 不得了 (bùdéliǎo)
January 21, 2008 at 2:32 AMHello frank. Not being conditioned to analyse everything in terms of English grammar may actually be a good thing! Chinese grammar and English grammar are so different, in some important ways, that you could parse an English sentence as far as that will go, do exactly the same for a Chinese sentence that (supposedly) conveys the same meaning, and STILL have plenty of puzzling bits left over when you try to reconcile the two versions. There simply isn't any one-to-one correspondence between the grammatical elements of these two languages. Indo-European grammatical terms are useful for helping learners to get a handle on Mandarin structures, but that may be as far as their usefulness goes. You're fine!
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 12:24 AMoh, chand -- One possible reason why more people don't move their butts and study Hindi, could be that Bollywood movies make anybody believe that they are already able to speak Hindi. Many Singaporeans are well-equipped with the standard Bollywood vocab: Kaun? Ki? Beta (/Beti)! Nehi! Chelow (as in, "go on, shoot me/ press this knife into my throat, I dare you"), love songs words like "zendegi", "dunia" etc, "Now my dear fellow"... etc. Sorry for the homemade hanyu pinyin!
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 12:14 AMZhou sunn. chand, every word of praise or encouragement that we aimed at you was justified. There! Actually, Bengali would be a natural choice for me (vs Hindi) because it is something of an unofficial local language for nearly a hundred years, having been brought here from Calcutta via the Sindhi, Parsee, Baghdadi Jewish, or Bengali businessmen who came to do business but ended up becoming citizens. Hindi is a much newer language in Singapore, it is spoken only by the newest Singaporeans: Indian engineers, managers, and investors who are being actively and aggressively courted by us as ideal permanent residents. Seems to be working. Only about five years into this policy, there are now two Indian International Schools in Singapore! Curiously, many of these new permanent residents (PRs) come to us via the US or Canada. chand, good luck with those Chinese phonemes! Mark said exactly what I was trying to say, but in fewer words...
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 20, 2008 at 1:37 PMErm, Chand (this was coming, you knew it), do you speak or read any South Asian languages? Just curious... one of my friends has been encouraging me to tackle Bengali -- ahh! the language of Rabindranath Tagore! Satyajit Ray! Sabina Yasmin! --, which is more native to Singapore than Hindi, but I am hesitant because I hear that Bengali orthography is very difficult, it is as irregular as English (eekk!!!)...?
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 20, 2008 at 1:33 PMDear Chand, if it's not too late to add my 2-cents worth, you are doing incredibly well with Mandarin if you can read Upper-Intermediate with reasonable comfort after only 1.5 years! Well done! I had 11+ years of formal classroom lessons in Singapore, where Mandarin was my official "Second Language", and one year ago even merely READING the Intermediate lessons seemed like a crazy challenge. Bravo, and I MEAN it. I'll think of your progress when I try to help my Mandarinistically-challenged toddler nephew to enjoy Mandarin. Please hang in there! Being comfortable with the written characters counts for more than you may realize. It means that you have a very solid foundation for acquiring additional Chinese vocabulary and natural speech patterns as soon as your "ear" adapts to the cadences of spoken Chinese. There's no telling what little thing will tip you over to the side where you wake up one morning and suddenly realize that you can understand just about everything you hear without translating it into some other language, it could be anything, really. All I want to say is that each person reaches that "magical moment" via his own route. Some need a boot-camp kind of turning-point, some reach it simply by relaxing and daring to let their brains process the language overnight (try listening to something from the day before, after a good night's sleep... you may be blown away). Go Chand GO!!!
Posted on: Getting Your Hair Done
January 20, 2008 at 7:48 AMIf it's not too personal a question to ask, changye how did you come to be living and working in China today, and how did your Mandarin and English -- and Bahasa, too -- get to be so good?
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 1:19 PMBy using sample sentences, you can get around the problem of having to attach "labels" to various language elements. If the sample sentences are well-written, it may not actually be so difficult for the student to process the elements in the sample sentence intuitively, and so to understand the syntax intuitively, rather than via parsing and analysis. However, I'm no linguist! John Pasden is doing some heavy-duty work in linguistics, and he is pretty utterly bilingual, so he would know if there's any value in this.