User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
July 1, 2007 at 7:38 AMOkay, fruitless. I'll give you that. Japanese people are all "devils". Thai, Vietnamese, and any language spoken in a relatively higher register is "nan2ting1". Germans always get the best spots at the beach. And the French never bathe.
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
July 1, 2007 at 7:28 AMHi Xiaohu, you don't need to apologize to me. I just don't "get" anybody feeling it's okay to be negative/ critical about the sound of a language which -- in most likelihood -- is just being spoken in its normal register. I have been studying writtenThai as intensely as I could for nearly three years, and -- yes --, the "normal" speaking register for men as well as for women IS very different than the "normal" register (if there's such a thing) for Mandarin or French or Japanese. I'm not saying you are a bad person for having these personal views, it is your right. But I still don't feel comfortable about any attitude to learning any language that suggests that some are more worthy than others.
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
July 1, 2007 at 6:24 AMSorry, the author of the "Vietnamese girls" comment (in Mandarin was not Clarence, but Xiaohu. Disappointing, because Xiaohu's written is so nice, and I actually thought his viewpoints were relatively calm and reasonable.
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
July 1, 2007 at 6:15 AMJohn Laoshi, if you purport to offer "Mandarin on YOUR terms", and even go so far as to make that a proud selling point, you might have listened to the "niggling" complaints from annoying customers (what a nuisance!) and maybe considered that not every customer depends on your RSS feed to deliver CPOD content. That's a fair meaning of "on your terms", I think. If you go to each lesson's home page, you will see that the "download dialogue-only MP3" button is missing, so it's actually reasonable that a user who was used to working directly out of the website might get the impression that this service was not available for his/her level of subscription. We are not only idiots and children who are deliberately being difficult about figuring out things which are obvious to the driver of CPOD, some of us do depend to a reasonable extent (I would argue) to a navigation system/ website design that is intuitive and well thought-through enough for users to get a reasonably quick fix on what services they are entitled to for what they are paying. Since I'm at it: I wonder why, after 4 or 5 requests in different CPOD fora, the dead link in the bottom row of tabs still has not been fixed. If you are in "Home" (formerly, "Study"), you can't can't get into the Lesson Archive ("Lessons") directly, but have to click on the "Lessons" tab in order to access it from THAT part of the website. As for Clarence: Man, that remark about Vietnamese girls being cute but sounding bad was one ugly comment. It saddened me that you were willing to go so far in order to "score" a clever point against Clarence. What is it that you find so "nan2ting1" about Vietnamese spoken in a normal register? Too squeaky? Too sing-song? Too "Donald Duck"? And please don't hide behind "Clarence Made Me Do It!" or "But Sharon, You Are a Convicted Racist!". Shame on you.
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
June 30, 2007 at 7:12 AMBtw, I've just listened to the lesson, and it was wonderful! I hope there will be more lessons in this format; the CPOD voice actors/ reality reporters can clearly handle it. Congratulations!
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
June 30, 2007 at 7:09 AM[QUOTE] For those that didn't get the Japanesepod connection, You don't get a transcript of the mp3 files with the basic plan. You must have the premium subscription to get that. That makes JapanesePod quite useless. I don't think it's worth paying $360 just to get the transcript, which is all that I would need. [/QUOTE[ Hi Clarence. Whoa, I have a basic subscription to JapanesePod101, and it does come with the lesson pdf. Not the full transcript, meaning the hosts' comments, but the entire lesson is definitely there. Together with a table of vocabulary, a grammar section, and even a separate kanji sheet. For each and every lesson. I think their "problem" is the same as CPOD (if any) -- merely very poor website design. You don't need a Premium Subscription to CPOD in order to receive dialogue-only MP3s via RSS feed, only a Basic Subscription. But you wouldn't guess that from each individual lesson's "home page", since there is only a button for downloading the whole lesson MP3. To me, it's completely daft to squander customer goodwill by reason only of not bothering to think things through so that a reasonable, intuitive, user can navigate easily to ALL the features that he/she is paying for, but I guess that is up to the company. Give JapanesePod101 another chance? Happy weekend to all -- Auntie
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
June 29, 2007 at 8:34 PM[QUOTE] Without wanting to be too emotional, I gotta say Jenny, Ken, John, Connie, Lillie, Zhang Liang, etc. you all have become part of my life and you are all great people. [/QUOTE] I hope Zodiac won't mind if I add the two CPOD aces -- Aggie and Amber -- to his (non-exhaustive, inclusive, I know!) list. And borrow his heartfelt words to thank them on my own behalf as well. The quality of CPOD's lessons, and the people who deliver it, have never been short of amazing. If there are any disappointments, it's never on the academic side; but rather things such as careless mistakes, poor site design, and -- maybe -- having a tendency to rush launching new ideas while they're still only half-cooked. But that last nit is actually how Apple works, and I still love it!
Posted on: She's Easy
June 28, 2007 at 11:42 PMErm, that was "just CAN'T imagine"... sorry for the typo!
Posted on: She's Easy
June 28, 2007 at 11:41 PMHee hee, I wouldn't have any problems with an "Adults Only" section! Having said that, I just imagine CPOD ever doing a lesson heavy on vocab for -- say -- tops and bottoms thinking of negotiating things like safewords, making up scenes, and discussing "toys" and shibari techniques... Believe me, there's a LOT of specialized vocab in that, that you don't want to get wrong! Ciao, Auntie
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
July 1, 2007 at 7:38 AMOh, and I forget, all Chinese always spit everywhere, watch out.