User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 3:42 AMAmber, Eileen, any admins out there, -- or Jenny? -- Lantian's post is so relevant and to-the-point that I really that one of you can tweak the Mandarin a bit and offer a "remixed" version. Sort of like, instead of "Wo3shuo1", maybe something like "Wo3de5yi4si5jiu4shi5" etc etc. I know that my Mandarin is not good enough for that. Lantian, you are on my Heroe's List too.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 2:51 AMHello again Clarence. Yes, I want CantoPod too. Btw, did you watch the "Infernal Affairs" trilogy, which "The Departed" is based on? The screenwriting (and editing, and acting and...) there is incredible too. But to be fair to CPOD, there are some very real practical obstacles to CantoPod. First, the language support for the Cantonese characters is even further away (in reality), than the language support for traditional character merely for Mandarin, which they are still struggling with. Second, I think it would be difficult for them to recruit Cantonese instructors/ curriculum development people/ voice actors etc having the same impressive professional credentials as their Mandarin team. All of this is not CPOD's fault (if "fault" is even an appropriate word), it has something to do with the fact that the Cantonese-speaking world can be a bit chauvinistic and inwardly-focussed, which has stood in the way of previous (and ongoing) efforts to develop and implement "Cantonese hanyu pinyin". I have never met a (at least half-way-) educated Mandarin speaker who had metaphysical problems with Hanyu Pinyin, but most Cantonese speakers I know tend to react with, "What for? No need! Just listen carefully lorr! And in any case we ALL KNOW that nobody can learn Cantonese, you know it if you are Cantonese, of course, but gweilos just can't handle it... etc". One prickly issue is the fact that Cantonese is not really a written language. So the way characters are used goes far beyond simply translating simplified characters into traditional characters, there are many characters which simply do not exist in Mandarin. Still, I wish everybody all the best. And especially Tianfeng, for whom I have a new respect. Tianfeng, I wish I had your balls!
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 2:10 AMOK, Tianfeng, I just read your post, and I like your attitude! All the best with your Chinese studies in China! Ciao, Auntie
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 2:09 AMOne thing to know about doing accents, is that the ability to do an accent in a "new" foreign language tends to kick in relatively early. So we can -- and should! -- have fun doing them even before we are able to speak correctly in that language. But if we make the mistake of thinking that we have the language down pat simply because we've got can already do an accent, there is a risk that our development will begin to stop there. I mean, I can understand virtually anything I read or hear in French, I have some close friends who only speak French, and I can be persuaded to do a "Big Black Man" African accent in French, but I know that my written French is pretty poor. Once a year, I still try to go through some kind of grammar review, and do some exercises. Because I know and accept what is deficient in my French.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 1:47 AMTianfeng, your written Chinese is a heroic effort, but the way you phrase things does bear out some of the points made by Clarence. Please don't be insulted, I have nothing but respect for you. I am NOT criticizing you, I am correcting your Chinese. Eg., "qin1zi4" literally means, "Personally...", but it is never used like this in Chinese. I could be wrong, as you rightly point out, but I might go for, "wo3zi1ji3yejiu4shi4zhe4yang4"... etc. I'm not talking about style, but about intelligibility. On the related point -- accents/ pronunciation -- speaking with an accent (but correctly) and mispronouncing words is not the same thing. I don't post in Mandarin characters because I am still struggling to learn Wubi Zixing, but I would say that a surprising number of the advanced students here on the CPOD boards do have very real problems with written Mandarin, even though their vocabulary is rich. Speaking for myself, I think it would be a huge incentive for me personally to start posting in Chinese, if some of the Board Admins would -- as a matter of course -- offer re-jigged versions in correct Mandarin at random. Since we're not talking about a "wo3ying2ni3shu1" situation, there isn't any need to declare anything "wrong", and the edited version can perhaps just appear there alongside the original version, without any fanfare. Tianfeng, my humble view is that individual preferences in "style" and "accent" are really only options AFTER one is able to write or speak a sentence can be understood by a Chinese-speaker without Marcel Marceau-type miming. I can do a wicked "Chen Shui-Bian" thick Hokkien/Minan accent thing to amuse my friends, but doing that deliberately is different from mixing up sounds and tones and not knowing it.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 12:29 AMAnd that is supposed to be a good thing?
Posted on: Global Warming
June 20, 2007 at 2:58 AMClarence, I gotta scoot now (Auntie has a life), but I think that quite a few ChinesePod users are also subscribed -- in some form or another -- to JapanesePod101.com, which is pretty marvellous. The lessons are a bit shorter, which I appreciate, but not lite on substance. And the presenters are... well... loveable. The Japanese presenters are extremely talented voice actors (and good teachers), it's all very professional. They're not related to CPOD; however the creator, Peter Galant, does express appreciation to CPOD in most interviews he grants. Cantonese 101: See Foo Auntie says, "Repeat after me, Clarence -- Ngoo hai Haarm Supp Low!". Watch those long vowels, please. Ciao -- Auntie
Posted on: Global Warming
June 20, 2007 at 12:10 AMHa ha. Well, Angelina Jolie has Mickey Brett to guard her backside, Ken has the sandpaper guy. Happy Mandarin learning, everyone.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 19, 2007 at 11:36 PMOuch! Or should that be "Bravo!"? Here in Singapore, we also use the word, "se4lang2" (literally, "colourful ie sexy wolf"). Cantonese has a wonderful, rough expression -- "haarm supp low" -- which means, "salty wet guy". Hmm...
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 3:48 AMI mean, this long, endless thread alone can be the basis of a good lesson in written Chinese from the admins. Eg. Instead of "yi4si5", a word I see in quite a few of the posts, a far more Chinese-sounding close-synonym is "guan1xi4". It's only a little point, but given that Mandarin has no conjugation/ case transformations to speak of, I don't think it hurts anyone to spend a bit more time on syntax and vocab use, because that is so much more important in Chinese!