User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

thanks Daniel. Quite the little gem. I've been to the Gaeltact. I met a Canadian linguist living there who said it was the hardest language she had tried to learn, so it was interesting seeing how Yu Ming was then doing after 6 months.

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

daniel,

I've gotta interupt the viewing of this youtube clip you kindly posted to say I'm lovin' it and that I'm really taken with his Irish version of DeNiro's famous taxi driver lines. I now feel impelled to practice this in Mandarin [something I now feel has been totally lacking in my Mandarin journey]:

你跟我说话？

你跟我说话？

。。anyone got a better translation before I take myself off in front of a mirror and rip into it?

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

yeah, rings some bells. Not sure which bell you're hinting at though.

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

I knew the Cantonese were proud and protective of their language and rightly so. I'm surprised with the ""Down with Mandarin" signs though...all news to me...didn't realise the situation had come to that...thanks for another very interesting post.

"What one can work actively for is usually to document the language before it goes extinct."

..agreed. Vitally important I would say.

Right..so Singapore is even trying to legislate these dialects into nonexistence..at least there. I wonder at the thinking there, the motivations.

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

Interesting comment and link,..thanks. There was an article in the newspaper here several months back about preserving Aboriginal languages here and how in one case I think they were down to their last elder. Here is an article along similar lines:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/08/2812936.htm

...looks like the govt is chipping in to try and help the preservation.

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

Interesting comment..thanks. I didn't know that at all...only 8 left. That is surprising,esp in light of your other points. When you consider all those small ethnic groups in the southwest..they'd have many more speakers than that, and yet Manchu was so much bigger as you say. Yep, the writing seems to be on the great wall for the other dialects then.

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

yeah, I did have the same suspicion,specifically wondered if it was from Manchu due to the region and a quick wikipedia search confirms our suspicions..that it is indeed a Manchu word. [ ᡥᠠᡵᠪᡳᠨ]

Apparently it means a place for drying fishing nets.

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

Yeah, what's the story with the name 哈尔滨 [Harbin]? It sounds like a transliteration of Harbin rather than the other way around.

I guess being northeast china, having the er sound seems somewhat appropriate though it's not 儿。 Do they use 儿化 up north in Harbin like they do around Beijing?

Posted on: All About the Lesson Content

ps what does the pb and pr mean in the radio quality and cd quality lessons? I guess the p stands for podcast. the r is not for radio quality as that comes with the cd quality download.

Posted on: Firing Someone

thanks johnb for confirming that