User Comments - brendaninaus

Posted on: A Tour of Xi'an

Touring Xi'an is a good time to know Chinese. There are many sites you could visit around the city and generally tours are divided into the western and eastern tour. The eastern tour (Terracotta Warriors, Qin Tomb etc.) can be explored cheaply using public transport, but the much more spread out western tour can't really be done by public transport. Taxis can be a bit expensive, and hiring a car is often not an option if you don't want to go through the whole process of getting a Chinese drivers licence. So you pretty much have to use the tours offered by the tour companies. There are English ones offered, but they are more than twice the price, and go to far fewer places (I think they spend more time visiting tourist traps like the Terracotta Warriors Factory). The Chinese tours are far cheaper and go to many more places. While my Chinese wasn't good enough to understand all of what the tour guide said, and I did have to look around for a company that was willing to give me a ticket (many "this is for Chinese only"), it was much better than what seemed to be on offer from the English Western tours.

Knowing Chinese can also help in the markets where you can hold stall owners to the price written in Chinese not the extra "foriegner" price they will seek from you. 

Posted on: Traditional Chinese Paintings

I agree with Changye, as far as being a "scam", it is at worst of the mild degree if it is called a scam. Yes they get pretty unpleasant if you say no I don't want any, but at least they don't start using physical force, unlike the various "tea house", "karoke" and "cheap and/or lady bar" type scams.

Posted on: Shanghai Expo Pavilions

Did they make you wear a placade saying "foreigner" like they often do to travellers who visit the country (the person I met who visited North Korea is obese, had orange hair and white skin, so why he needed to be labelled foreigner is beyond me).

Posted on: Shanghai Expo Pavilions

No, I think the World Parks are for that (there is one in Beijing and one in Guangzhou). There they have scale models of world famous sites (Eiffel Tower, Great Pyramids etc.) where you can get your photo taken, so you can pretend you have been around the world.

There is even a movie made about a worker in the park (I can't recall the name), which is how I know about them (they are more domestically orientated so are often left out of travel guides).

I think the Expo concept was menat to be to show off new technology. At an early one they showed offf the then new technology of X-rays, letting people have a go using it. Through this they soon discovered the side affects of X-rays, most notably through the many cancers people suffered afterwards.

Of course these days the money making incentive is ever present, and it is in part a travel show.

Posted on: Mother's Day

Just give them a few more years of capitilism. The shops will soon find the benefit of inventing gift giving days for people to spend more money.

Posted on: Calling People Names

There is a link with a star saying "bookmark this lesson" which at least added the lesoon to my dashboard. Whether this now means future Shanghainese lessons will appear I don't know.

Maybe it was something lost in translation, but Cheyun sounds a bit dodgy, she isn't a society woman is she.

Posted on: Designing the New Apartment 4

This lesson only just got added for me, but I received the email notification yesterday. It is usually the opposite, by the time I get an enail about a lesson, I have already studied it.

Posted on: You Sing Terribly!

I think a "mongrel" language might be a better description than a bastard language. Although some people would find that still an insult anyway.

The problem (or benefit, depending on which way you look at it) with English is that more people speak it as a second language than those for whom it is their native language, and in some ways there is a sort of democracy often with language, in that the more people who use it in a particular way, the more it will become part of the rules for that language (people like the French try and stop this with the afore mentioned "language commission").

There is a BBC series (I think it is called "The Story of English") which goes into how the language is a composition of other languages, which includes words from various Indian languages (obtained when the British colonised India), Native American languages and even Australian Aboriginal (although in that BBC series, the British presenter mispronounces nearly every Australian origin word he mentions, at least to what I, an Australian, is used to).

Posted on: Getting to Know CPod Teacher Helen (and exciting content news)!

I did use "guys", so I guess when it is used in plural form, it seems to be unisexual (e.g. "wait up you guys", which I have heard used a lot to refer to people who are female), but yes you are right, if used as the way you suggest (which is singular), it would be refering to a male (or what you thought was a male).

Posted on: Getting to Know CPod Teacher Helen (and exciting content news)!

I'm a bit late into this conversation, but obviously the definition of what is a dialect and what is a different language is very fluid. I have been told that Portuguese speakers and Spanish speakers can both understand each other, but they are seen as different languages. Conversely, the "English" spoken in places like Glasgow is often unintelligeable to me, and TV shows from Scotland are sometimes given subtitles when shown on TV here.

From my discussions with Chinese friends, Cantonese and Mandarin are seen as different languages. Recently I was studying Mandarin with a Cantonese friend. Her reading was great, but pronounciation and recognition of the Mandarin version of words was similar to my level (intermediate).

Another thing, "sheila" is rarely used in Australia, except in the rural areas, and is often seen as sexist. But I agree with you, "guys" is seen as unisex in Australia.