User Comments - paulinurus
paulinurus
Posted on: A Day at the Races
February 8, 2009 at 3:58 PMHi Changye
Whew! good thing there were more Northerners votes... four tones are already difficult enough to remember! Maybe they should have voted for no tones and simply invent new words.
Posted on: Pre-Valentine's News
February 8, 2009 at 2:50 PMI've read John's blog. To me, the projects sound highly technical and academic so it is hard to get excited on the 'great things' planned for and to happen at CP. It's like reading a chef's descriptions of the isoteric ingredients and fancy names of pastries to come, which in truth can only be experienced after tasting.
I've taken slightly over a year of Chinese lessons elsewhere and have recently enrolled at CP because of its role play practical dialogues delivered in the form of radio broadcasts. Such a delivery allows me to learn the language as per the mother tongue approach. Academic drills and evaluations are low priorities to me.
How many Poddies from the Western world are here studying Chinese for academic reasons?
I find the most challenging aspects of learning to speak and read Chinese are remembering the tones, syntax, and of course, remembering the words themselves. Memorization will be made easier if the words are associated with phrases and other related words. I hope there are more emphasis on word associationsand more usage examples in the podcasts, especially in the Intermediate podcasts.
It will be incomplete and perhaps misleading to learn Chinese via pinyin alone, so it is necessary to recognize Chinese characters. It'll be much help to Poddies like me if during the podcasts there are mentions of 'high frequency' radicals in the Chinese characters. Such mentions will help foreigners to better associate and learn more effectively to read Chinese characters.
Posted on: A Day at the Races
February 8, 2009 at 12:47 AMWow Changye, great answer... enlightens my weekend, thanks!
Posted on: A Day at the Races
February 7, 2009 at 9:19 PMCould someone comment on the second sentence where the same character 骑 qi2 (ride) has two pronunciations - qi2 and ji4.
骑师 qi2 shi1
坐骑 zuo4 ji4
Posted on: Illegal taxis
February 6, 2009 at 2:53 AM非常好！Haha, the extra bit of insight is also useful ... 现在就走 [door slams]...等一下。。
Nice job Ken and Jenny!
Mmmm... now in edit mode... I don't know why the the last sentence font showed up smaller when all appeared same size when I first typed... learning pains of a few days old Podie.
Posted on: Pre-Valentine's News
February 8, 2009 at 11:45 PMHi tvan,
Just curious to know the name of the radical dictionary you're currently using, if you're satisfied with it, and whether subsequently there's another one you had come across and would prefer.
As for the show podcasts, I wonder if less emphasis on intepreting the dialogue text (since the pdf document already has the Chinese to English intepretation) and more emphasis on usage examples, explanations on Chinese language syntax versus English language syntax, and some commentary on the Chinese characters themselves would be further value added to the show podcasts.