User Comments - questyn

Posted on: Focus and Specialization

Chinesepod.com has been what helped me improve my Chinese (instead of lose it) after I moved back to the USA after 3 years in China. I had, at one point on my return to the US, a diehard attitude that I should look for my own sources of study, use a dictionary, learn on my own. That is unrealistic for the time I have available. I need podcasts so I can take lessons on the go. I like Media lessons so I don't have to search the Internet, and also so I know the content will be worth the time to study. Chinesepod keeps me more up-to-date with trends in news and culture with its lessons.

Getting from UI to Advanced happened over a year or so as I listened again and again to lessons at both of those levels. Initially, Advanced was a speed faster than I could fully grasp, and with repeated listening I found myself more and more comfortable with the pace. UI tends to be easy now (with a few new words, and clarifying the use of terms) and the English explanations break my train of thought - I don't need them. I think that's a good sign to depend more on Advanced and Media lessons.

A topic I would love to have in more Advanced or Media lessons is education: formal Chinese discussing school administration, teaching, and linguistic terminology. Something about how Chinese teachers of Chinese to non-native speakers would discuss their profession.

Posted on: Measure Words for Animals

I've often found it hard to remember donkey vs. deer:

一匹驴 for a donkey  lǘ

一只鹿 for a deer?  lù  Or is there another measure word to use?

Posted on: Character Amnesia

Thanks, toianw, for the link to Etymology. I tried entering a couple characters there & found the information thorough and helpful. I use Wenlin software to find similar info. So far, the website appears more thorough.

In learning to read Chinese, I've found it helpful to get familiar with the character components (偏旁 - maybe the word that Keth wanted to use?) because as the brain gets "used to" them, it is both easier to take a guess at the meaning of an unfamiliar character and to guess at the pronunciation based on the components. Learning the names of strokes has been helpful when Chinese friends tell me how to write a character, but individual strokes don't usually tell much about the meaning or pronunciation.

As mentioned by bodawei, components are not a foolproof guide to pronounciation, but I'd guess that maybe 50% of the time I'm close enough to type it correctly after seeing an unfamiliar character (that is, with a try or two I can get the pinyin spelling based on components). About 90% of the time when I learn the pinyin of that unfamiliar character, I go "Ohh!" because it sounds fairly similar to the same component in other characters. Then there are seemingly random ones!

I'm a Chinese teacher and emphasize learning components with my students for these reasons. I really believe that the brain takes some time to adjust to seeing characters, and that regular practice made as fun as possible really helps. I show clips from "The Karate Kid" to demonstrate how small repeated efforts build up into powerful skills over time. Both the older film (with a Japanese flavor) and the newer one (set in Beijing) have scenes that work well - it's when the student gets fed up and the teacher demonstrates that skills are highly developed through the seemingly endless repetitions of movements. Even if you can't fully guess the meaning or the pronunciation from the components in a character, you will be better able to recognize it because your brain is keyed into the components. After a point, I think it'd be impossible to remember characters without understanding the system behind them.

Posted on: 去香港生孩子

你听得对。最后一两分钟，他们说最少要罚一年的工资，也许到三倍。

所以，我的一个中国朋友也赴港生第二胎了。可是，我想知道的是，这个小孩子上学还算香港人的话，入学不是麻烦一点吧？去大陆的香港人有没有什么手续要办好才能跟爸妈回家去呢？

Posted on: Chinese Names

大家好！

My Chinese name is 杜雁子。I had first received the name 杜秀琴 orginally from my college Chinese professor in the USA who matched my maiden name to 杜。Chinese friends in China thought it sounded like a old lady name. A friend & her father created 杜雁子 for me during a summer in Xi'an. My English given name sounded like the "大雁" of the 大雁塔。They felt it would be more feminine to say 雁子 instead of just 雁，which seemed masculine to them.

I love poetry including 雁 and the name became even more appropriate when my next home in China was in the south. So I was like the 雁，flying from north to south. I also like sharing a family name with 杜甫 and 杜牧。

Since then I've met 2 other women in southern China with the give name 雁. I've also had a Chinese coworker say it looks like a Japanese woman's name because of the 子. I do sometimes find it tedious to correct people who assume I'm 燕子。

Opinions? It seems too late to change to me as I've been using it in professional settings for 15 years, but I'd like to know the impression it makes in general.

Thanks.

Posted on: How Did You Learn Chinese?

Hello！

I would really like to find the Twitter equivalent mentioned in the podcast, but I can't find it in my preliminary searching. Can you please post the link?

Thanks!

Posted on: 城管与小摊贩

Lily, 你真的必要交了吗？住在他隔壁应该很不舒服！

Posted on: Talking to the Neighbors

Thanks for listing this new series in the May ChinesePod newsletter! I would have entirely missed it since I rely mainly on the new lesson emails & my RSS feed for new lessons.

I'll be visiting Shanghai this summer & this series will help a lot!  When I lived in Kunming, I took a class on the Kunming dialect & really enjoyed it.  Cab drivers liked hearing it & always got a kick out of a foreigner speaking the local dialect.

Posted on: 电影故事一

我和putao同感。Expansion对我来很重要；这样我会更好的了解怎么用生词。

Posted on: Thinking of my Brothers by Moonlight -- 月夜忆舍兄

Thanks for a Du Fu poem! I enjoy his melancholy reflections and affection for family and friends expressed so often as themes in his poems. I got to visit the Du Fu museum during a trip to Chengdu several years ago. Worth a trip! There's a hut set up like his house, and information about his life and works. I took home a book and CD of some of his poems read expressively and sung. I hadn't seen such a nice selection on Du Fu at bookstores.

My Chinese family name is Du. And my given name has the same character 'goose' mentioned in the poem.