User Comments - simonpettersson

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

I thought Hudong was the Chinese Wikipedia.

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

roye：

vigdis说的不是“我的菜被偷了”，是“我的菜都被偷了”。

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

Go Europe!

Anyway, more on topic: I enjoyed the lesson today, as usual. However, I expected to learn some useful internet vocabulary, but was instead treated with vocab for running a farm. Kind of unexpected.

Can anyone recommend a useful Intermediate lesson for learning web vocabulary?

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

tal_,

That's so true. A bit of Queen's English would put some class into the show. Right now it sounds like a bunch of sherman chinas at the rub-a-dub, having had too many Britneys and trying to speak with their troubles on the dog-and-bone and oily rags in their north-and-south, innit?

Posted on: The Pen and Paper Mystery

Is there something wrong on my end or doesn't this lesson have any vocabulary?

Posted on: Turn Right, Turn Left

zhenjiliang, never mind. I get it.

This is sort of similar to the situation in the Czech Republic, where there's a big discussion going on about the adding ov -ová after foreign women's last names, since Czech grammar demands it. It's been done for as long as the language has looked this way, but suddenly now it's not okay to talk about Michelle Obamová and Britney Spearsová anymore. They have to use their foreign names unchanged! I find it silly.

Just in case you thought this discussion couldn't veer more off topic. I'll shut up now.

Posted on: Turn Right, Turn Left

Hi zhenlijiang,

what about country names? When you're going to Paris (which I assume you pronounce like the French do), do you also say you're going to La France? I see you're still using "the Chinese" instead of "Zhongguoren".

Also, historical names? Like Marc Anthony or Jesus?

Somebody needs to tell us to stop talking about this in a newbie lesson discussion ...

Posted on: Turn Right, Turn Left

My opinion is that if you're gonna be spending some time in a foreign country, you should decide on something you want to call yourself that is easy for people in that country to pronounce (if nothing else then as a courtesy to the people you'll be interacting with). Like getting a Chinese name if moving to China (and I understand of course the frustration felt when someone transliterates your English name instead of using your Chinese one).

I lived in the US for six months and I called myself Simon, the way it's pronounced in English. Some people asked how it was said in Swedish and tried to pronounce it that way, but I soon asked them to stop and just call me my English name, since their attempts were ... not good (it sounded like the French woman's name "Simone"). I also removed a 't' and an 's' from my last name: "Peterson" instead of "Pettersson".

Of course, getting a new name to go with your new language is a pretty exciting thing to me! It's as they say, "Another language, another soul". Methinks this new soul needs a name.

Posted on: Turn Right, Turn Left

bodawei:

To which I might reply: The Chinese use the Chinese sounds in order to communicate - it is that simple.  You may use English sounds if you like but you will not be understood.

My point is that most if not all civilizations have converted foreign names to their own language for thousands of years. In the last hundred years or so the European and North American countries have stopped. This is the weird phenomenon, not that the Chinese have not stopped. I suspect it has to do with globalization.

Also, I suspect you'll be easier understood by the average non-Chinese speaker in English if you say "Beijing"* instead of "Běijīng" and "Shanghai" (to rhyme with "bang-hi") instead "Shànghǎi". Though they might get both (though I'd assume you're trying to boast about your Chinese speaking ability).

* which was until recently called "Peking", by the way.

Posted on: Turn Right, Turn Left

When I speak Swedish (or English, for that matter) and I talk about something that is Chinese, I use sounds from the language that I'm speaking, not sounds from Chinese. Because it sounds really weird if I do that. If I'm talking about Brad Pitt in Swedish, I use Swedish intonation and mostly Swedish sounds, though for example the English 'r' is imported because it doesn't seem to out of place in Swedish.

Suddenly injecting tones into English when you're mentioning a Chinese name sounds weird and sort of ... uh, posh to me. Suddenly injecting English sounds into Chinese also sounds weird.

It's really no different from the fact that you say "Rome" and not "Roma" in English, or "John the Baptist" instead of whatever his name is in Arameic or something, or that you pronounce "Ceasar" as "see-zar" instead of "ky-sar". Trying to pronounce foreign names in the foreign tongue is a relatively new and, in my opinion, slightly silly notion. So the practice that requires explanation would not be that Chinese prefer to convert foreign names to their own sound system, but that westerners nowadays seem unwilling to.