User Comments - standuke
standuke
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 22, 2008 at 2:12 PMA general comment that might be of interest to relative beginners, As an English speaker learning Chinese I think different aspects of pronunciation change with the dialect in the two different languages. I think its fair to say that in English the sounds of the consonants are fairly invariant from region to region, while the sounds of vowels can change dramatically. In Chinese it seems like the vowel sounds and tones are least variant, while the consonants at the beginning and end of each syllable can change dramatically according to the region. When I was just starting to learn Chinese I found this baffling. My Chinese colleagues (from all over China) would have, to my perception, totally different ways of saying a simple word like 'chi1' (吃). 'si' 'dzi' 'dstchi' -- you name it. It took a while to sort out that these dramatic differences in pronunciation are only regarded as 'accents', while (to me subtle) differences in tones are the basis for different regional dialects. Since I'm a geneticist we summarized in terms of evolution: English: vowels are hypervariable. Chinese: consonants are hypervariable; tones vary with dialect; vowel sounds are conserved. I'm sure this is totally academically incorrect, but this way of thinking about things has helped me focus on the important (tones) rather than getting hung up on those freaky sounds different Chinese make at the beginnings and endings of their words. Anyway, hope this helps someone, and I'm looking forward to part 2 of this lesson.
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 22, 2008 at 1:55 PMChangye, I enjoy reading your comments, but now I'm confused. I listened again to the 'let's listen again' portion of the lesson and it seems to be in the order Beijing female, Taiwan male, Shanghai female?? (i.e. consistent with what Jenny and John and Casie said.)
Posted on: Cheering
March 21, 2008 at 5:59 PMI've been Chinese Podding for a couple weeks and practicing with some coworkers. The experience of using CPod has been a revelation, and it took all of half a lesson for me to be inducted into the cult of Jenny Zhu :>) Anyhoo, I've been practicing with a couple Chinese coworkers, and they tell me 'jia1 you2' can be used (reasonably politely) with any situation where you want someone to get a move on, especially kids. My 3 year old will be hearing ’加油‘ on a regular basis from now on--she's such a slow poke. My wife and I don't speak Chinese at home, but we like to teach her little words and phrases. Have there been any 'kids' CPod lessons?
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 22, 2008 at 2:13 PMLight487, thank you.