User Comments - swansong
swansong
Posted on: Regional Accents Part II
May 26, 2008 at 6:03 AMI've been living in Guangdong since I came to China 4 years ago. I studied Mandarin a little bit with tapes and stuff before I came, and was disappointed (and ashamed!) that I had such difficulty communicating with and understanding the locals. Chinese people who befriended me were kind. "We can help you learn Chinese," they told me! And they did! Everytime I said 我是 for instance, they'd say: "No, no, no. Not Wo3shi4, say wo3si4". "But it doesn't sound like that on the tapes I studied in England," I'd say! If I wanted to buy 四个香蕉 I'd always be offered 10, and if I wanted ten of something, guess how many I'd get? That's right. 4. After I finally got used to people tittering whenever I opened my mouth I guess I'd just decided that I really would never get the hang of this language! Oh ChinesePod is really cool btw. Maximum respect to all you guys who work so hard to make it what it is, I wish I'd discovered it sooner. I only have 2 suggestions right now. One thing is I've just started seriously learning 汉字 and I find the size of the characters (especially on the expansion page) really small. It'd be neat if you could redesign that page so it was more like a Powerpoint slide or some such. Oh and could you do a lesson on getting clothing altered by a seamstress, like shortening trousers for example? That'd be cool.
Posted on: KTV
May 25, 2008 at 2:11 AMThat was a reply to quasifrog (!)
Posted on: KTV
May 25, 2008 at 2:11 AM... even the Chinese wouldn't understand you.
Posted on: SBTG: Confucius
May 27, 2008 at 1:50 AM老虎屁股 — 摸不得,意思就是猫的睡衣吗？