User Comments - tianfeng
tianfeng
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 2:02 AMI am going to study in China next year for the reason that I write like I speak. I tend to litterly translate things that turn out to need some tweaking to make it sounds more idiomatically Chinese. I just used 亲自because i found in in an old dialog from class. I tend take the jump right in approach. I will through it all out there and if i make mistakes so what. It will eventually be corrected if I take criticism well and keep working at it. You shouldn't be scared to post in Characters. This isn't Xinhua it is a place to learn. How much knowledge is enough? 200 characters, 800, 2000? The more you use them the better you will be.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 1:29 AMman my Japaneses reading is still good but my Speak sucks. 我觉得每一个人在这里都是学生。 如果我们要联系写中文有时候有错， 如果中文是一个人的母语，他们也有时候写错。 亲自， 这一定个有错。
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 12:30 AMTo me it makes it interesting. If everyone spoke the same it would be boring and I couldn't have fun at parties doing accents.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 21, 2007 at 12:17 AMhaha my friends are from china and they all have different accents and are all understood. My friends from the south pronounce. Shi and si the same and they also substitute L for words that are in the north more of an n sound. Like It sounds like "li si ta de lan peng you." But they are all native speakers. If your can't cope with variation in pronunciation than you will have a hard time adapting to traveling in China.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 20, 2007 at 11:47 PMI wonder why everyone is so crazy about native speakers. I learn everything and anything I can from whoever I can. I like to think I can use even people who are beginners to review things and maybe pick up some words I didn't know or grammar rules I took for advantage. You will start to realize that many second language learners understand more about the construction and grammar than most native speakers.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 20, 2007 at 1:10 PMThis article kind of fits in with what we are talking about/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070620.wchinaclimate0620/BNStory/International/home Johns Chinese is awesome and he seems like a nice guy in both. I feel one of the keys is to be able to represent your self honestly in both languages. I feel now that my Chinese is good enough to represent my actually personality unlike before when I had to joke around so much because it was all I knew. @ Whoever mentioned "da niu". I met the guy twice and I wanted to kick his face in both times. He is arrogant and unfriendly. I went to one of the tapings of 通乐五洲 because one of my friends was on it and they asked me to be on it as well. After the show a bunch of us were hanging around and talking with the people from CCTV. Whoever the female host was was really nice. I talked to her for a while afterwards. But Da niu was like a spoiled little rich kid. I would never make the comparison between him and John. John seems to have a personality and a good sense of humor, Da niu is an idiot. After meeting him I said to my Chinese friend "man what an asshole." Who responded to me by saying " yes but his Chinese is very good" I than said "good well now he can be an asshole in both languages". Have of language learning is also knowledge. If you can speak a language but you have nothing interesting to say than no one is going to want to listen to you anyway.
Posted on: Global Warming
June 22, 2007 at 11:17 AMOk auntie. I am kind of lost at what you are doing. You say you are learning the 五笔字型 method but yet you want to type in pinyin? Is the whole point of that system to get rid of pinyin? I agree with man2toe about the writing in pinyin. When you get to more advanced sentences it becomes much more confusing to try and figure out the pinyin than it would be to look up the character. It seems almost like trying to break a code where letters are representing symbols and you need to judge by context. It is neat that you are learning the 五笔 method but I think using pinyin with out characters is like music without melody.