User Comments - tiaopidepi

Posted on: Colors

Lessons 7-23 were deleted. See the explanation here: http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/1599

Posted on: New Lessons, Video, and Groups

@cytj: "Maybe its an american influence"

CPod is run by an Irishman in China. Thanks for the bigotry but you might be wrong here.

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

@Frances: Ah, so it's not Microsoft's fault this time :P Good to hear that. I assumed it was just a Zune issue because CPod doesn't test on non-iPod platforms. (Of course, now that they're focusing on improving life for paying subscribers we'll get more cross-platform support, backup servers for the Sunday night outage, Hanzi user names, etc etc.)

The solution for me appears to be to delete the old feed (cpod.com/a1pi2/lessons/feed) and subscribe to a new podcast at the new feed (cpod.com/a1pi2/lessons/feed/SECRET).

And it looks like on the new feed CPod finally stopped giving me the dialog MP3s for free : ) Yay!

Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod

Ugh. I assume because of my new feed address my Zune just started resyncing all my old podcasts. Looks like I'll soon have two copies of everything on my player :{

Posted on: Editing a Photo

@JennyZhu: Those of us in the IT industry appreciate that you recycle your old bits and bytes instead of needlessly throwing them away.

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

Great lesson! I love the "Chinese must be difficult for you" line. Some quotes from my limited experience:

• Don't worry about measure words, non-native Chinese will never understand which are which.
• If you were not a Chinese baby you will never understand tones.
  
• Learning Chinese is a waste of time. Everyone speaks English.
• You will never truly speak Chinese properly because you are not Chinese. Chinese is a cultural gift, not just a language.
  

I want to believe Jenny when she says there is no ill intent but it rings a little hollow. China is still a very closed culture.

One last note: I was giving a talk in Beijing last year. I started with "你好" and got a huge round of applause. That, also, rings a little hollow : )

Posted on: 会 (Huì) and 能 (Néng) Face-off

@fred2: Thank you! The article is here: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-07/st_essay

The article has the example "how many informations does your flash drive hold?" I've noticed that people at work are much less careful about the number of items. Informations is a perfectly valid plural, and thus requires how many instead of how much.

Posted on: 会 (Huì) and 能 (Néng) Face-off

@dongni:  Singaporeans did it in Singapore. The thrust of this article was how Chinese in America were changing English outside of their subgroups.  It cited examples of Chinglish which had crept into common American English usage.

Posted on: 会 (Huì) and 能 (Néng) Face-off

Ah, this old chestnut. I agree with Mr. Corrigan, though it's only absolute when we're referring to English. English is an absolute dog of a language which is only defined by those currently speaking it.

I saw a great article online recently (alas, I cannot find it) that detailed how Chinese Americans are changing the English language permanently. 加油！

Posted on: Morning at the Office

In my experience, Chinese don't worry about tones. Native speakers, when asked about tones, have to think (and sometimes wave their fingers about) to tell you what tones they're using. "Tones don't matter", says one coworker, "you just need to use the right ones at the right times."