User Comments - tiaopidepi
tiaopidepi
Posted on: I don't want it!
May 18, 2008 at 5:40 PMMy favorite response is "我不会说英文". (1) Follow it up with a "你会说法文吗？" (2) and a couple "我听不懂" (3) and "一点儿中文"s (4) when they try to talk to you in Mandarin. 1. wǒ bù huì shōu yīngwén / I don't speak English 2. nǐ huì shōu fǎwén mǎ? / Can you speak French? 3. wǒ tīng bù dǒng / I hear but don't understand 4. yī diǎnr zhōngwén / A little Chinese.
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan
May 9, 2008 at 3:25 PM@Texastochina: I asked my guests if anyone could tell the male from the female. The male temple dog usually has his paw on a ball (which may represent the earth?) The female has her paw on a baby temple dog. If we really want to be sexist we can postulate that the baby is a male and will one day sit proudly in front of the temple with his paw on a ball after having found a stone female and sired a stone child.
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan
May 9, 2008 at 3:19 PM@Alwingate: Each year Apple Computer holds a conference in Moscow Apple's conferences are at Moscone Center, not Moscow : ) When we have the CPod lesson on 旧金山 (Old Gold Mountain==San Francisco) it might mention George Moscone, the mayor of 旧金山 who was gunned down two years into his term. And you thought that 芝加哥 (Chicago) had all dirty politics and violence?
Posted on: Paris
April 29, 2008 at 5:41 AM>> the way Parisians are so warm and courteous towards anybody who speaks a bit of French ...not my experience. Ok, I've only spent a week in Paris but I had a pretty good understanding of French after years of study. Let's just say it was in Paris I decided I didn't want to speak their language and have to endure their looks of pain and disgust every time I tried to say something. Those who knew no English were kind; others, not so. Suffice to say it was in Paris I decided to learn Chinese. Frenchpod is tempting, though. It would be nice to listen to "advanced" podcasts and actually understand them!
Posted on: What's up?
February 27, 2008 at 2:34 PMYes, CPod, congratulations for successfully resisting the evil American plot to ruin the language they stole. "Big Brother" can try his best but shall not be allowed to spoil the perfection that spews from the lips of uptight Anglophiles around the world!
Posted on: I Have Class
February 17, 2008 at 3:40 PM>> then it becomes confusing if not annoying to those who are not so eager to be trendy by adopting the lingo of 'big brother'. Enough said.
Posted on: I Have Class
February 17, 2008 at 7:31 AM>> and now there's no bloody way they're stealing it back Well put, Auntie Sue. You and yours can have the language. Just keep sending us the Shiraz!
Posted on: I Have Class
February 17, 2008 at 4:17 AMAuntySue, you assume--as did many others--that she is the teacher. Possibly because she looks Chinese? But many huaren don't know the Chinese language and would thus have to learn. Or possibly because she is female? I admit, my suggestion that she is a student seems a bit contrived, but it is defensible given the slight evidence the photo supplies. Ingmar, by "standard English" do you happen to mean the language spoken by the English? The same English which contains oh so many words acquired each time the French controlled that island? The same English which gained a plethora of words when its beloved Shakespeare just made them up? I clearly stated "in the US", without making any statement about "standard English". But if you want to argue about "real English" or "real Chinese" I think you're going to have a hard time defending your bias. Languages are living and changing constantly. English belongs the US as much as--or more than--it belongs to the British. Even the French, with their Académie française, speak of "faire du shopping" on "le weekend".
Posted on: I Have Class
February 16, 2008 at 2:27 PMFirst, in the US we often say "I have class" and say it without irony. Second, there is no indication from the photo that this woman is not a student who has just learned her first two sentences in Chinese. Were this the case, her handwriting is impressive. My first four Chinese character were far less well written.
Posted on: Chinese Universities
May 19, 2008 at 2:46 PM@Casie: Columbia, Cornell and Penn are also members of the ivy league. There's a common misperception that the "ivy" of "ivy league" stands for IV, the Roman numeral 4. If that were true (it is not) then the four wouldn't include Harvard *_*