User Comments - wenjong

Posted on: Buying a Bike

There is such a variety of bike, and babyseats for bikes, in China. I took a whole slew of photos of them while there adopting... rattan, plastic, metal... here child seats are pretty standard.

so, what IS the word for "helmet" in mandarin? I was all excited that I can tell my kiddo tomorrow when he rides his zi xing che!

Posted on: Light and Dark Colors of Clothing

The first tone ng! or ng..... is when you catch a body part in your pants zipper, someone is stepping on your toe with a stilletto heel while you are crammed into the subway, or you have bitten your tongue!

I really liked that dictionary breakdown of the different tones and (pragmatics?? ;D) of ng/en! ;D

Great lesson.

Posted on: Coming Up Next: 接下来，然后，还有，那么

Dang, I just looked at this Dashan's website. They are absolutely right he may be known in China but not outside it. He got the Order of Canada and all. I am Canadian, studying Chinese, and never heard of him.

Posted on: Funny Rice

Does anyone know that "Eats shoots and leaves" is a name of a great book on the importance of punctuation? Very amusing and wellwritten.

http://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/159240087

As for the cultural differences of humour: French Canadians don't seem to get it when you state the opposite of the obvious in a dry tone. After my mother finished off her second helping of a dish, my girlfriend asked "Mrs Wenjong, do you like the food?" to which my mother replied "no, it's one of the worst things I've ever tasted". I laughed and filled up her plate again while my girlfriend left the room in tears as to why my mother was so disparaging... this scenario has repeated itself in various guises often enough here in Montreal over the past 20something years I have deduced it is the French not comprehending anglophone deadpan humour. The chinese pun thing may be the same for anglophones...

Posted on: Language is Music

I think she has a very good point. One of my favorite lessons (ok, two of my favorite lessons) were the Zhao Pengyou children's song and the Liang Zhi Lao Hu song. It really is easier to remember the rhythm of hte language. And very practical! When I adopted my son, he was 22 months old. I started singing the Zhao a zhao a xiao pengyou... and he started bobbing up and down and doing little body movements to go with the words! So he obviously knew the song and it created a real intimate moment though he spoke no english or french.

I do have some chinese kids' cds I listen to, and having my son listen to Dora the Explorer in mandarin in the background has really helped my language comprehension. Wo shi bei bao bei bao shi wo, li mian zhenme duo you.... lalalalal! ;D

I don't think it matters if you understand it all.. it is the rhythm and flow I think we absorb.

I'll have to look into her book.

Posted on: Why are You Studying Chinese?

I started learning chinese to pass the time waiting to adopt from China in 2006. Now I continue because I want my son, who is now 3 and a half, to know his native language. And because I am totally hooked! I buy way too many chinese grammar books, "learn chinese" books, children's picture books, Dora the Explorer (Duo La he ta zui hao de pengyou, Bu Ci) dvds, Little Pim, Early Start Mandarin...

And I just love languages. I am anglophone, but now bilingual english/french in Montreal, Canada. I know some swedish and german (from paternal and maternal sides of my family), and when I was a kid, I learned "runes" from The Hobbit and used to write my journal in them. Now I practice writing hanzi, and it is lots of fun. And I am too shy to try writing pinyin or hanzi here. btw, I agree that the tone marks are TINY here. Esp diff to differentiate between 1st and 3rd tone marks.

Thanks so much for a fantastic site and excellent lessons. I usually listen while I work: I illustrate books so can use my ears while i work. Thanks!

Posted on: Juiced!

thanks, Matt_c, that was really helpful!

Posted on: Juiced!

Oh my, Dunderklumpen! thanks so much for the firefox addon!

yay!

Posted on: Juiced!

Why does John keep saying "it must taste bad" or "that sounds horrible" when obviously the guy thought it would be good, and then when he received the completed order and actually tasted it, he DID find it undrinkable, or tasting bad. It just seems like it is a very concrete statement of fact in the dialogue and John presents it as a supposition or opinion or future possibility: that will taste bad. Thanks.

Other than that, a fun lesson. Not much new for me, but it is listening to the spare chinese phrasing that is important. And I never remember what the opposite of "hao chi" "hao he" are, so now maybe I will finally remember "nan chi" "nan he"! Now for closing things: I seem to only retain "open" : "da kai".

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Thanks for having posted about the tongue position. I had a hard time with pronouncing "r" and the differences between the qu/chu, j/zh, x/sh too until I had a teacher point out the tip of the tongue needs to be in the upper middle of my palate. I can get "re" right by going "zhe, she, re"... works everytime.

Thanks for pointing out about the bopomo too, I had wondered about it: I see it mentioned all the time in chinese bookshops online. It is so complicated to buy books that are only in simplified and pinyin, when there are also traditional and bopomo, in different combos.

I recently read a book about the chinese language, and they pointed out that one of the roadblocks to going pinyin only is that there are so few combos, and so very many homonyms that it is impossible to tell which word is meant by pinyin alone in many cases. Much like one of our lessons on first names where they say "san dian shui" Tao etc. The nonstandard letter combos in English make it much more readable: we don't mix up bred and bread, or their, they're and there when reading as they are spelled differently despite being the same phonetically.