User Comments - xiaohu
xiaohu
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 27, 2007 at 3:07 AMClarence, I don't know why you're taking such a negative stance here. Sure don't learn how to read chinese through 2nd year 3rd year learners postings they are certain to be full of mistakes, but the lessons are full of perfect text with wonderful variety for you to follow. They also have the podcasts and the dialogues to help you learn proper pronounciation, all of which were recorded by Chinese people who grew up in the environment and you can be sure if you follow their pronounciation before you know it you'll be sounding like a native Chinese, AND YOU'LL BE UNDERSTOOD ON THE STREET, GUARANTEED! Please don't turn a blind eye to all the great things Chinese Pod has to offer, and by the same token don't use our postings on the message boards as your primary method of study.
Posted on: She's Easy
June 27, 2007 at 1:25 AMJust so I could be clear, I asked my wife and her friends and some of my other Chinese friends about the usage of, "随便”when talking about a person. They all agreed it is not necessarily a "strong and even insulting" statement, it depends on the context. Also they said it's not so cut and dried as to say, “随便”has a negative connotation and “随和”means easy going. They said in a lot of cases “随便，”and “随和”are interchangable. My wife and her friends are from 沈阳，perhaps 东北人，and people from other parts of China have different viewpoints about the connotation of these phrases? Doesn't "随便" in alot of cases just refer to someone who's not too picky, very easy to please / get along with? Maybe even a "随波逐流的人" can be called, "随便"？
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 27, 2007 at 12:56 AMOne could say that I leaned Chinese out of the "environment", my first 2 years experience in the language was when I was living in an area with no Chinese people to communicate with, just using CD & CD rom training courses as well as studying with my private tutor, using Pinyin to study Chinese. In fact the first book I used to study my Chinese was called, “汉语拼音学中文”. I've never had a problem being understood by the Chinese people. I've had wonderful, long conversations with the Chinese and no one has said anything about my tones not sounding right. Now one of my friends has said she thinks I don't sound 100% natural, she said I sound too much like a newscaster because my pronounciation and tones are TOO standard “太标准了”. Just because I'm always striving to pronounce the tone so perfectly, a Chinese speaker might not say the 1st tone in the extreme high voice, the 2nd tone rising up to VERY HIGH, etc, they might say the 1st tone in a flat but more like MID VOICE range, and the 2nd tone might not really rise all THAT HIGH. However there is no barrier to my being understood, it just doesn't sound perfectly natural, it might sound like having a conversation with a DJ instead of having a conversation with a friend. Also there are Mandarin speakers from every part of China who's native dialect's tonal structure might be VERY DIFFERENT from that of standard Mandarin and their tones are, REALLY not all that perfect, yet I understand what they are saying perfectly well. Am I still missing the point of what your saying? I'm having a hard time understanding how someone could say to a Chinese person, “很高兴认识你”, EVEN WITH A HEAVY ACCENT and imperfect tones and not be understood. For example: I have a friend who is married to a Chinese girl from Beijing, he doesn't really care to be fluent in Chinese, just that he can say a few things to get by. HE NEVER USES THE TONES, AND HIS PRONOUNIATION IS TERRIBLE and the Chinese people don't have a problem understading what he says...even when he says, (in his harsh American accent), "Wu bu don" (mind you he always forgets to put the "NG" on the end of DONG), and the Chinese people still know what he's saying, and I'm referring to Chinese peole who grew up in the environment, I'm not talking about ABC's.
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 26, 2007 at 4:56 AMI don't know, I've heard a wide range of tone mastery in the area I live in there are a lot of people from Canton and their tone mastery is not so perfect. But I've never been in an environment that I couldn' t understand what a Chinese person is saying because the tones are spoken so poorly as to become indistinguishable. Is it possible that he was just plain using the wrong tones? In other words his first tone was really fourth, his second a third? That seems to be a very common problem for foreigners who learn Chinese. Also I don't know what you mean by, "learning Chinese from Pinyin as opposed to Bopomofo", whether you learn Mandarin in an environment utilizing Pinyin or Zhuyin it's basically the same thing. You said, "if a person is concscious of the tones while speaking, chances are good that he doesn't have the proper version of the tones and learned them outside the environment", here again I'm not sure what you mean. You reapeadedly keep saying, "the proper version" of the tones. It seems to me that we all learn the same version of the tones. EG: 1st tone is a high flat tone, 2nd one rising tone from low to high...pretty simple. Maybe the problem is not with this Law Professor's mastery of the individual tones, but it's that when he speaks the tones strung together in sentences that's where his weakness is revealed.
Posted on: 一见钟情
June 26, 2007 at 1:57 AMChrisMandarinStudent: 不要担心你第一次写的文章含有一些的很小的错误，你也不必来跟我们说一些对不起的话！ 你的那篇文章写得很好，而且我完全能看得懂！ 我觉得你可以说，“爱人”，这个词语， 而这个词不是那么古老的！ 你的老婆是中国人吗？
Posted on: Studying Japanese
June 25, 2007 at 8:49 PMUser36502 If you try EVEN A LITTLE BIT, the enthusiastic results from the Chinese people will be amazing! Chinese people are so impressed if you can speak even a few highly accented words in their language. Chinese people here in Los Angeles are excited when you speak with them but when your in China you will be met with double the enthusiasm. Actually you probably don't have to say much for the conversation to move to a question about why your studying Chinese. Usually my conversation with the Cabdrivers in Beijing went something like this, Me: ”你好“ Cabby: "你会说中文吗？" Me: "会" Cabby: "你的中文学的多久了？" Me: "学的四年多了" Cabby: "你为什么要学中文呢" And there's your in! After just a few phrases you can impress the locals with your amazing language skills especially if you talk about Chinese being so, “优美动听的”which I'm sure they would appreciate.
Posted on: She's Easy
June 25, 2007 at 6:17 AMI think we can probably translate, 小白脸（小白脸儿）as Gigolo, being that it's describing a young man who is handsome (with a white face which in ancient Chinese and also current Chinese culture is considered to be very beautiful), who plays around with (usually older women) and uses women for their money. I guess you could say this is a kind of Gigolo. The text of the lesson says the meaning of 血拼is to go on a shopping spree. In my mind this is different from just expressing the meaning of, "shopping". Maybe this would be a suitable topic for a "Qing Wen" lesson. What's the difference between, 血拼，and 买东西？
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 25, 2007 at 5:59 AMFor me the tones are no problem, maybe because I have a background in acting (which includes a lot of mimicry and study to get regional accents correct) and public speaking, so the Chinese people I talk to, when they first hear me speak Chinese, the first thing out of their mouth is, “哦我的妈呀！ 你会说中文吗? 你的老师很好啊” My personal Achilles Heel is, and probably always will be listening comprehension. I am so absorbed in making sure every nuance of my spoken Chinese is absolutely perfect that it leaves much less room for rapidly learning vocabulary. I'd say that after 4 1/2 years studying this language, my vocabulary is greatly underdeveloped, and maybe equal to someone with 2 years less experience. That's why I'm glad there are cool resources like Chinese Pod out there. My first Chinese teacher, a professor from Beijing has another private student, an older lady (now 75 years old) who is in love with the art and culture of China. However being she is not as young as she used to be, in the 9 or so years she's been studying Chinese has never gotten beyond the point of being able to say the most rudimentary phrases, like, “你好不好，你吃饭了吗，你叫什么名字？” These phrases however are usually spoken either without tones or with the WRONG tones, and frequently the Chinese people don't understand what she's saying. One time she tried to say to me, “小心开车”but it came out more like, "小心开吃" I guess you can somewhat gauge your own level if after saying a few phrases the Chinese people want to continue a conversation with you in Chinese or always try to bring you back to speaking English.
Posted on: 80后-希望还是迷失
June 25, 2007 at 5:07 AMJenny, 我觉得，“奇客”这个词比科技呆子好一点，因为，“科技呆子”这个词根本就带上，傻瓜一样的意思，然而， “奇客”这个词呢不仅带上，Geek 的原来的意思，（就暗示一个神奇的人的意思），而且，译音很像，英文的 Geek，似的。 一般来说，我不喜欢从英文声音音译过来的词，不过还有一些例外。 比如，“可口可乐”， （Coca Cola). Jenny, 你自己比较喜欢哪一个词，“奇客”还是， “科技呆子”？ 但是我还不清楚, Jenny, 你为什么要把，“科技呆子”代替，“奇客” 呢？
Posted on: She's Easy
June 27, 2007 at 5:56 AMUser 32047, You probably can't understand my first post on this board since it's all in Chinese, but to paraphrase it says I'm glad to see Chinese Pod has opened a forum that allows us to comment on some of the more negative aspects of society, because no other language learing forum I've seen has ever brought up a subject considered to be even SLIGHTLY risque'. However, that being said I do think that to open up a topic on prostitution would be going slightly too far, maybe pushing the envelope a bit much. To speak frankly, it's one thing to have a topic talking about some gold-digging ho's, but it's quite another to have a whole lesson completely dedicated to REAL ho's!