I guess being northeast china, having the er sound seems somewhat appropriate though it's not 儿。 Do they use 儿化 up north in Harbin like they do around Beijing?

Apparently it means a place for drying fishing nets.

I'm thinking about the American government's projects to preserve dying languages: http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/del.html. Of course, America is implictly responsible for every language in the world because we don't quite have a history of our own ^_^

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/08/2812936.htm

...looks like the govt is chipping in to try and help the preservation.

Then again, preservation efforts are in general pretty useless. What one can work actively for is usually to document the language before it goes extinct. The few preservation efforts that have succeeded have been closely coupled with strong identity politics, like Irish and Hebrew (which wasn't even preserved, but revived). In fact, my hope for Cantonese lies in the Chinese government's attempts to stamp it out triggering a backlash amongst the Kongers. There have been some action down here of late when the government suggested switching the Guangzhou TV channel from Cantonese to Mandarin. Protests broke out with demonstrators waving signs of "Down with Mandarin" and even "(have intercourse with) Mandarin". Especially in Hong Kong the Cantonese identity is pretty strong and many people still say "I'm not Chinese, I'm Hong Kongese!". I'm afraid the fate will be worse for dialects like Shanghainese. The biggest threat is probably the great influx of people moving to cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou and not bothering to learn the local language.

That's my rant for today. Cantonese learners have to say things like this once in a while. Ask anyone.

* The Singapore government is actively trying to eradicate all non-Mandarin Chinese dialects. Broadcasting in Cantonese, Hakka, Toishanese &c. is illegal and DVDs from Hong Kong have to be dubbed to Mandarin and stripped of their original audio to be legally sold. Of course, the same happens in China, but it's still legal, if discouraged, to sell Cantonese DVDs here.

"The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige."

Ring a bell?

谢谢

This guy is from northeast china: http://baike.baidu.com/view/2783.htm

He often acts in the 春节联欢晚会小品: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI4XxDHT4l0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcciy0HBOz4

"What one can work actively for is usually to document the language before it goes extinct."

..agreed. Vitally important I would say.

Right..so Singapore is even trying to legislate these dialects into nonexistence..at least there. I wonder at the thinking there, the motivations.

Then there are the 10 year old and younger crowd who only spoke a little bit that they had to to their grandparents. When I tried to talk to one of my student's grandparents, the only thing he could say in Mandarin was "爺爺". Most old people in Wenzhou don't even own TV because 看不懂。

There was this one 8 year old who was exceptionally fluent for his age range.

Then I imagined that in 80 or so years, there might be a newspaper headline that says, "Last living speaker of Wenzhouhua dies at 88."

. . . but most likely not

I've gotta interupt the viewing of this youtube clip you kindly posted to say I'm lovin' it and that I'm really taken with his Irish version of DeNiro's famous taxi driver lines. I now feel impelled to practice this in Mandarin [something I now feel has been totally lacking in my Mandarin journey]:

你跟我说话？

你跟我说话？

。。anyone got a better translation before I take myself off in front of a mirror and rip into it?

Unfortunately, many of the 儿 endings are optional, and are usually not written. A northerner is likely to add them (whether written or not), while a southerner is unlikely to. 玩儿/玩 is a good example of this. Currently, this issue creates problems for our dictation exercises, but we hope to solve it programmatically in the future. In the meantime, it's good for you to know that you don't have to write the 儿.

As for the sentence re-ordering, we added the destinations into the responses because otherwise too many of the responses are exactly the same, and it would be impossible to get them correct without a lot of luck.

"做" is usually used as a verb, means "to do/make something".

eg, 你在做什么？ 做作业，做菜，做家务，做生意

作 usually appears in words and chengyu that have abstract meanings.

eg, 作业，作文，作为，作曲

Anyway, thanks for the comment. I will keep that in mind when working on the exercises.

多谢，

高健

Can someone explain this use grammatical point and give me some good examples?

谢谢

Well, chances are they became wealthy by using Mandarin and English. Amongst many Chinese "发财" is the most important and Mandarin is the vehicle to do it. Thus they abandon their mother tongue. People who have already made it big are more likely than others to reason like this, I suspect. And I'm not sure if it's even legal to have a school that uses Cantonese as a teaching language.

In general, Cantonese has, apart from amongst the few enthusiastic supporters, a very low status. Even in Hong Kong, proper Cantonese grammar is not taught, and Cantonese writing, though it flourishes on the web, is looked down on by most. As far as I'm aware, there's a single Cantonese 词典 in existence, and it's created by foreigners on the web as a community project. Apart from comic books, there seem to be no books published in Cantonese. Even most Cantonese songs are actually written in Mandarin and just pronounced in Cantonese.

你们的意思是不是“作”不能作动词? 有动词的都要用做。"作动词"的zuo是不是用的对????

This use of 过 and 了 at the same time is suggesting a stronger meaning of the completed action. It is coupled with (the sometimes omitted) (已经) that can be put in the sentence (hence the 了 at the end). Some other examples might be.

我已经看过两次了。wǒ yǐjīng kàn guò liǎng cì le.

我吃过早饭了 wǒ chī guò zǎofàn le.

A: 你要不要看今天的报纸? nǐ yào bú yào kàn jīntiān de bàozhǐ?

B: 谢谢，我已经看过了。xièxie, wǒ yǐjīng kàn guò le.

I hope these help.

高健

ps being intermediate in Irish is very impressive I'd say.

"Zuò" hé "zuò" yǒu shénme qūbié?, Néngbùnéng shūo"zuò zuòyè"???

Xièxie

Connie:

"Zuò zuòyè" is incorrect.

"Zuò" is usually used as a verb, means "to do/make something".

eg, Nǐ zài zuò shénme? Zuòzuo yè, zuò cài, zuò jiāwù, zuòshēngyì

zuò usually appears in words and chengyu that have abstract meanings.

eg, Zuòyè, zuòwén, zuòwéi, zuòqǔ

channelǖ986:

Bùkěyǐ shūo "Zuò zuòyè" ；zuò shì yīgè dòngcí；zuò yībān chūxiàn zài dāncí zhōng, eg: Zuòwén

maloum:

Xièxie nǐmen bāngzhù.

Nǐmen de yìsi shìbùshì "Zuò" bùnéng zuò dòngcí? Yǒu dòngcí de dōu yào yòng zuò."Zuò dòngcí"dezuoshìbùshì yòng de duì????

..yeah, I can hear it clearly now with an Irish accent

Where you live, I guess you have already heard about “推普废粤” (promote PTH over Cantonese).

让胡乱推度一下"推普"的目的,

推动普通话

推动简体字

推动汉语拼音

那关于"推普" Cpod真有部优! ;o)

Subtle nuance !

I find it useful to hear on Chinesepod, as it's more information about commonly spoken Chinese outside of my area. But I also like the fact it is optional to include, because it is alien to the Chinese that I see & use in my location! So a well done to Cpod on that one I think.

My speech is definitely southern-style, but I like to add in the occasional 儿 ending, using 玩儿 or 哪儿 just to mix it up. As long as you don't go overboard, it won't stand out too much, and it's good to practice different ways of saying things.

在西安玩得怎么样？

Zài xīān wán de zěnme yàng?

The translation is "did you have fun in Xi'an".  How is this in the past tense? If I were to read that, I'd have assumed it was asking what's fun in Xi'an (like, how is the playing in Xi'an?)

You can do it for other verbs too... For example, if your friend goes to a fancy dinner, afterwards you might ask 吃得怎么样？

I have never used a pinyinizer (I didn't know that word existed until you used it yesterday) - it is amazing how intelligent these programs must be. If I am unsure I still look up each in a paper dictionary (my electronic one if I'm desperate because it is harder to see the 声调). Now I can see how this can potentially save me hours of work - last year I went through checking maybe 200 student names individually in a paper dictionary for 声调. Of course I could have asked them - this year I have started by asking students for their names, 汉字，拼音 and 声调. About 1 in 20 students say 我不知道 (in reference to 声调)，or ask their friends for help with 声调 for their own names.

by the way - I loved your contribution to the 5th birthday celebrations - I had never pictured you with soft toys!! now I just see soft toys.

I just looked at Foshan on the map - so close to that great city Guangzhou - must be constantly tempted by the bright lights.

PS. Great video work - loved it. You could hit the big time making movies here. 100 odd stations to sell your work to? And there is a market for foreigners mastering the language; many channels seem to be seeking out foreigners who can come in to a talk show, sing a song etc. Had any invites yet?

Oh, I just remembered, I had a dream about you last night! How weird. All I can remember was that I found a picture of you as a young man. Admittedly, not the best dream in the world, but hey :)

(apologies for going very off-topic to the lesson.)

Look I have plenty of weird dreams, particularly after eating cream, or steak for that matter. I will keep an eye out for you in my dreams. (Zhen's right, this is starting to get too weird.)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?

。。而且，如果恐龙玩具成为活着。。哎哟！！

*flips through a dictionary*

WHAT DOES IT MEAN???

I remember that in one of the recent podcast (a Qing Wen one I think), I heard someone saying Dei instead of Dui. Is there someone from the north east in the Chinesepod team ? :-)

The textbooks I use all have 儿 in them and I always use it in my speech and writing, but my teacher is from Beijing so I just follow her lead.

Great lesson!

More overlapping lessons? I hope this doesn't mean more lessons such as the recent Elementary "You've Been Every Where" featuring the phrase .“去过”According to Cpod's search, there are already 52 podcasts containing this phrase. How much more overlapping lessons are necessary to teach such a phrase or other repeated phrases/vocabulary?

I would suggest that if the production team is running out of Elementary phrases to feature in the Elementary lessons, then perhaps the current Elementary level should be phased out, just like the Newbie lessons, and start Elementary level II with fresher vocabulary.

Would "不要做” or "不会做" not mean, "I will not do it" as opposed to "I will not have done it"? Are these not differentiated in Chinese?

Of course, an English-speaker with no previous exposure to Pinyin won't have a whole lot of luck pronouncing syllables containing Qi or Ci, either.

It's hard to explain why not, but in Chinese, you don't usually find yourself trying to express things like "will not have done it."