ChinesePod Olympic Site

Is this Olympic site still going?

What about Shanghai Expo 2010?

We can use this site again for Shanghai 2048. ;)

Aah. Thanks, Calkins.

Lordstanley, they entered by the number of character strokes in the country's name, from least strokes to most.  As is tradition, Greece still entered first and China (host nation) entered last.

Does anyone know how the order in which countries marched into the stadium during the Opening Ceremonies was decided. It certainly wasn't English, French, German or Spanish alphabetical order. The South African commentator to whom I was listening said it was in the "order of the Chinese alphabet". Not sure what he meant by that. Wasn't Pinyin. Radicals?

Auntie68, I believe the proper term is autonomous region/自治区/自治區/ZìZhìQū.  I believe that the Olympic Committee has tried to cut down on these "special areas" (e.g. Puerto Rico and Hong Kong) and, of course, Tibet never qualified, hence its  omission.

@gesang, due to the PRC's early isolation and Hong Kong's outsized role in international commerce, Cantonese developed a similarly outsized role in defining English/Chinese transliterations.  With the reemergence of the PRC and Mandarin, it's become one of those curiosities that all language learners have to deal with.

@gesang: I had the very same question about the same thing, until the Cpod community discussed place names and how they are pronounced in Cantonese. It makes so much more sense to use 瑞, when you know it ends up being pronounced as "soei si" = Suisse... Same goes for Sweden, I believe.

@gesang: One reason why Switzerland and Sweden have the character 瑞 is that in some dialects -- eg. Cantonese --, the character is pronounced "soei". HTH.

@daizi: After reading lostinasia's comment, I realize that you had been making a joke. Sorry for being so grumpy earlier. Another minor flag error I spotted: I can't find the flag for the Kingdom of Tibet. Hope CPOD will fix that soon!

gesang,

It's because there is no "sw" initial in Chinese (see also 瑞典 Ruìdiǎn (Sweden)). 瑞 at least has the "w" sound, although they might well have used 斯威 sīwēi as they did in 斯威士兰 Sīwēishìlán (Swaziland). 

Impressed with the website! Great Job, Cpod!

Putin knows...

Putin's mighty military wouldn't stand a chance in Atlanta's traffic.

Due to Google error.. however corrected pretty quick.

It would be kind of neat to see the reaction if the flag of China on the site were the one for the Republic of China... because, after all, that USED to be the flag, even if it isn't now. Just like with Georgia. Minor mistake. (<--insert "irony" tag here)

(Daizi DID say "God forbid" with regards to the confederate flag... and actually, I thought the comment was funny, in that it was lampooning American/ western ignorance of other countries, as well as the continued respect (?!) given to the confederate banner itself. I've been wondering-in-a-despairing-way how many people around the world are getting confused about where Georgia is.)

Silver medalist Natalia Paderina of Russia (L) and bronze medalist Nino Salukvadeze of Georgia pose on the podium of the women's 10m air pistol.

Speaking of Georgia, on page one of today's NY Times sport pages, there's a story of the friendship of silver and bronze medalists (air pistol [sic]) Natalia Paderina of Russia and Nino Salukvadze of Georgia, as well as a photo of them sharing the awards podium. Take that, Putin.

Great, daizi. Minor flag error?

Thanks for standing up for CPOD. So: the capital of China is Taipei, right? I don't think the PRC found it so funny or hilarious when the names of the countries got mixed up on that horrible state visit when the US got the anthems mixed up on a state visit by a very senior China leader.

It is kind of witty that you make jokes about such things using American symbols, but who outside the US of A really thinks this is an excuse... or funny? How dare you you make light of that mistake by referring to a state flag which has a --- well -- confederate feel to it?

Great site, in spite of the minor flag error, which could certainly have been worse. Seriously. They could have used this flag:

Georgia State Flag 2003-present

Or, god forbid, this one:

Georgia State Flag proposed in 1956

Now that Georgia and Russia are virtually at war, can we at least have this stupid (STUPID STUPID SO SO STUPID) mistake fixed now? Thank you. Shame on you, CPOD.

This kind of carelessness makes me feel queasy when I think about the wonderful free coverage that CPOD gets from good papers like the NYT. Seriously. How many posts does it take to fix one serious mistake?

I don't want to jump on conclusion here but the Cpod tech-team still didn't update the flag of Georgia.

Flag of Georgia, 1990-2004

Flag of Georgia, 2004-Today

Most of the previous mistakes were corrected (apart from Iceland which is still in north America) and there's some interesting additional informations :

South America is now separated from north and central America (and Iceland)

Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong are listed

Btw, the flag of Georgia is not the actual one (sorry I forgot to mention that last month).

I am not that much of a sports fan, but this side is really useful.. to have all the country names with audio in one place is very nice!

Can anybody explain why Chinese choose 瑞士 for Switzerland?

Most of the country names seem to be phonetic translations...

But rui4 shi4 is not similar to Switzerland or Schweiz or Schwyz... in my ears...

(And not all Swiss guys are "auspicious gentlemen" ;-) ha, ha, just kidding...:-)!)

But where DOES it come from?

Got wow-ed with the site. Genio!

Here is another tiny mistake have just noticed on the Cpod Olympic page.

On the word map, you put Island (Iceland) on the American continent (color change with mouse-over) when it should be on the European continent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland

It works ok now, it was because I didn't have the latest flash plugin. :)

kimiik, thanks. Praxis, it's SIMPLY UNBELIEVABLE that Bangladesh is called "Bengal" on your "Olympics" typo-site. Shame on you. Does nobody on the Praxis staff have even the most basic kind of knowledge of Bangladesh's history? Like, maybe, the civil war? This is absolutely shocking.

After one week, the mistakes with Bangladesh and Cyprus are still there. Is it deliberate to leave false informations on this educational pages ?

I'm on a Mac running Firefox 2.0.0.1.4  and have never had a problem viewing this site.  Looks great!

I'm still having the same problems, even after upgrading to Firefox 3.

It works ok at work. So I guess there's something wrong with my browser at home.

I'm using v2.0.0.14 and I've tried both the English and Chinese versions with the same results comparing to IE.

1. The page doesn't load the first time, I have to click the banner and refresh the page for the index to come up.

2. The lesson scrollbar is missing.

3. If I click on any country on the map it just show one and a half flags with no other information.

4. If I click on an event it shows the Chinese, pinyin and audio at the top, but only 3 keywords underneath in English only with no chinese, pinyin or audio.

5. The links on the Beijing map seems to work ok but the popup boxes are blank.

I'll give it a try on my computer at work and see if I get the same results.

bazza,

What problems are you talking about? As far as I can tell, it works fine in Firefox for me (v. 2.0).

Wow. Cool ressource. You should definately put a link on the home page.

i initially had some viewing problems with the site until i upgraded to the newest flash version. click on the following to get there.

Newest Flash Player

Lost in Asia,

we definately are not placing any political meanings behind any country name errors if there are some. Ｉｌｌ　ｇｏ　ａｎｄ　ｈａｖｅ　ａ　ｌｏｏｋ　ａｔ　ｉｔ　ｔｏｄａｙ　ａｎｄ　ｓｅｅ　ｉｆ　ｉ　ｃａｎ　ｓｐｏｔ　ａｎｙ　ｍｏｒｅ．

ｆｏｒ　ｔｈｏｓｅ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｐｒｏｂｌｅｍｓ，　ｌｅｔ　ｍｅ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｓｐｅｃｉｆｉｃａｌｌｙ　ｗｈａｔ　ｙｏｕ　ａｒｅ　ｅｘｐｅｒｉａｎｃｉｎｇ　（ｏｕｔｓｉｄｅ　ｏｆ　ｓｌｏｗ　ｐｌａｙｅｒｓ）　ａｎｄ　ｉｌｌ　ｒｅｐｏｒｔ　ｉｔ　ｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｔｅｃｈ　ｄｕｄｅｓ．

For the countries list I would add a thin line between the columns.  I pressed what I thought was the play symbol for a country, and it played the one in the other column.  I was first very surprised, then I realized I had picked the wrong one.

I am very impressed.  You all have been very busy.  Now all I need is a Chinese language feed during the olympics.

Very cool. Doesn't seem to work properly in Firefox though.

The Cyprus comment made me hunt around a little... er, I believe the name of another country should be Bangladesh, not Bengal. (Half of what was once Bengal now being in India - where it's still called West Bengal.)

Those old-style-calligraphy symbols for the different sports are really cool. Very impressive design, far better than the Fuwa or whatever the mascots are called.

The Flash player set up is a little annoying. I'm so used to opening things up in new tabs now, but of course that won't work.

So "Natatorium" is the English name for a building containing a swimming pool? And all these years I thought it was just "Indoor Swimming Pool." I'd like to paste the characters in here, but I can't seem to paste them... just the pinyin, you2yong3guan3. I guess it's a sign of progress that if, two hours ago, someone had shown me the Chinese word I'd have understood it, but I'd have had no idea what the English word meant.

Just one question from me about the old world division.

Why is Cyprus (塞浦路斯) still in the large group of the Eastern countries ? I don't really mind about Turkey but actually Cyprus is in Europe.

Btw, thanks for all the vocabulary. That will be useful.

This is the skeleton of something really impressive but it takes 3-8 seconds between clicking on a sound link and the sound actually playing, which makes it feel like there is something wrong with the site. The lava lamp effect in the banner is kind of annoying too. The keywords are displaying funny for me; anyone else?

Nice site folks.  It looks like a lot of effort went into this.  I particularly like all the key words for each of the sports.  Now I need to find a way to work the "clean and jerk (挺举)" into a conversation!  The section on countries is useful irregardless of the Olympics.  Hopefully this sub-site is a sign of things to come with regards to other sub-genres of interest to the CPod community.

Are any of the CPod staff making official visits to  the Olympics?  Perhaps a Dear Amber live from Beijing.

ooh ohh I can 刺和犯規!!!

WOW WOW WOW and another WOW, there are all the lessons for the olympics, grouped aswell, then all the sports and the group words in each sport.

now I can 屈体　和　下法　yeah!!

have to click on the chinesepod olympics bit and then wow!!!!!!!

Is the site live? I went there and just displaying the title and feed link as well as the Praxis logo of the little person. If not live yet, when will be live? (Gawd.. look my Chingrish.. getting bad now.. haha..)