User Comments - AuntySue
AuntySue
Posted on: Where Do You Live?
May 12, 2008 at 8:38 PMAll you need to remember is that each and every Newbie lesson is a lesson for someone who has never encountered Mandarin before, much less decided whether to learn characters (which are not taught in this course), and that as a first lesson attender their computer resources are probably lacking. Just know where you are and who the primary audience is. Then it's up to you to decide for yourself whether you are being selfish or helpful or simply executing your CPod-given rights. Your attitudes towards Newbies, the majority of CPod users, will become apparent from your actions. The more the beginning Newbies like what you do, the more they will stay and participate, or quietly vote with their feet, so you have immediate feedback if you look for it. But it's up to you as the more experienced participant to judge for yourself, because we all have different and very conflicting standards. All I can ask is that you do look, you do think, you do ponder outcomes, and you do care about those who you cannot hear.
Posted on: Roommates and What Chinese Think of Foreigners
April 18, 2008 at 8:49 AMBoran, at least we can be glad that attitudes like your teacher's could not be hereditary.
Posted on: Knitting a Scarf
April 12, 2008 at 2:41 AMWell first I was moving house, then I got sick, then moving house again, then net connection off the air for a couple of weeks, sick again, and just now my desktop computer has died so I'm using the cpod Mobile interface from my text-only server. It all has to come to an end soon, surely.
Posted on: Knitting a Scarf
April 10, 2008 at 11:11 AMWait... 我自己織的。 It is! It is! It's a miracle! Oh wow, all my mandarins have come at once. Thank you so much!
Posted on: Knitting a Scarf
April 10, 2008 at 11:06 AMIt's amazing how things change before your eyes when you have a fever. For a minute there I could have sworn this lesson title was about knitting a scarf! Oh well, maybe one day.
Posted on: Chinese Green Eggs and Ham
March 7, 2008 at 8:54 PMOh Sindy, finding a Chinese characters name for yourself is quite complex, and only a Chinese person can do it for you. It's a big subject that would need to be discussed elsewhere. As for Mandarin/Cantonese, they are different but closely related languages which use the same writing, that writing being based on meaning, not sound. I can give you an English example. Imagine a woman called Lottie Grant. In England she will be called something sounding like Lottie Grahnt, while in the USA she will be pronounced Lahdie Grent, or at least that's what it sounds like to me. You often get changes like that (or more complete differences) between each of the languages that use the same Chinese characters, e.g. Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hokkien,...
Posted on: The Fourth Tone
March 7, 2008 at 1:37 PMGoing back to an earlier comment, I'm trying to work out how on earth the second and third tones can sound similar. The second tone starts just ABOVE the middle and goes UP. The third tone starts DOWN BELOW the middle and keeps on going DOWN to rock bottom, then hovers there and kicks up a bit at the end. They are in two different parts of the voice range. One starts high and one starts low. They glide in different directions from their starting point. One is a simple glide and one is a complex double glide. They're as alike as koalas and sharks. Have I got this wrong, or do those differences really scream out a lot less to other people?
Posted on: Chinese Green Eggs and Ham
March 7, 2008 at 12:42 PMActually, some of us don't have much say over our names. I seem to have acquired, with no input or feedback from myself, a Cantonese name that is pronounced, exactly, "arsehole". Not a very flattering name, but I'm getting used to it. You see, it comes from my name Sue being transliterated into a Cantonese character pronounced sou, and then any single syllable name in Cantonese must have an "ah" added to the beginning, so there we have it, "ah-sou" which sounds identical to the Aussie "arsehole". Until my Cantonese becomes substantially better, I have no way to explain why this name is problematic (I've tried), and by then, hey, I'll be used to answering to the name. Perhaps names aren't so important after all, it's only important how they are used.
Posted on: Buying a Newspaper
March 6, 2008 at 1:38 PMBazza, surely they are published in the major cities, or at least London? We have gazillions of them here, national and dailies for each state. Our local (small city) newsagents don't keep them but are very happy to get them in from Sydney if there's a buyer. Oh, look! One of the newspapers we have here seems to have a European version(s), with offices in London. http://www.singtao.com/singtao_europe/contact.shtml
Posted on: Welcome to ChinesePod
May 15, 2008 at 8:54 AMWelcome, and thank you, gilloustyle. It's always exciting to have new members join our conversations, and you'll have plenty of topics to choose from! Chat with you later.