User Comments - Keth

Posted on: The New Intern

迈克means Mike . What I would be interested to know is why choose these two characters to represent this sound loan word? Why not 卖课these would both be 4^th tones. Similarly with 大卫   for David . Why not 大为？For the native Chinese speaker there must presumably be a reason why one option is preferable over another option. Trying to understand why one phonetic choice is preferable over another could have implications to help beginners read unfamiliar characters. 

Posted on: "Always" Reexamined

How does 老是  laoshi fit into this usage?

Posted on: Playing Mahjong

For me , at this level , the video lesson is a definite improvement. I could follow and understand a lot more than I usually do on a first listening to an Upper lesson of John and Jenny’s  talk. Seeing your faces ,and the visual word hints as new vocab is introduced is a very good idea. I don’t know exactly why it should help, but it does seem easier  to understand the dialogue when I can see the persons face. In this respect the camera angle on Jenny was consistently good because her face was never obscured by the microphone whether in long shot or up close, however in long shot John’s mouth was often hidden, although in some close ups you could see his mouth.

In the actual dialogue , it seems less important to me to see everybody’s face when they speak, maybe because you can read the dialogue as well.

This format would certainly be something that would encourage me to work at the Upper lessons.

This is what we expect from Chinesepod language teaching innovations  and of a high quality.Well done.

Posted on: Onomatopoeias

I was very interested to hear Jenny say that she now realizes why there are so many characters in Chinese. The implication being that Chinese Characters actually convey the sound of a word, whereas we are often taught to just look for the meaning. I am currently working on an idea to help English student learn to write Chinese that emphasises more the sound characters,  along side learning  the Radicals.  So青   could be more useful to a beginner of Chinese than knowing a Radical , because it give the reader a clue as to how it might sound  . Example 晴，请，清  ，情  .

Posted on: Character Amnesia

It is interesting to hear you say this aucaman .I also tend to do this kind of thing.

Posted on: Character Amnesia

I appreciate you kind concern bodawei .I am not building up my hopes too much! I just think that maybe one day ,this could be one more way to add to all the other systems that people have suggested to try and learn to read and write Chinese characters. Some systems some people will find work well for them and other people will find the opposite is true. We all learn in different ways.

Posted on: Character Amnesia

Thanks toianw the web site looks very useful and I will explore it.

Posted on: Character Amnesia

I am very interested in looking at new ways of approaching how English students could be helped to a better understanding of reading and writing Chinese, particularly with regard to beginners.

I know that with a knowledge of the “Radicals” it is possible to look at a word and the Radical can give you a clue as to what the meaning of the word might be. What I am looking for is some kind of guide into which strokes could give you some indication of the phonetic sound of the character. If you could recognise which strokes these where , then when you saw a new character you could make an “ educated guess” about how the character should be pronounced.

Obviously Chinese is very complex and I envisage that just as in English there are many words that are not pronounced as you might expect by looking at the combination of letters. ( many exceptions to the rule ) Nevertheless, for beginners these pronunciation rules are quite helpful in guiding them along the road to fluent reading.

So that is the rough outline of my idea. Suppose we could link the Pinyin phonetics to specific “strokes” to be found with in the character, or within some characters. ( I cannot think of a word to describe these phonetic sounds. I know that 部首means Radical  but I cant find a word to describe what I mean for the phonic part of a word.)

Forinstance the word  请      晴    情  would be a good example to describe what I am looking for . Here the pronunciation is constant “qing” but the radical at the beginning gives you a clue to the different meanings.

Now suppose in  啊     for arguments sake that the 口part of the character was the “a” phonic . Then when you look at 吧   character you could guess that this word might have an “a” sound.

Presumably because Chinese is a pictogram writing system there must originally have been some stokes that gave everybody an indication of the sound as well as the meaning.

This leads me on to another point. I know that in China you have approx 53 different languages that all use the same writing system. So a Shanghainese person  will pronounce the same written word completely differently in some cases than somebody from Anhui or Beijing.

I wondered whether you knew of any comparative study of how all these Chinese languages differ from each other with regard to say those languages that are “nearest” to Mandarin pronunciation and those that are furthest away   from Mandarin pronunciation. I think this kind of study would be helpful in looking for those strokes that consistently carry the phonics of a word.

So I hope I have been able to describe my thinking clearly enough for you to grasp the concept. I know of no other person thinking in this way, so maybe that is because it is just a crazy idea! However if we could work out a table or partial  table of “Soundguides” we could use these 1. as the beginnings of learning Chinese writing. As they write so they at the same time speak the phonic. 2.Link them to radicals in specific words .They would early on in their writing be thinking about radicals for meaning of the word and looking at how these radicals can be altered depending on where they are in the character etc.

This combination of approaching beginning Chinese writing/reading , would offer distinct advantages to Western people who are often overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the  characters and by the additional problem that ( as far as I know ) the characters themselves give no indication of the all important” tones” that they should be delivered with.

Posted on: Chinese Couplets

University 对联

            付      成     

             就      就

Posted on: Chinese Couplets

How about this for a Language school 对联

可以              但愿

中                   英        

国                   国       

人                   人        

会                   会

自                   说   

己                    汉

飞                    语