User Comments - bweedin

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

開玩笑嗎？男生也有紋身啊！沒有問題

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

在溫州突然看到很多紋身的女生。

Posted on: Learning English in China

I would not say that I'm advanced by any means, but I recently jumped to another level in my Chinese ability. It first started with my friend correcting my bad pronunciation and tones that I had been saying for so long that my Chinese teacher never corrected after 4 semesters of Chinese.

Then, I realized that when my pronunciation got better, my listening comprehension also improved. I also would think in Chinese, instead of translating it in my head, and I was able to remember more vocabulary. and the cherry on top was that my reading speed in Chinese got faster.

Of course, what really did it was when I spent time in China and had to speak Chinese literally every day, at my job, at the gym, and with my friends.

oh yeah, and unlike a lot of Westerners, I actually really like Chinese music, so a lot of KTV helped me remember words, but that only goes so far as Chinese pop songs use the same words over and over again 比如說：幸福，溫柔，永遠，愛情，心， 等等

Posted on: You've been everywhere!

The youngest FLUENT speaker of Wenzhouhua, and actually preferred to converse in Wenzhouhua 的 speaker that I met was 17.

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

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Sorry to bring this conversation back from the dead, but. . .

When one of my third grade students in China wrote her name, and I didn't recognize the characters. Instead of writing pinyin, she wrote easier Chinese characters with the same sounds in parentheses.

I was just eager to provide more evidence in the case of Chinese kids not knowing pinyin very well.

Posted on: 4S Dealership

Please say it was stick-shift!

Posted on: 4S Dealership

Honestly, besides "GF" and "MP3" and maybe "OK", I haven't heard other Chinese English acronyms with great frequency.

In 浙江的溫州 young people still prefer to say 唱歌 instead of 唱k or 唱ktv to the point where if I would say "ktv" they would correct me.

Posted on: Talking Numbers

It's funny that they said that the supermarket ladies love to tell you the numbers in Shanghaihua, because I noticed that in Wenzhou, there was this one particular lady that loved to tell me the total in Wenzhouhua, even though she could speak Putonghua. I guess she figured if I learned Mandarin, it's just a short next step to speak the local dialect.

Posted on: Adjusting the Temperature

I wish I had this lesson while I was in China!

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

I sent a Chinese "friend" a text message saying that he didn't have to translate everything into English for me, and if I don't understand, it's not his fault for not speaking good enough English, but mine for not studying enough Chinese. He never called or texted me again.