User Comments - changye

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Hi bodawei,

You are saying that the Chinese fourth graders in the class still can't write Hanyu pinyin well. Am I right?

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Just for the record, Vietnamese, which had long been written only in Hanzi, was completely romanized after World War II.

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Hi bodawei

As far as pronunciation is concerned, Hanyu Pinyin does a good job as phonetic symbols, provided that you master the rules of pronunciations for Hanyu Pinyin.

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Hi simon

I happened to come across an explanation about Dungan dialect in a book I read last night. Here is an example sentence written in the Latin alphabet, which was transcribed from its Cyrillic version.

Dungan : Ho ma jitjan nyn zu jibyj kilometer.

Hanyu Pinyin: Hao ma yitian neng zou yibai kilo (gongli)

Mandarin: 好马一天能走一百公里.

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

我小时候女生一般不喜欢戴眼镜，可是在我看来当代年轻人对戴眼镜女生的看法和过去不一样。眼镜并不挡住你的美丽，恰恰相反，戴一款适合你的眼镜会让你显得既时尚又聪明。

一个最典型的例子就是美国女副总统候选人“沙拉佩林”(Sarah Palin)。佩林女士戴的一个日本制造的眼镜架把本来不太聪明的女人变成一个看起来很聪明的女人，效果挺不错的！

Posted on: The Left-handed Child

日本有一部经典棒球动漫叫《巨人之星》，其中男主人公“星飞雄马”本来就是个右撇子，但是他爸爸把儿子的右撇子改成左撇子，强迫飞雄马用左手投球，因为左撇子有利于棒球投手。

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

我的眼睛视力很差，可能是我从小就爱看动漫爱读书的缘故吧。我看远处当然看不清，岁数大了小字也越来越看不清了，不过很奇怪，我看美女总是看得清清楚楚。这到底是为什么呢？

Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin

Hi waiguoren

Fortunately (for most of us), even Mao Zedong didn't dare employ Cyrillic alphabets for Hanyu Pinyin, despite an amicable relationship between China and Soviet in the early 1950's. For the record, Cyrillic alphabets are officially used in Mongolia People's Republic today, because of influence of Soviet, which helped Mongolia become independent from China in 1924.

Incidentally, have you ever read "Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang, who is the author of "Wild Swans".

Posted on: Minor Changes, Virtual School, and a Lefty in the Studio

Chinese and Japanese students are just busy memorizing Chinese characters, and have (almost) no time to learn how to write them beautifully.

Students learn calligraphy at school, but it's not so important for them. After all, "beautiful handwriting" has nothing to do with scores in entrance exams.

> are Japanese children allowed to write with their left hand?

It varies from teacher to teacher, but I guess that most teachers of today take an attitude of "let it be", probably because they're afraid of being called "racist", hehe.

Posted on: Minor Changes, Virtual School, and a Lefty in the Studio

I hear that left-handed people have some disadvantages in brush calligraphy. Right or left, I'm very poor at writing characters.......