User Comments - chris

Posted on: How was your flight?

Baba, yes, I sincerely hope so. I kind of hope that even if my fluency improves more and more, I'll still get given the benefit of the doubt for any dropped tones, faux pas, etc. I'm always ready to play the laowai-card if I need to....

Posted on: How was your flight?

I think most Chinese would make allowances for foreigners who continuously say thank you over here and would not read too much more into any deeper meanings we may or may not be trying to convey. Most of the time I just get the obligatory "bu keqi" or "bu yong xie" response every time I say thank you, no matter what the situation. I think that sometimes it is very useful to be obviously not Chinese when speaking the language with locals, particularly if we commit one of the many faux pas, e.g. getting a tone wrong and completely changing the meaning of a word, possibly accidentally hitting a swear-word. I certainly sense I get cut quite a bit of slack in this regard. However, the downside of course is that it probably hinders me getting properly authentic if my interloculators are forever having to make allowances!

Posted on: Fun at the Beach

I just get a retort of "cut the BS" from the other half when I try this line of sweet talking... clearly, I'm never saying it convincingly enough.

Posted on: Daddy Changes a Diaper

Zhen, in my experience the mum herself, in a third-person, very sarcastic, mock-hurt manner ;-)

Posted on: Daddy Changes a Diaper

I took it to mean a son going through adolescence who feels a bit awkward/embarassed to still be hugged by his mum. Guess it depends a lot about the personality of the individual and the family. I certainly went through this phase!

Posted on: Please Speak Chinese

Interesting thread. I think there is a 'percentage game' played in these situations sometimes based on one's physical appearance. To illustrate my point, the vast majority of times when I strike up conversations with strangers here in Shanghai, I get the question "are you American?" (strangely rather more than the more general question of what country are you from). I'm actually English, but can't say I ever get offended by it since, statistically speaking I would assume America make up the biggest national share of all the world's caucasians. Now, I never know what word to use to avoid offending people, be it 'race', 'ethnicity', 'appearance' or whatever, But there will always be a statistically more accurate assumption to make of somebody's nationality based on their appearance since of the entire population of people in the world with similar appearance, there will mathematically always be one country representing the highest share of the total population (unless of course a dead heat). Whether or not such assumption actually offends the person concerned is an entirely different matter!

Posted on: A Magazine Subscription

My word baba, i just logged on and yours is the only avatar i can see on my dashboard's conversations section with just a solitary appearance from changye breaking it up! some frenetic blogging tonight :-)

Posted on: Buying Sandals

上海天气这么闷热的时候让我的脚凉快！

Shànghǎi tiānqì zhème mēnrè de shíhou, ràng wǒ de jiǎo liángkuai

When Shanghai weather is so humid and sticky, they help keep my feet cool!

(not sure if the Chinese is correct, but you get my drift!). The less straps, the cooler my feet.

Posted on: Buying Sandals

Ah, the first few days of summer flip-flop wearing......be prepared for very sore calf-muscles and achilles tendons until they get used to that odd walking action again! Reminds me, I must invest in some sandals with heel-straps this year.

Posted on: Beards Are for Old Men

hi go manly. Yes, I've started using nckiu more and more recently, specifically for the sample sentences. Sites like mdbg and other dictionary sites are great for vocab, but they lack the example sentences which is where nckiu excels. I assume the sample sentences on nckiu are grammatically correct, since I understand it is basically a user-generated site like wikipedia, etc and users are not necessarily experts.