User Comments - daixiong
daixiong
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 26, 2008 at 8:40 AMShowing how much I'm addicted to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Mandarin I heard, or read, most of these terms while living in Taipei. There are a huge number of characters that are pronounced with different tones (a real pain for tone-deaf me who still finds mandarin tones difficult, despite being able to read newspapers with no trouble, and novels very slowly) and a smaller number of vocabulary items that are different across the straits eg 原居民 (台灣) vs 土著人（大陆）, sort of like indigenous/aborigine vs native/tribesman - I do find Taiwanese translations to be generally more PC I would find it irritating when Taiwanese would 'correct' my Mandarin if I was using standard pronunciation instead of 台灣國語發音, but it wouldn't happen that often, most know that the way they speak is not in line with either the PRC or ROC goverment's 'standard'. It is interesting how they mix mandarin, taiwanese, japanese and english terms. Now that I've started learning Japanese, I'm considering living in Japan for a while. I might drop by Taiwan for a couple of months on the way from Australia, see how much Japanese I can use there - I had more Japanese friends in Taipei than locals.
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 26, 2008 at 8:22 AMIf I need to find the chinese translation of obscure terms that don't appear in your average dictionary, or any online one (like www.mandarintools.com or tw.dictionary.yahoo.com), then I normally try finding the english Wikipedia article and seeing if it has a Chinese version. Result: кири́ллица = 西里尔字母 http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A5%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B0%94%E5%AD%97%E6%AF%8D PS Back when I was studying Russian I also found this. Useful for reading Russian texts on Sino-Soviet/Russian relations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillization_of_Chinese_from_Pinyin
Posted on: 澳洲总理秀中文
April 15, 2008 at 5:30 PM哎哟, I don't know if that made sense. During the Howard years, I loathed our government and had no sense of Australian identity beyond shame. Yet I couldn't support the Labor Party because of their corruption and factional in-fighting, so I went even more left-wing and voted Green. It was only when Rudd and Gilliard (吉拉德）took over the Labor leadership that I began to hope, and only when they had such a landslide victory over the stinking Liberals and apologised to the Stolen Generations (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_generations) that I began to feel proud of being Australian.
Posted on: 澳洲总理秀中文
April 15, 2008 at 5:23 PM可能应写：*内党有太多腐败及小派系斗争的争议
Posted on: 澳洲总理秀中文
April 15, 2008 at 5:21 PM我这十年来非常不认同澳洲，憎恨我们的自由党及前总理何华德（Howard），但当时我不会支持工党，因为内党有太多腐败与斗争的争议事件，因此我更偏左而支持了绿党。陆克文当工党领袖之后，我才开始信任工党，反而，他向澳洲原居民道歉是我十年来首次为澳洲认同而自豪。
Posted on: Train to Beijing
April 15, 2008 at 5:09 PMWhen I do eventually go back to China I'll want to do a lot of travel, so I guess there'll be some rail trips in there, but I hope to have friends with me next time.
Posted on: Train to Beijing
April 15, 2008 at 5:08 PMYou can't beat the Chinese Trans-Mongolian 6 day train trip, which I loved (went 软卧, which on that train means two person compartments, with every two adjoining ones sharing a low-pressure shower) but my one experience of LONG distance train travel within China wasn't great, but bearable I suppose. 北京-昆明, 硬卧（下铺）something like 46 hours. I'd tried to buy 软卧, but even though I got to Beijing train station at 10am of the day they opened sales, that was still to late, all bought up by scalpers and travel agents. As described by others, getting onto the train was a bit of a battle, with much use of elbows and suitcase edges required. While I tried to chat with some Chinese travellers, my Chinese then was no where near as good as it is now, so pretty basic stuff. One BIG disadvantage (to me) of hard sleeper is that their are no compartments, its all open to the corridor, so you can hear people chatting, singing or yelling through the night, and choke on their cigarette smoke as well. The toilets were pretty nasty, I still don't have flexible enough legs to make handling a 蹲厕 anything less than a nightmare experience. I don't think I slept much at all the entire trip. Got into Kunming, was luckily met by someone from 云师大 and crashed at their student hostel. All the travel I did in China after that was by plane (they discount some flights so much it's sometimes as cheap as rail) and a couple of times by bus (though no sleepers, I never dared)
Posted on: Choosing a Chinese Name and Safety
March 9, 2008 at 4:46 PMAnother thing, I was trying to find a name that would be written the same in traditional and simplied characters. At one point I was trying to make a name that would sound natural and native in both Chinese and Japanese, which I've started to learn, but I think that's just too hard.
Posted on: Choosing a Chinese Name and Safety
March 9, 2008 at 4:39 PMhmm... 人必须有恒心，才能当语言师傅 .. better.
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 26, 2008 at 8:46 AMRambling again - I'm sure I had a more important point to make. Ah yes - I think it's best to try for a relatively neutral, clear, standard accent like Jenny, and not pick up ANY regional accent, even Beijing. If you have a southern accent with no 卷舌音 (zh, sh, ch as z, c, s) then you'll be laughed at in the north, but if you use too strongly accented a 卷舌音, and lots of 儿, then you'll be laughed at in the south. Neutral is best.