User Comments - frances

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

@xiaohu - My comments were about the difference between American and Chinese social protocols and some of the things that I, as an American, have found I need to learn to adjust in my own thinking in order to work in a Chinese framework. I didn't mean that I think badly of Chinese people who speak politely by Chinese standards - only that I find it personally challenging to make the shift. With respect to the premature compliments on my Chinese ability, I still have to remind myself each time that the comment is well meant. I could not yet bring myself to tell a Chinese person saying "Hello" to me that "你英文说的很好!", even though I'm beginning to suspect that in some cases that would be the polite thing to do. I still need to wait for at least one well-constructed sentence before I feel I have the license to give compliments. Though I can see how the conversation might seem critical of China or of Chinese people, it's really just trying to bridge a gap in how the social niceties operate. I find it useful to catalogue and discuss these differences because it helps me to learn to adjust, and it's a difficult task because native speakers rarely need to think through all aspects of social ritual... it's too well ingrained.

p.s. I don't know how this whole comment ended up in bolded italics, but I can't seem to fix it.

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

It's interesting how the rules for polite conversation can differ between cultures. Chinese culture tends to put more emphasis on polite forms than does American culture, and a lot of acceptable American behaviors would (and are) considered rude when practiced in China.

The reverse is also true. A lot of polite Chinese conversation would be considered rather rude in America. Giving blatantly insincere compliments is one example. If my first "你好" is greeted with flowery compliments about the beauty and skill of my Chinese, this is at least annoying, and possibly offensive. As I haven't had time to show how well or badly I speak Chinese, the compliment cannot be honest.

Also, while modesty is valued, it's important not to sound argumentative when refusing compliments. If someone tells me I've done a good job I can claim that the credit belongs to others, or that what I have done was not as difficult as it looks. I can't simply say that I did not do a good job. That would be argumentative and tells the other person that I don't think they can tell the difference between a good job and a bad job.

If someone tells me that I speak Chinese well, I can claim that I've had great teachers, that I am not very advanced considering the amount of time I have studied, that I hope to improve further, that my Chinese is not as good as the other's English, or that I have already used most of my Chinese vocabulary and will soon show myself to be a novice speaker. Similarly, if I simply respond that I do not speak Chinese well, then I would be telling the other person that their judgment is bad. If I were speaking with a native Chinese speaker, it would be especially rude to suggest that I can judge Chinese better than they can.

Sometimes when you can't refuse a compliment without being argumentative, you must simply say "thank you", and it is understood that you appreciate the intent of the compliment without necessarily agreeing. I don't think that a response like the Chinese "哪里, 哪里" has a polite equivalent in English.

Do other English speakers agree with my characterization? Can anyone think of an English equivalent of  "哪里, 哪里" that would not sound impolite?

Posted on: On Location at the Beijing 2008 Olympics

I love that you didn't provide any translation for the final interview. It gave me the opportunity to see how much I could decipher. I'm not saying that I won't appreciate it if someone posts a complete translation... but I'll be glad that I didn't have immediate access to it.

Now that Dear Amber is being marketted to a non-Mandarin-studying audience through its very own Dear Amber podcast, I wonder what the casual China-enthusiasts who are not studying Mandarin will think of it. Maybe this is a sly way to convince them that they really should understand a little Chinese??

I, too, would have loved to be there.

Posted on: Olympics and more...

The media lessons have already been very infrequent, so I don't think we have to worry that they'll force out any other levels. I'm still looking forward to the day in the distant future when I'll be able to take advantage of the media lessons.

I do like the idea of a more even distribution of difficulties, but if their statistics show that they'll attract more users with extra newbie lessons... I don't know. I can still hope that they'll attract so many people with the extra newbies that they will be able to hire another Chinese teacher and add back in weekend lessons. I guess that's unlikely, but it would be nice. This is going to be a very difficult balance for CPod as so many users of every level would already like to see a greater emphasis on their own levels. All of the difficulties will probably be reduced noticeably.

The Cantonese will be fun.

Posted on: Olympics and more...

By my math, we're now going to have five new lessons a week and six different levels. The question as I see it is which levels will more often be the one missed in any given week. I hope we don't often see a single level getting more than one lesson a week.

Posted on: Olympics and more...

Rjberki,

I'm pretty sure he meant that the regular Mandarin lessons would be running only weekdays instead of every day. Those are the two lost shows.

Clay,

I apologize for this comment in advance. This is a slash: "/". This is a backslash: "\". The CPod Olympics site is at "chinesepod dot com slash olympics". I thought about it and decided I'm too geeky to hold my tongue, even though I know I'm being annoying. Sorry.

Posted on: The New Site and the Guided Plan

This didn't come through into my feed, either, penben. I'm still getting Qingwen traditional-character PDFs in my feed (as broken links - there aren't any actual PDFs!). I guess the feeds are still a work in progress, but I'm now getting all my lessons and related materials.

Posted on: The Double 了 (le) phenomenon

Thanks, wolson. The new edit ability creates the new possibility that the question you're answering may be gone before you finish your answer! 

Posted on: The Double 了 (le) phenomenon

In this lesson you used the words 次 ci4 and bian4 (I think the character is 遍) to mean times or occurrences. I've been wondering for a while what the difference is between these two words.

Edit: I did a search and found that this very question was addressed pretty well on a lesson last year: Newbie: Repeat After Me

P.S. The search function works really well for this type of search. I searched for the character, and found example sentences and a list of every lesson that included the character in dialogue. After clicking on a few lessons I found one where my question had already been asked and answered in conversation. It's too bad it didn't work when I searched with pinyin, though. I wasn't sure I had the right character!

Posted on: Aren't you.... （不是.... 吗）

rash- This didn't come through on my personal feed either. I finally figured out that my personal feed subscriptions had been scrambled by the move. I corrected them pretty quickly, but I still had to manually bookmark this lesson (because I was unsubscribed when it first came out), then go back to my iTunes and "Refresh" my Podcast downloads. Have you tried this?