User Comments - helenhelen
helenhelen
Posted on: Guilin Mifen
April 15, 2009, 12:21 AMExcellent video :) educational and appetizing.
Are cooking shows popular in China?
Posted on: Early January News
January 04, 2009, 01:56 PMThere was a Chinese pop song a while ago to the same tune as 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'. Weird, but why not, I suppose. I forget the name though.
Posted on: The Person Component
December 27, 2008, 02:54 PMRadical trivia; in some traditional fonts, the flesh and moon radicals are distinguished by the 'bars', which are parallel for moon and close in to the right for flesh.
Posted on: The Person Component
December 20, 2008, 03:03 PM( Heisig has put the first few chapter of Remembering the Kanji online for your free-of-charge perusal. http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_1.htm , link at the bottom of the page. It makes fairly radical reading. )
Posted on: The Person Component
December 17, 2008, 07:24 PMI'm fond of the Cpod humour. It get's you to respond to the lesson, making it feel relevant to you. I think the reason this one fell flat is because the humour doesn't tie in tight enough to the lesson content, it seems just a bit gratuitous.
I also like animated characters, but the chunky fonts generally used, though nice visually for recalling the character, don't resemble anything you can actually acheive with a biro. The balance (want of a better word) of the characters is also very different to any penned Chinese I've ever seen. It would be good to see some nice slow 'animated handwriting', without a hand in the way.
Posted on: 你好 (Nǐhǎo) is a Many-Splendored Thing
December 14, 2008, 10:54 PMI was told that 'ni hao ma?' is sometimes used, but only to show actual concern, so more like saying 'Is something wrong?'. Is this right, or is there a proper way to say this?
Another question; is it usual for xiaopengyou to address their parents as 'nin'?
Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod
September 04, 2008, 09:02 PMI don't think it's that uncommon to study two languages, especially two related languages like French and Spanish.
Will the language of instruction of Englishpod be Chinese? If so, maybe subscribers to Englishpod could be given free Chinesepod access, and vice versa?
Posted on: Changes on ChinesePod
September 02, 2008, 08:26 PMI'm happy to pay, but sexier subscription options would be nice. I like the premium features, and I upgrade when I'm going to have the time to use them, as it means I can tackle more difficult lessons. But this isn't most of the time, it's a month every so many months. My ideal learning on the run subscription would include the dialogues and fixes, as well as the podcasts and transcripts. I don't need to be at the computer to use these, so they'd mean more effective study but not significantly more time-consuming study. Would this make sense for anyone else?
Posted on: Taking the HSK
July 04, 2008, 07:26 PMI think the standards used to be similar. I can see why they had to make it easier though; Chinese simply wasn't being taught as a foreing language in schools here. Untill recently the GCSE was taken almost exclusively by native speakers (and the pertaining literature was written with this in mind, making it totally inaccessible). The current course (as of 2000 + something) can comfortably be taught from scratch in 3 years, even by a relatively inexperienced teacher. Hopefully as Chinese becomes better established as a subject here the standards will go up..
Posted on: The Jenny Zhu Show
August 31, 2009, 02:33 PMHow about a lesson on learning to drive? Or general road safety?