User Comments - lechuan

Posted on: Celebrating the New Year with Visitors

The shift to Mandarin in traditionally cantonese speaking communities overseas seems to be the trend, at least according to this New York Times Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?_r=1&hp

Posted on: Executive Plan, Newbie Changes, and More

How about a introducing the concept of "seasons" to some of the levels (like JapanesePod101). This would provide a series of lessons that build upon one another (ie. each lesson assumes that the grammar/vocab in the previous lesson is learned and does not need to be explained again).

This would assist those who want more structure (ie. a newbie season 1 could create a good base foundation for new users, then they can fill in the rest with non-season newbie lessons).

One season per level would may be a good start and could possibly be considered a "ramp-up" to that level.

Posted on: Good Morning!

@seriously. After googling your email, looks like you also have an affinity for japanese, american, spanish, bulgarian, south american, polish, danish, english, thai, russian, hungarian, and ukranian ladies too! :)

Posted on: Cheering

@Asegal, Why do you say that the lesson was bad?

Posted on: All in the Family

There is no pong2 in pinyin.

the 'e' in peng sounds similar to schwa in IPA/English [ ə ]

Posted on: Chinese for Trekkies

buy' ngop! (Klingon for 'That is good!'; Literally "The plates are full")

@a1pi2: Picard is the dude that Kirk went horse-back riding with in the Nexus.

Posted on: Pinyin Section 15

@Chris, you are fortunate to have a mandarin teacher who knows how to teach the mechanics of making the basic sounds of the language. Which school was that teacher at? It took me many months until I finally learned how to make the ü sound from a french teacher.

It's quite amusing to hear my friend's say "rang4 wo3men kao3lu4" (let's roast deer) instead of "rang4 wo3men kao3lü4"(let's discuss).

Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 10: The Other Woman

@motti,

When learning a language there are many "pillars" one must develop: Reading, Listening, Writing, Grammar, Pronunciation, Writing, Vocabulary, etc.

Most students don't usually develop all pillars at the same pace.

I would think that at the intermediate level, introducing faster pace and non-standard pronunciation will help to develop the 'listening' pillar to an intermediate level. At intermediate level you'll likely want to be able to carry on conversations with other Chinese, many who won't be speaking slowly or with standard putonghua.

If this were a elementary or newbie level lesson, then I would tend to agree with you.

Posted on: Language Exchange

My impression so far is that "哪里" (or similar) is expected from native Chinese, but 谢谢 is perfectly acceptable from foreigners (as the intent is understood).

Ironically when I say "哪里, 哪里" to "Your chinese is so good" (which it isn't), then they say that my chinese is REALLY good because I knew to say "哪里, 哪里", to which I respond 哪里, 哪里 and the cycle repeats. I'm not sure if this would be seen as 'fishing for compliments' by native Chinese.

My chinese co-workers used to be impressed by my "你好". But recently, one said "yeah, but now you have to learn to understand it!". Once the element of suprise wears off, progress is expected! :)

Posted on: Lessons and Comment Policy

There wouldn't be two seperate forums, just two seperate tabs at the top of the page. I also find the drivel highly amusing and sometimes informative, but it would be nice not to have to spend time doing "weeding' when one wants to see the direct lesson related content.