User Comments - mikeinewshot

Posted on: Hurry Up and Clean Your Room

I see the translation has now been corrected but no acknowledgement forthcoming

Posted on: Ivory Tower

Interesting - Vera - thank you for your reply.

To better understand where I was going wrong, I have used the Praat program suggested by John Pasden on Sinosplice http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/01/21/seeing-the-tones-of-mandarin-chinese-with-praat to analyse the sound profiles of three of the vocabulary items in this lesson: 经典 (first then third) 销毁 (first then third) and 黑市 (first then fourth).

This shows that there is a difference in the graphs for 典 and 毁. Whereas the graph for 典 goes down and levels out (with a hint of an up at the end), the graph for 毁 finishes before any leveling out (interestingly the graph shows a slight initial rise before going down). The graph for 市 indeed just falls as expected.

The difference between the graphs for 毁 and 市 is that the latter starts higher up, actually a little higher than the end of the first tone. The graph for 毁 starts at a mid level.

I therefore conclude that I was focusing on the falling tone of 毁 and thinking it sounded like a fourth tone. However it would appear that a native speaker more readily hears that it starts too low for a fourth tone, and is not distracted by the fact that it descends without leveling or rising at the end.

Posted on: Hard Drive Storage

Having seen these comments I listened to the dialogue for the first time.

If you think this woman's voice is annoying,... I have heard far worse than this!

There is for example the '撒娇 phenomenon', which Chinese girls seem to think is attractive, but which to me (being Western) makes me cringe!

Posted on: Ivory Tower

Or is it that the final 毁 is being pronounced more like a neutral tone?

Posted on: Ivory Tower

There have been some comments elsewhere by users querying the pronunciation of a few of the vocabulary items.

In this podcast I must say that I seem to be hearing some of the final third tones more like fourth tones.  For example 销毁 sounds more like xiao1hui4 than xiao1hui3. 

Now I totally accept that my tonal recognition is not expert being a Westerner but I was taught that a third tone should have a bounce up at the end when it is terminal.

Please can native speakers tell me whether I am hearing wrongly or not?  Thank you

Posted on: The Paper Chase

In my experience it's the Chinese women who won't let the men anywhere near the kitchen

Posted on: Time for an Update

Sadly I have to agree with you on the pronunciation of 功能. The rest seems ok to me though.

Posted on: Her Mom Doesn't Like Me

Here is a video of the show and the song (you have to get through the adverts first).

http://v.qq.com/page/g/n/0/g0013zwq5n0.html

It looks like the same franchise/format as the UK show "The Voice" at first sight.

Posted on: Hurry Up and Clean Your Room

I find it amusing how many mistakes of this sort we are finding in the translations recently. Often personal pronouns are omitted in Chinese which might explain some errors of this sort, but in this case the pronouns are there, and still we have it translated wrongly. I am reminded the suggestion made elsewhere in a slightly different context that the 'modern' way to develop is to put it out there and let the users correct it!

Posted on: Participating in a Marathon

Nice to see you back.