User Comments - sydcarten

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

goody

谢谢你!

Posted on: Mother's Day

Mother's Day is big in Indonesia too, at least in the bigger cities like Jakarta, Bandung and Jogjakarta

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

I have a request for Shanghainese content.

Can we have the cardinal numbers, at least 1-10 please?

Posted on: Calling People Names

vocabulary related to negative comments about people, or abuse, is always fun to learn of course

but I don't think it's a good place to start when learning a new language or dialect.

maybe it's useful to know when someone is abusing you, and thinking you won't understand

but it's probably better if a learner holds off using such words themselves until they become a lot more experienced in the language

Posted on: Talking to the Neighbors

woohoo... !

I've been waiting for the next one.

Posted on: Funny Business

I found the recording level on the dialogue to be very poor

so much so, that I used audio editing software to improve it

Posted on: I Have Class

This americanism is new to me, and seems ambiguous.

If I were to say "I have class", it would mean that I thought I was a classy guy - not something you're supposed to say about yourself!

Posted on: Calling People Names1

This seems to be a failed first attempt to post the following lesson:
Shanghainese - Calling People Names.

The files in this version do not download.

Maybe it would be would be a good idea to remove this version, so people don't get confused

Posted on: You Sing Terribly!

I remember reading that English vocab is more than 70% Latin, either directly, or indirectly thru Norman French, Italian, Spanish etc.

The thing about the Anglo-Saxon words is that they are the most common in the English language, they are pretty central and important.

If you look at dialects of English, you will find that Scandinavian loan words in the north command a somewhat larger percentage of the vocab.

PS. The most common English words of Scandinavian origin are: They, Their, Them

Posted on: You Sing Terribly!

Describing the fusion of anglo-saxon with vocab from other languages as 'bastardisation' is a very negative and prejudicial term.

I prefer to see it as enrichment.

Being able to select a word of germanic origin, or a synonym of french, latin, greek etc origin gives us a much greater subtlety of nuance which is not available in some other languages