User Comments - xiaohahaha
xiaohahaha
Posted on: Booking a Plane Ticket
June 5, 2007 at 10:24 PMegads! there is a forum, but I doubt if I want to go there! there must be a million posts there, I don't have time for that. Actually, I don't have time for the comments either. My plan is to become fluent in a couple of months. Already I found 250 new words that I memorized from the newbie's. I found another 100 words from the elementary section. I already knew at least 1000 words - one or more chinese characters/word. Next is to scan the Intermediate section. This way when I listen in my car to the mp3 files, I can recognize the words I know, which reinforces these words making it harder to forget!!! I listen to chinese radio to guage the % I can recognize which is about 50%, I read Taiwan news - already I recognize 90%. I noticed that already the conversation I had with my hair dresser, a lot of words I heard on Cpod, already became part of my vocabulary. She said that I should ask my teacher a couple of words, but I don't trust her!! I think she is trying to get me into trouble. She really has a sense of humor and a pleasure to get my haircut from her, but she said something that I heard Ken & Jenny talking about. Ken used the wrong tone, but Jenny corrected Ken;. Now I don't know what Ken meant, but I know what Jenny said it sounded like!!!
Posted on: 连锁咖啡店
June 4, 2007 at 3:04 AModadrek and Lantian. well the classes are over now until the fall anyways. That teacher's intention was good. She put a heavy emphasis on conversation at the expense of chinese characters. Nobody in that class was interested in characters either. My major concern was that what I was hearing in class also wouldn't necessarily be the correct tones. I know from experience every week that I'm still having trouble being understood on the street by real chinese. I'm getting better though. I use "wo hen gao xing ren shi ni" as a guage to see if I'm improving or not. A couple of months ago, it took several tries, plus an explanation in english before I was understood. Just last week I tried it again with a lady that I met for the first time. It only took me 2 tries in chinese. I didn't have to explain it in english. Ofcourse I warned her that nobody understands me, so she prepared all her senses, eyes, ears and whateve else women use. But she got it!!!
Posted on: Booking a Plane Ticket
June 4, 2007 at 1:53 AMI suppose I'm a major contributor of off subject posts. In a lot of cases these topics can spin off to something else. I don't even know where the forum is, but I doubt that I would go anywhere but here!! To strictly adhere to topic only would really make for a boring place. There appears to be a way to remove a post. I recently responded to a post, but then that post disapeared, leaving me responding to a ghost like post! This is a good example of a spin off type of post!
Posted on: 连锁咖啡店
June 3, 2007 at 3:47 AM我有一个问题。 I was thinking of compiling all the comments that people post in characters here. This way I should be able to learn how to say things in chinese. At least the way others are saying things. I suppose since everybody is a chinese student here, I could be learning bad chinese? Recently I attended another chinese class. I was assured it was and advanced class, but I soon found that wasn’t the case. Everybody in the class seemed to be learning from each other rather than by example from the teacher. The problem was that to stimulate conversation, we were encouraged to talk to each other in Chinese. At first glance, this should be an excellent way to practice conversation. I noticed that everybody was saying what sounded like ‘shay’ for the word ‘xue’ ( 学 ). What must have happened, one person said it that way, and everybody else learned to say it that way. I asked the teacher how that could happen. She said that some aren’t able to say some words correctly, so she doesn’t want to make them feel bad by correcting them continually. I dropped out of that class, since my listening ability to detect proper chinese is in a delicate stage. I don’t need to pick up bad chinese, especially in a classroom!!!! I suppose I risk a similar situation here? by learning bad writing habits?
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 2, 2007 at 3:27 AMAnd so for now, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. There was also a chinese girl from Thailand in my class. I always like to impress girls with my chinese ability, but she said to me, you've been studying for how many years? For 10 years? I had the feeling that I didn't impress her very much! I just have to learn to adjust the number of years that I have been trying to learn, to the situation. So if it's a chinese girl, then maybe a couple of years would be ok.
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 2, 2007 at 3:15 AMuser13977 Actually I meant it's impossible for Americans to speak Chinese - unless the environment is Chinese!!! People in China learn the tones for at least 6 years before they learn pinyin! That's the problem. If you are in LA, you are probably in a chinese environment. I often go to LA - Monterrey Park which as you must know is a Chinese city. I go there just to get totally immersed in Chinese. At the moment Chinese is just for fun, because I would starve if my income depended on it!! There was a girl from Singapore in my chinese class. She was able to speak chinese to a certain extent, but she wanted to learn pinyin. She had a really hard time relating the chinese sounds to pinyin, in fact it was almost impossible for her. And that's the way it must be, there should be no natural relationship between pinyin and the sounds of chinese!!!! With Chinesepod, there is a chance to correct this, at least this is my hope! But it takes a lot of listening.
Posted on: Playing the Stock Market
June 1, 2007 at 3:48 AMThere is one sure bet in China today. There is immense world pressure to get China to increase the value of their Yuan. I don’t know if it’s possible to buy Yuan outside of China, but the value will never go down, it’s all but guaranteed to rise, ofcourse that could take a long time. It’s doubtful that China would do anything hasty!
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 1, 2007 at 2:58 AMThere has to be Vietnamese here on chinesepod. Every chinese class I’ve been to, had Vietnamese students. It would really be nice if besides Chinesepod, SpanishSense, there would also be a VietnamesePod!!!! If anybody knows of something like this, please let me know! I’m also interested in expanding my Japanese, the Chinesepod way also! In Houston we have more Vietnamese than Chinese. I tried to learn Vietnamese before I tried Chinese. I tried on my own, I bought several Vietnamese books, cassettes and everything I could find. I spent a couple of years trying, but nobody could understand me mostly because I didn’t understand the concept of tones at that time! Then I moved to Houston and met a chinese girl. Everytime I saw her she would give me 5 words in Chinese to learn. I found that I could actually learn them, so then I really wanted to impress her so I bought every chinese language book I could find. That was 10 years ago. I haven’t seen her in years, but It would be nice to show her that I’m still trying!!!!!
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
June 1, 2007 at 2:08 AMImagine the incentive to being able to write chinese characters in Japanese as a sign of your education level. Actually, we have a situation in America that others equate to intelligence! I was also taking Spanish classes at the same time as my Japanese class. I was also taking my chinese classes at the same time of course. There was a Taiwanese girl in our class. Naturally I said 你好 to her. One girl told me you really must be smart!! What kind of brain do you have? She was struggling with Spanish! People really do equate chinese ability to intelligence. Only the americans think this way ofcourse. I was in chinatown here and picked up a chinese newspaper as I always do. I chinese man looked at me, then looked at the newspaper and then asked me if I can read a chinese newspaper. Ofcourse I can, I said. Actually at that time I couldn’t really. I’m not so sure he believed me. I bet he knows I was lying. He probably knows that it’s impossible for an American to learn chinese!!!
Posted on: Going on a Diet
June 7, 2007 at 2:14 AMHi Jenny I have a suggestion. Would it be possible to record from a live chinese radio station? My teacher owns the company that does the broadcast programming on Chinese radio in Houston, and she gave me CD copies of some radio broadcasts. She even gave me a CD copy of an interview she did with a Chinese Astronaut from here at the Houston Space Center where I work. She can't really explain anything like this in class, but Chinesepod might be a good place to do something like this. My interest is to be able to understand what I hear on chinese radio. I use that as a guage to how well I should be able to speak. After all, if I can't understand what I'm hearing, I will never be able to speak to anybody!!!