Learn Chinese in a few minutes (1577 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 0.1 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by David Adventurer (View user info) at 2003-07-20 00:19:00 EDT
This follows on from http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1057726993995412226
I want this sort of tranquillity. Can anyone find it?
A landscape
Look into the distance; see the colour of the mountains.
Listen around you; the brook makes no noise.
Spring goes; the flowers remain.
A human comes; the birds do not fear him.
Xiao Dawei
User Reviews
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-23 18:01:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Chinese theme continued on http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?user_id=1638
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-21 04:33:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
"Am I the only person to find this painfully dull?
Or do I just not get it?"
It's just a nice description of a landscape, and only four lines so you have to get bored pretty damn quickly if you're going to get bored by this.
Submitted by Teri (user info) at 2003-07-20 21:31:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I remember my elementary school teacher saying something about workers who died building the Great Wall had their bodies buried inside the Wall.
Anyways, David, nice Chinese lesson here. Your common phrases sound like something out of "Traveller's guide to Chinese" though. These phrases would work (they get the general message across), but depending on which area of China you're in and what manner you wish to express in, they can be grammatically switched around a bit.
For example, "wo jiao" is the equivalent of "I'm called". As an introduction, one would use "wo de mingzi shi ..." (My name is ...). A less polite way would be "wo shi ..." (I'm ...). This is probably a bad example, but that's the way it works.
Here's a bunch of things that you probably won't learn in class - the chinese version of irc language:
9494 - "jiu shi jiu shi" - "exactly right"/"Damn straight!" (when agreeing with someone)
7456 - "qi si wo le" - "Pissing me off"
4242 - "shi a shi a" - pretty much same as 9494, in a more polite way
TMD - shortened form of "ta ma de" - "Fuck his/her/its mom" ("Fuck it.")
MM - shortened form of "mei mei" - "little (young) girl/pretty girl"
JJ - shortened form of "jie jie" - "Miss/Nice Lady"
3166 - "san yi liu liu" - their version of the Japanese "Sayonara"
88 - "ba ba" - it's supposed to sound like "bye bye"
LJ - shortened form of "la ji" - "Garbage" (can be used to describe a person/place/thing)
There's more but it's mostly specific to the topic.
The poem sounds decent in Cantonese or Mandarin, but I find that many people have problems pronouncing Cantonese because you can't slur through words like Mandarin. The difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is similar to English and French. (SIMILAR. I've been through nine years of French and I still can't speak it for the life of me.) When I started teaching Chinese (mainly pronounciation) a couple years back I've spent two weeks trying to get my student to say one word properly. Have fun learning Chinese.
Please be gentle with the flaming (and spelling errors).
Teri
Submitted by Hairsphincter (user info) at 2003-07-20 21:14:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Am I the only person to find this painfully dull?
Or do I just not get it?
Submitted by drink_DDT (user info) at 2003-07-20 18:59:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1050462858201623915
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-20 05:46:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Yeah, I know. I said it would look funny.
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2003-07-20 04:34:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"SHAN, SHUI?? HUA!
yuan?? kan! shan, you?? se!
jin! ting, shui?? wu? sheng,
chun, qu! hua, hai? zai!
ren! lai? niao?? bu! jing,"
I'm sorry, but reading that made me laugh... I do mean "I'm sorry" in the sincerest sense, you can't really transcribe linguistic phonetics... But damn, imagining that being said out loud was just funny.
Submitted by Zoidberg at 2003-07-20 04:16:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 because I had a chinese friend read this to me and it sounded rather pretty
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-20 02:11:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
The accent marks indicate the intonation of each syllable.
Languages like English use intonation only to express emotion and differentiate between statements and questions. Tonal languages like Mandarin do this but also give a certain intonation to every single syllable as part of its pronunciation. In my opinion this is the hardest aspect of learning Chinese, along with the characters.
The tones are:
1) high and constant (e.g. shan)
2) rising (e.g. hai. It sounds like you're asking a question)
3) falling slightly, then rising (e.g. shui. It sounds like an astonished question)
4) falling very sharply (e.g. kan. It sounds like a command)
It may help to think of them as being pronounced like this:
1) shan,
2) hai?
3) shui??
4) kan!
Here is the whole poem written in our alphabet. I'll use punctuation instead of standard tone marks, to help you see how it is pronounced, which will make it look a little funny:
SHAN, SHUI?? HUA!
yuan?? kan! shan, you?? se!
jin! ting, shui?? wu? sheng,
chun, qu! hua, hai? zai!
ren! lai? niao?? bu! jing,
Note than there are two words "hua," and "hua!" that are pronounced in the same way apart from their tones.
This is probably enough to scare most people off learning Chinese, but it's not so bad; Chinese people do their best to understand you even if you fuck up the tones. Be grateful Mandarin only has four of them; Cantonese has twice as many.
The grammar is easy though. Each verb has only one form. Compare that to Spanish, with a total of 105 forms for its two verbs to be. (soy, fuisteis, estuviésemos...)
Sorry you don't like the poem. I though it would inspire people more than holiday phrases. Here are a few though. I won't bother with the tones.
wo ai ni - I love you
wo hen e - I'm hungry
wo xiang - I'd like
qu Zhongguo - to go to China
qu Meiguo - to go to the US
qu Yingguo - to go to the UK
wo shi Meiguo ren - I'm American
he cha - to drink some tea
he shui - to drink some water
he Kekou-Kele - to drink Coca-Cola
chi fan - to eat
lüguan - hotel
wo jiao - my name is
ni jiao shenme? - what's your name?
nin gui xing? - what is your name? (polite)
women qu nar? - where are we going?
wo xiang zuo che qu Tian'anmen - I'd like to drive to Tian'anmen square.
duibuqi - sorry
xiexie - thanks
ni hao - hello
zaijian - bye
Submitted by Illegal_Jose (user info) at 2003-07-20 01:14:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is better than the original learn chinese post. I would like it better if it was not a poem, but simple phrases I might actually use. And I have no idea what the pronounciation marks mean. Does anybody? Heh.
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-20 01:14:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
That's OK, Flossy.
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2003-07-20 01:13:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Well that cleared that mystery up for me. Thank you walking encyclopedia David!
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-20 00:44:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No, Chinese does exist. There is only one Chinese written language, the one that poem is written in. Spoken Chinese is divided into many dialects, of which Mandarin and Cantonese are just two. The pronunciation key uses the pinyin system and indicates standard Mandarin pronunciation. Mandarin is known in China as "putonghua" or common tongue, because it is the national language. The second mostly widely-spoken dialect is Wu (which has more speakers than French), followed by Yue or Cantonese, which is well-known because it is spoken in Hong Kong and by many overseas communities.
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-20 00:34:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Why the mai nus tiu, Drink_DDT? Is that supposed to mean "fuck your mum"?
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2003-07-20 00:31:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I thought there was no such language as 'chinese' - it's Mandarin or Cantonese mainly.
+1 for tranquility - that's just how I was feeling this morning http://ford.ieor.berkeley.edu/tzhang/chinalandscape.htm#
I need some beautiful peacefulness.
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2003-07-20 00:28:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://ford.ieor.berkeley.edu/tzhang/photos/china/hangzhou1.jpg
You're thinking of Vietmanese shirley, EvilZurr...
Submitted by EvilZurr (user info) at 2003-07-20 00:24:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
the only chinese i know: "me love you long time"
Submitted by drink_DDT (user info) at 2003-07-20 00:22:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
tsoa ni ma