The group of ECNU international students that went to Wuyuan last weekend was composed of undergrads and above (no language students). So that meant everyone could communicate in Chinese pretty well already. There was a whole busload of Korean students and half a bus of Japanese students, however, so you still heard a lot of Korean and Japanese on the trip.
It was nice hearing Japanese again (it’s been a while), and even nicer knowing I still understand it pretty …
I recently got an e-mail from a beginner regarding tones in Mandarin:
I was searching the web to find an answer with no luck. I read what you wrote about Debating “You’re Welcome” and I’m hoping you can help me.
I keep finding different sources giving different tones for “bu keqi”. In Chinese for Dummies bu has a rising tone and keqi both have falling syllables. Another book gave a falling tone to bu, a flat tone to ke, and
…
So in Jiangxi on the way back from Wuyuan our bus got stopped for 30-40 minutes at a toll booth. It turned out that a ways back our driver had hit a dog. He knew he had, but the dog had come out of nowhere, and it definitely didn’t make it. We kept going. The owner saw the bus hit his dog and took off after our bus on his motorbike. He caught up to us at the toll booth.…
Back in my first year or two of teaching at ZUCC, there were several instances where I showed up to the classroom all prepared to teach “Spoken English” (invariably they were early morning classes), only to be stood up by the entire class. No one came. Why? It was their 春游–their yearly “Spring Outing.” The “class monitor” (班长) had neglected to inform me.
What are these “Spring Outings?” They’re a very Chinese way of enjoying life’s …
ChinesePod Video
Recently ChinesePod released its first video podcast: a visit to Shanghai’s Xiangyang Market (襄阳市场). The video is pretty entertaining and well done, and gives you an idea of how items are haggled over in a Chinese market.
The ChinesePod Weblog has some interesting topics, ranging from issues in applied linguistics such as the ‘lexical approach‘ to Chinese ‘buzzwords‘ (didn’t Micah used to have buzzwords too? What happened to those?).
The other video …
OK, this is an entry that’s likely to bore many readers to tears. You have been warned.
While I don’t find the study of Chinese grammar remarkably stimulating, there are some aspects of it that catch my interest. It’s kind of cool how Chinese parts of speech don’t fit so neatly into our Western designations. When China first starting applying Western linguistics to Chinese, Chinese syntax was forced into the Western mold. Over the years Chinese scholars have decided that …
Talk Talk China has had some good entries about Chinese traffic (I especially enjoyed their use of Spy Hunter graphics), but my favorite commentary on Chinese traffic is now the China Driving Exam. It has lots of pictures (many of which are a bit frightening, to tell the truth), and the “test questions” are great. Check it out.
Chinese traffic jam (courtesy of Ape Rifle)
…It took me a while to learn to grunt like an East Asian, but I feel much more comfortable here now that I can. Sure, I’ve been grunting like an American all my life. I may have learned the “annoyed grunt” from TV, but I’ve been saying “uh-huh” for yes and “unh-uh” (if that’s how you spell it) for no, as well as the special “nuh-uhhhh!” (reserved for childish arguments) ever since I was a kid. …
This semester all my classes are in classrooms with facilities that could be aptly described as “lacking.” Although there is no dearth of multimedia classrooms and many teachers regularly conduct class through PowerPoint presentations, some of my professors’ classrooms don’t even have blackboards. To make matters worse, the two most poorly equipped classrooms are the two with the professors that like to ramble.
Now, I don’t mean to say that these professors don’t come to class prepared. They both come …
Brad of Shanghai Streets has organized a concert for this Saturday night at Shuffle Music Bar (next to where Tanghui used to be). Despite Dan’s assertion that it’s an inconvenient location, I find it extremely convenient. Not everyone lives in that part of town.
The headlining band is The Subs, a punk band from Beijing. I’m glad that foreigner indie band Living Thin will also be playing (I’ve only seen them once before), and Slit is always interesting.
All …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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