In a recent post, Deconstructing the Chinese Character Creativity of Japan, I highlighted some creative work with Chinese characters by Japanese artists. What I didn’t say at the time was, “I wish the Chinese themselves would do more stuff like this.” Well, they are, and just recently I saw some great examples of it, first sent in by reader, and then later on Kaixin Wang (China’s Facebook).
I’m not going to deconstruct them like last time, because these …
Most Americans are familiar with the “base system” baseball metaphor for physical intimacy. If you’re not familiar with it, you might check out this XKCD comic for the complicated version, or this excerpt from baseball metaphors for sex from Wikipedia:
…
- First base is commonly understood to be any form of mouth to mouth kissing, especially open lip (“French”) kissing.
- Second base refers to tactile stimulation of the genitals over clothes, or of the female breasts.
- Third base refers to groping
To follow up my recent massive post on Language Power Struggles, I’d like to highlight the responses of Dr. Orlando Kelm, a professor of linguistics, teacher of many years, and learner of multiple languages. Dr. Kelm’s experience is largely with Portuguese and Spanish, but he’s also studied Japanese and Chinese, among other languages.
Dr. Kelm’s three main points were:
Chinese perception of use of English: There is something interesting about Chinese adoption of Putonghua as a lingua franca,
Do you ever find yourself engaged in battles of nerves over which language you should be using? Whether it’s waiters, business contacts, or friends, these linguistic power struggles are everywhere. Learn a bit more about how to minimize conflict in this post about language power struggles.
The worldwide boom in Chinese study has resulted in a greater demand for Chinese teachers. China is the natural supply, and thus the Chinese government is working hard to train teachers and send them abroad to teach. I’ve heard from numerous sources (including people in the Hanban, an organization which oversees the governments efforts at teaching the world Chinese) that schools are often disappointed with the Chinese teachers sent to them. American schools feel that while the teachers may …
前阵子有几个朋友问我：为什么中文博客不写了？没错，我很久没写，而且最近的几篇都写得很简单，很短。
其实，我最初开始写中文博客的动机是：（1）锻炼写作，（2）多跟中国读者沟通交流。2005年，我初到华东师范大学读研，每个科目的老师在学期末都会要求我写论文。当时觉得写学术论文是个很大的挑战，每次都要花大量的时间才能写出看的过去的论文。（还好有中国朋友帮我修改！）后来，我渐渐觉得自己写课程论文不是那么绞尽脑汁的事了，可是此时却已经要开始准备写硕士论文了。这个挑战更大！
于是我就停止写博客了。当时的我已经受够了“锻炼写作”的乐趣了。毕业以后，由于一直要写论文，我中文已经写腻了，所以也就不想继续写中文博客了。
从毕业到现在，时间已经有两年了。这两年内我买了PS3，重新变成了游戏狂，还开了自己的公司。我想我应该休息放松够了，继而又想“锻炼写作，多跟中国读者沟通交流”了。
喂？有人还在关注我的博客吗？真是忽视你们了。但我觉得很多事情还是“放假比辞职好”。…
The idea of being able to send or receive cell phone text messages on a computer is not a new one, but this Chinese software called “Fetion” (飞信 in Chinese, literally, “flying letter”) is new to me. In a recent AllSet Learning teacher training session, we were discussing various types of technology for learning, including ChinesePod, Anki, and Skritter, when 飞信 came up (weird English name: “Fetion”).
For now, Fetion is PC only, although …
OK, so its name isn’t terribly appealing, its logo is questionable, and it doesn’t even seem to have a website, but Shanghai Sculpture Park (上海月湖雕塑公园) impressed me. At a time when everyone else was heading to the Expo grounds, my wife and I, together with a few friends and our dogs, headed to the Sheshan (佘山) area outside Shanghai, where Shanghai Sculpture Park is located.
OK, so what is cool about this park? Here are some …
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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