The time has come. For an open thread. It’s up to you. What’s on your mind?
Ken Carroll
Friday morning open thread
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Well it’s Thursday afternoon open thread over here.
A Tale of Two Chinese-Learning Websites:
What’s on my mind is how deficient your competitor, Linese.com, happens to be. They DID have a cool feature called “Bilingual News”, that included pinyin and vocabulary, and included an English version and a Chinese version of a news feature. Never mind that the topics were pretty absurd, such as “Dog Takes Self to Pub”. Then, with no explanation whatsoever, they just started posting English-only news, but get this — it’s still called “Bilingual News”! Of course I contacted them about it but received no answer. They also dropped some other nice features with no explanation.
My point in all this is twofold: 1) Is this pretty typical for Chinese businesses/websites? and 2) Chinesepod is doing a fantastic job with customer service, continual improvement of features, communication, etc.
And another thing — isn’t Linese run by the Confucius Institute?
I think one thing students don’t like is lack of consistency and lack of structure — wasn’t that the finding of the University of Fla.? Yet every time I visit Linese, something is (unpleasantly) different, with no communication or reason why.
That’s one thing I like about Chinesepod.com; when y’all make changes, you “add on” or improve, not radically change things with no rhyme or reason. And you give us an explanation on why you’re doing things the way you are.
Thanks for the open thread, and thanks for your time, Ken.
I was listening to the advanced lesson on dialects this morning as I was doing my morning-clean-up-the-house routine. I actually could follow the conversation! Not word for word or anything, but usually I can’t make heads or tails of the advanced lessons (ever since you took away my English translation).
Oh, and I am really trying to learn to read and write the simplified characters. I’ve quit mourning over the fact that I have to go back to the starting line with characters and begin all over again. Last year I was just barely figuring out the traditional and I finally admitted that I had to start all over with the simplified. I’m no longer complaining, I’m just doing it.
But I’ve had my fun with Chinese for the day and better get back to the rest of my life.
Ken,
Is it possible to take the top 5 Intermediate/Advance Intermiate lessons and transcribe Jenny and John’s discussion? I like Jenny and John’s banter and I don’t recognize some of the words they used.
I also like the new Media section in the Advance website. I had posted a request over there that Chinesepod does the same for the intermediate listeners. I’d like to read some intermediate Media text and then listen to Jenny and John discuss them just to determine if I understood the text I read.
Art
I was listening to two students in my high school today. One was half taiwanese and one was chinese and they were talking about their backgrounds in from china. They were speaking in chinese and that somewhat surprised me. I live in a university town and there are numerous chinese, but in high school they just don’t talk at all in anything but english. They even seem somewhat embarrassed at times to be heard speaking in chinese. My friend once told me that he was in an awkward situation because a non chinese person walked into the physics room while him and his friends were listening chinese techno. I always wonder why they’re so timid to speak chinese. I think maybe it’s just fear of being different, but one certainly doesn’t see this with english speakers in other countries.
There’s a Japanese magazine (nihongo jaanaru Japanese Journal) that publishes articles on Japanese local news and some international news in simple Japanese. It has some bilingual articles, but many of them are just there, with furigana for the difficult kanji. I’d love to see a Chinese version, with some pinyin or a glossary but otherwise just simple, relevant news in print (or in sound, but I prefer print for news).
“Dog takes self to Pub” is nothing, Andrea. Today’s linese news includes “Cows Moo with an accent. Accompanied by a photo of a charmingly eccentric farmer fiddling for his beasts. One of which appears to be in the last throws of mad cow. Either that, or it’s trying to break-dance. Hmm. I don’t seem to have contributed anything to a discussion of learning Chinese. But it’s 9:30 pm here; definitely time for a drink. TGIF Shanghai!
I’d like to see ChinesePod continue with fun and even with some controversy at times, but at the same time remain professional. It will be interesting to watch how CP grows and moves out of start-up mode.
Important news
I shower three times per day, but I only drink beer once per day.
Mike in Jubei
Ken,
One more suggestion. Can we have a lessons forum for interlopers? I and several others are listening to the advanced lessons. Today, I saw the “This is a Chinese-language only forum” comments from John and the other advance listeners. I understand where they are coming from, however, it would be nice if a forum is available for people like me to ask questions.
For example, I read the Mencius’ Mother article for today’s advanced lesson with the aid of the MDGB Chinese-English online dictionary. It took a lot of time because no online Chinese translation tool is perfect. MDGB is better than Google translate because it also lists the definitions of the single and compound words of the text it translates. I was able to get past some of the clumsily-translated text (the software isn’t as smart as the Chinesepod staff) by reading the definitions of the single and compound words. Nevertheless, I still have a few questions about some words and would need some answers in English.
Knowing the goals and focus of the advanced lesssons, I can’t just post my questions in the comments section of the advanced lessons. Ok I have done so but I also understand the lack of response.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the advance lessons. I even read the comments section. I am a better reader than speaker when it comes to Chinese. And the “Chinese-only posting” has forced me to post some simple queries in Mandarin and I think that’s good. But where do I go if I need an English explanation of some advanced Chinese words?
By the way, I’ve also started doing the exercises of the advanced level even though I am not an advanced level listener. I just want to accelerate my Mandarin acquisition. In the real world, I can’t ask a native Mandarin speaker to use words appropriate for a midlevel Chinesepod listener when conversing with me!
Sue,
That’s great to hear! I have been making an effort to make sure that not all of the advanced lessons are so specialized, so you should continue to find podcasts that you can handle. I applaud your efforts in tackling the simplified characters. I’m sure it will pay off down the road.
Art,
Recommendations noted. Thanks!
Speaking of simplified characters, I read in “Practical Chinese Reader” that the original goal of making Chinese writing simpler was to eventually turn it into a *phonetic* system! Is this true?! Why didn’t they just jump right into a phonetic system to begin with? When will further progression towards this goal take place?
On the other hand, my friend (who spent time in Taiwan, mind you) told me that the REAL reason they simplified the characters was to prevent those on the mainland from reading classical works, essentially making them less educated and allowing the government to rewrite history as they see fit.
The fact is, nothing has been “simplified” yet. It has been “complicated” because now you see things written in both formats, forcing people to be able to recognize both. Mind-numbing really. And I always wondered how anyone could make Chinese writing more complex…
Speakers of English as a second language, often have seemingly self reinforcing incorrect habits in their speaking and writing. I mean the kinds of things that don’t cause them to be misunderstood, but make it obvious their English is not quite standard, not quite fluent.
I wonder if I should worry about picking up similar self reinforcing mistakes in my Chinese. I recall a weblog entry discussing one year long Mandarin program that involved daily one on one discussions with a professional tutor, I’m sure this would be an effective way of avoiding picking up such habits. For me, all my spoken Chinese practice is by myself, or with Chinese speaking friends. They will point out some mistakes, but thinking about my own interactions with ESL speakers, it’s just not normal to point out all mistakes, it’s normal to just keep talking when you understand what the speaker is saying.
I don’t know if anyone has something to offer on this topic, either how to know how close your speaking/writing is to standard, or how to avoid letting bad habits slip in.