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Category Archives: běijīnghuà

The Humble-V says Veng Veng

On the V in Beijing Dialect and a new translation of River Snow

[ADVERTISEMENT: Don't forget the Zhonglish / Chinglish conference on Nov 17]
You probably remember hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time when he sang, “Scuze me, while I kiss this guy.”

Posted 25 October 2008 † syz § Chao Yuen Ren 赵元任 Zhào Yuánrèn § kid culture ‡ Comments (31) °

Fat Bosses

On metaphors living and fossilized; YR Chao’s syllable-final M

If you’re a real-estate-free Minnesotan you might be feeling kind of self-righteous right now.
“That house I sold in June. Yeah, I sold it at a loss, but I took the blow and look at me now! Sitting in my rental, calling the manager the second the faucet [...]

Posted 04 October 2008 † syz § Chao Yuen Ren 赵元任 Zhào Yuánrèn § Yuèmǔ U. ‡ Comments (16) °

A Pirate’s Deal

Eterrrnally grrrateful to pinyin.info for bringing Talk Like a Pirate Day to the attention of the ever-unvigilant writing staff here at the Beijing Sounds studios, who apparently missed this well-known international holiday entirely. Having once been credited with (accused of?) promoting R-fulness in the speaking of Mandarin, the editor is happy to adopt the holiday [...]

Posted 18 September 2008 † syz § Talk Like a Pirate Day § Yuèmǔ U. § beijing-r § érhuàyīn ‡ Comments Off °

Egg with spinach and language variation

On good dictionaries, good bachelor dishes, the free dinner offer

The ABC dictionary is wrong. At least the version on my Pleco dictionary. At least according to Yuèmǔ U. (aka Grandma). At least the entry on spinach, which would have us pronounce bōcài rather than grandma’s very clear rising tone on the first syllable: bócài.
Here, listen [...]

Posted 16 September 2008 † syz § recipes ‡ Comments (17) °

A dose of soy sauce

On cooking your own shrimp YU style; free dinners in exchange for linguistic data; idiolects and other non-languagesIf you could map a man’s acquired vocabulary to a human body, there is no doubt that in the case of your correspondent, for Mandarin, the representative human body would be that of a three-week-old infant, with the [...]

Posted 30 August 2008 † syz § Yuèmǔ U. § recipes ‡ Comments (14) °

The Beijing-R exposed! (yet still sublime)

On the ineffable act of naming, the Beijing-R dissected by the white coats, and the ultimate BeijingerSometimes convergence happens. Not the dream where you’re listening to God Save the Queen belted out by a punk cover band in your company’s cafeteria, talking to Grandma Gertrude about Suzie (who you liked in high school) who’s supposed [...]

Posted 17 August 2008 † syz § Chao Yuen Ren 赵元任 Zhào Yuánrèn § Nigel Greenwood § beijing-r § education § linguistics § society § zhonglish § érhuàyīn ‡ Comments (2) °

Read & write Mandarin: no characters required?

Zhōu Yǒuguāng on a Beijing talk show; 4=2 in Beijing; Pinyin and topolects; schadenfreude

Everyone knows that literacy in Mandarin means hour after brutal hour of memorizing and practicing a script whose design clearly shows the influence of sadistic genius. Here are a couple of favorites from the torture rack: two pairs of characters that have [...]

Posted 01 June 2008 † syz § DeFrancis § beijing-r § education § pīnyīn § érhuàyīn ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged:

Beijinghua, the school

Special thanks to a reader in the sānlǐtún (三里屯) area for bringing this to my attention and providing the sound clip. You’ll probably recall the local Beijinger uproar last August when it came out that that Legal Mirror was publishing some Shanghai dialect expressions in a grammar book.
Why, they wondered, couldn’t Beijing get equal treatment [...]

Posted 01 April 2008 † syz § education § wàidìrén ‡ Comments (2) °