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Category Archives: education

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 § běijīnghuà § 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 § běijīnghuà § 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 § běijīnghuà § wàidìrén ‡ Comments (2) °

Don’t take away our pinyin

Thanks to the Guardian, this video of the one of the founding fathers of pinyin, Zhōu Yǒuguāng 周有光, is meandering the blogosphere. Hat tip to pinyin.info for the reference.
Beijing Sounds doesn’t often pick up newsy memes cuz I figure you hear about them elsewhere. And maybe I shouldn’t in this case either, since if you [...]

Posted 22 February 2008 † syz § pīnyīn ‡ Comments (2) °

Mary Poppins

My daughter adores her art class. What’s not to love? Crayons, paints, bits of colored paper, bows and ribbons, stickers, playdough, glue – everything a five-year-old could love as long as you’re not a five-year-old like I was, who thought art class was like a bow tie for your birthday: not just a phenomenal waste [...]

Posted 24 November 2007 † syz § beijing-r § teacher § érhuàyīn ‡ Comments (2) °