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Category Archives: MFL

1.3 billion people speak WHAT as a mother tongue?!

On Mandarin learning challenges, the definition of language, and the best taxi-driver critique of hànzì ever recorded.

You’ll be forgiven if you missed the pins-and-needles press conference of foreign minister (wàijiāobùzhǎng, 外交部长) Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪 a couple of weeks ago (hat tip to Joel Martinsen at Danwei).

Posted 30 March 2008 † syz § DeFrancis § linguistics § taxi ‡ Comments (12) °

Wàiguórén xué zhōngguóhuà

Thanks to S.H.E. we Zhonglish-speakers now apparently have our own hit song, complete with rap lite and formulaic key change in the last refrain. Hat tip to Granite Studio for the reference to the song as it was performed for the new year.
Key phrase:
全世界都在学中国话
quán shìjiè dōu zài xué zhōngguóhuà
The whole world is learning Chinese

Posted 17 February 2008 † syz § běijīnghuà § youtube § zhonglish ‡ Comments (1) °

Where NOT to look for beginning Mandarin lessons

All of us sad sack Mandarin learners get desperate now and again for some instruction, especially when we’ve just begun the language acquisition journey. With that in mind, I hope that some of you Stage 2 or better hànyǔ speakers can reflect on what you’ve gone through to provide some advice to the Stage 1ers.
To [...]

Posted 10 February 2008 † syz § ‡ Comments (17) °

Update: Mangled Mandarin

A few days ago I tried to nominate Manglish as a term for Mandarin butchered by excessive influence of foreign sociolinguistic patterns, prosodic habits and so on.
Through an idle Google search I discover that “Manglish”, though, is a very well-established term for a dialect of English spoken in Malaysia, with 62,700 Google hits and [...]

Posted 07 December 2007 † syz § zhonglish ‡ Comments (6) °