Comments for Beijing Sounds -- 北京的声儿

Comment on A structured approach to Chinglish pronunciation (2 of 2) by Lilly Lee

Lilly Lee — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 06:59:57 +0000

Hawaii is officially translated into Chinese as 哈瓦伊。
Each government decides on official translations for place names in its jurisdiction. I found the translation on the US Consulate web site in Shanghai and was delighted to see that it did not use the insulting translation found in Taiwan and the PRC which means something like Chinese deterring barbarians.

Hopefully some day the Chinese will learn to respect other countries in the choice of translations just as Americans have respected the PRC choice to change the English translation of 台湾 from Formosa to Taiwan.

Comment on Soundbites: Hitmen on the street by syz

syz — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:56:22 +0000

Matt: Mingtianr?! I’d venture to say that’s an erhuayin you never hear in Beijing.

Connecting to your “every place they can put the R sound they do” statement, just to be picky (and I’m sure you know this): it’s not at all the case. Sure, Beijingers do a lot of R-ing, but it’s a system with prohibitions and strong rules and so on.

Maybe we should come up with a list of R-izations you can hear outside Beijing that you’d never hear as part of the vernacular here. Mingtianr could be first on the list!

Comment on Soundbites: Hitmen on the street by Matt

Matt — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:15:16 +0000

Wow! I live in Chongqing and I can understand most of Chongqinghua but that is hard! Beijing… Every place they can put the “R” sound they do! Wow. Chongqing isn’t as harsh but they do say things like Mingtianr with an are but that is just ridiculous.

Comment on Wu — sounds from way outside Beijing by syz

syz — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:56:25 +0000

@Deany & Albert: I've put your questions into a Sinoglot post. Hope they get some response!

Comment on Wu — sounds from way outside Beijing by Albert

Albert — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:49:41 +0000

deany,

Those are great questions. I’m living in Guangzhou (Cantonese-speaking land) right now, and I’m actually surprised that most of the students from outside Guangdong can’t learn Cantonese very quickly (or at all). It’s probably more a matter of not needing to, but it seems that the tones are the main barrier.

I myself would like to find the following resource (though I admit it would be a very VERY small market): A Cantonese instruction book for foreigners who already speak Mandarin.

I, like you, would love to see an overview of the differences to get an idea of what kind of “discount” I’d get if I actually tried to learn Cantonese.

Comment on Wu — sounds from way outside Beijing by deany

deany — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:55:38 +0000

So, could you tell me how much “discount” can someone gets if she/he is already able to speak cantonese and want to learn mandarin (pu tong hua)?

I’ve noticed that a friend of mine who is able to speak cantonese (raised in a family who is able to speak cantonese), he has a higher speed in learning mandarin. Is it true that mandarin is easy to master when you already fluent in one of chinese dialects? he is the only friend I have who could speak cantonese at the intermediate level in my class, so I don’t know how to compare him with other people.

Another question, I’m currently learning mandarin, if one day, I could call myself fluent enough in mandarin (speaking, writing, fluent enough to speak mandarin as a second language…) Will it help me to learn cantonese? Considering that I m not the native speaker for both languages.

Sorry, this might be out of the topics, but thanks for sharing your ideas…
I’m not a native english speaker myself, pardon my awful english..

Comment on Only those you trust can bleed you dry by syz

syz — Sun, 30 May 2010 02:42:18 +0000

Hi Carl, i think the sound files would be easy to find if i new my html/wp better, and i think i’ve found them before, but it might be easier if you just want to email me (bjshengr *at* gmail etc). I can send them to you in whatever format you want. I might even still have the original wav — oh, except that would be huge

Comment on Only those you trust can bleed you dry by Carl Gene Fordham

Carl Gene Fordham — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:44:16 +0000

Some really great stuff here, thanks so much for posting. Was wondering if there are any direct download links available for the sound files?

Comment on The elusive IF by maria

maria — Sun, 23 May 2010 17:36:05 +0000

I come from a country whose native language is not english.
In regards to this “if”… My native language also doesn’t have such 3 types of ‘if’ conditional as the one you have been talking about:
1st, if I go to the cinema, I will definately meet her.
2nd, if I were you, I wouldn’t come up with such an idea.
3rd, if you had been there, I would let you to meet my boyfriend.
And so, in replace to those, we just merely add the words that are suitable depending on the contexts.

In chinese, ru guo, jia shi, jia ru, can be used to form the if conditional.
Jia shi, or jia ru, can be used to form the second type of ‘if’ conditional, while ru guo can be used to form the first type of ‘if’ conditional. The third type of ‘if’ conditional, it refers to an event happens in the past, so we could add the timing words to give the indication that the event is already over, na shi hou, ru guo wo shi ni, shuo bu ding wo yao shuo zhen hua de….or na tian, ru guo/jia shi/jia ru ni shi wo de tong wu, wo ken ding neng bang ni de…

Hope this helps, and sorry …, I don’t type the pin yin correctly since the gadget I use doesn’t support chinese (han zi) and pin yin with tone’s marks…
This is just my opinion, since my native language doesn’t have such an ‘if’ conditional, and neither does chinese. Correct me I’m wrong, I’m not an expert in linguistic; and neither English and Chinese is my native language…

Comment on Taxi palavering and the great taxi fraud by syz

syz — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:41:15 +0000

Hi Chrix,
I’m kind of surprised I don’t have any native pronunciations of 明白 on BJS. The last thing anyone should do is take my pronunciation as a guide! Especially since this one is from two and a half years ago when my pronunciation was (I hope!) decidedly worse than now.

My intuition says it’s pretty clearly míngbai, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear lots of variation, esp. outside of Beijing. The “aristotle1990″ on that Chinese forums thread who hears it as míngbài notes some other words that are not standard this way. I can think of a lot too.

Your suggestion was right: record it! and it looks like they’re going that direction. It’s a great discussion!

Comment on Taxi palavering and the great taxi fraud by Chrix

Chrix — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 02:38:13 +0000

This just came up on http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=231015#post231015

any thoughts on the pronunciation of 明白?