A few quotes and idioms I’ve collected. 顿悟之前砍柴挑水，顿悟之后砍柴挑水——吴力。 Dùnwù zhī qián kǎnchái tiāo shuǐ, Dùnwù zhī hòu kǎnchái tiāo shuǐ. –Wú Lì Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. –Wu Li Note: Enlightenment does not relieve one of the details of daily life. 摸着石头过河——邓小平。 Mōzhe shítou guòhé. –Dèng […]
I finished Mandarin Tuesday III this past Spring. There’s a lot going on at work and I must admit, I didn’t put in the same level of effort as I showed in Mandarin I and II. I believe anyone who is learning a foreign langauge will concur, class is a bitch when you’ve not put […]
I stumbled across an article on lostlaowai.com www.lostlaowai.com/survival-chinese which lead me to poke around the site a bit. At the above URL, I noticed that some of the combining diacritical marks (tone marks) used in writing pinyin were not rendering properly. I had not seen this problem before. It didn’t make sense. Things that don’t […]
Let me tell you. Learning Chinese is damned hard. The character set, the tones, the pinyin phonetic alphabet (which uses latin characters but the characters rarely correlate to English pronunciation), the grammar… In comparison, learning German was a snap. And German is no snap. I can babble like an idiot in German but I’m understood. […]
My Tuesday dancecard is filling up. The first mandarin course has ended and I’m now registered in the next chapter of Mandarin. Beginning Chinese II “This course is the second of a three-quarter sequence of beginning Mandarin Chinese. It is designed for students with little knowledge of Chinese. With an emphasis on conversation, the course […]
It’s confirmed. My Tuesday evenings are booked till December. I’m building a study group to meet once a week out of class. All students in either the Monday or Tuesday class are welcomed to join. (Which suggests we won’t meet on either Monday or Tuesday) Introductory Chinese Language and Culture “With an emphasis on conversation […]