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atitarev -



Quote:

...But then students of Chinese don't have to learn the passe anterieur of french or the
soul-crushing cases of Russian and German...

Foreign students in Russia master Russia on a decent level in one year, especially Europeans,
Americans, Arabs.

Another fact: in the former USSR, everyone mastered Russian, including people from various
linguistic backgrounds, in China a large percentage can't speak standard Mandarin.

Russia boasts good schools and methods of teaching Russian. I am sure every language can be taught
efficiently, it's all to do with teaching methods and learner's motivations and efforts.



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gougou -



Quote:

But it's always amazing to see how thrilled a native speaker gets when they meet a foreigner who
speaks Chinese that sounds native-like.

I realized something funny about this. When I first came to China, tones were virtually
non-existent in my speech. After some friends pointed out that my pronunciation wasn't so good, I
paid more attention to native speakers and gradually started imitating them. Listening to myself
now, I find that I still say many words with the wrong tones, only the sentence as a whole sounds
more like a native speaker. Now, however, everybody praises my pronunciation - even though there's
still plenty of words I mispronounce.

Somewhat related: I went to play soccer the other day, and one of the Chinese shouted "Shou2qiu3!"
Then he added, in a much lower voice: "啊，不对，是手球！"


Like the writer of the editorial, I also believe that tones are not very important for
understanding Chinese (that certainly is the case for myself). As in the example above, everybody
obviously understood what the guy was talking about, even though the tones were wrong. Yet despite
of that, I still pay great attention to tones when studying and try to iron out mistakes in my
pronunciation. I don't think it takes much effort (just quite some time to get used to it), and
will make you sound so much more professional.










HashiriKata -



Quote:

But then students of Chinese don't have to learn the passe anterieur of french or the
soul-crushing cases of Russian and German, or the verb-at-the end-of -the-sentence insanity of
Japanese. Xhosa? Agglutinative, tonal language with alveolar clicks? Don't get me started...

All these languages are also easy, if you know something about them and have got the will to
learn.　　










gato -

From the article:

Quote:

In terms of memorization, there are no more than 300 particles that form most characters, with 100
or so used most frequently. The number is by no means harder to deal with than the road signs
(written and in symbol form - like the shape of a building at the corner where you must make a
right turn) that all drivers have to remember.

Just like knowing the 26 letters of the alphabet makes learning English a breeze.










Long Pan -

The funny thing is that the example taken by the columnist is not correct: indeed yinyue can be
音乐 (yin1yue4=musique) or 隐约 (yin3yue1=indistinct). But I believe that 隐约 is rather
written language than spoken (maybe an advanced learner could confirm). Which leads us to a real
difficulty of Chinese (my current big difficulty in fact) : making part between spoken and written
vocabulary. All languages have this kind of distinction, but I think it is particularly true in
Chinese. And using a rather written word in a conversation often leads to misunderstanding, much
more often in fact than wrong tones do.










gougou -



Quote:

And using a rather written word in a conversation often leads to misunderstanding, much more often
in fact than wrong tones do.

I agree, but I wouldn't limit it to the speaking/writing part. Using any word that a native
speaker wouldn't use, i.e. any word that your counterpart doesn't expect in that context, will
make communication difficult.










Long Pan -

For instance, following with the 隐 of my previous remark. If in a conversation you say
这是我的隐私 (yin3si1 – that’s my privacy) even with correct pronunciation and tone,
good chance that people will understand 这是我的意思 (yi4si – that’s what I mean).
Question is : what you should say (口语) for « that’s my privacy » - is there a native
speaker around ?










<<恒心>> -

Because I'm nuts, like I said.
Sorry for the rant-- it's not directed at anybody at all; these are just some of the questions I
torture myself with.










gougou -



Quote:

If in a conversation you say 这是我的隐私 (yin3si1 – that’s my privacy) even with
correct pronunciation and tone, good chance that people will understand 这是我的意思

Now this I doubt.

Funny, though, that you should mention just this word. One day in a bus, the guy next to me was
looking over my shoulder at the book I was studying from, and asked me if I knew what it meant. He
explained to me how to use it, too, so I guess it is not too 书面话？

Oh, and a more 口语 way of saying it might be 这不关你的事。










HashiriKata -



Quote:


Originally Posted by Long Pan

Question is : what you should say (口语) for « that’s my privacy » - is there a native
speaker around ?


Hi, I'm not a native speaker (far from it ) but in the situation I'd just say: "这是隐私的"
(taken from your 这是我的隐私). I don't think there'll be a chance for this to be taken as
"这是我的意思".












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