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郑州话
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randall_flagg -

Anybody able and willing to post a few typical Zhengzhou Hua sample sentences? Any comments on
this dialect would be welcome as well.

Thanks!

Randall



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MarkKang -

I know Zhengzhouhua has it's peculiar vocabulary, but I can't really think of any right now. What
really defines it is pronunciation. It changes 3rd tone to 1st, and 2nd tone to 4th. It is very
conducive to speaking very fast because of these changes. Even though I have lived here for years,
and hear it everyday, when 2 men get going, I can barely understand them. Although, if they were
to slow down, I could understand everything they say.

My 2 kids can speak it like natives, but I don't. However, I think my standard Chinese has been
corrupted slightly by it.

When women speak it, it sounds uncouth in my opinion, no matter how wenruo the girl is.










heifeng -

just answer with 中 instead of 成or行...










trxlwb -

Hi,I'd like to choose some typical zhengzhou sentence for you.

1." 中"（zhong）means yes/good/great

2."可"（ke）is a adverb which always used before adj. to emphasis something.For
example,"可好吃（ke hao chi）"means it is very delicious;"可美（ke mei）"means it is very
beantiful.etc.

3.“俺”（an）equals me/I.

Other differances are pronunciation.eg."这"（zhe）is always (zhuo).

But it is not the problem.Because north accent is always easy to find out.










heifeng -

Just watch 荣誉, it was filmed in Henan (I don't remember if it was in Zhengzhou
however...)....but I would skip the last few episodes...

oh yeah, this is supposedly 'henan hua' 孬种....if you need to add insults to your list...
also review
http://news.xinhuanet.com/forum/2004...nt_1957440.htm
then quiz yourself:

http://www.jobdao.com/protest/vtest001_28.htm

here's my sad score:
考试分数: 34
菜刀老师评价: 不及格，立即送去学习!










randall_flagg -

Thanks everyone!

Is 中 zhong4 or zhong1 in this case?










trxlwb -

"中" zhong3,not zhong1 or zhong4










RinGo -

-_-
r u studying or working in ZhengZhou?
just want to know because that's my hometown










randall_flagg -

No, I'm not. Just heard somebody use it and I thought it sounded really nice. Just was curious
about it, that's all.










xichg -

I speak He'nan Hua which is a little bit different from zhengzhou hua. When I visited Zhengzhou I
was aware of the trivial difference but I think I can convert to perfect Zhengzhou hua after
living there for 1 week.












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Chinese School - Requesting some handwriting samples - Page 2 -

> Learning Chinese > Reading and Writing
Requesting some handwriting samples
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skylee -

shikang, I think you can do them in parallel. Write the characters first on grid paper then on
plain paper. Do this when you feel like it and when time allows it. Don't put too much pressure on
yourself.

strawberries, I think your handwriting is very neat and nice (and cute, if you don't mind). There
are two errors on the last line (桌 and 跟), though.

Edit - shikang, I just picked up the first sheet of paper on my desk and wrote on it. Lined paper
would be fine for practising. Don't worry too much.



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anonymoose -

I'm not a native chinese writer, but here's a sample of my writing, in case anyone is interested.
I chose a dialogue from one of my books, as there is a slightly wider range of characters.

Image2.jpg

Any comments or criticism welcome.










Kathy -

I took Imron's suggestion and wanted to look at the font. I think it is a good on to have on hand
- I am always looking for handwriting-like fonts. Before you download the font however, you might
want to go to

http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

and download their free trial to extract the files. If anyone has other suggestions or ideas about
this font, extration of this font, or other links to handwriting-like fonts, please le me know.
Thanks,
Kathy










skylee -

anonymoose, I think your writing is fine. IMHO it is a bit childlike but is very neat.










naturegirl -

two samples of my handwriting

http://img12.imageshack.us/my.php?im...9920070es2.jpg




criticism welcome, esp. on how to improve my cursive writing, coz everytime I see it it makes me
wanna puke
However my problem is that I don't really know what is considered good looking and what not. I
grew up in Germany though...










kudra -

@naturegirl

You are joking about wanting to puke, right? I'm no expert, but speaking as someone who has
less-than-flowing handwriting, I wouldn't mind at all having mine look like that.

For something to shoot for there is this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pzlabs/sets/709578/
from our own geek_frappa.

You could try to get the book by Fred Wang. See this thread. I have a copy and it has several
contributors. The emphasis is on learning to read cursive, but I suppose you could learn to write
from it. The link has other suggestions.










naturegirl -

@kudra: actually I wasn't ^^
since I'm chinese born my writing should be better I think. But thanks for the e-book link, it's
great!










Gulao -

@naturegirl: not necessarily. I find that unless the person in question is an architect or
interior designer (or other craft that requires legible handwriting), perfect handwriting is rare.
In fact, native users of a writing system tend to be less legible, in my experience, because
they've used it so often that they develop individualized abbreviations and slurs. Non-native
speakers tend to lack those because they haven't had the time to. So I'd be surprised if your
handwriting were to actually fit a drafter's standards.










naturegirl -

I found this Chinese site containing many handwriting samples http://bijifenxi.com/graphology/zxfx/












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Learn mandarin - ZDT 0.6.0 released -

> Learning Chinese > Chinese Computing and Technology > ZDT Flashcards Forum
ZDT 0.6.0 released
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bogleg -

I'm pleased to announce that the new version of the ZDT has been released. Check out this page for
a more detailed description of what's new. The release can be downloaded from here.

Existing users:
Please do not install the new version in the same directory as your existing version. Either
uninstall your old version (your user data will NOT be deleted) or install into a different
directory.

The main new features in this version are the stroke order animations, built-in Chinese IME, and
some flashcard improvements. Plus, numerous bugs were squashed. =)

It's completely free and available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. As always, feedback, suggestions
and hate mail are welcome.

Chris



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Chinese Online Class - Non-Chinese Cantonese speakers - Page 3 -

> Learning Chinese > Non-Mandarin Chinese
Non-Chinese Cantonese speakers
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Quest -



Quote:

Please let me know how good you reckon he is compared to the above people. In terms of accent,
fluency etc. He is my idol.

Very fluent, with some accent. I'd still put him where I put him in my last post.



Quote:

sorry Quest, I'm curious about the 乡下话 accent. Are you saying that these people sound like
native speakers but with a non-'standard', yet non-'foreign', accent?

Yes, 乡下话/乡音 is a non standard accent that does not sound foreign.



Quote:

If so, shouldn't their accent be considered as native as that of the others, albeit of a
non-standard variety?

The Indian mother is native as I stated above.



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Ncao -

Actually alot of elderly people in HK speak with 鄉音. HK is an immigrant city.










Howell Jackson -

I'm curious whether her English has any accent.










babelpeon -

This Ho Kwok Wing guys sounds very native.










flameproof -

Kids, there are millions of " Non-Chinese Cantonese speakers". Just remember that most USA, Canada
and UK Chinatowns are mainly Cantonese speaking.










wannabeafreak -



Quote:

Kids, there are millions of " Non-Chinese Cantonese speakers". Just remember that most USA, Canada
and UK Chinatowns are mainly Cantonese speaking.

These people you are referring have Chinese ethnicity, that doesn't count. This thread is about
Non-Chinese Cantonese speakers. Not Chinese people born overseas or who have migrated to another
country hence losing their citizenship.










sarahkuang -

Wannabeafreak, I think Robby's nickname should be titled to you, 完美主义者. Go!
Wannabeafreak!!!! Be careful don't get lost somewhere, because language is alive. It can be
changed from time to time. Especially a language like Hongkong Cantonese influenced by
multiculture.










sarahkuang -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C91tZ...arch=cantonese










wannabeafreak -



Quote:

What do you think of him( an American teaches Chinese in University), Wannabeafreak?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C91tZ...arch=cantonese

I wish I had his language skills I know someone who went to one of his lectures and said he has an
enormous knowledge of Chinese language both Cantonese and Mandarin, much more than other Chinese
lecturers.

However, my wife (native speaker) said he is fluent but speaks like an old person (no offense to
anyone).










skylee -

An RTHK programme about immigrants in HK. With non-Chinese people speaking Cantonese and Mandarin
(謝肅方/Stephen Selby, who was not born locally, is good).

Link -> http://www.rthk.org.hk/asx/rthk/tv/h...7/20070304.asx












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HSK - Which language is the hardest (for a native Chinese speaker) or an English speaker - Page 2 -

> Extras > Other cultures and language
Which language is the hardest (for a native Chinese speaker) or an English speaker
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View Poll Results: Which language is the hardest for you or in general
English 0 0%
French (français) 1 5.56%
German (Deutsch) 0 0%
Russian (русский) 3 16.67%
Mandarin (汉语 / 漢語) 9 50.00%
Japanese (日本語) 3 16.67%
Korean (한국어) 4 22.22%
Arabic (عربي) 6 33.33%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 18. You may not vote on this poll



Page 2 of 3 < 1 2 3 >






atitarev -

Thanks for interesting posts, guys!

Some words about Chinese vs Japanese (or Korean). Although Japanese and Korean grammars are more
complex than Chinese, it's not that you have to memorise a lot, understanding patterns, endings is
not that time consuming and with a proper exercise or two it sinks in. A difficult grammar, IMHO,
is when you have a LOT of patterns to deal with. I am Russian but I think Russian grammar has too
many plural patterns, declensions and conjugations, so objectively, Russian is a hard language to
learn, phonetics - no it's not that difficult but native Japanese and Chinese learners have more
difficulties with consonant clusters. So, I think Japanese and Korean grammar is strange and
unusual from European point of view but not too difficult.

Arabic grammar is also difficult, after some exposure, I think it's not as difficult as Russian
but you also have to memorise a lot of plural patterns, declensions and conjugations. Arabic words
change the middle of the word a lot:
bayt - buyuut; house - houses
waziir - wuzaraa'; minister - ministers
madiina - mudun; city - cities
kalb - kilaab; dog - dogs

Like Russian Arabic has cases - 3 only (Russian has 6!)
haadha bayt-un - this is a house
fii bayt-in - in a house
adraka bayt-an - saw a house

But there are different endings for definite/indefinite nouns

Verbs have conjugations and have more forms than, say Russian or German - adding the feminine
forms vs masculine and dual plural. (All nouns have singular, dual and sound plural forms).

Diglossia is more of a problem with Arabic than with Chinese, since there are no native speakers
of the standard Arabic, everybody speaks a dialect and there is some resistance by learners to
actually learn it before getting any education at all.

As the short vowels are not written, very often learning Arabic is somewhat similar to Chinese,
since you have to know the words or their forms, to know how to read them. You can guess the
meaning by their root letters (similar to recognising radicals) and sometimes, guess pronunciation
(of vowels or absence thereof) if you know a lot of patterns and know the grammar well.

d-r-s (learning) - root letters
madrasa - school
mudarris - teacher (male)
darasa - to study (or he studied)


I now find easier to learn Chinese with so many resources available. Characters are the biggest
hurdle, of course but good audio courses with character texts help to overcome at least the
recognition problem. When you know the characters, in many cases it's just putting the building
blocks together to make meaningful sentences

A huge factor in making learning a language is what you have on hand to learn it. Good textbooks,
teachers and exposure. Some complex gramamr points can be explained well and using good examples,
so it no longer seems difficult.



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rmdavis82 -

I came across an article in a Newsweek from earlier this year. It had an article about learning
Chinese and it sited it as being one of the most difficult languages to learn. It claimed that
Putonghua/Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese are believed to be the 5 most
difficult languages to learn. But this is from a Western magazine's perspective, so the question
still remains. . .










Weronika -

maybe somebody knows which newsweek was that? I'm interested to read that article.










Quest -

From a Western perspective, Chinese is hard because there's too much irregularity in its grammar,
and you have to relearn all vocab. That plus the annoying characters the Chinese just wont give up
on. And oh, the pesky tones! AND the fact that Chinese people won't talk to me in Chinese.
From an East Asian perspective, Chinese is easy. It has simple grammar, many of which we share in
our own language. We know most of the vocab. We know the characters or we think the characters are
fun to learn, and one of the best things the Chinese have invented. Everyone speaks to us in
Chinese, and since our English is bad, we have to use Chinese to communicate, that gives us a
little more push to pick up the language asap.
From a Chinese perspective, any dialect is easy, you just have to live there for a year or less,
and start speaking to people in their dialect. don't even bother to get rid of your accent though,
because you will never succeed.










Ncao -



Quote:

From a Chinese perspective, any dialect is easy

I have to disagree. I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think
Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.










HashiriKata -



Quote:

I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese
sound like foreign languages.

By "northern Chinese" do you mean Mandarin native speakers? I can understand why Mandarin speakers
would say so about other dialects, since - generally speaking - speakers of the standard variety
often don't have a very strong incentive to learn (or frequent exposure to) the non-standard
varieties. Similarly, English speakers often consider other languages difficult.










Ncao -

Yes I meant native Mandarin speakers.










Quest -



Quote:

I have to disagree. I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think
Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.

Any language you don't understand sounds like a foreign language. Those that say it's hard are the
ones that never tried or intended to learn. "yea, it's hard, because I don't understand it..."
"are you gonna try and learn it?" "no, why would I?" I don't know about other dialects, but I've
seen northerners, southerners alike settling in GZ/HK/overseas, and picking up the language in
less than a year.










gato -



Quote:

I don't know about other dialects, but I've seen northerners, southerners alike settling in
GZ/HK/overseas, and picking up the language in less than a year.

It really depends on what proficiency level one is aiming for. The Western European languages are
still easier to learn, in my opinion, because the written text being phonetic makes it easier to
learn and having the written text makes it easier to learn the spoken language. The difficulty of
the Chinese written language makes it harder to learn the spoken language -- harder meaning that
it takes longer (not hard like quantum mechanics, which is impossible for most people to learn).

I think most Western European langugages can be "picked up" (i.e. reaching conversational level)
in a matter of two, three months in a full-immersion environment. If one studies full-time,
conversational proficiency can be achieved in about a month.

That may also be true for non-Mandarin dialects, though I suspect it would take much longer
because of the lack of a written language to serve as a visual aid, in most cases.










rmdavis82 -

I checked my magazine. . .it was actually TIME and it was from June of this year. The cover story
is about the new trend and the importance in learning Chinese.












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Chinese Speaking - basic pronunciation questions - Page 4 -

> Learning Chinese > Speaking and Listening
basic pronunciation questions
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Gulao -



Quote:

There are no voiced consonants in Chinese.

Can't be that great of a site, for all they neglect "r."



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owen -

No voiced consonants in chinese? There are at least 2 ('l' and 'r') - 2 more if we consider the
nasals ('n' and 'ng').
I suspect we might be quibbling over the details of morphological desciptors. Though it seems to
me if one is explaining the sound of chinese for the purpose of teaching an english speaker they
should use that persons linguistic framework to explain. In the final analysis all of these
statements 'this is voiced/unvoiced/aspirated/fricative/nasal/etc.' are arbitrary. I just think i
would get way further teaching someone to make an approximation of the chinese initial 'z' by
using 'dz' than 'tz'.










atitarev -

Agree about R, L, N and NG (adding M to the list) but they have no voiceless equialents and they
are voiced by their nature. By all means, Owen. I can't provide you another interesting link but
they were discussing how Chinese native speaker hears.

Let's compare Russian and Chinese phonology - I will use Russian since it is an opposite of
Mandarin in this respect - there's no aspiration whatsoever in Russian but strong differentiation
between voiced/voiceless. So if a Russian speaker says "папа" (like "papa" but with no
aspiration at all) a Chinese untrained person hears "bàba", they ignore the voicelessness of "p"
but they hear that it is unaspirated and register "b", not "p". English sounds have both
voiced/voiceless and some aspiration, not as strong as Chinese, that's why Chinese speakers are
often (not always able) to hear if it is a P or B but confusion exists on both sides. I could use
a French/Italian speaker vs Mandarin in my example, since these languages have no aspiration
either. So the initial P in Paris sounds almost exactly like B in Mandarin's 巴黎 Bālí, but
the initial in B 波尔多 Bōěrduō (Bordeaux) can be confused by a French speaker for a "P" -
by some English speakers as well, I think.

Of course, you can get away teaching the way you prefer but I just wanted to go into a bit more
detailed discussion about differences in phonology.










owen -

So a french person would say that 'baver' (to drool) and 'paver' (to pave) are pronounced
identically? Same for any word that is the same save for the exchange of b and p?
I never would have guessed. That makes me think even less of the spelling system.










atitarev -

I thought I expressed myself well, please reread my post. French B and P are not the same, I
haven't said this, the first one is voiced, the second is voiceless but that doesn't make a lot of
difference to a native Chinese speaker, since Chinese B and P are different in
unaspirated/aspirated.

IPA doesn't use symbols B-P, D-T or G-K D when describing Mandarin (B, D and T non-existent)
phonology but p-pʰ t-tʰ k-kʰ:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar...arin#Phonology










owen -

Sorry if i misunderstood what you were saying about french b and p. Perhaps its that canadian
french is a little more aspirant than parisian french.

The whole idea of labeling consonants voiced or unvoiced doesn;t seem all that convincing a
descriptor. It seems to me language is somehow resistant to being cut up and analyzed that
atomically.










atitarev -

No, in standard French they don't aspirate consonants, but:


Quote:

/p/, /t/ and /k/ are never aspirated in French, unless one wants to indicate contempt.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_phonology

Neither does Spanish (at least standard), in case you are exposed to this language more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology










Lorean -

Hey, several things. I think a good approach to teaching the pronounceation of 'z' is to first
teach 'c'. 'c' is easier to teach because it occurs naturally in English, for example the word
"it's". However, it will take time to be able to produce the 'c' sound without any preceding
vowels. e.g. saying "it's" is easy, but saying it without the "i" is harder. Going from "c" to "z"
isn't that hard once you understand that the only difference is aspiration. You can teach the
concept of aspiration by having the student place a piece of paper infront of their mouth,
pronounce "c", and notice the paper move forward. To make "z" they have to perform the exact same
linguistic acrobatics except without making the paper move forward.

Another thing, while the French "p" and Mandarin "b" are both considered to be voiceless
unaspirated bilabial stops they are infact recognizably different sounds. (I can verify this
because French is my first language and Mandarin is my 3rd). Catford's "A Practical Introduction
to Phonetics" categorizes them as distinct sounds accordingly.

Peace.












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digmen1 -

Hi xentropic

I am stratring to teach myself to write basic Chinese.

You will imagine what a marvelous tool your pop up sounds !

I have installed it.

But like the others I need the CEDICT.

I think you should mention this in your description of your program and provide a link to where we
can get it and how we should install it and where, and which version we should download as there
seem to be 3 versions.

Thank you

Kind Regards

Digby
New Zealand



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necroflux -

I made this post in one of the other threads that got deleted, but:

1.01 doesn't require any dictionaries installed, so no worries about that. This extension is
incredible, it's simple and fast. That said the dictionary that is included could use some work in
order for the extension to reach its full potential. I'll see if I can't help work on the
extension.

In any case this is a must have extension already, even with the dictionary issues. Very useful
stuff.










gato -

I have the extension working, and it is indeed very fast. I haven't tried it out fully yet, but if
the dictionary is incomplete, maybe you get the Adsotrans dictionary adapted for it. The Adso
dictionary uses the CEDICT dictionary as one of its bases, I believe.

http://www. /showth...ghlight=source
Adso dictionary : open source?
http://www.adsotrans.com/










xentropic -

first, if anyone has download the first version i posted it wont work, so get the one that finally
is posted on mozilla (ver 0.1.1) which will work fine. it has the CEDICT file included

yea if theres more dictionaries it would be easy to add them to the search, even without the
entries you can usually figure out the meaning from going character by character, but ill see what
else is out there










atitarev -

Xentropic,

I PM'ed you. My setup is not working.

Gato, please tell me what you did and how start up this extension.

I also have Rikaichan, maybe that's why it's not working, I don't see it in the tools or context
menus.










gato -

atitarev, xentropic said that since his extension is modified from rikaichan, it can't currently
coexist with rikaichan due to resource name conflicts. But he's working on correcting that for the
next release. He said you can work around this for the moment by creating a new profile for
Firefox.










atitarev -

Thanks, Gato. I thought the message was related to version 1.0.










flameproof -

I just installed and tried 0.1.1.

It works perfectly. Did only do a short test so far. Just hat to install from the mozilla site and
nothing else.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3349/

Well done!










flameproof -

ok, not that i want to promote my own posting....... but...

I had a look here:

http://www. /showthread.php?t=12706

Post #6 by Quest was:

....
黐线，.....
....

黐 gives some sort of japanese pop up. I can do a screenshot if you can't get the same result.

But not a big issue though....










nubix -

xentropic, thank you, it is very useful.












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