Yeah Cindy, relax....it seems like a silly argument especially using written words over the internet. If you and some of your critics were in the same room, we could have a contest to see who has the better Chinese skill, but a little pointless to argue here. Also, when you respond in such a way to criticism, especially if it is untrue, it lowers you a bit. If what people say is not true, have the confidence and strength to address it once if necessary and then ignore it.

Astroboy - good one! Here is another appropriate saying you can find a lot of occasions in which to use. "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person"

I often surprise to see many neo-conservatives turned out in China, it sounds a lot of people are more Alberta/Texas there..

Astroboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's "anti-semitic". And no, I am not
> anti-anything. Just pro-truth.
> And the true losers are the majority. That's why
> the poor always gets poorer, and the rich richer.
>
>
> Uberche Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Regale us all with your knowledge of economics!
> no
> > wait! Let me do it for you. Jews are evil and
> > control everyone.
> >
> > Anti-semetic loser.

Cindy.Zhou Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How can you come up with such a precise percentage
> by using such a dumb method? I said I can
> immediately tell at least 95% of them are trash,
> but I didn't say all the rest 5% are usable.

You might want to make it clearer in the future but ok. But even if it's only .001% that's good English is still heavily expandable which makes your insults towards it uncalled for.

> Obviously you know nothing about permutation and
> combination. Even if you want to use such a dumb
> method, it should at least be something like 26 +
> 26*26 + 26*26*26 + ... + 26^8. Otherwise all the
> words containing less than 8 letters will be
> excluded from English. Actually words with less
> than 8 words are the most commonly used ones in
> your daily conversation, like I, you, he, hi,
> good, is, she, are, hi, and hello.

I have never claimed the number was exact. The Math I did was exact because it's math but after I rounded it off. and I know that the number I gave was for 8 letter words, that's why I said it to begin with. I was giving you figures just to help you to understand that English is HUGELY expandable, just like Chinese is. All languages are hugely expandable because they all expand continuously (other than the dead languages)

> Besides, you didn't even distinguish vowels and
> consonants in your ingenious method. And now you
> have the face to brag about how many words can be
> created in English by using your dumb method!
> Don't make me laugh! Go back to a primary school
> and ask a maths teacher there if you can calculate
> the total number of Englsih words containing less
> than nine letters by using your innovative method:

I did originally write out a much longer one where the words were 9 letters with one a in each and anohter where they were 6 with three vowels in each, but it was just far too long. I was hoping a simple demonstration of the size of words the English language can create would suffice to temper your arrogance a little about how poor English is.

> That's exactly what I said, if the linguists
> borrow some syllables or words from other
> languages into English, the goal of creating 2
> millions words with less than 9 letters may be
> achieved.

You do realize the entire English language is made up of words and syllables from other latin languages right? Chinese characters made up of old rune symbols and such. Pretty much every language in the world today borrows heavily from other sources.

> Last time the precise number you got is
> 208 827 064 576. Where did you get the above
> "precious" numbers this time? Maybe you calculated
> them by using some other extremely ingenious methods.
> No need to tell me the maths formulas you used this
> time. I already know how good you are at maths!

Please try to understand the difference between syllables and words. VERY different concepts. English has over 12,000 syllables which can be used to make up millions of words. Chinese has 2070 syllables.

[semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu] - English
[www.chinese-forums.com] - Chinese

All the Chinese are listed above and some of the English are too to give you an idea.

> I said jing京 as in Beijing北京. I wrote jing in
> hanyu pinyin, the pronunciation is totally different
> from jingle. Either You deliverately mistrued my words
> or you never heard the correct pronunciation of 北京.
> English do lack a lot of syllables, like 京、金、女、七、奇.
> Once again, Cheeky sounds nothing like 奇.

Syllable! Jingle Jing-le Two syllables (actually Jin-gle). the First syllable sounds exactly the same as beijing's Jing. And Cheeky CHEE-KY, two syllables. CHEE sounds exactly the same as QI.

京 - Jin-gle (Jing)
金 - jin-gle (jin)
女 - none
七 - Chee-ky (qi)
奇 - Gee (ji)

As I said, English has some Chinese doesn't have, Chinese has some English doesn't have. Every languge does.

> I will be pretty happy to see you leave Beijing and go
> back to your home country or another country. No one
> invited you to China club, you can go to Italian or French
> club and learn their languages.

Because I disagree with you I must leave. Glad most Chinese are more accepting of disagreements than you seem to be.

And your attacking of hanyustudent for criticizing your translation is just absurd.

我们的大中国呀
好大的一个家
经过那个多少
那个风吹和雨打

This

Having weathered through
Endless years of rain and wind
Our great China
Is the largest family in the world

is wrong. No where does it say the largest family in the world. No where does it say endless years. It says

Our big China
Such a big family
already gone through
lots of wind and rain

If you wanted to flower it up

Our great country
We're one big family
Already we've weathered
though so many storms

(or big country depending on the meaning they wanted to convey)

My Chinese isn't great but some of what you wrote in the translation was incorrectly done. you added multiple words throughout the translation that weren't originally there. No where did it say biggest family in the world, it said it's a big family. No where did it say endless storms, it said so many wind and rain. There are huge differences in those ideas. I think you should go back and look at hanyustudent's first reply to your translation, he was very polite and just pointing out some errors made. Yes he made some errors too, the police thing would be to point out his, accept the mistakes you did make and move on with some new English translation skills. Instead you reply insulting his ability to translate and understand the language when he just corrected some of your mistakes.

经过多少年的风吹雨打 means weathered through so many years of wind and rain (storms). not endless. That's a big difference in meaning. 经过无数年的风吹雨打 would be closer to endless but still not prefect as innumerable years and endless are not the same. innumerable years is past, endless is past, present and future. But the song didn't include 无数年.

This is an language learning site, i'd think you would be happy that hanyustudent was wanting to help your English. If you are going to insult someone else's translations you should be sure you are right, and yes I know this could be said to hanyustudent as well, I'm not because he's not still going on about it. You can't accept criticism, you lash out at English even though it's not at all warranted and now you are telling me I should have to leave if I don't agree with you.

Take a step back from what youa re saying here and look at it. Chinese is a great language, but it's no more ingenious than others. Tone down the arrogance and people will react better to what you say.

Canuck Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I often surprise to see many neo-conservatives
> turned out in China, it sounds a lot of people are
> more Alberta/Texas there..

China is a conservative country, I always figured the fear of the scary Jews wouldn't translate over but strangely I've heard many Chinese insult the Jews here...

Either they insult them for controling everything or they love them for having the intelligence to control everything. Fun in anti-semitic land (thanks to Astro for the correction!)

to be honesty, how many Chinese actually talk to Jews in China?????
a lot of them probably never even talk to Japanese before.

what did Jew do to China come on....

I don't think it's really the Jews they hate, It's the USA, but it seems a common idea here to somet hat Jewish people control the USA. Plus Israel has done some pretty messed up things.

No, most Chinese have not heard of Israel nor care where it is. And no, Chinese do not hate Jews. Read [opinion.globaltimes.cn] (RE-POST NEW LINK).

However, some Chinese do hate the west for its anti-China sentiments, biased western propaganda and non-stop China-bashing. If u believe in all those propaganda, it seems like China has not done anything right.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 03:10AM by Astroboy.

Wow... this has been one of the most entertaining threads I've ever read in a forum. I will just say "thanks" and leave it at that.

I did originally write out a much longer one where the words were 9 letters with one a in each and anohter where they were 6 with three vowels in each, but it was just far too long. I was hoping a simple demonstration of the size of words the English language can create would suffice to temper your arrogance a little about how poor English is.

I don't know if you are deliberately playing dumb or what. It seems you know nothing about languages(including your mother tongue) and always need a foreigner to remind you something about your mother tongue. When you talk, you sound like an extremely arrogant and ignorant toddler.

Have you ever thought of the fact that all the words containing less than 13 letters have almost been used up by now?(There are a significant amount of new words can be made, but you simply can't create a million new words and use them for special terms or jargons in a certain industry.) I know English borrowed heavily from other languages, including Latin, French, Italian, or even Chinese (like typhoon, cha and kungfu). But when you borrow words from other languages, there are certain rules to follow. You can't just borrow a new word from another language and use it as a special term in a certain industry which has nothing to do with its original meaning. Besides that, you have to leave room for people's names and places' names. In the past, you only need to set aside a certain amount of words for people's names and places' names in your own country and your neighboring countries. But nowadays, things are totally different, you have to set aside a huge amount of words to name people and places outside your country, including all first-tier and second-tier cities, all major islands, plains, rivers, basins, plateaus, forests, mountains, all influential politicians, entrepreneurs, writers, entertainment and sports celebrities, famous models and scientists around the world. Three decades later, the number of words used to name famous people all over the world will double the number we use at present. You have to set aside a considerable amount of words for future use. For example, Indonesian's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Russian's former president Vladimir Putin and a famous Japanese scientist named Hideki Yukawa. You can't simply use up all the possible words that can be created with less than 13 letters.

Besides that, even if those linguists finally decide to borrow new words from Italian or other languages. There are still a lot of rules to follow, otherwise you will risk taking too much away from your own language. At present, having a small amount of Italian words is okay, but if you borrow too heavily from Italian, when you speak or read something in English, you will sound like you are speaking English and Italian at the same time. Every language has certain rules to follow when it comes to pronunciation. If you don't follow the rules, all the charm and beauty and vitality with that language will be gone.

Actually, even if you set aside a considerable amount of words to name people and places, it's still unwise and impossible to use up all the rest. When you read something in your native language, you only take one glimpse of each word or character, you don't have to pay attention to each letter or each stroke in it. For example, when you read the word chrysanthemum, you only use one glimpse, but if you divide it into chry san the mum, you will use four glimpses to take in the four words. If you make all the words only contain less than 11 letters, there will be a lot of words look and sound very similar to each other. For example, heroine and heroin, premier and premiere. Having a small amount of such words is okay, but if you want to create millions of words that contain less than 11 letters, you will have a huge amount of such words. When you read something, you will have to pay attention to each letter inside each word, that will significantly prolong the time you spend on reading. When you say something, you will have to use a lot of extra words to specify which word you are referring to, that will cause a lot of inconvenience and confusion.

Next time when you talk, you'd better use your brain. Just by looking at how linguists create new jargons and special terms in a certain industry, you can tell the general trend. If you method of creating 2 million words with less than 9 letters is practical, those linguists will adopt your method half a century ago. Long words like photogrammetry or Potassium Permanganate won't even exist in our current dictionaries.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 04:17AM by Cindy.Zhou.

Syllable! Jingle Jing-le Two syllables (actually Jin-gle). the First syllable sounds exactly the same as beijing's Jing. And Cheeky CHEE-KY, two syllables. CHEE sounds exactly the same as QI.

You know nothing about Mandarin, it's a waste of time to tell you your pronunciation of 京 is totally wrong. Ask a native mandarin speak if 七 sounds exactly like chee in Cheeky.

Astroboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No, most Chinese have not heard of Israel nor care
> where it is. And no, Chinese do not hate Jews.
> Read
> [www.freerepublic.com]

It's gone.

Most educated Chinese do know what and where Israel is.

> However, some Chinese do hate the west for its
> anti-China sentiments, biased western propaganda
> and non-stop China-bashing. If u believe in all
> those propaganda, it seems like China has not done
> anything right.

So basically everyone in the West should hate you. Undersood.

It sounds the same only to the foreigner's ears. hahaha....
Cantonese is even worse. Some words cannot be pronounced by a foreigner unless they go for tongue surgery.

> You know nothing about Mandarin, it's a waste of
> time to tell you your pronunciation of 京 is
> totally wrong. Ask a native mandarin speak if 七
> sounds exactly like chee in Cheeky.

Astroboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It sounds the same only to the foreigner's ears.
> hahaha....
> Cantonese is even worse. Some words cannot be
> pronounced by a foreigner unless they go for
> tongue surgery.
>
> > You know nothing about Mandarin, it's a waste
> of
> > time to tell you your pronunciation of 京 is
> > totally wrong. Ask a native mandarin speak if
> 七
> > sounds exactly like chee in Cheeky.


So dose most northern chinese people can't speak cantonese,either can they understand,shall you do surgery for them?son of a bitch.

It sounds the same only to the foreigner's ears.
Cantonese is even worse. Some words cannot be pronounced by a foreigner unless they go for tongue surgery.

Yes. That's true. It's very difficult for a person above the age of 15 to learn how to speak Cantonese.

Cindy.Zhou Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It sounds the same only to the foreigner's ears.
> Cantonese is even worse. Some words cannot be
> pronounced by a foreigner unless they go for
> tongue surgery.
>
> Yes. That's true. It's very difficult for a person
> above the age of 15 to learn how to speak
> Cantonese.

And yet my friend from the US marrying a HKese girl has been learning Cantonese for 2 years now to be able to communicate with his fiancée's grandparents is able to do so

Cindy.Zhou Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't know if you are deliberately playing dumb
> or what. It seems you know nothing about
> languages(including your mother tongue) and always
> need a foreigner to remind you something about
> your mother tongue. When you talk, you sound like
> an extremely arrogant and ignorant toddler.

I realize that you're upset I disagreed with you, and I know I'm an ass sometimes and insulting when I write. So I'm trying to more polite here as I think if you rationally look at what is being said here you should be able to see that English is no more limiting than Chinese. So lets stop calling each other names, though I do agree it's fun to do, and look at things rationally.

> Have you ever thought of the fact that all the
> words containing less than 13 letters have almost
> been used up by now?(There are a significant
> amount of new words can be made, but you simply
> can't create a million new words and use them for
> special terms or jargons in a certain industry.)

But you don't know how many words are left. I have agreed from the beginning that my Math was simplistic, it was meant to be, as a full mathematical look at it would be almost impossible. But your proof of your claims just doesn't exist even in simplistic terms. Every limitation of English that you have shown also exists in Chinese. Yeah as words become longer they become harder to learn, just like in Chinese how everytime you add another stroke or in longer words adding another character it becomes harder to learn. It's pretty common among all languages, complicated words are hard to learn.

As well I'd have to ask for proof that almost all the words with less than 13 letters are used up because i'd have to say that is in no way factual, I can see many more examples of letter combinations that could be words.

fleatle, Fleatly, fleatler, fleatlie, fleatla, fleatlo, fleatlu, fleatli, fleatlth, fleatlop, fleatlip, fleatlap, fleatlyp, fleatlep, fleatlup, fleatlar, fleatler, fleator, fleatlur, fleatlyr, fleatlir

Would you like me to continue, We've only just started scratching the surface of using fleatl- and we're already at 21 new words that could be used. Admitedly you wouldn't want to assign them all to the same industry as that would be confusing but assign each one to a completely different industry's jargon and context would take care fo the confusion. Just like what happens in Chinese. Or make fleat into a suffix like how E- has come to mean Electronic as a prefix. Business online didn't need a whole new word, just a simple prefix e-business, e-mail, e-commerce. Simple

> I know English borrowed heavily from other
> languages, including Latin, French, Italian, or
> even Chinese (like typhoon, cha and kungfu). But
> when you borrow words from other languages, there
> are certain rules to follow. You can't just borrow
> a new word from another language and use it as a
> special term in a certain industry which has
> nothing to do with its original meaning.

Of course it's a bad idea, so borrow words from the other language that are similar in meaning, or use another method to expand English. There are many different ways English makes new words, not just other languages.

> Besides
> that, you have to leave room for people's names
> and places' names. In the past, you only need to
> set aside a certain amount of words for people's
> names and place's names in your own country and
> your neighboring countries. But nowadays, things
> are totally different, you have to set aside a
> huge amount of words to name people and places
> outside your country, including all first-tier and
> second-tier cities, all major islands, plains,
> rivers, basins, plateaus, forests, mountains, all
> influential politicians, entrepreneurs, writers,
> entertainment and sports celebrities, famous
> models and scientists around the world, etc.

No you don't. Names are often used as items. John also means toilet, Terry is also a type of cloth, Lance also means a long sharp stick. And LOTS of towns and cities are named after objects. Red River, Bridge Lake. Just because I call an object a name doesn't mean you can never use it for people and places.

> At present, having a
> small amount of Italian words is okay, but if you
> borrow too heavily from Italian, when you speak or
> read something in English, you will sound like you
> are speaking English and Italian at the same time.

No because we take their words but say them using our phonetics. When we say Croissant we don't say it like the French, we say it using English. It's like the Japanese, they have TONS of English words in their language now, but they made them sound Japanese.

> Every language has certain rules to follow when it
> comes to pronunciation. If you don't follow the
> rules, all the charm and beauty and vitality with
> that language will be gone.

That's why when we say Typhoon we don't say Taifeng, we say Typhoon in English.

> For example,
> heroine and heroin, premier and premiere. Having a
> small amount of such words is okay, but if you
> want to create millions of words that contain less
> than 11 letters, you will have a huge amount of
> such words. When you read something, you will have
> to pay attention to each letter inside the word,
> that will significantly prolong the time you spend
> on reading. When you say something, you will have
> to use a lot of extra words to specify which word
> you are referring to, that will cause a lot of
> inconvenience and confusion.

Just like Chinese, English is also context based at times. If I say

The prince ran into the castle and save the heroine.

it's not a hard sentence to read and understand, it doesn't require studying the word or lots of extra words to clarify because princes don't run into castles to save heroin (though it would be an interesting story if they did). In the same ways Chinese isn't actually limited English isn't either. Context is what saves Chinese from being an incredibly messy language and same with English.

If I come up to you and say Xin in Chinese you wont have a clue what I mean even with tones. But in context it makes sense
If I come up to you and say Heroin in English you wont have a clue which I mean. But in context it makes sense.

> Just by looking at how linguists create new
> jargons and special terms in a certain industry,
> you can tell the general trend. If you method of
> creating 2 million words with less than 9 letters
> is practical, those linguists will adopt your
> method half a century ago. Long words like
> photogrammetry or Potassium Permanganate won't
> even exist in our current dictionaries.

First off, Potassium Permanganate is actually two words. Secondly it's a chemical name and chemical names are all long because they don't need to be short and easy to remember, those who use them, have studied them thoroughly and remember them easily. Thirdly, Potassium Permanganate originally was called Condy's Crystals. A person's name. Which proves your earlier point was not correct, And is very easy to remember.

Photogrammetry on the other hand is an amalgamation of

Photograph - Picture
Gram - something written or recorded
metry - the process of measuring

A recorded picture used to measure. Perfect in defintion for photogrammetry. If you actually study the English language it's not hard to remember at all. This reminds me of foreigners stuying Chinese who claim it's so hard to learn words with multiple characters, but often if you break down the characters it makes perfect sense. English is the same.

Also in 30 years and I've never heard anyone use either of those words, ever. You might notice the more jargon based a word is (and these two words are never said outside of those heavily into chemistry for permanganate and I'd guess physics for photogrammetry) the longer and more confusing the word will be, that's done on purpose.

So yes, for jargon words we rarely make small words (except when creating a word from a acronym which is often done in Jargon, SCUBA, LASER, NASA or a word that will be often used by many people) because it's not needed. instead we usually use an amalgamation of English words to describe what it is like photogrammetry.

Lets look at the Chinese to see the exact same thing happening, I'm not sure if it's

照相测量法
or
摄影测量学

Two different Chinese people told me two different terms and insist they are right so whichever.

摄影测量学

Very hard to learn that word as it is. Just like Photogrammetry. But if you break it down into it's parts

摄影 - She ying - to take pictures
测量 - ce liang - To survey
学 - Xue - Study or -ology

Easy once broken down.

照相测量法

Again, very hard to learn as it is.

照相 - Zhao Xiang - Take photo
测量 - Ce Liang - Survey
法 - Fa - Law or method

Break it down, easy. Same as English.

Makes perfect sense and if you actually study Chinese words it becomes easy. Just like English, if you study English thoroughly it makes learning new words and longer words easier and it becomes very obvious we are in no danger of running out of words.

Astroboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It sounds the same only to the foreigner's ears.
> hahaha....
> Cantonese is even worse. Some words cannot be
> pronounced by a foreigner unless they go for
> tongue surgery.

I love when you say such stupid shit like this. DaShan, a foriegner, has better Chinese than almost every Chinse person in this country.

Cindy.Zhou Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You know nothing about Mandarin, it's a waste of
> time to tell you your pronunciation of 京 is
> totally wrong. Ask a native mandarin speak if 七
> sounds exactly like chee in Cheeky.

You're right, they aren't exact. All languages have sounds other languages don't have. especially if we are talking EXACT sounds

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 04:50AM by Uberche.

If I may paraphrase that: Astroboy, a foreigner, has better English than almost every white person in the western hemisphere - now do u know how stupid you sound?

Uberche Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I love when you say such stupid shit like this.
> DaShan, a foriegner, has better Chinese than
> almost every Chinse person in this country.

Cindy.Zhou Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It sounds the same only to the foreigner's ears.
> Cantonese is even worse. Some words cannot be
> pronounced by a foreigner unless they go for
> tongue surgery.
>
> Yes. That's true. It's very difficult for a person
> above the age of 15 to learn how to speak
> Cantonese.

Not really. It just depends how forgiving your ears are to foreign accents. I heard this Indian guy trying to speak cantonese with an Indian accent. I undertood what he was saying in cantonese. But the Hong Kong sales girl couldn't understand thinking he was speaking Indian.

Don't get me started with Putonghua. I'm surprised considering every province in China has different accents that make it pronouce things differently that they don't improvise and be more forgiving on their listening. In fact its funny seeing Chinese people not understanding another Chinese person's putonghua lol. Its like seeing an American trying to understand what that scottish guy is saying.

Hey scottish people speak english but I can't understand.

That's a classy attempt at salvaging your pride after being ruthlessly put down but since when is it your nature to be polite and not resort to calling names when you have lost an argument? *lol*

Uberche Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>So I'm trying to more polite here as I
> think if you rationally look at what is being said
> here you should be able to see that English is no
> more limiting than Chinese. So lets stop calling
> each other names, though I do agree it's fun to
> do, and look at things rationally....

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 05:21AM by Astroboy.

Astroboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's a classy attempt at salvaging your
> reputation after being ruthlessly put down but
> since when is it your nature to be polite? *lol*

No offense to her but nothign she has said has in anyway been backed up. I've shown multiple times how English is clearly not limited.

It was an attempt to stop yet another flame war as i already have you following me around shouting idiotic slogans and racist bullshit at me.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 05:22AM by Uberche.

I actually like the sounds of Cantonese more than Mandarin. When I go to KTV or sing around my friends, they think my pronunciation is fine and in fact compared to some of the Chinese who cannot speak Cantonese, it is better. I agree that the sounds are very different, much more strange at first than Mandarin, but they can be learned with patience, repetition, and a good teacher. Cantonese is, to me, a much more beautiful sounding language than many around the world.

Following what Astroboy said, there are SO many examples of a "foreigner" who often speaks a language much better than native speakers. There are a lot of people in America who do not sound very intelligent at all when they speak, due to a strong accent, limited education and poor peer modeling, poor vocabulary usage and grammatical errors, etc...This should not be contested or surprising to anyone. I have heard several people in China, especially in Hong Kong, who have much better English than many people in America. If you watch television from other countries you will see the same thing. Actually, even though my Chinese is very limited, I am in a small city where the local language is not Putonghua and MY Putonghua is better than some of the Chinese here!

A suggestion - you should not make assumptions about someone's language ability based on what they look like or where they are "from", especially in America, where what someone looks like often tells you little about their language ability. See an Asian? Odds are their English is great but they cannot speak whatever language their family is originally from. See a "white" person? They might be from Germany or Russia and cannot speak English at all. A black person? Might be Cuban or Haitian, speaking Spanish or Creole. A Latino? They may or may not speak Spanish or English. So again - my most valuable advice regarding language ability is an "oldie but goodie". "Don't judge a book by its cover".

Uberche Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Astroboy Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > That's a classy attempt at salvaging your
> > reputation after being ruthlessly put down but
> > since when is it your nature to be polite?
> *lol*
>
> No offense to her but nothign she has said has in
> anyway been backed up. I've shown multiple times
> how English is clearly not limited.
>
> It was an attempt to stop yet another flame war as
> i already have you following me around shouting
> idiotic slogans and racist bullshit at me.

Uberche I've been reading cindy zhou messages and she lost my respect a while back.... all she does is attack character (well mine at least). Which started when I pointed out how much she changed the meaning BIGTIME of some chinese song she translated into english. I've met people like this before and well I just stay away.

i'm just happy she is not my chinese teacher. from some of her posts about chinese pronunciation like the W sounding like V... when standard chinese W sounds like W..

as for the Th sound in english sounding similar to S she said awhile back. unless you are saying th wrong .. it does not, in anyway sound like S.

TH has two sounds a Voiced and a Voiceless

Voiced is like the word THE
Voiceless is like the word MATH

anybody who studies english as a second language for many years knows this.. ( I'm surprised she did not)

when you say the TH sound ( voice or voiceless) your tongue is in a totally different place in your mouth then saying the S sound.

for S sound its more on the bottom of the mouth and the TH sound its on the top of the mouth touching your top teeth.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 07:11AM by Hanyustudent.

It's true what you said. I am not belittling foreigners for their inability to speak proper Chinese. Just one or two on this forum who knows just a little bit but have elevated themselves to become "authorities" on the subject.

As they say, empty vessels make the most noise.

Xietingfeng Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Following what Astroboy said, there are SO many
> examples of a "foreigner" who often speaks a
> language much better than native speakers...

too confusing....

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 09:31AM by Hanyustudent.

Hanyustudent Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Uberche I've been reading cindy zhou messages and
> she lost my respect a while back.... all she does
> is attack character (well mine at least). Which
> started when I pointed out how much she changed
> the meaning BIGTIME of some chinese song she
> translated into english. I've met people like this
> before and well I just stay away.
>
> i'm just happy she is not my chinese teacher. from
> some of her posts about chinese pronunciation like
> the W sounding like V... when standard chinese W
> sounds like W..
>
> as for the Th sound in english sounding similar to
> S she said awhile back. unless you are saying th
> wrong .. it does not, in anyway sound like S.
>
> TH has two sounds a Voiced and a Voiceless
>
> Voiced is like the word THE
> Voiceless is like the word MATH
>
> anybody who studies english as a second language
> for many years knows this.. ( I'm surprised she
> did not)
>
> when you say the TH sound ( voice or voiceless)
> your tongue is in a totally different place in
> your mouth then saying the S sound.
>
> for S sound its more on the bottom of the mouth
> and the TH sound its on the top of the mouth
> touching your top teeth.

I'm hoping she was just being rude to me becuase i was rude to her. We'll see how her reply is this time..

But yeah a lot of my students claim the Th and S sound the same and V and W too, because when they say it it does. I do a lot of work on there two usually.

Oh and the qi/chee thing was my mistake, she was just quoting me but didn't put any quotes around it or anything. I was wrong.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2010 09:15AM by Uberche.

> I'm hoping she was just being rude to me becuase i
> was rude to her. We'll see how her reply is this
> time..
>
> But yeah a lot of my students claim the Th and S
> sound the same and V and W too, because when they
> say it it does. I do a lot of work on there two
> usually.


this forum topic is getting crazy and confusing.

I'm also constantly correcting my students (and some of the CHINESE english teachers) on the TH sound and the V and W sound. its part of the job I guess.

fleatle, Fleatly, fleatler, fleatlie, fleatla, fleatlo, fleatlu, fleatli, fleatlth, fleatlop, fleatlip, fleatlap, fleatlyp, fleatlep, fleatlup, fleatlar, fleatler, fleator, fleatlur, fleatlyr, fleatlir

I am afraid due to the cross-subject problem, your method is still not practical. People will easily get confused with so many similar words.

I realize that you're upset I disagreed with you, and I know I'm an ass sometimes and insulting when I write. So I'm trying to more polite here as I think if you rationally look at what is being said here you should be able to see that English is no more limiting than Chinese. So lets stop calling each other names, though I do agree it's fun to do, and look at things rationally.

Whether you are an ass or not has nothing to do with me. If you want to be polite, I will talk nicely too.