Subj : Re: HOLY CRAP! To : alt.tv.farscape From : weirdwolf Date : Wed Sep 21 2005 16:35:19 From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape Nick wrote in news:Xns96D84D9FDC02Fndtcm@204.153.244.170: > Jim Larson wrote: > >> weirdwolf wrote: >> >>> Jim Larson wrote in >>> news:Xns96D7AAA33CD743v234oiwofui3284af93@130.133.1.18: >>> >>>> weirdwolf wrote: >>>> >>>>> Jim Larson wrote in >>>>> news:Xns96D7A60C6A75F3v234oiwofui3284af93@130.133.1.18: >>>>> >>>>>> weirdwolf wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> I went to my first Mandarin lesson tonight. >>>>>>> I think my brain has melted and is running out of my nose..... >>>>>> >>>>>> Ni hau! >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Wo hen hao xiexie! >>>>> Blergh I want a v over certain letters but all I can find is ^ >>>>> Ted >>>>> >>>> >>>> By the way, can you hear differences in tone? >>>> >>> >>> When the teacher talked slowly I could just about manage it. I found >>> it interesting that she was saying that when in certain words there >>> are repeating syllables with the same tonal sounds that they might >>> either be pronounced with a different tonal stress or not at all. >> >> I had a Chinese acquaintance try it out on me for about 10 minutes. I >> couldn't really get it. >> >> (Of course, he mentioned that in Cantonese they have 9 tones instead >> of 4, and the average Mandarin speaker has about as much success >> distinguishing those as I had with Mandarin. Made me feel less >> stupid.) >> > > I used to work with a guy who told me he could teach me to read > chinese in about 3 weeks. I am waaaay dumber than that. It's not as hard as it looks, if you can learn some of the radicals, sort of root words like for example in English,(well latin,) you know that sub means beneath. So when you see the word for sub combined with marine you know that it means beneath the water. The same thing works for some Japanese, they have three alphabet systems, the one we are talking about is the one they got from the Chinese. When you see the pictogram for wood, boku, it looks like a little tree, if you see three trees together in a triangle then you have the pictogram for forest,shin. I've forgotten most of the ones I knew because of lack of practise and I could only really read to the level of a junior school kid, say grade 6. The teacher told us last night that if you can read say 2,500 symbols you can read 96% of an average newspaper. You could hear the sound of 9 rectums collectively tightening. That was the most relaxed I was all night. Ted -- Stare too long into the abyss and the abyss looks like a nifty place to hide the bodies .