For more context, people in China have been assembling plain white bread sandwiches to try to understand how we live in this part of the world, and they are posting through it (the idea of eating anything cold or raw, especially a vegetable, is seen as especially disgusting in the Chinese world, with some exceptions)
Can someone please either volunteer to translate (via email) my nainai speaking an old Yantai dialect (Mandarin Chinese) to English…
[OR]
tell me the best app to listen to my recording of my Nainai speaking Mandarin and translate it as closely as possible to its intended meaning in English?
The recording is 47min long. I’m desperate to know what she’s saying. Student, no money of my own, can’t pay sorry.
I think the reason why I sometimes have difficulties understanding #cdrama#Mandarin is because Malaysian Mandarin has a different accent and the words are also different.
Realised this after watching a Malaysian Chinese show and realise I understood it far easier than China Mandarin 😂 I still remember my Shanghainese teacher telling me, Malaysian Mandarin is "not right" 😂
We're blessed to have so many tools to use to learn #Mandarin free. It has made learning the language so much faster and easier. Here are the apps and courses I'm using to improve my Mandarin.
My stalled collection of #minority#folklore in #China is picking up steam again. Today's books come to us from the #Hani peoples of China. The Hani are a #Chinese minority culture living chiefly in the south of China and in northern #Vietnam and #Laos. The books here are #bilingual#Mandarin/#English ... unfortunately the original Hani language material is not available in them. This means I'll be reading a translation and a translation's translation, but ... it's still better than not knowing anything about these interesting people at all, isn't it?
There's two things that intrigue me about the Hani. First, they claim to be an offshoot of the #Yi peoples (who are my absolute favourite minority group in China). Second, they are typically able, at least by reputation, to recite their entire family history from the mythical progenitors of the Hani peoples to the individual doing the recitation. When you consider that they date to before the 3rd century CE, that's ... a lot of years and a lot of generations to recite!
The first of my two books is the origin story, in effect, of the Hani dating back to when they purportedly branched off of the Yi. The second is twelve common folklore songs. These are beefy books (~450 and ~350 pages respectively) so it will be a lot of months of study for me.
I managed to get myself up and out this afternoon for the first decent walk with the dogs this year.
Chilly, but a beautiful day, and thoroughly worth it.
As a bonus, I spotted a bit of wildlife.
🐉 There are lots of Mandarin/English puns circulating for the Year of the Dragon playing on the Mandarin word for dragon: 龍 (lóng).
Another form of pun uses lóng 龍 in Mandarin vs lóng 攏 in Taiwanese which means all/everything.
The characters 龍賀 (lóng-hè) mean "congratulations for the dragon year" in Mandarin. In Taiwanese this sounds similar to "everything is good" (lóng hó 攏好)
I am charmed to learn that #Mandarin has a measure word for small things one has to be cautious with. The word is 枚 méi, and you can use it for eggs, grenades, and rings.
I've never heard it used myself, so I'd love to have this confirmed by someone else.
I've been a little suspicious that almost everything I wrote in Chinese, ChatGPT said was 👍 .
However, today my faith was reaffirmed when ChatGPT corrected me when I wrote 我出家。
ChatGPT: "出家" usually means to become a monk or nun, which might not be the intended meaning.
Bwahaha. Would've made an interesting diary entry though.
But what's encouraging though is that I seemed to have internalised Chinese grammar ... mostly.
The first time I realised I had a superpower was when I was living in Australia.
I was at a party where there were mostly Malaysians and Australians, and a lady from China was there. She could only speak Mandarin, so I spoke to her in my not-so-good Mandarin, apologising for my subpar command of the language. She reassured me in the polite way Chinese people do when you’re trying your best but not hitting the mark.
Then, a friend from Malaysia came over, and I responded to her in a mix of Malay and English – Manglish, to most of us.
Then another person came over to talk to me, and I joked with her in Hokkien and then switched to English when her Aussie spouse came over.
When I returned to the lady from China, she remarked, “You Malaysians are so amazing!”
At first, I was confused, because I was just doing what many Malaysians do and take for granted – context-switching and adjusting my language to the person I’m speaking to.
Then she said, “You can speak Mandarin, you can speak English. I’m amazed that Malaysians can do this.”
This may sound like I’m humble bragging, but this was not the first time people said this to me. I’ve travelled around the world when I was younger, and I heard this often.
Once, in Japan, the guide and translator who accompanied us said that the Japanese people were intrigued by Malaysians due to our linguistic abilities. I had the same remark about Koreans from another tour guide when I visited Seoul.
I’m not sure if they’re flattering us Malaysians, but since both tour guides were originally Malaysians, maybe they were speaking the truth.
And I think, due to this flexibility, a lot of people are confused by Malaysians.
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I've started making little Chinese post-its for things around the house! It's far too much fun getting out my brush pen again, but wow I am not used to writing simplified script #calligraphy.
This is number 4 (cling wrap). The first 3 (cupboard, drawer, microwave) were too embarrassing to share. #Mandarin
Updated this article with an extra para on the #Malaysian school system & realise how confusing it is. I speak 4 languages only because I had the luck of growing up in certain areas & studying in schools where Malay, English and Chinese are used often. These days, it's not unusual to find graduates who can only speak ONE language. In #Malaysia, this can be limiting, especially if you cannot speak Bahasa Malaysia, the national language.
Apparently 黑线 (black thread) is a colloquial expression that means "a feeling of speechlessness or frustration" and when I looked up Pleco, it says that it has something to do with the Cultural Revolution. Man, I went to deep places with that sentence lol.
Asking Chinese Mastodon - does black thread really mean this in the Chinese context?
Interesting discussion between #Chinese educated Chinese and #English educated Chinese aka "bananas" 🍌.
I belong to the latter group and have always felt like an inferior Chinese in Selangor (my state) because I couldn't speak fluent #Cantonese and so-so #Mandarin. The only place I really felt like I belonged was in Penang where people spoke my dialect & I am one of the dwindling numbers that speak it.
Have learned 100/1000 Chinese characters using mnemonics and memory palace techniques :). Apps I'm using to do this: Tofu Learn to write the characters and Du Chinese as a graded reader.