Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5080 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Indonesian*
| Message 393 of 420 17 January 2016 at 6:04pm | IP Logged |
Serpent wrote:
My dad speaks some Japanese :) When he went to China he would write down some kanji when he had to communicate with people that don't speak any English or Russian. |
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Do Chinese generally speak Russian, though?
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cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6070 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish
| Message 394 of 420 18 January 2016 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
I'm here right now, and I would guess that Chinese people are mostly either mono-lingual or have some English. I was at the bookstore just today, and saw more books in Chinese for learning Japanese than Russian there.
Picked up phrase book. I think the characters that are common to both are pretty popular, so it seems like in a sentence I'll typically have seen quite a few of them, though I speculate this is less than 15-20% of what's needed to actually 'learn Chinese'. The TV is subtitled, so in theory, maybe it's possible to match the pronunciations to the characters below, but, I don't know enough to pick up the context, and the voice goes by quickly. A lot of signs are common, 銀行 (Bank) which is the same in Japanese is everywhere. Someone told me Horse was Ma and in Japanese that's Ba -- like the sounds are shifted for them or something? I do see 牛 and 羊 on retaurant menus, cow and sheep also in Japanese.
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Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5080 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Indonesian*
| Message 395 of 420 18 January 2016 at 6:06pm | IP Logged |
cathrynm wrote:
Someone told me Horse was Ma and in Japanese that's Ba -- like the sounds are shifted for them or something? |
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Horse in Japanese was Uma as well.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6542 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 396 of 420 18 January 2016 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
Monox D. I-Fly wrote:
Serpent wrote:
My dad speaks some Japanese :) When he went to China he would write down some kanji when he had to communicate with people that don't speak any English or Russian. |
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Do Chinese generally speak Russian, though? |
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Not in general, but they had some Russian-speaking guides etc.
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cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6070 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish
| Message 397 of 420 19 January 2016 at 2:29am | IP Logged |
I do find that in shops and things, Chinese people just assume I speak Chinese. I'll go to a restaurant, I'll hear something incomprehensible and just nod yes -- if I get food, I call that a win. Was on the street, walking to work, and a Chinese woman asked me for directions in Chinese -- was pretty sure just from how she was wandering, though, I had no way to communicate anything to her. The minute I open my mouth, they try to speak English, of course.
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cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6070 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish
| Message 398 of 420 01 February 2016 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
Well, back home from China -- that was a bit of an adventure. I went and purchased the basic, by the month
Finnishpod101. I'd like to download all the audio to my phone, though so far I've just been monkeying with
iTunes, bleach. We'll see how this goes.
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cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6070 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish
| Message 399 of 420 01 February 2016 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
Also I fired up my memrise account after some time. I logged into memrise via Facebook and because
Facebook is blocked in China, I couldn't get in. Oops.
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Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5080 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Indonesian*
| Message 400 of 420 01 February 2016 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
cathrynm wrote:
Facebook is blocked in China, I couldn't get in. Oops. |
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Wow... And here in Indonesia people still whine about internet restriction even though we are even more free than China, how ungrateful...
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