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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 497 of 740 13 November 2011 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since I've been studying for a while, I've gotten used to alternate ways of saying the same thing. This is tripping me up with audio flashcards, especially with the same sentence from FSI and say PopUp Chinese. So I asked my Taiwanese chat partner how he would say some of these sentences. He gave the PopUp Chinese version. Then we talked about the FSI material. His first comment was that the speakers have mainland accents. On the sentences that I specifically asked about, which am having some difficulty with on the exercises, he said
有点饶舌/有點饒舌; yǒudiǎn ráoshé 唠叨/嘮叨; láodao 拘谨的教材/拘謹的教材; jūjǐn de jiàocái I initially thought 有点饶舌 was a reflection of the age of the material and that 拘谨的教材 was understandable given the original audience. When thinking about which exercises I have difficulty with though, this doesn't help my motivation. Sigh. Edited by Snowflake on 13 November 2011 at 4:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 5146 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 498 of 740 13 November 2011 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I run into multiple ways to say something, the "question" side of a card will have some hint like, "do not
use this word," where I will only write the Chinese character(s) as the word I should not use when speaking the sentence. Another example is in my Pumsleur 3 deck. With some audio flash cards, the English is "did you reserve a hotel?" and a hint is written: "use the northern way of saying hotel". Then my correct response will be 你定了 旅馆吗？ and not 你定了酒店吗？ Sorry if I am mistaken on some of my characters :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5047 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 499 of 740 13 November 2011 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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“拘谨的教材”？
This expression is not "understandable". Instead, it is totally wrong. 拘谨 can only be used to describe human behaviour. To aerozeplyn: If you mean "to reserve, to book", 订 would be the character to use. Your sentences are possible but 定 means "to make a final decision" here. It is new to me that 旅馆 is a northern version of 酒店 though I am from the north part. I consider the difference between the two is rather functional than regional. 旅馆 refers to the traditional (and usually small) hotels that provide only basic accommodation. 酒店 refers to the modern hotels like Holiday Inn or Ritz-Carlton. If you ask such questions in business you'd better use 酒店 unless you are very familiar with the person and you know he/she will not stay in one of those better hotels. "Hotel" has many translations in Mandarin, Roughly speaking, “酒店”>“饭店”>“宾馆”>“旅馆” >“旅店” though some are interchangeable in many situations. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 500 of 740 13 November 2011 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Aerozeplyn, thanks!
Everplayer, this is not the first time a native speaker thought that my overseas Taiwanese chat partners' sentences are odd to wrong. He works in a technical area at a rather high level and sometimes his sentences are different than what others expect. So I'll just chalk this up to him being somewhat atypical. Hotel room, I'd personally add the word 房间/房間 (fángjiān). Edited by Snowflake on 13 November 2011 at 9:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5047 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 501 of 740 14 November 2011 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Everyone may make mistakes or use sloppy grammar when speaking. Perhaps one just doesn't need a very rich vocabulary in his daily life so in the end one becomes a bit rusty even with the mother tongue. However, if he typed/wrote the wrong examples to you without realising the mistakes, that could be worrying.
People sometimes do say "book a hotel" though we actually book a hotel room. As long as the message is effectively conveyed, a shorter expression may be more convenient. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 502 of 740 14 November 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Also "totally wrong" will be different between Taiwan and China. Expressions that are correct in one place might be incorrect in another.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 503 of 740 14 November 2011 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I’m somewhat used to Chinese disagreeing with each other on how something should be said or how things should be done. For instance, Cantonese people have said that I prounounce my surname wrong (because I use Toishanese). With the things I run into these days, my husband will periodically remind me that I’m seeing first hand some of the issues of unification.
I'm sort of banging my head about making audio flashcards....it's time consuming which has a domino effect. Things are really piling up. Did make it to a Mandarin church yesterday...listened to a history where a slew of successive Roman emperors were mentioned. Sigh, that's something we generally don't actively work on learning until probably well into the advanced stage. Even though it is daunting, I should probably make the effort to go to as many Mandarin speaking functions as possible. Eg, is it more important to work on "lessons" at this stage or to attend native speaker gatherings? I'm not practicing much at work these days... probably should try to change that. I feel generally bummed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5047 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 504 of 740 16 November 2011 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
If you are talking about 拘谨的教材, I am certain it is "totally wrong", not only in Chinese. Can you justify that "a very reserved textbook" is a good expression? If you are talking about Chinese languages in general, I am afraid you may have over-estimated the differences among them. There are colloquial expressions unique to one dialect but not existing in another. In this case, one cannot simply say that they are "incorrect" in the other dialect because they are not there at all. This happens not only when you move from Taiwan to Mainland, but also when you move from one province to another or even from one village to another in many areas of South China. Yes. People across the strait use different sets of characters and many borrowed concepts have been translated differently since about sixty years ago. Other than these aspects, there is almost no difference between them, esp. in written Chinese. If it is not a newly coined word, its usage must have been established throughout the long history of China. An adjective used to describe human behaviour in the last thousand years won't be forced to describe (behaviour of ?) objects in sixty years. I have probably read more in traditional characters than in simplified characters in recent years. Books are usually reprinted across the strait by only changing the character set. Even scientific terms translated differently are not replaced because people knowing the topic can usually understand a reasonable translation immediately. (at least for an ordinary reader like me) So, besides colloquial expressions unique to each area, I would say the difference between languages in Taiwan and in Mainland is next to nothing. Edited by Everplayer on 16 November 2011 at 1:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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