Anyhow, I thought I would share an exciting new resource I’ve found in the native English speakers quest to learn Mandarin. I mentioned in a previous post that I was frustrated with the lack of Chinese film and television that had English subtitles. Enter mysoju.com, an index site that has links to hundreds of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language shows, many/most of which have English subs.

There is also a cooperative of fan subbers at timelessub.org. The majority of the television and video on this site isn’t hosted online, rather needs to be downloaded via torrent.

Having resources such as these is so valuable in the period between having advanced past basic listening exercises and having the comprehension to listen to a full news report fulling in unknown words through context.

Disclaimer: I’m in no way advocating piracy. Buy the videos. Use these links for subtitles, not the videos themselves. We all want to stay out of jail don’t we?

What I will share now is my frustration with how few mandarin language films and television shows are published with english subtitles. I think this area is one where the mandarin speaker learning english has the advantage over the reverse. There is a vast library of film and television available in spoken english with chinese subtitles. I suppose that the market dictates production, and at present there isn’t sufficient market for this but it sure would be nice. With the ever increasing economic power of China, I think (and hope) this will soon change.

-185

So I haven’t posted anything of substance recently, and frankly this post doesn’t improve the situation.

At first look this video is just  few non-Asian kids speaking Mandarin. Cute, no? But what I found interesting was the message behind it, that is to “Speak Mandarin.” The video was commissioned by the Promote Mandarin Council of Singapore with the hopes that through marketing the language will be spoken more frequently by those who use it as a 2nd, 3rd, 4th … language.

As we all (should) know  Singapore is a major crossroad in Asia, serving to connect a great number of cultures, economies, and of course languages. With Mandarin being a one of the four official languages and the ever increasing economic power of China it isn’t surprising that it would be valuable, and publically supported to promote the use of the language.

What is more interesting is the infiltration of Mandarin into North American homes. This comes, again, with the increasingly ferocious tiger that is the Chinese economy. The following is a quick CNN clip about Chinese-born nannies hired to teach the language in addition to raising the child:

Thanks for reading and happy learning!

185

Caught this video whilst scrolling through youtube one day. There are a lot of whiteboy/girl speaks mandarin type posts on youtube (for that matter there are hundreds if not thousands of videos for EVERYTHING on youtube), but this one was particularly impressive. Why?

1. He is the head of a freaking country! Without a doubt he has an extraordinarily busy schedule, so where he fits in the time neccessary to master the language is beyond me.

2. Accent. Wow! If you close your eyes you wouldn’t know he’s not a native speaker. Even watching him speak you question whether it’s a camera trick. I’m sure his accent doesn’t mark him for having grown up in the heart of Beijing to the astute native-listener, but to me it’s pretty darn  convincing.

3. Confidence. Of course you have to have a great deal of self-confidence, and with that confidence in public speaking to become a head of state. For him to speak a non-native tongue as if he spoke it all his life impresses me.
So, without further adieu:

Details to come!

For this instalment, being the self-focussed people that we all are (it’s true, get over it) some words to identify us, those around us, as well as ownership. Right into it…

The word for me is:
wo3

You is:
ni3

He or she:
ta1

How about plural? The beauty of the Chinese is that the grammar is logical. The difficulty lays in the vast difference in sound, not in grammar. Unlike the irregular jungle-gym of english, the grammar of (proper) mandarin is laid out like the London subway.

To make an individual or group plural you just add:
men
Notice how I haven’t put a number behind this syllable. This is the “tone-less” type I had alluded to in a previous post. It is a short, flat, unchanging tone notably different from tone 1. Tone 1 is higher and longer. The following is how “men” modifies the three words given above:

wo3 men (us – plural)

ni3 men (you – plural)

ta1 men (they – plural)

The last audio clip provides a clear contrast between tone 1 and a toneless syllable.

The last part of this post, as promised, has to do with ownership. As mentioned above the grammar of mandarin (or what little I know of it) is great because it follows clear rules and in many cases just requires you to put separate pieces together in a predictable, rule-driven order. The same goes with ownership, that is “my/mine” “your/yours” “his” “hers” “theirs” etc…. This case the modifying syllable is “de.” Like “men,” this syllable is put after the “who” part of the sentence. Best to show it through examples:

wo3 de (my / mine – possessive)

ni3 de (your /yours – possessive), sorry, no audio for this one

ta1 de (hers / his – possessive), audio is just the first two (of three) syllables

Okay, that’s it for this post! Please comment with corrections, suggestions, additions, and/or questions.

Till nexttime!

If you’re reading this let me say first and foremost: Wow! This blog was really just for me, though I hope that it’s helps and inspires on your own journey to learn mandarin.

My learning journey. I have been interested and intrigued by the “Chinese language” (not knowing that there were hundreds, if not thousands of dialects at that time) since I was a little boy. The beauty and complexity of the written language was fascinating and the verbalized aspect, with it’s tonal gymnastics, had me enthralled.

Since then my interest has inspired me to read books, study course material, listen to endless hours of audio (Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone etc), and converse with native speakers to greater or lesser success.

There was a point where I spoke and more importantly understood the language quite a bit better. Perhaps it isn’t the case for native speakers who’ve been away from the language for a while but I find that if I don’t hear it spoken on a daily basis I start to lose the ability to pick words and even tones apart.

Where I’m going. My ultimate goal is to speak at least mandarin fluently. As I’m sure that it’ll take ages to get to the point of reasonable fluency I hope to be able to at least understand fluently even if I can’t speak fluently.

Timeline. I looking to have fairly competent understanding by the end of August next year and relative spoken fluency a year following.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. If you speak Chinese please don’t hesitate to offer a bit of education in person. If you know of some good online resources please suggest them. And if you are learning yourselves I hope this blog helps.

Xiexie and zaijian!

In order to understand where this story is going you much know something else about me… I’m tall. While no Dr. J, I am a full head, if not chest above most in the room (or most rooms for that matter). My height is something that has defined me as long as I can remember. With a good deal of certainty I can say I’ve stood nowhere but the back row for class photos.

Now for a certain period of my life I was courting a lovely Chinese girl, and at one point during our relationship her grandparents came to visit. As I often did I went over to her house to visit and it happened her grandparents were home. Being the dorky whiteguy that I am I shook hands with both of them, offering the best “ni hao” I could muster up. Belly laugh. Apparently there is very little funnier to a sweet, elderly, mainland Chinese couple than to hear a boy from the Canadian Prairies stumble through the simplest of mandarin greetings. The favour was returned with their most earnest attempts at “Hello” and “Merry Christmas!” I cherish such genuine (and hilarious) exchanges.

Now certainly, dearest reader, you are wondering how the two – church and meeting grandparents – could possibly be connected in anything but a very superficial way. I assure you, you haven’t read all this way for nothing. The connection is that the grandparents, for the utter inability to pronounce my english name, named me in Chinese according to my height: 185cms. Yi Bai Ba Shi Wu. I’m told that ever since that first meeting whenever I was mentioned in conversation I was Yi Bai Ba Shi Wu. 185.

A few weeks ago my church had a [Canadian] thanksgiving charity event. We handed out hundreds of turkeys and pies to those coming up a little short this holiday season. At this event one of my closest friends, a pastor at the church, asked one of the Chinese kids what his Chinese name was. “Well mine’s _____!” my friend replied, turning to me “betchu don’t have one.” To this I answered “Well actually, my Chinese name is Yi Bai Ba Shi Wu.” He shook his head (clearly the result of my spot-on pronunciation) and chuckled to himself as he so often does.

This past Sunday, just for a second, I regretted offering him my Chinese name. For a second I thought I should have just shut my mouth or told him I didn’t have one. For a second I wanted to forsake the name given to me by the grandparents years ago. My friend the pastor asked me, mid-worship, what my Chinese name was. Fifty sets of eyes immediately fixed on me, one of two white boys in the congregation. Fifty sets of eyes sitting, for the most part, between ears that hear “proper” mandarin all day and inches above mouths much more able to produce it than I can. With anxiety and certainly very poor pronounciate I piped up “YI BAI BA SHI WU!”

Even in a crowd of experts be proud of what you say, how you say it, and most importantly your life experiences and where you come from.

So one thing every english speaker unfortunately must come to terms with very quickly in their mandarin-learning career is that it sounds different. Duh! It doesn’t take a PhD in linguistics to recognize this (which is good because I certainly don’t have one). To my ear, and put in very un-technical terms I feel that there are two differences:

1) Flat differences: these are the differences in sound between two syllables said with a flat pitch. e.g. The difference between the english word wren (a type of bird) and the mandarin word ren2 (meaning person). The latter can be heard in at the following link.

2) Tones: This is what really sets apart mandarin from english – the use of pitch. This is the reason people often say mandarin (and Chinese in general) is also sung and not just spoken. This is the idea that the same flat syllable can be subject to a range of pitches/change in pitch, resulting in different meanings.

So what are the four primary tones in mandarin? They are:

#1: High flat. Spoken a wee bit higher than you would naturally speak in english with a clear, unchanging pitch.

#2: Low, raising. This tone starts at the lower end of your natural range and raises in pitch progressively.

#3: The dipping tone. This one’s my favorite! Starts in the middle of your normal speaking range, dips to a lower pitch briefly, finishing approximately where you started.

#4: Dropping. This pitch starts at the top of the natural range and progressively lowers in pitch.

The following is another audio clip kindly borrowed from UMF. It has the four tones spoken successively (1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4) by a native speaker. Enjoy!

That’s it for tones. There is also a fifth tone which isn’t really a tone at all, rather a tone-less, short syllable. More on that as times goes on…

[[ Much love to the University of Maine Farmington for the stolen audio. I do not have permission to use it. If you want me to take down the links just ask ]]