Archive for the ‘MFL’ Category
1.3 billion people speak WHAT as a mother tongue?!
March 30th, 2008
On Mandarin learning challenges, the definition of language, and the best taxi-driver critique of hànzì ever recorded.
You’ll be forgiven if you missed the pins-and-needles press conference of foreign minister (wàijiāobùzhǎng, 外交部长) Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪 a couple of weeks ago (hat tip to Joel Martinsen at Danwei). Read the rest of this entry »
Wàiguórén xué zhōngguóhuà
February 17th, 2008
Thanks to S.H.E. we Zhonglish-speakers now apparently have our own hit song, complete with rap lite and formulaic key change in the last refrain. Hat tip to Granite Studio for the reference to the song as it was performed for the new year.
Key phrase:
全世界都在学中国话
quán shìjiè dōu zài xué zhōngguóhuà
The whole world is learning Chinese
Where NOT to look for beginning Mandarin lessons
February 10th, 2008
All of us sad sack Mandarin learners get desperate now and again for some instruction, especially when we’ve just begun the language acquisition journey. With that in mind, I hope that some of you Stage 2 or better hànyǔ speakers can reflect on what you’ve gone through to provide some advice to the Stage 1ers.
To spark discussion, here is a countdown of
the top five places not to get started
Update: Mangled Mandarin
December 7th, 2007
A few days ago I tried to nominate Manglish as a term for Mandarin butchered by excessive influence of foreign sociolinguistic patterns, prosodic habits and so on.
Through an idle Google search I discover that “Manglish”, though, is a very well-established term for a dialect of English spoken in Malaysia, with 62,700 Google hits and its own Wikipedia entry. So what’s our word for Mandarin garbled by a non-native speaker? My vote is for Mandarish. Not quite as catchy as Manglish, but, with only 21 google hits, not too promiscuous in its semantic habits.
[Correction 12/9/07 - "Malay" to "Malaysia"]
