Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

On YU Alternatives — anyone have recommendations?

Here’s a bit of the guest lecture today at YU:

[No sound? Click here]

sān jiā èr děngyú wǔ, yī jiā sān děngyú sì, sì jiā èr déngyú liù, wǔ jiā èr děngyú qī, sì jiā èr déngyú liù, yī jiā wǔ děngyú liù.
三加二等于五，一加三等于四， 四加二等于六，五加二等于七，四加二等于六，一加五等于六
3+2=5, 1+3=4, 4+2=6, 5+2=7, 4+2=6, 1+5=6

Rather elementary (first grade, in fact), but still a decent lecture, with extremely clear tones and a textbook example of 3rd-3rd tone sandhi (where the first of two consecutive third tones automatically becomes a second tone) on the last sum. Thereby

wǔ děngyú

becomes something that sounds like

wú děngyú

No doubt: I’m a YUniphile. But when reader Ellen writes in to ask for Mandarin study opportunities outside of YU…

I’ve been studying Mandarin for about 2 years as an adult learner in the States and am looking for an intensive summer program in China to focus on my speaking skills (my nightly prayer: dear any-power-that-is-listening, please, please help me with my tones). Do you have any to recommend to a middle-aged person determined to become marginally fluent? For business reasons, I’m inclined to look in Beijing but welcome suggestions in other places where there might be fewer English speakers.

… I have to admit I’m kind of at a loss, so she said I could pose the question to a wider audience. Does anyone out there have a recommendation?

Personally, my ideal program:

1. Forces communication. It should make the Zhonglish speaker get things done and get them done in Mandarin.

2. Involves Mandarin speakers who aren’t secretly trying to learn English. Common problem for native English speakers trying to learn any language — that their interlocutor is actually trying to use the opportunity to learn more English.

3. Emphasizes acquiring a reasonable level of competence in the spoken language before attempting to teach characters. Any curriculum teaching characters to beginners gets sent straight back to the dugout for some long, hard introspection.

Meeting these criteria is what makes YU so great — it certainly beats some of the alternatives cited earlier. However, some potential students may think the tuition is a bit steep.

Looking for ideas here, folks. Can anyone help?

Olympic sloganeering & ingenuousness, Mandarin acquisition & n-closing, the Catch-22 of tones

If you’re a return reader to this blog of questionable taste, obscure subject matter and infrequent update, you probably have an appetite for a good cynical rant. Not that you’d be able to feed the habit on this url, mind you: as a recovering cynic, the editor-in-chief takes pride in methodically expurgating sarcastic ledes that might degenerate into farting about the ignorance or folly or Pollyannish behavior of some group or another. But old habits have a way of sneaking in through the side remark, the choice bit of lexicon, the polysemous blog title — the territorial pissings of a cynical alter ego that subvert the editor’s best intentions and signal to the ranks that Optimism shall not yet overcome. Read the rest of this entry »

A different way of thinking about how to put tones together

Let’s say you’re living in China’s Minnesota, the frigid dōngběi (东北 = northeast). You’ve come to Beijing for a bit of R&R and have met up with syz and his audio recorder. The idea is to talk linguistics and maybe record a random conversation or two along the way — fodder for the blog.

Suddenly after taxiing around Beijing for a bit, innocently explaining to the sījī (司机 = driver) where you’re from, syz interrupts your Mandarin train of thought with, “Hey, could I use some of this for the next episode of Zhonglish?”

What do you say? Was “Zhonglish” part of the bargain? Do you let the insult slide so as to achieve ever-lasting notoriety on the world’s most widely read (N=8) blog about the minutia of běijīnghuà?

Of course you do! Because syz has the most sympathetic ear you’ll ever find. His own thick tongue and disturbing (to him) inability to memorize hànzì make him eminently sympathetic to the difficulties of Mandarin. Anyway, calling your speech “Zhonglish” is no insult — it says so right here in the definition. Read the rest of this entry »

The first in a series. Part 1 — Tones

There’s really nothing fair about growing up as a native English speaker. The world wants to learn your language, no credit to you. But you, personally, get to reap all the benefits. You are invited to go to exotic places like oh, say, Latvia after you graduate from college. In the village of Vandzene, amidst the rolling hills and plentiful lakes of the Talsi region of Kurzeme, you get to “teach” English, although you have no teaching skills in anything, least of all English. You’re treated like a visiting dignitary, with clandestinely expedited access to everything. They’ve also pulled strings to pay you at the highest end of local wages, ironic in that, despite being grossly unfair to long-suffering, hard-working local teachers, it’s not enough to pay off an hour’s worth of interest on your student loans.

And BEST OF ALL, when your Latvian language skills reach the level of a butane-huffing 13-year-old who just got his teeth knocked out in a fight, you are paraded before the local media and adulated in the manner of a minor deity.

Not to single out Vandzene, really. The same story gets played out in Beijing, albeit with Chinese characteristics.

Thus today we present: Zhonglish! Revenge for every native Mandarin speaker and, by extension, for every non-native speaker of English around the world who has been blankly stared at, mocked, ignored, ostracized, discounted, looked down upon, trifled with, or made a fool of as they attempted legitimate communication in English.

(For the record, “hellooooooo” thrown in the direction of aforeign face does not fall under the category of “legitimate communication”)

Oh yeah, the post also includes some reasonably constructive analysis of the “All right, I know I sound like a foreigner speaking Mandarin, but why?” problem.

Read the rest of this entry »