The Lingual Bee is an interesting blog from a Chinese guy who has lived in the states and has mastered the English language. Here he describes how idiomatic English can be rather tricky. Many of his amusing insights apply to the Mandarin learner, but in reverse. Here’s a classic, Karl Marx, me, and learning English.
Recommended.
Ken Carroll
Ken
How many sites have you bookmarked?
Mike in Jubei
Mike,
Probably a couple of hundred, but I will review them soon, eliminate the ones I don’t often visit, and start gathering again. I’m quite interested in the linguistics-oriented blogs at the moment, so I will have more to share this week.
Ken Carroll
Ken,
I am always learning interesting things on ChinesePod, even on blogs such as this informal one. There were several things on the Lingual Bee blog that stood out for me:
1.)[referring to cheese]”the food that no Chinese ever comes to like”
2.) “teacher always made sure we suffer as the sign of the progress”
3.)”the only way to instill something in student is to drill the same rule over and over until his brain spins”
Regarding number one…my native Chinese teacher hates cheese. Is it true that the Chinese people don’t eat a lot of cheese? Why is that?
Number two…it seems to me that my teacher is never satisfied until we are groaning. The saying, “No pain, no gain” must have originated in China! Also, our teacher uses an awful lot of red ink. My papers come back looking like a war zone. Even when I get the answers right it is marked with a great big red check marks. It is my understanding that teachers in China love the liberal use of red. Is that true?
Number three…She drills us over and over again until my head hurts. The truth is, however, that even though I get a lot out of my Chinese classes and am glad that I chose to participate, I am finding that I am advancing much more rapidly with the help of ChinesePod.
After eight years of living in another country and finally getting to the point where I am very comfortable with the language it seems like I learn a new slang word or double meaning or old saying every day. That is why I enjoy the little China insights that are gleaned from things like your blog, the “word on the street”, “the “Saturday Show” and comments by John, Connie, Mike in Jubei, Lantian, Art Kho, and lots of others. Many thanks to all who contribute something to the big brain.
After reading the Lingual Bee, I concluded that Karl Marx was right. The oppressed Chinese students of English did not have control over the pedagogical methods for teaching English. Marx wouldn’t have learned how to speak English if he had gone through the Marxist-run English language schools in China.
I know exactly how the Lingual Bee guy feels. I went through 10 years of Chinese-language school in the Philippines. 12, if I include two of years of kindergarten.
I still remember the first three Mandarin words/Chinese characters that I learned: 人，手，山。 I was five then. The teacher led us in reciting the mandarin pronunciation for these three words. Each mandarin pronunciation was immediately followed by the recitation of Hokkien (Minnan) pronunciation of the word to help the children comprehendt the meaning of the word. Majority of the ethnic Chinese in the Philippines trace their roots to Fujian’s Xiamen and Jinjiang areas.
We had to memorize a lot. We used zhuyin to learn how to pronounce words. We had to write traditional characters repeatedly and turn them in as homework. For a few hours a day, we were exposed to Mandarin when we had to read the book’s lesson out loud. Unfortunately, after class is over, the children go home and speak only Hokkien or Tagalog (the language in the Philippines, although a linguist purist would call it Pilipino).
10 years of drills made Mandarin boring. There were no practical applications for me. However, I did enjoy learning about the origin of many Chinese idioms in school. The teachers did explain the lesson text using Hokkien which helped me remember things. The writing drills did help too. I surprise myself every now and then when I take a pen and just write some traditional characters from memory. Then I surprise my friends from China even more when I juxtapose the traditional characters with my written simplified-characters.
My main problem is that I think mainly in English. I translate English to Mandarin and my English mapping to Mandarin vocabulary/lexical chunks is limited. I had posted before that I discovered in China that thinking in Hokkien made it easier and faster to translate in Mandarin, but even doing this has its limitations.
The most ironic and funny thing that happened to me in Xiamen last May was trying to understand some Hokkien words that I didn’t recognize. A few times, I would ask the assistant hotel manager what a particular Hokkien word she used means, and she’d explain it by giving me the Mandarin-equivalent. Well that didn’t help me at all.
CPod has been very helpful. I occasionally go to the advanced site to listen. Since I am required to post only Chinese comments over there, I force myself to think and write my thoughts down in Chinese. Last Friday, one of Chinese at work, who hears my language discussion with another Chinese (I help him understand English, he helps me understand Chinese) told me that my Mandarin seems to have improved. After I told her and the guy that I had read the Two Butterflies story the previous night, she asked for the Cpod url. She wants to find out if her children are able to read the Chinese text of the story.
So keep up the good work Chinesepod!
Ken, if you can access google, you’ll love this: http://video.google.com/videop.....6237246497
It’s about a German coastguard and his English-speaking skills. It is funny!
BTW Bob, when I was a kid, my homeworks and tests came back with red marks. Not only that, I even had this high school teacher who was a bit sadistic after grading her exams. She returned the weekly tests this way: She stood in the center of the room holding the test papers. She’d say 100 (for perfect score) and follow it by announcing the names of the students who got 100. Each student has to go up to her to get his or her test paper. Afterwards, it’s 99, 98, and so on until 75 (the passing mark). After the students who got 75 received their papers, she proceeded to announce these words in Mandarin with vigor: “下来不及格！” (The Remaining Failed!). Boy, she was the Chinese History and Culture Test Nazi.
The ironic thing was she was a very good teacher. For two years in high school, I learned quite a bit of Chinese idioms from this teacher and the stories behind the Four-character Chinese Idiom. She just did not know how to motivate her students. She wanted her students to not just pass, but do very well. Unfortunately, she like many other Chinese teachers before her, thought that shaming is the only effective motivational teaching tool.
Can you imagine our Jenny acting like a drill seargent and telling us that we’re such a bunch of failures? Hmmm..fortunately for all of us, it’s impossible to imagine Jenny being like my old high school teacher.
Art,
As far as I am concerned Jenny can do anything she wants. I wouldn’t even mind if she slapped my hands with a ruler
The ruler! I forgot about the ruler. Bob, you’re jogging my memory. When I was in the fifth grade, I tried not studying for a test once and flunked it. My Chinese language teacher took out her big fat teaching stick/pointer and whacked my right palm. The # of whacks is equal to the difference between the passing score and one’s failing score.
Art,
You are going to make me cry. The nuns used to do that to me all the time. They must have received their training in the Philippines! The only difference is that the wacks weren’t tied to our grades. I think they had a daily quota
Art and Bob
I went to Catholic schools and had the SAME teacher from 2nd grade through 8th grade! Sister Fidelis. We never got along. I once got all A’s and a “U” unsatisfactory for effort.
Since I would argue with her all the time she used to get the class against me. “One more word Michael and everyone in the class must write a 500 words essay.” Of course I would keep going not a good way to make friends.
She would smack me with a yard stick ( she had a large supply because she was breaking them all the time) and if you look foul at her after one of these smack downs. She would thrust her ring finger out and inform us she was a bride of Christ and how dare we.
Oh so much fun. Especially around 7th grade when the hormones started flowing and Gizelle sat next to me until she moved her to the far side of the room.
I suppose it explains a lot about me.
Mike in Jubei
Art, Mike,
Let’s find us a time machine and go back! I’d do it in a heartbeat!
By the way, Mike, Sister Mary Magdalene was my nemesis. May God bless her! In spite of all the corporal punishment I must say that she did her job well.
Bob,
If I have a time machine, I’d rather go to the future. Afterwards, the Star Trek Temporal Police will come after me for using the future to guide my present decisions.
After reading about the Catholic school thing, it dawned on me that I had the double whammy. I lived among the strictest patriarchal ethnic Chinese community in a 90% Catholic country. And I am not even Catholic! I smelled and breathed the air of beatings for not performing well in school growing up in the Philippines. Boy that explains a lot about me.
Art,,
If you do get a Time Machine make sure to check where it is was made. I guess for a Chinese Machine you would push the 後面 Button to have the future come to you based upon todays lesson.”Encouraging Words”
Mike in Jubei
Mike,
If it’s a Chinese-made Time Machine, I hope the buttons say “过去“ and “前途“。
Art
Ken,
Thanks for featuring my blog in yours. I really appreciate it.
Reading the comments from others, I realized that my experience in learning the second language wasn’t unique to China and Chinese culture. It seems that “rule of the ruler” goes beyond border and is equally endorsed by both atheist and believer.
And I can tell your Chinese podcast has many happy and grateful followers. Not an easy and small accomplishment, given it’s much harder to learn Chinese than to English as a second language. For what you’ve achieved, if I can borrow a phrase in Chinese: Ni3 Zhen1 Niu2. Or literally, You Real Cow.
Hope your students won’t read it literally in Chinese, as I did to “big cheese” in English.
Hey Bee,
I take ‘ni zhen niu’ as a compliment! Let’s keep in contact.
Ken Carroll
I feel somewhat happy that although I went to a Catholic school, it was well past Vat. II and no nuns… I think I prefer the education of my generation. I might have enjoyed that of an upper-class education of 150 years ago though… Latin, Greek then on to being an Orientalist, maybe Oxford or Cambridge… Ahhh…
Will,
Vatican II was very taumatic. The world turned upside down. Before Vatican II you had to study latin for at least two years in most Catholic prep schools for boys in the hopes that if you went on to the priesthood you would already have a good start, especially if you were an altar boy. The upside is that those of us who studied Latin seemed to have a head start in studying other languages so Latin did not really die. It is just sleeping in oldies but goodies, perhaps just waiting for Vatican III
I wonder what kinds of things would be up for contention at a Vat III convocation? Interesting concept, but nothing to do with where the topic started.
It wouldn’t really affect me directly anyway, being a rather unconventional non-denominational.