Comments on: White Guy Speaks Chinese; Film at Eleven

By: Davide

Davide — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:14:39 +0000

Best damn post I have read in years.

By: Pedro E. F.

Pedro E. F. — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:49:09 +0000

As a major in Classical Greek trying my hand at Mandarin, I have to concur with you. Even Sanskrit can be less painful than c.g. Nice blog, I’ve been getting some good tips for when I’m there.

By: Albert

Albert — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:58:09 +0000

Chinkerfly,

I’m betting it was

měi gè yǔyán dōu yǒu tóngyīncí
每个语言都有同音词

By: Albert

Albert — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:56:16 +0000

I really appreciated this post. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said several sentences to someone in Chinese and then, after about a minute, they express genuine shock that “You can speak Chinese!?” My replies vary from “No, I can’t” to “What did you think I was speaking when I first came up?”

By: Beijing Sounds

Beijing Sounds — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:02:22 +0000

from “1.3 billion people speak WHAT as a mother tongue?!”

…the field is much deeper these days than back when Dashan rocked the New Year’s show. I’m aware, for example, that a high percentage of the seven readers of this humble blog hold their own in various regional flavors of more or less pǔtōng huà. Also, not too many weeks ago a certain O’Kane from Beijing’s very own blogosphere was featured in a well-known PR journal for his consummate Mandarin skills (you can discount his kèqi 客气 — humbleness — about aforementioned language skills and read the more interesting version of the story on his blog, here)…

By: Chinkerfly

Chinkerfly — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:38:12 +0000

So how exactly Do you say “every language has polysemous words” in Chinese? A part of me is betting that it’s more straightforward in Chinese than in English.

By: Jianjun

Jianjun — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:18:29 +0000

Brendan,

I recounted your story to my family and they couldn’t stop laughing!

I go to BJ once or twice each year and don’t like those cab drivers. But it’s rare that you meet such a talkative guy over there! My city Tianjin is famous for such chatty cabbies. But they usually don’t engage in any arguments.

Hope to see you write more…

Best,
Jianjun

By: Poagao

Poagao — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:01:10 +0000

Ha! Funny post. I feel your pain.

By: Brendan’s Chinese Makes News | Doubting to shuo: Chinese, Investing, EFL and Being a Geek in Taiwan

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:16:13 +0000

[...] about time Brendan got some love for his skills! When he showed me around Beijing the summer before last, I was amazed [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 04:41:49 +0000

I’ve only been self studying Chinese for about 2 years now (and lived here for about 1) but I’ve done surprisingly well with the langauge. (conversationally)

This is due to the fact that I a) studied/practiced my ass off. (Not so much these days. It’s cyclic)
and b) I was lucky enough to have a natural talent for picking up the pronunciation.

Well, this has gotten me into many conversations with people, including cabbies, who just straight up don’t believe me when I say I’ve been here for a year and studied for about 2. Some times I think it’s just a form of flattery, but there have many times where they tell me that they DO NOT believe me. When pressed for why, they go into the Chinese is really hard schpeal.

That being said, I’d say most Chinese people I talk to are pretty encouraging about learning the langauge.

Step two for me is learning ‘real’, academic Chinese. Now that’s going to be hard…