When you eat grapes, don't spit the grape skins out.

April 30, 2003 10:30 PM

Explore a Chinese Language. The Ting Chinese English Center is a database of tools to learn Mandarin or English, and it's fun to boot. Don't miss the tongue twisters, and try to guess how to pronounce the color before clicking on the sound file.
posted by frykitty (11 comments total)

Cool! Thanks! [Real intelligent comment, huh?].
posted by hairyeyeball at 11:03 PM on April 30, 2003

ecru... New colour to bug people with! Sweet!
posted by shepd at 11:28 PM on April 30, 2003

? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?!
posted by eddydamascene at 11:48 PM on April 30, 2003

um, that should be:
Ni3 cuo4 le.
Wo3 bu2 xin4, Ni3 cuo4 le!
posted by eddydamascene at 11:54 PM on April 30, 2003

The link in the sidebar says the Mandarin word for fish is "Yue". "Fish is Yue. Yue. Yue. Yue. Yue."


Good lord. Maybe it should be "abominable Chinese in three hours".
posted by Poagao at 1:11 AM on May 1, 2003

Ni hao. Wo yao xue pudonghua. Xieh xieh (for the link).

Mandarin is a fascinating language. It is said that one must master only 500 words in Mandarin in order to be 80% fluent.

In Mandarin, verb conjugations are extremely simple - there are no separate forms for past tense, future tense, etc. Conjugation is achieved by adding a temporal modifier to the present tense version of verbs.

Then you have the tones... and the characters... coming in to make life difficult again...

A few more links from my collection (put it together after my trip to China and Mongolia last year):
http://www.chineselanguage.org/
http://zhongwen.com/
http://www.mandarintools.com/
posted by syzygy at 4:58 AM on May 1, 2003

My state is pronounced "busy funya". I totally agree. Great link, thanks frykitty - I'm going to memorize all of the colors.
posted by iconomy at 5:07 AM on May 1, 2003

syzygy...I agree that Mandarin grammar is not too difficult, but I know far more than 500 words and I'm nowhere near 80% fluent.

The problem with Mandarin, too, is that many Chinese outside of a few areas (NE Coast, Beijing) don't speak standard putonghua, so they're very difficult to understand.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out.
posted by Kevs at 10:33 AM on May 1, 2003

When you have a Taiwanese accent like I do, though, some of the tongue twisters become quite easy to say because all the sh's become s's in "Taiwan Guoyu".
posted by Poagao at 6:50 PM on May 1, 2003

My mother teaches at a Chinese school in South Florida, where tongue twisters are the bane of every fifth-level student's existence.
Nice links, syzygy.
posted by casarkos at 8:34 PM on May 1, 2003

Fish is yu. yu2 (rising tone)
Rain is yu. yu3 (down-up)
Jade is yu. yu4 (down!)

Zhongwen.com is much more useful once you understand the Pinyin system.
posted by linux at 4:09 PM on May 2, 2003