Thread: Let's practice our Chinese

I just told her I was 16 in another thread. And not to call me "vy."

I'm sorry, I forgot. Are you Chinesse? Is Chinese your native langauge? How many languages do you speak?

I know what Pravit's going to say, so I'll say it for him, just in case:
English - fluent
German - very good
Russian - good/very good
Thai - few words
Japanese - few words
Chinese - 222 characters
Korean - the syllabary
French - bad
Dutch - Ik heb eene tandarts notig
Spanish - out of principle, bad

Did I miss anything? In other words, he knows three languages well.

[edit:]Oh yeah, and he is Thai, lives in America but prides himself for having a Chinese background.

Hey, my French isn't that bad. I would rank it under German which I'd rank under Russian. Last year I was 3rd in the state for the French National Exam, so hush(I just like joking about my French being really bad). It's Japanese I know next to nothing about.

As for my Chinese background, the only ancestor of mine that was Thai was my the father of the mother of my grandmother. Which makes me around 6.25% Thai and 93.75% Chinese. Not that there is anything bad about Thai people, but the two cultures are different. Chinese people generally maintain their culture from household to household. I'm a foreigner in Thailand too

Yah well, but is that an accomplishment in America? Being the third best in French? I doubt you Americans learn French all that well...
Oh, I did forget one language:
Arabic - ~300 words

Jasper, do you know any letzebuergesch? moyen?

my virtual hat is taken off to you whizz kids btw.. but i bet i know more than you about ..err.. about ... nuclear physics?? Peruvian basket weaving techniques??

That was a list of Pravit's accomplishments, btw. My list goes something like this:
Dutch - fluent
Afrikaans - comprehension fluent
English - near fluent
German - very good
Frisian - well, it's understandable anyway
Latin - very good comprehension, bad composition
Spanish, Italian, French - rather good comprehension
Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi - alphabets
Chinese - not telling you...
Ancient Greek - bad bad bad

I'm sure that if you'd learn German and remember the differences between that and Letzebuergisch, Yiddish or Swiss you can understand practically anything.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

That was a list of Pravit's accomplishments, btw. My list goes something like this:
Dutch - fluent
Afrikaans - comprehension fluent
English - near fluent
German - very good
Frisian - well, it's understandable anyway
Latin - very good comprehension, bad composition
Spanish, Italian, French - rather good comprehension
Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi - alphabets
Chinese - not telling you...

Enough already! My list:
English - weird.
French - appallingly unfluent considering I've spent 3 years living in Francophone countries
Portuguese - learnt for a few months .. survival .. managed to forget half of what I learnt.
Russian ..
Latin - two years learning the Gallic Wars by heart -> cr@p
German - atrocious. Haven't even tried to use it for 15 years.
My Perl and C++ aren't bad though

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Ancient Greek - bad bad bad

как стыдно! . How do you expect to get a job in the modern world???

Originally Posted by Jasper May

I'm sure that if you'd learn German and remember the differences between that and Letzebuergisch, Yiddish or Swiss you can understand practically anything.

Eh? You lost me Jasper.
Btw does that "you'd" = you had or you would? Something funny going on wiv dem dere conditionals.. ( 'if you would' is possible as a special construction for requests, but usually it's not right)
Seriously, if your English is 'near fluent' then so is mine ..

One more question: wtf is Frisian??

Here is my list:
Russian-Good(I will be fluent again!)
Ukrainian- A little bit
Spanish- Okay
French- none
German- none
Sign Language(ASL)- Good

как стыдно! . How do you expect to get a job in the modern world???

Non scholae, sed vitae discimus, eh?

Eh? You lost me Jasper.

Misunderstanding #1: grammar
I did mean 'you would', because you can't say 'if you had learn'. It wasn't a request.

Misunderstanding #2: meaning
I meant that, if you know German and the differences between that (German) and other dialects, it isn't that difficult to understand those as well. E.g. yiddish for 'we' is 'mir' in stead of 'wir', the 1pl of 'to be' is 'zaynen', not 'sind' and all umlauted u's are i's. So you can understand quite easily what 'Un mir zaynen ale brider, oy, oy, ale brider' is. And if you know what 'azoy' means ('gleich') you know what this means as well 'Un mir zaynen ale shvester, oy, oy, ale shvester, azoy vi Rakhl Ruth un Ester oy, oy, oy.

你们好！我叫Димон!
Давненько я не был на форуме. Очень рад, что появился раздел, посвященный великому и могучему китайскому языку! The matter is that I've been studying Chineese for about 6 months at the university. I can say it's so intresting to speak more than 2 languages!
中文很难，也很有意思！我学习了六个月的中文了。现在我会写五百多汉字。我在符拉迪沃斯托克（ 娥国）住, 在东大学东方学院学习。[I live in Vladivostok (Russia), study at the FarEasternNationalUniversity, Institute of Oriental Studyies.]

Here is a topic from my exam. Perhaps it would be interesting for some of you. Если будут какие-нибудь проблемы с переводом, буду рад помочь!

今年我十八岁。我研究中文。我们班有二十四个学生。三位老师教我们汉语语法，汉字和口语。汉字很有意思也很 漂亮。
大学生一天。我是大学生。每天都我很忙。我有很多课也有很多事儿。我的一天七点开始。早上我吃了早饭就去学 院上课。常常有三个课或者四个课。每天我们班有汉语课。我两点下课。| 下课以后我跟我同学一起去食堂吃饭。我很喜欢在食堂作的反。我们食堂不太大可是很漂亮。我们常常一起去那儿 坐一坐。| 星期二汉语老师给我们辅导。她回答我们问的问题。| 星期五我没有课。我去阅览室看报和杂志。我们阅览室的杂志很有意思。| 有时候我跟我朋友一起去看新电影。| 晚上我回家。九点我复习汉语语法，写汉字，念课文。十一点半我睡觉。

That's enough for the first time )

Ну ну, 500+ иероглифы за 6 месяцев? Даже китайцы учат медленнее этого... Я никогда не понимал, почему говорится что языки выучатся куда быстрее детьми чем взрослыми. Никогда не услышал о младенце знающем 500 китайские иероглифы, или в моем случае, 6000+ русских слов и почти* все правила грамматики...

*Да да, почти, bad manners и VendingMachine. И их применение ещё не так свободное, знаю.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Eh? You lost me Jasper.

Misunderstanding #1: grammar
I did mean 'you would', because you can't say 'if you had learn'. It wasn't a request.

In that case you needed to form either a 1st or a second conditional:
1:
I'm sure that if you learn German and remember the differences between that and Letzebuergisch, Yiddish or Swiss you will be able to understand practically anything.

->if + present simple, will + base form

2:
I'm sure that if you learnt German and remembered the differences between that and Letzebuergisch, Yiddish or Swiss you would be able to understand practically anything.

->if + past simple, would + base form

I suspect you meant the latter. More realistic, in my case, would have been to use the 3rd conditional About requests, I simply meant that there are some cases in which it is OK to put 'would' in the 'if' clause : if you would be so kind as to.... Kind of a hangover from some older form of the language I guess.

Ok, now I see the ambiguity (and appaling ugliness) of my original sentence. I wasn't paying much attention to the grammar. I am familiar with English grammatical structures, you know, after all, I'm half-English! Don't you get all smarty-alecky with me, eh?

Hey Jasp you did kind of force my hand
Anyway you have to allow me my little Pyrrhic victories, considering how totally outclassed I am here, 'nall

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Ну ну, 500+ иероглифы за 6 месяцев? Даже китайцы учат медленнее этого... Я никогда не понимал, почему говорится что языки выучатся куда быстрее детьми чем взрослыми. Никогда не услышал о младенце знающем 500 китайские иероглифы, или в моем случае, 6000+ русских слов и почти* все правила грамматики...

*Да да, почти, bad manners и VendingMachine. И их применение ещё не так свободное, знаю.

Well, I learned 222 over the course of about a month. Had I kept up the same pace, I would have certainly reached 500+ in six months.

Dimon, I'm very excited that you are studying Chinese! I am learning Chinese by myself, unfortunately my university doesn't offer Chinese or Russian. Jasper doesn't know it, but I have been continuing my Chinese learning, disregarding learning how to write the characters - for now I'm content if I can recognize them in reading. The book I have will soon be finished and I am going to pick up another one fairly soon, I think. Да здравствует великий китайский язык!

你有中国的先生马？我学了二百二十二汉字了。我学中文学得很慢。中文很难！
Кстати, твое маленькое сочинение было для меня очень полезным, спасибо. Было также очень забавным!! Мне кажется, что ты очень подобный другим студентам, о которых я читаю в моем китайском учебнике. Им всегда нравится ходить в столовой, и какая она красивая! После того, они всегда смотрят новый фильм. Но я очень удивлен, что ты не сказал, что тебе нравится петь китайские песни, которые Товарищ Жанг тебе научил...

Jasper May, thanx a lot for the comliment! The rate seems to be unbeliveable, but it's true!
Восточный Институт Forever! By the way visit it's homepage on www.vostochnik.ru
Мы занимаемся по учебнику "Практический курс китайского языка" Кондрашевского (Russian translation of the 实用汉语课本)
And it is very, VERY difficult! Я знал, что будет трудно, но не знал, что ТАК трудно!
中文真难! Older students say that the first year is simply a holiday comparing to the real HELL of 2nd and 3rd years.
Students on the 2nd year have to learn about 150-200 汉字's per week! On the 3rd year, if still alive, they can easily work as guide with Chineese tourists...

***********
Pravit, I see u use the same book! Какой урок ты сейчас изучаешь?
U live in PRC, or it's a joke?

Our teacher from China don't speak Russian at all, so her lessons are very usefull for learning both English and Chineese : - )

And here is another topic from my exam:

我的房子。 我们的房子不太大，也不太小。 我们房子有两个卧室，一个客厅，一个洗澡间，一个厨房。
我的卧室很小。窗户对面有一张床。床右边是我的桌子和椅子。桌子里有很多英语和俄语书也有一些中文书和英语 词典。桌子上是我的电脑。
我的卧室左边是我们的客厅。客厅很大。我妈妈很喜欢花儿，所以客厅里边有很多花儿。窗户旁边有 一个电视。
客厅左边是我们的厨房。厨房里边有一张大的桌子也有四把椅子。我妈妈常常做好吃的菜。我们的朋友常常来我们 这儿。他们很喜欢在厨房坐。
客厅对面是洗澡间。这个房间很大也很漂亮。
现在我不在家里住可是我常常回家。我很想我的家也很想我的房子。

We aren't using the same book, but in books, Chinese and Soviet students tend to be big fans of refectories and reading "Renmin Huabao" in the library... I am using Beijing University's "Modern Chinese: A Basic Course."

I don't really live in PRC. Maybe I will go there someday.

I'm really tired right now, so I'll read your thing later.

Jasper doesn't know it, but I have been continuing my Chinese learning

Waah! Jerk! That's not fair!
Though I must say, I've also been learning a lot more Chinese up till now. I know 220 hanzi as well. In effectively two weeks. Nananananaah. I'll just do my Latin essay and watch some German movies, then I'll continue with Chinese. Just you wait, you backstabbing Thailanderman!

Could you good people check these sentences, please?

要是想买好书, 就二十块钱多半儿会不够

我们星期六晚上六点钟在"东南"酒楼外头见

谢谢!