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HashiriKata -



Quote:


Originally Posted by Quest

HK, can the poem be read in Vietnamese, can you post a Vietnamese version? Just curious about the
sounds and traces.


Interesting idea but I'll need to do some work on it, so I'll have to see how I get on...

A step further with your idea, I wonder if any Korean speaker here who would read a few lines of
the poem in Hanja? I could then myself try the Vietnamese and Japanese versions so that we can
hear the poem in all 4 languages of the old "漢字圏".



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HashiriKata -



Quote:


Originally Posted by studentyoung

Well, I have no idea on the condition in Taibei, but in China mainland, 1~ 3 year old little
babies are often taught to recite ‘Three Hundred Poems in Tang Dynasty 唐诗三百首’


I remember Semantic Nuance once gave us a link to a Taiwanese site called
唐詩三百首網路教學系統 (http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/300/BIN/ti_brow.asp), which may be
a similar idea. The site is unfortunately down at the moment, so I can't verify the contents.










sjcma -



Quote:

Well, I have no idea on the condition in Taibei, but in China mainland, 1~ 3 year old little
babies are often taught to recite ‘Three Hundred Poems in Tang Dynasty 唐诗三百首’ as
their enlightening education to train their sense of their mother tongue by their parents,
especially in intellectual families, because these poems are well written with beautiful rhymes
and easy enough for babies to read out loud, which are just the right points to help them practice
the pronunciation. A lot of experts in early education say it helps young children to read (no
matter to read out loud or to read in silence) more easily when they start to learn Chinese in
primary school.

My kids (ages 4 and 2) know quite a number of Tang Dynasty poems as well as passages from the
Three Character Classic (三字經). While Taibei is correct is saying that sound and tone is
important to reading poetry, I think modern readings of these Tang Dynasty poems sound great in
either Cantonese or Mandarin and follows very melodic rhyming patterns.










strongneo -

Hi Quest and HK

I can help with Vietnamese version of this poem (長 恨 歌), normally there are 2 types of
translation from Chinese to Vietnamese: translation to the ancient Vietnamese language (called
Hán Việt - Han Viet, which heavily borrows from Mandarin and it is no longer used nowadays) and
the other is translation to modern Vietnamese language.

The name of verse style, title and author of this poem (長 恨 歌) in Vietnamese
詩體: 七 言 古 詩 – Thất Ngôn Trường Thiên (That Ngon Truong Thien)
詩名: 長 恨 歌 – Trường Hận Ca (Truong Han Ca)
作者: 白 居 易 – Bạch Cư Dị (Bach Cu Di)

I will record the modern Vietnamese translation and post later with the Vietnamese translation
script
.










kudra -

a couple of comments on the adsotation of the selection from post #1.

If you cut and paste the passage into the advanced page, and adsotate there are a couple strange
things. Admittedly, feeding tang shi into adso may be ill advised. But I just wanted a quick
conversion to pinyin. Setting output to UTF8 simp which seems to work better yields --

1. 汉皇重色思 comes out as all 1 "word" 汉皇思重色. Notice the 思 has changed position!
There is no english -- just the hanzi

2. 天生 gets stuck together, but with no gloss

3. 回眸一笑百媚生, here 百 gets pinyin of yibai, not bai

4. 恩泽 has no english

5. 日 gets translated as "Japan is". OK, adso is tuned for prose, not tang shi. no big deal.

6. 遊 doesn't get adsotated. It gets converted into 閬� if the output is set to guobiao. Don't
know what's going on here.

If I choose pinyin, instead of adsotate, only the 1st line comes out.
If I also choose output as utf-8 simp then we get



Quote:

hànhuángsī chóngsè qīng guó ， yù yǔ duōnián qiú bùdé ** DANGER **
yáng jiā yǒu nǚ chū cháng chéng ， yǎng zài shēn guī rén wèi shí
tiānshēng lí zhì nán zì qì ， yī cháo xuǎn zài jūn wáng cè
huímóu yī xiào yībǎi mèi shēng ， liù gōng fěndài wú yánsè ** DANGER **
chūn hán cì yù huá qīng chí ， wēnquán shuǐ huá xǐ níng zhī
shì ér fúqǐ jiāo wúlì ， shǐ shì xīn chéng ēnzé shí
yún bìn huā yán jīn bùyào ， fúróng zhàng nuǎn dù chūn xiāo
chūn xiāo kǔ duǎn rì gāo qǐ ， cóngcǐ jūn wáng bù zǎocháo
chéng huān shì yàn wú xiánxiá ， chūn cóng chūn 遊 yè zhuān yè
hòugōng jiālì sānqiān rén ， sānqiān chǒngài zài yīshēn。

again note that 思 si has changed position. hànhuángsī chóngsè qīng guó should be
hànhuáng chóngsè sī qīng guó .

Now for some questions.
In listening to semantic nuance, it sounded to me like 识 in 养在深闺人未识 was pronounced
with 4th tone.

遊 has trouble converting, but if I put it into pleco with the handwriting recognition, it finds
it in the unihan add-in. as you2, wander, roam, travel. Apparently the meaning of 旅游. There is
probably an interesting reason that 游 is used in lvyou, where 遊 seems to have the more
appropriate meaning.

So here is the adsotrans assisted pinyin of the passage, with the few hand corrections.



Quote:

hànhuáng chóngsè sī qīng guó ， yù yǔ duōnián qiú bùdé
yáng jiā yǒu nǚ chū cháng chéng ， yǎng zài shēn guī rén wèi shí
tiānshēng lí zhì nán zì qì ， yī zhāo xuǎn zài jūn wáng cè
huímóu yī xiào bǎi mèi shēng ， liù gōng fěndài wú yánsè
chūn hán cì yù huá qīng chí ， wēnquán shuǐ huá xǐ níng zhī
shì ér fúqǐ jiāo wúlì ， shǐ shì xīn chéng ēnzé shí
yún bìn huā yán jīn bùyào ， fúróng zhàng nuǎn dù chūn xiāo
chūn xiāo kǔ duǎn rì gāo qǐ ， cóngcǐ jūn wáng bù zǎocháo
chéng huān shì yàn wú xiánxiá ， chūn cóng chūn yóu yè zhuān yè
hòugōng jiālì sānqiān rén ， sānqiān chǒngài zài yīshēn。

Now, there were a couple characters where semantic nuance used what againstwind called ancient. I
guess ths is classical pronunciation. Can someone point this out?
I heard
(adsopinyin) -> semantic nuance
chong2se4 -> zhong4 se4
chang2cheng2 -> zhang3 cheng2
wei4 shi2 -> wei4 shi4
li2zhi4 -> li4 zhi3
yi1 chao2 -> yi4 zhao1 (this one I have a handle on, since here 朝 zhao means early morning, as
in 一朝被蛇咬,十年怕井绳， think I read this in the HSK listening course book) So this
is corrected in the pinyin above.
bai2 -> bo2
liu4 gong1 -> lu4 gong1

So before I memorize this, I would like someone to untangle the pronunciation ambiguities above. I
don't mind using classical pronunciation if that is what is involved at some points, but I'd like
to know that is what is going on.

Thanks.










Jose -

Regarding your problems with 遊, this is a traditional character. In simplified Chinese it has
been merged and replaced with 游. Note that in traditional characters, 游 is used in
combinations that have the meaning of "swim, float", like 游泳, whereas 遊 is used with the
meaning of "roam, wander" as in 旅遊.

I think it is not correct for a text in simplified characters to use 遊. My guess is that its
appearance in the original text is probably the result of an automatic conversion from traditional
characters.










trevelyan -

Thank you the notes Kudra -- I'll fix the errors as I can and post a thread in the Adso forum
detailing then. In the future can you post these sorts of things in the Adso forum... I don't
check all of the threads and this would have slipped through. Someone sent a private email about
it though.










Janedcm -

very good!
It will be better if you could read the forth tone more strong ,










kudra -

Thought I would submit to evaluation by (and humiliation at the hands of) our helpful critics. I
have not memorized this passage. Doing so would probably make my reading smoother. Of course,
probably what most people are interested in is pronunciation during spontaneous conversation(Since
I am not podcasting in Chinese any time soon, you will have to use your imagination). Anyway, what
with practicing it a bit, I may end up memorizing the passage, in which case I will submit another
version just to see if it really is smoother.

A couple things – I based the pronunciation of 六宫 off of what I heard in semantic nuance’s
recording, so I pronounced it lu4 gong1. Also, to my ear, she pronounces 百媚生 as bo3 mei4
sheng1, which I tried to pronounce bai3 mei4 sheng1. Perhaps someone could clarify this.

My gut feeling, which isn’t worth much, is that these may be differences between modern and
archaic(perhaps there is a more appropriate term for this) pronunciations.

Also, to my ear she says 人未识 as ren2 wei4 shi4, but I tried to pronounce this as shi2. In
this case I am just taking a chance in breaking with what I hear semantic nuance doing, and going
with the dictionary pronunciation.

Given all that, to paraphrase the original poster, bring on the bitter medicine!

note: I shortened some of the pauses between lines using audacity to get the file under the limit
for uploading, hence the file name changhenge6










Koneko -

Good try!

I think your pace was a bit too fast for 長恨歌
Intonation... Well, I think your pitch was understandable but your stress was rather flat - I
think you should focus on pronouncing some words (normally the first word in a sentence), more
loudly or forcefully than those surrounding it in the same sentence.

Your tone is clear; just need to work on your stress.

K.












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Learn mandarin - Wikipedia Unblocked? - Page 3 -

> Learning Chinese > Chinese Computing and Technology
Wikipedia Unblocked?
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liuzhou -

BBC news is still blocked...



... unless you click here



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imron -

Now being reported on slashdot...



Quote:

'Wikipedia reported on its site that it had received word from multiple users in the country on
that the site had been restored.'"












roddy -

That's quite funny, I expected someone to edit that line out fairly quickly and put in something .
. . well, better. And now it's on the front page of slashdot . . .










hughitt1 -

hehe... at least they didn't link the people to this forum thread



Quote:

The 2004 block referred to came allegedly in response to an article posted on the site as the
country approached the 25th anniversary of the Tienneman Square massacre. The country subsequently
initiated a mass edit of political articles on the site.

Hmm.. I guess the next question is- are they going to allow wikipedia to maintains its NPOV goal
for articles? Or are you going to see more of a "China's POV" on some of the issues.










roddy -

I added a comment to the slashdot article to clarify a couple of things and linked to the forums
thread. However, it was #120 or something and so far has generated a total of 2 visits, at least
one of which was me. So far the server is coping. I also linked to Liuzhou's blog, as he was the
one to spot it first. Danwei is also on the case.










robattoronto -

I'm from Toronto and although I've never been to China, I've never been a big fan of big brother
watching over your shoulder all the time. Yes, there may be some pros and cons to this issue, but
I see way more cons than benefits.

The bottom line is: The government just cannot bring their people to compete at par with other
nations if you shelter their lives to such a degree that you dictate what they can see or cannot
see on the internet. Its like a protective mother not allowing her kid to play with the other kids
in the playground. Her son will hurt himself and do stupid things, but along the way, he'll learn
a lot of valuable lessons.

I was very glad to read that the Chinese government unblocked wiki. I think its a great step
forward. Its not about whether you can already access it through proxy sites, its about a
government willing to negotiate and relaxing its fist. I'd say, don't be too disappointed if they
didn't open the floodgates and allow all websites. It is indeed baby steps for your government.

As I've said, an excellent step forward in the right direction. The Chinese goverment need to
allow their citizens to see the good and the bad of the internet.










imron -



Quote:

It is indeed baby steps for your government.

Just FYI, most people on this forum aren't Chinese, but are non-Chinese interested in studying and
learning about Chinese language and culture. It's not our governments doing anything.

And I don't really think it's relaxing anything, or showing that the Chinese government is somehow
making the steps towards changing its ways. It's just got more fine-grained in how it censors
things, so that non-sensitive articles can be viewed, rather than having a blanket ban on the
domain. So although wikipedia is not completely blocked (as it used to be), you still have no
access to the more "sensitive" web-pages. i.e. the Chinese government still believes it can
dictate what content Chinese internet users can access.

One could argue that it's quite a master stroke by the Chinese government. Previously, many
foreigners in China would complain about government censorship blocking access to a valuable
resource like wikipedia. Mostly these people wouldn't be looking up the stuff that the Chinese
goverment was concerned about, but the government still ended up copping a lot of criticism for it.

Now, that they've unblocked large amounts of wikipedia, you won't have nearly so many voices
crying out that wikipedia is blocked, so they won't be getting criticised as much.

The net result of all of this is that they've silenced a bunch of critics, but are still doing
more or less the same as they always were (i.e. still limiting access to the stuff that they don't
want people seeing).

The cynic might well argue that in terms of protecting free-speech and in terms of the government
changing it ways, things are now worse than they were before.










roddy -

Agree with Imron. It's not a step forward, it's a step nowhere. They've just stopped doing
something pointless that didn't achieve their aims and got a bit of good publicity (or at least
cancelled out some negative publicity). into the bargain.


Quote:

I'm from Toronto and although I've never been to China, I've never been a big fan of big brother
watching over your shoulder all the time.

On behalf of the Chinese people, doubleplus thanks.










Hero Doug -

I actually just read an article (well many) about how China is already starting to influence the
world. MS, Google and Yahoo were the first to go, Skype recently came under critisim, Yahoo also
released information which led to the arrest of two "online dissident writers".

This is all based on censorship issues.










liuzhou -



Quote:

It's not a step forward, it's a step nowhere.

"
I think it is actually a step backwards. They have only opened wikipedia because their techniques
are getting more sophisticated (thanks to companies like Cisco). They no longer need to block
complete domain names as they did in the past. They can now block individual pages.

I can watch the Beatles on Youtube, but try to access the film of the recent T!bet murders by the
border guards. They have blocked one video, not the whole site.

I guess that is why my blog was suddenly unblocked. I suffered from a mass blocking of the entire
domain name. Now they are just waiting to pounce!












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Chinese School - basic pronunciation questions -

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basic pronunciation questions
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leosmith -

I’ve been using online tutorials to learn pronunciations/tones. Unfortunately, there are some
discrepancies. Here are some questions.

1. I’ve heard it’s best to learn the Beijing accent. What do you think?
2. Is ‘c’ pronounced more like ‘ts’ or ‘h’? Different sites have different
pronunciations.
3. Should I use this dictionary http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php
to resolve any accent questions?

Thanks,
Leo



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Gulao -

1. You shouldn't learn the thicker Beijing accent, IMO. It can get to be just as unclear as any
other accent. Ultimately, you should look up the "standard" pronunciations and make sure that each
letter sounds like that. For instance, don't try to pronounce 学生 as 学儿生. You'll still
get a bit of rhoticity at the end of xue, that way, but it will definitely sound more standard.

2. C is pronounded ts. Stop reading whatever source tells you that it is pronounced h.

3. That dictionary seems fine to me.










leosmith -

Thanks Gulao,

1. Actually, I'm just beginning, so I don't know any characters yet. According to the dictionary,
学生(student) = xue2sheng5. For the mispronounced word, which of these do you mean: 学儿生 =
xue2er2sheng5 or xue2er5sheng5?

2. The "c sounds like h" thing came from a syllable table. Do you, or anyone else, know of a site
with a complete syllable table, including tones, that has good pronunciation? I've been using 3
different tables, all connected to
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm
One has correct pronunciation (I think), but is all in the first tone. The other two are complete,
but have incorrect pronunciation (I suspect it's a messed up recording). I just want to try to
read the pinyin, and click to hear the answer. These tables are great for that, but I need them to
have correct pronunciation.

3. I love that dictionary, but I notice it locks up when I check a lot of pronunciations. Do you
know of another one that has pronunciation on it? Is there a really popular chinese dictionary
site? There's sort of a master dictionary for Japanese
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/c...wwwjdic.cgi?1C
so I wonder about Chinese.










imron -

This is probably what you're looking for.










leosmith -

Thanks imron. Not bad, but I hope to find something a little faster like one of these:
http://www. /showthread.php?t=12997










Gulao -



Quote:

Actually, I'm just beginning, so I don't know any characters yet. According to the dictionary,
学生(student) = xue2sheng5. For the mispronounced word, which of these do you mean: 学儿生 =
xue2er2sheng5 or xue2er5sheng5?

The second one tends to be romanised as, xuer2sheng5. The 儿 is used in text to indicate
rhoticity, or the r-colored finals, in the Beijing dialect. This romanisation is also used in
yi1dianr3 (一点儿), ger1 (哥儿), wanr2 (玩儿), etc.










Craig -

Living in Beijing and studying in Beijing i still find it easier to understand, and now talk in, a
southern accent. When i started i stuck very dilligently the beijing pronunciation but the longer
i studied the easier it got to stop retroflexing r's.

I'd say start with learning the "standard" way to pronounce words and as you study more and are
exposed to more materials (videos, music, people) from other parts of china one you will find
easier than others to replicate. That is the one you will most likely end up speaking more like.










Yang Rui -

IMHO, it's best to learn standard Putonghua and not try to adopt any kind of regional accent.
There's nothing more cringeworthy than hearing a foreigner attempting to talk in an over-the-top
Beijing accent.

Putonghua has rules about which words take a retroflex "r" and which don't. In Beijing, the "r"
sound is added to words that technically should not have an"r" ending in Putonghua. In the south
of China, the "r" sound is left off words that should have an "r" ending. Neither is standard
Putonghua.

Unfortunately, the noble goal of trying to learn standard Putonghua is undermined by the fact that
almost no one speaks it in daily life (although as it is based on the Beijing dialect, i think
more people in the north of China speak standard Putonghua). So if you learn by talking to Chinese
people, you will undoubtedly pick up their non-standard habits, and may end up with a slight
regional accent.

Ultimately, the aim is to be understood by as many people as possible, and i think aiming for
standard Putonghua is the best way to achieve this. Which i suppose is a roundabout way of
agreeing with Gulao that you should not learn a heavy Beijing accent.










leosmith -



Quote:

IMHO, it's best to learn standard Putonghua and not try to adopt any kind of regional accent.

Ok, I'm convinced. So how do I make sure my learning materials are "standard" Putonghua?










roddy -

All learning materials - ie textbooks, associated recordings, etc are going to be standard
Putonghua, almost by definition. If you are using stuff like movies, TV shows, etc for study
purposes you might want to check what kind of accents they feature, but you'll have to take those
one by one.












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