There's a new record label in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It's called Gold Taiphoon. It's a merger between EMI Music Hong Kong and EMI Music Taiwan and it is designed to help promote EMI's Hong Kong artists in Taiwan and vice-versa. So far it has signed Elva Hsiao, Cyndi Wang, A-Mei and Zhou Bichang. Stefanie Sun and Jolin Tsai recently left Gold Taiphoon and signed with Warner Music Taiwan.
That's where it gets interesting. I've seen pictures on Facebook of Elva Hsiao standing next to Cyndi Wang or singing with A-Mei and Jolin singing with Stefanie Sun and briefly wondered if there actually was a god but then realised it was just their respective record companies trying to promote them as a kind of family. Almost as if they were a pair of supergroups: Elva Hsiao, Cyndi Wang, A-Mei and Zhou Bichang on one hand and Stefanie Sun, Jolin Tsai, Coco Lee and Vivian Hsu on the other.
Not that many of them are all that loyal to their record companies. Jolin started with Universal and then went to Sony and EMI before settling at Warner's. Coco Lee started at Capital Artits and then went to Fancy Pie Records and Sony before settling at Warner's. Vivian Hsu started at EMI and then went to Sony and Avex before settling at Warner's. Elva started at EMI and then went to Warner's before returning to EMI. A-Mei started at Forward Music and then went to Warner's before settling at EMI. On the other hand, Cyndi started at Avex and stayed at Avex for her entire career before recently signing with EMI while EMI is Zhou Bichang's first record label.
So there seems to be a kind of musical (appropriately enough) chairs going on between Warner's and EMI, almost as if they are trying to steal each other's artists. Compare to how Rainie Yang has been signed on to Sony for ten years. Mind you, we also have Karen Mok going from Star Records to Rock Records to Sony to Universal without ever signing to either Warner's or EMI.
What's my point? I don't really have a point. This is just my excuse to search the internet for information about my favorite singers. Well, except for Zhou Bichang: she kind of looks like a guy.
Martin
Monday, 8 February 2010
Friday, 25 December 2009
Language Centre Classes
The 2009 fall semester is the fifth semester in a row that has had native speakers interacting directly with non-major students at CTUST in a relaxed environment with the intent of getting students to speak in English. The program has been a success in so far as some students have come back several weeks in a row and this has given us -and, even more importantly, them- an opportunity to observe improvement. Topics have ranged from mundane topics such as school, sports, weather, travel, food, music and television to more advanced topics such as the future, emotions, shopping, bad habits (such as smoking and drinking) and good English study habits.
The native speaking teachers are mostly full time teachers at CTUST. The classes differ from ordinary classes in many ways. First of all, no grades are offered, although teachers do provide feedback to students, judging their participation as anything from "weak" or "so-so" to "great" or "excellent". The feedback is intended not so much to gauge their level but to encourage students to come back and try harder. Teachers do not offer classes at different levels although a teacher can very quickly adjust the level of the class to suit the level of the students: weak students are asked to repeat after the teacher and answer mainly yes/no questions whereas more advanced students are expected to speak in full sentences and talk freely about themselves. Some students will even ask the teacher questions -which the teacher will encourage- but then the teacher has to keep his or her answers brief and get the students talking again. In general, the students at these English Clinic classes are coming voluntarily and are more motivated than even English majors but are typically much weaker than English majors and will sometimes need to hear a question spoken a few times slowly before they can answer.
The December 3rd classes were at 1:20 and 3:10 and lasted for fifty minutes each. The topic was Hopes and Dreams. At first it seemed as though the topic would be too difficult for the students but the teacher compensated by explaining the vocabulary in Chinese. The teacher was able to do this partly because he had been in Taiwan for over six years and had studied a lot of Chinese in that time and partly because he had brushed up on the vocabulary he needed to use, having taught the same subject previously to both majors and non-majors in recent years. What could have been two difficult classes thus turned out to be no problem as most students were able to answer in full sentences. That being said, there was one student in the 3:10 class who had trouble understanding questions even when they were explained both by the teacher and his classmates. It is, however, better to have students who don't understand and yet still pay attention and make an effort than to have students with more potential who aren't interested and talk amongst themselves in Chinese: the latter type of student is less common in English Clinic classes simply because they are there voluntarily. The student in question was eventually able to answer some questions.
Overall, it was a good afternoon: there were sixteen students altogether, ten at 1:20 and six at 3:10. The teacher asked the 1:20 students if they wanted to stay around for another hour and engage in free talking as no students were coming at 2:15 but the students all opted not to: the teacher didn't bother to ask the same question to the 3:10 class because their level was lower and free talking would have been too difficult for them. It was hoped that some of the students from either group would come back next week so they could get some more practice.
On December 10th, there were three classes, one with eleven students, one with four students and one with nine students. The first and third classes were about coming and going (around the house or around town) and the second class was about preventive medicine and home remedies.
The first class went well in the sense that there were many talkative students who interacted well with the teacher and made him feel comfortable and relaxed. Having the teacher be comfortable and relaxed is not necessarily a good thing for all the students, however: some students would prefer the teacher to speak more slowly and more deliberately even though doing so is unnatural and stressful for the teacher: a teacher who is relaxed is not constantly worried that students don’t understand. It turned out that there were a few relatively weak students (mainly students from Early Childhood Education) mixed in with the group so the teacher had to explain some things twice and so the lesson took longer than usual. At 2:10 the teacher told students that he wasn’t finished but anybody who wanted to leave could. Four students stayed on after 2:10 even though the teacher did try to encourage others to stay.
Instead of immediately switching to the new topic, the teacher continued to speak about the old topic. With the weaker students gone, the teacher explained the difference between “borrow” and “lend”, “bring and take” and “come and go”. This took about fifteen minutes during which time no new students came. The teacher reluctantly informed the students that with no new students coming he would stop. He suggested to students that they come back at 4:05 when the topic would be different from the one they just had. No students wanted to come back at 4:05, however, and instead asked if the teacher couldn’t have a “free talking” class. The teacher said it would be easier if he actually had a topic to talk about so he decided to teach about preventive medicine and home remedies.
Preventive medicine and home remedies is a class aimed at nursing and other health care students so it was a bit awkward speaking instead to radiology and marketing students. Nevertheless, the class went well: the weaker students had already left and the teacher didn’t have to explain all the vocabulary. (It also helped that the teacher included Chinese translations on the handout precisely so he wouldn’t have to explain every word.) The teacher asked in general terms what students did to keep healthy (sleeping, exercising, eating right and bathing) and he discussed the various ways that diseases were prevented (vitamins, vaccines, keeping warm and staying away from sick people). He also discussed the difference between a virus and a bacterium and spoke in general terms about how diseases were treated.
The last class returned to the original topic. With a couple fewer students, instead of finishing late, the teacher found he had a bit of extra time at the end of class and decided to go back and discuss about what different types of hotels (motels/inns), restaurants (fast food/coffee shops), bars (wine bars/clubs) and theatres (playhouses/concert halls) there are. He did this until the class was over. As he was leaving he spoke to one student who hadn’t said very much in class: it turned out he was just shy and was able to speak English fairly well but didn’t like speaking in a large group. I think this is a matter that needs to be taken under consideration: a large group may not benefit all students equally and with some students being unable to take advantage of a large group at all.
Week 14 added a new twist: the handouts were double-sided which meant that students who were taught about Shopping also got the Food Poisoning handout on the other side and vice-versa. This made things a bit simpler: the teacher could, for example, simply ask students to turn their handouts over and continue the lesson with the new topic and then ask students if they wanted to stay for another hour having already introduced the new topic. This is what was done during the first hour. In the second hour, the topic was supposed to be Food Poisoning but as none of the students from the first hour stayed for the second hour the teacher decided to do the Shopping topic again because it was easier. Four students from the third hour stayed for the fourth hour, however, so Food Poisoning was officially the topic for the fourth hour and this time the teacher asked the students to turn their sheets over at the end of the fourth hour so they could be asked some questions about Shopping too. Thus, every hour had students exposed to both topics. It was good to be able to do this because the class sizes are smaller now than they were two years ago so it is harder now to get students to talk for a whole hour compared to back then. (In larger classes there is at least one student who can speak freely plus at least one student who needs to have questions asked repeatively.)
The first class today had only five students even though fifteen students had shown up. The students who came were from marketing, childhood education and radiology. One student was actually not registered in any program. In this particular case it was really necessary to have at least five students as the first four students neither had much to say nor had trouble understanding the question: they simply didn’t do a lot of shopping nor get sick very often.
The second class had eleven students even though thirteen students had signed up. It is possible that some of the students who had signed up for the first hour came late and attended the second hour. (One student came late in the first hour and said that there was a volleyball game during the lunch hour. He didn’t say if he had been playing volleyball or merely watching.) The students who came were from dentistry, radiology and management information systems. As there were no students from either nursing or nutrition, the teacher decided to start by asking students about their shopping habits. This turned out to be the right thing to do as the ESP topic would have been a bit too difficult for them to start with.
The third hour had only nine students even though sixteen had signed up. The teacher knew that sixteen student had signed up for the fourth hour but he was worried that only a fraction of them would only show up. As it turned out, only four students showed up for the fourth hour but the teacher had managed to convince four of the students from the third hour to stay on for another hour. The students in the third and fourth hours were childhood education, nursing and security students with two students each from nursing and security staying on for the whole two hours.
In addition to the topics of Shopping and Food Poisoning, the teacher talked with the students about the difference between “looking for” something and actually “finding” something and discussed phrasal verbs with the ending “up”. One problem that students had was with the pronunciation of the words “cats”, “dogs” and “price” and the teacher spent a lot of time in the first hour getting students to pronounce correctly. Some students looked confused which had the teacher wondering if they could even hear the difference between “cat” and “cats” or “dog” and “dogs”. The teacher recommended to one student that if she couldn’t say “What is the price?” correctly then she would have to say “How much is it?” instead. In practice however, students will inevitably find it difficult to be understood by foreigners (be they native English speakers or non-native non-Chinese English speakers) if they can’t pronounce certain words correctly. This fact should not be overlooked by any of us when we teach English.
Finally, Week 15 had twenty students show up in the first period. Of those twenty, six stayed on for another period, including one who stayed on for two periods. An additional seven students showed up for the second period of which two stayed on for another period. Thirteen students came for the third period and no students came for the fourth period. Twenty students had originally signed on for the first period, fourteen for the second, seventeen for the third and four for the fourth: it seems everybody who signed up for the first and third periods came but less than half those who signed up for the second and fourth actually came, if any at all.
The topics this week were Learning English and Long Term Treatment and Rehabilitation. The students this week were mostly from Radiology, Dentistry and Security with only a few students from Early Childhood Education and a couple from nursing. More emphasis, therefore, was placed on Learning English than on Long Term Treatment and Rehabilitation: it was touching when a couple of students in the second period talked about how their respective grandfathers died from diabetes. (One other student said his grandfather had had a stroke but got better.) Besides, with twenty students in the first period the teacher didn’t get much of a chance to talk to them individually about what they did to study English so he used the beginning of the second period to talk to students about their study habits before moving on to the new topic.
Besides the main topics, the teacher also talked to students about gerunds and infinitives and about phrasal verbs ending in “down”. Students didn’t seem to have much trouble understanding the teacher this week: instead the teacher had to insist that students not use Chinese because to explain the teacher’s questions to other students; it just didn’t seem necessary this week. Instant translation of questions posed in English can easily become a crutch: students need to try to listen to questions posed in English and think about how to answer them without having to wait for a Chinese translation.
With the Week 15 classes finished, the Language Centre classes were finished until next semester.
Merry Christmas.
Martin
The native speaking teachers are mostly full time teachers at CTUST. The classes differ from ordinary classes in many ways. First of all, no grades are offered, although teachers do provide feedback to students, judging their participation as anything from "weak" or "so-so" to "great" or "excellent". The feedback is intended not so much to gauge their level but to encourage students to come back and try harder. Teachers do not offer classes at different levels although a teacher can very quickly adjust the level of the class to suit the level of the students: weak students are asked to repeat after the teacher and answer mainly yes/no questions whereas more advanced students are expected to speak in full sentences and talk freely about themselves. Some students will even ask the teacher questions -which the teacher will encourage- but then the teacher has to keep his or her answers brief and get the students talking again. In general, the students at these English Clinic classes are coming voluntarily and are more motivated than even English majors but are typically much weaker than English majors and will sometimes need to hear a question spoken a few times slowly before they can answer.
The December 3rd classes were at 1:20 and 3:10 and lasted for fifty minutes each. The topic was Hopes and Dreams. At first it seemed as though the topic would be too difficult for the students but the teacher compensated by explaining the vocabulary in Chinese. The teacher was able to do this partly because he had been in Taiwan for over six years and had studied a lot of Chinese in that time and partly because he had brushed up on the vocabulary he needed to use, having taught the same subject previously to both majors and non-majors in recent years. What could have been two difficult classes thus turned out to be no problem as most students were able to answer in full sentences. That being said, there was one student in the 3:10 class who had trouble understanding questions even when they were explained both by the teacher and his classmates. It is, however, better to have students who don't understand and yet still pay attention and make an effort than to have students with more potential who aren't interested and talk amongst themselves in Chinese: the latter type of student is less common in English Clinic classes simply because they are there voluntarily. The student in question was eventually able to answer some questions.
Overall, it was a good afternoon: there were sixteen students altogether, ten at 1:20 and six at 3:10. The teacher asked the 1:20 students if they wanted to stay around for another hour and engage in free talking as no students were coming at 2:15 but the students all opted not to: the teacher didn't bother to ask the same question to the 3:10 class because their level was lower and free talking would have been too difficult for them. It was hoped that some of the students from either group would come back next week so they could get some more practice.
On December 10th, there were three classes, one with eleven students, one with four students and one with nine students. The first and third classes were about coming and going (around the house or around town) and the second class was about preventive medicine and home remedies.
The first class went well in the sense that there were many talkative students who interacted well with the teacher and made him feel comfortable and relaxed. Having the teacher be comfortable and relaxed is not necessarily a good thing for all the students, however: some students would prefer the teacher to speak more slowly and more deliberately even though doing so is unnatural and stressful for the teacher: a teacher who is relaxed is not constantly worried that students don’t understand. It turned out that there were a few relatively weak students (mainly students from Early Childhood Education) mixed in with the group so the teacher had to explain some things twice and so the lesson took longer than usual. At 2:10 the teacher told students that he wasn’t finished but anybody who wanted to leave could. Four students stayed on after 2:10 even though the teacher did try to encourage others to stay.
Instead of immediately switching to the new topic, the teacher continued to speak about the old topic. With the weaker students gone, the teacher explained the difference between “borrow” and “lend”, “bring and take” and “come and go”. This took about fifteen minutes during which time no new students came. The teacher reluctantly informed the students that with no new students coming he would stop. He suggested to students that they come back at 4:05 when the topic would be different from the one they just had. No students wanted to come back at 4:05, however, and instead asked if the teacher couldn’t have a “free talking” class. The teacher said it would be easier if he actually had a topic to talk about so he decided to teach about preventive medicine and home remedies.
Preventive medicine and home remedies is a class aimed at nursing and other health care students so it was a bit awkward speaking instead to radiology and marketing students. Nevertheless, the class went well: the weaker students had already left and the teacher didn’t have to explain all the vocabulary. (It also helped that the teacher included Chinese translations on the handout precisely so he wouldn’t have to explain every word.) The teacher asked in general terms what students did to keep healthy (sleeping, exercising, eating right and bathing) and he discussed the various ways that diseases were prevented (vitamins, vaccines, keeping warm and staying away from sick people). He also discussed the difference between a virus and a bacterium and spoke in general terms about how diseases were treated.
The last class returned to the original topic. With a couple fewer students, instead of finishing late, the teacher found he had a bit of extra time at the end of class and decided to go back and discuss about what different types of hotels (motels/inns), restaurants (fast food/coffee shops), bars (wine bars/clubs) and theatres (playhouses/concert halls) there are. He did this until the class was over. As he was leaving he spoke to one student who hadn’t said very much in class: it turned out he was just shy and was able to speak English fairly well but didn’t like speaking in a large group. I think this is a matter that needs to be taken under consideration: a large group may not benefit all students equally and with some students being unable to take advantage of a large group at all.
Week 14 added a new twist: the handouts were double-sided which meant that students who were taught about Shopping also got the Food Poisoning handout on the other side and vice-versa. This made things a bit simpler: the teacher could, for example, simply ask students to turn their handouts over and continue the lesson with the new topic and then ask students if they wanted to stay for another hour having already introduced the new topic. This is what was done during the first hour. In the second hour, the topic was supposed to be Food Poisoning but as none of the students from the first hour stayed for the second hour the teacher decided to do the Shopping topic again because it was easier. Four students from the third hour stayed for the fourth hour, however, so Food Poisoning was officially the topic for the fourth hour and this time the teacher asked the students to turn their sheets over at the end of the fourth hour so they could be asked some questions about Shopping too. Thus, every hour had students exposed to both topics. It was good to be able to do this because the class sizes are smaller now than they were two years ago so it is harder now to get students to talk for a whole hour compared to back then. (In larger classes there is at least one student who can speak freely plus at least one student who needs to have questions asked repeatively.)
The first class today had only five students even though fifteen students had shown up. The students who came were from marketing, childhood education and radiology. One student was actually not registered in any program. In this particular case it was really necessary to have at least five students as the first four students neither had much to say nor had trouble understanding the question: they simply didn’t do a lot of shopping nor get sick very often.
The second class had eleven students even though thirteen students had signed up. It is possible that some of the students who had signed up for the first hour came late and attended the second hour. (One student came late in the first hour and said that there was a volleyball game during the lunch hour. He didn’t say if he had been playing volleyball or merely watching.) The students who came were from dentistry, radiology and management information systems. As there were no students from either nursing or nutrition, the teacher decided to start by asking students about their shopping habits. This turned out to be the right thing to do as the ESP topic would have been a bit too difficult for them to start with.
The third hour had only nine students even though sixteen had signed up. The teacher knew that sixteen student had signed up for the fourth hour but he was worried that only a fraction of them would only show up. As it turned out, only four students showed up for the fourth hour but the teacher had managed to convince four of the students from the third hour to stay on for another hour. The students in the third and fourth hours were childhood education, nursing and security students with two students each from nursing and security staying on for the whole two hours.
In addition to the topics of Shopping and Food Poisoning, the teacher talked with the students about the difference between “looking for” something and actually “finding” something and discussed phrasal verbs with the ending “up”. One problem that students had was with the pronunciation of the words “cats”, “dogs” and “price” and the teacher spent a lot of time in the first hour getting students to pronounce correctly. Some students looked confused which had the teacher wondering if they could even hear the difference between “cat” and “cats” or “dog” and “dogs”. The teacher recommended to one student that if she couldn’t say “What is the price?” correctly then she would have to say “How much is it?” instead. In practice however, students will inevitably find it difficult to be understood by foreigners (be they native English speakers or non-native non-Chinese English speakers) if they can’t pronounce certain words correctly. This fact should not be overlooked by any of us when we teach English.
Finally, Week 15 had twenty students show up in the first period. Of those twenty, six stayed on for another period, including one who stayed on for two periods. An additional seven students showed up for the second period of which two stayed on for another period. Thirteen students came for the third period and no students came for the fourth period. Twenty students had originally signed on for the first period, fourteen for the second, seventeen for the third and four for the fourth: it seems everybody who signed up for the first and third periods came but less than half those who signed up for the second and fourth actually came, if any at all.
The topics this week were Learning English and Long Term Treatment and Rehabilitation. The students this week were mostly from Radiology, Dentistry and Security with only a few students from Early Childhood Education and a couple from nursing. More emphasis, therefore, was placed on Learning English than on Long Term Treatment and Rehabilitation: it was touching when a couple of students in the second period talked about how their respective grandfathers died from diabetes. (One other student said his grandfather had had a stroke but got better.) Besides, with twenty students in the first period the teacher didn’t get much of a chance to talk to them individually about what they did to study English so he used the beginning of the second period to talk to students about their study habits before moving on to the new topic.
Besides the main topics, the teacher also talked to students about gerunds and infinitives and about phrasal verbs ending in “down”. Students didn’t seem to have much trouble understanding the teacher this week: instead the teacher had to insist that students not use Chinese because to explain the teacher’s questions to other students; it just didn’t seem necessary this week. Instant translation of questions posed in English can easily become a crutch: students need to try to listen to questions posed in English and think about how to answer them without having to wait for a Chinese translation.
With the Week 15 classes finished, the Language Centre classes were finished until next semester.
Merry Christmas.
Martin
Monday, 23 November 2009
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Weekend in Taipei
When my wife and I go to Taipei we don't do touristy things when we go to Taipei: we don't visit parks or museums or historical landmarks or Taipei 101. We just go to the hotel and then go shopping in the evening. This weekend I went top Taipei to attend the Eighteenth International Symposium on English Teaching.
My wife and I were sick this past week so we weren't sure if we were going to go at all. Then once we got better we still had to wait for my monthly pay to be deposited into my bank account so we would have enough money for the bus, taxis, a hotel room, food and new whatever stuff Imelda was planning to buy.
I got paid Friday morning so we left Friday afternoon. It took over four hours to get to Taipei by bus because the traffic was bad. We then checked into a cheap hotel near the bus station but the bed was too small for the three of us (me, my wife and Ian) so I paid for a second room, which was fine because that meant I was able to watch local Taiwanese TV and my wife was able to watch HBO.
I attended a few talks in the morning. The first two talks I attended delt with matters of giving speeches (using persuasive speech and providing students with appropriate topics to choose from). The next two talks delt with corpora, specifically using corpora in the classroom and using evidence from corpora to determine how people learn languages. (Apparently we associate the word "bark" with the word "dog" but not with the word "cat" so that the sentence "The cat barked" would give us pause even though it is not grammatically incorrect: the author claimed that this is a generalisation of how we notice errors, ie by noticing when two things don't go together.)
I also got a chance to speak about fuzzy logic. Engineers use fuzzy logic when they design heaters and air conditioners: they know that the words "hot" and "cold" can't be defined by a single temperature but by a range of temperatures and they often explain this by pointing out that the words "tall" and "short" are not clearly defined either. I made the argument that the words "usually" and "sometimes" and "many" and "few" and "probably" and "possibly" are all similarly fuzzy and that we need to recognize this when we explain to students the meaning of these words. Even native speakers get confused by the meaning of the word "few": if "few" means "between three and five" then what do we mean when we say "There are only a few buffalo living today in North America"?
I also attended a few talks in the afternoon, starting with Stephen Krashen's talk about USSR (Uninterupted Sustained Silent Reading). He claimed that a few minutes a day of USSR during class helped students. Of course, a well motivated teacher with well motivated students is always going to have better results so if the teachers and students both knew they were part of a study then I would be very surprised if they didn't get positive results. I suggested to Krashen that too much of anything (such as testing or gramming instruction) is a bad thing and that we needed to find what worked for our students. He said "That's why we do research". Of course, I clearly said that we needed to find what worked for OUR students but I guess he doesn't have students and can't relate to that.
The talk that followed was much better because, like the corpus discussions in the morning, the claims made were supported by hard evidence, something that is difficult to find in the humanities. I'm actually gratified that people are now doing corpus research and not simply trying to defend their unsupported opinions over and over as it will, in te long run, provide some much needed credibility for the field. I'm thinking, in particular, of a talk that someone from TOEIC gave at Chungtai a couple of months ago: he claimed that most communication in English was done between non-native speakers. Whether this is true or not -and it obviously isn't- it wasn't supported by the reference he cited because I found out yesterday that the reference he cited showed that most international travel was done by non-English speaking people travelling to non-English speaking countries. I made the point today that Japanese tourists travelling overseas are very much unlikely to be using English when they travel overseas and will instead seek out the services of a bilingual tour guide. So there you have it: a prime example of where an unsupported opinion can hurt one's credibility.
The last talk I attended was by Jeremy Sykes. I remember he gave a similar talk at Chungtai back in May. I also remember that talk being more interesting than this one, partly because that talk used more multi-media (he had pictures and a video last time) and partly, probably, because I had already heard much of what he had to say before. He made the distinction between Academic English and EOP (English for Ordinary Purposes) and said that most students needed to study EOP. In the previous talk I attended, however, the speaker made the point that critical thinking was important and that students needed to learn how to "analyze a text, reflect on it, form an opinion and try to persude others" and I asked him if he thought these were useful skills for students to learn (as that's really all we are teaching in Academic English classes). He seemed upset. I didn't bother to point out that fluency is meaningless unless a speaker can make himself understood. (He argued that fluency is more important than accuracy and that students should focus on fluency first.) I tell students the exact opposite: I find that when students try to talk to quickly I can't understand them and I tell them that they need to slow down, speak accurately (ie with proper grammar and pronunciation) so I can understand them and only worry about fluency when speaking comes more naturally. To me that's just common sense so I didn't even bother to bring it up.
Anyway, I'm glad I went. Imelda even says we should go back next month so she can do some more shopping. Me, I'd like to go back so I can watch some more local TV: we don't have cable TV here where we live; instead we have a satellite dish that picks up signals from the Philippines. I was really excited last night because I was able to see the latest episode of a Cyndi Wang drama - all two hours of it! I was so, so happy to see that she was still active in the entertainment industry and hadn't disappeared altogether. I was a little upset when a new album by Cynthia Wang came out recently and then yesterday evening on MTV a girl introduced herself by saying "Hi, I'm Cindy" and I said "NO, you're not" and she said "Cindy Yuan" and I said "Okay but you're not MY Cyndi. Where's MY Cyndi?" and then there she was for a good couple of hours. Yay!
I was also happy to see Rainie Yang, not only in a drama of her own but also in a jeans commercial. Yes, Rainie Yang was in a jeans commercial, which is surprising because she is really thin. Yet there she was and she looked great. Yum. So I guess the message to young girls is "No matter how thin you are you can find a pair of jeans small enough that can make you look like you have a great figure". Well, frankly, it's hard to argue against that logic after seeing that particular commercial. Now I want to see Cyndi and Jolin doing jeans commercials: it's the next best thing if they're not going to do porn.
Oh, one last thing: I was surprised how much Korean and Japanese content is on Taiwanese TV, especially as much of it is not dubbed but in the original language with Chinese subtitles. Korean and Japanese women look great on TV, much better than Korean and Japanese women on the streets of Korea and Japan. To be fair, Taiwanese women look better on TV than in real life but not by much: women on Taiwanese TV look like ordinary Taiwanese women after a quick make over. Taiwanese women on TV really do fairly well represent how women in Taiwan look in real life. Yes, yes, I do love living here.
By contrast, women in the Philippines are actually better, on average, than the women you see on Philippine TV. Women in the Philippines are spectacularly beautiful but you wouldn't know it by watching Filipino TV: women on Filipino TV have much lighter skin than the average Filipina and some Philippine TV stars (eg Marion Rivera) look more Spanish than Filipino. The Filipino obsession with lighter skin tones has always been a pet peeve of mine - why should Filipinas spend so much money on skin lightening products that, in my opinion, make them less attractive (assuming they even work: my wife says that Filipino stars usually opt for skin bleaching teahniques instead of cosmetics)? It says something when I find myself enjoying Taiwanese TV much more than Filipino TV. (Mind you, it doesn't help that I don't understand anything that they say on Filipino TV and therefore can't follow any of the storylines, but if the women on Filipino TV were all spectacularly beautiful then I wouldn't mind.)
Martin
My wife and I were sick this past week so we weren't sure if we were going to go at all. Then once we got better we still had to wait for my monthly pay to be deposited into my bank account so we would have enough money for the bus, taxis, a hotel room, food and new whatever stuff Imelda was planning to buy.
I got paid Friday morning so we left Friday afternoon. It took over four hours to get to Taipei by bus because the traffic was bad. We then checked into a cheap hotel near the bus station but the bed was too small for the three of us (me, my wife and Ian) so I paid for a second room, which was fine because that meant I was able to watch local Taiwanese TV and my wife was able to watch HBO.
I attended a few talks in the morning. The first two talks I attended delt with matters of giving speeches (using persuasive speech and providing students with appropriate topics to choose from). The next two talks delt with corpora, specifically using corpora in the classroom and using evidence from corpora to determine how people learn languages. (Apparently we associate the word "bark" with the word "dog" but not with the word "cat" so that the sentence "The cat barked" would give us pause even though it is not grammatically incorrect: the author claimed that this is a generalisation of how we notice errors, ie by noticing when two things don't go together.)
I also got a chance to speak about fuzzy logic. Engineers use fuzzy logic when they design heaters and air conditioners: they know that the words "hot" and "cold" can't be defined by a single temperature but by a range of temperatures and they often explain this by pointing out that the words "tall" and "short" are not clearly defined either. I made the argument that the words "usually" and "sometimes" and "many" and "few" and "probably" and "possibly" are all similarly fuzzy and that we need to recognize this when we explain to students the meaning of these words. Even native speakers get confused by the meaning of the word "few": if "few" means "between three and five" then what do we mean when we say "There are only a few buffalo living today in North America"?
I also attended a few talks in the afternoon, starting with Stephen Krashen's talk about USSR (Uninterupted Sustained Silent Reading). He claimed that a few minutes a day of USSR during class helped students. Of course, a well motivated teacher with well motivated students is always going to have better results so if the teachers and students both knew they were part of a study then I would be very surprised if they didn't get positive results. I suggested to Krashen that too much of anything (such as testing or gramming instruction) is a bad thing and that we needed to find what worked for our students. He said "That's why we do research". Of course, I clearly said that we needed to find what worked for OUR students but I guess he doesn't have students and can't relate to that.
The talk that followed was much better because, like the corpus discussions in the morning, the claims made were supported by hard evidence, something that is difficult to find in the humanities. I'm actually gratified that people are now doing corpus research and not simply trying to defend their unsupported opinions over and over as it will, in te long run, provide some much needed credibility for the field. I'm thinking, in particular, of a talk that someone from TOEIC gave at Chungtai a couple of months ago: he claimed that most communication in English was done between non-native speakers. Whether this is true or not -and it obviously isn't- it wasn't supported by the reference he cited because I found out yesterday that the reference he cited showed that most international travel was done by non-English speaking people travelling to non-English speaking countries. I made the point today that Japanese tourists travelling overseas are very much unlikely to be using English when they travel overseas and will instead seek out the services of a bilingual tour guide. So there you have it: a prime example of where an unsupported opinion can hurt one's credibility.
The last talk I attended was by Jeremy Sykes. I remember he gave a similar talk at Chungtai back in May. I also remember that talk being more interesting than this one, partly because that talk used more multi-media (he had pictures and a video last time) and partly, probably, because I had already heard much of what he had to say before. He made the distinction between Academic English and EOP (English for Ordinary Purposes) and said that most students needed to study EOP. In the previous talk I attended, however, the speaker made the point that critical thinking was important and that students needed to learn how to "analyze a text, reflect on it, form an opinion and try to persude others" and I asked him if he thought these were useful skills for students to learn (as that's really all we are teaching in Academic English classes). He seemed upset. I didn't bother to point out that fluency is meaningless unless a speaker can make himself understood. (He argued that fluency is more important than accuracy and that students should focus on fluency first.) I tell students the exact opposite: I find that when students try to talk to quickly I can't understand them and I tell them that they need to slow down, speak accurately (ie with proper grammar and pronunciation) so I can understand them and only worry about fluency when speaking comes more naturally. To me that's just common sense so I didn't even bother to bring it up.
Anyway, I'm glad I went. Imelda even says we should go back next month so she can do some more shopping. Me, I'd like to go back so I can watch some more local TV: we don't have cable TV here where we live; instead we have a satellite dish that picks up signals from the Philippines. I was really excited last night because I was able to see the latest episode of a Cyndi Wang drama - all two hours of it! I was so, so happy to see that she was still active in the entertainment industry and hadn't disappeared altogether. I was a little upset when a new album by Cynthia Wang came out recently and then yesterday evening on MTV a girl introduced herself by saying "Hi, I'm Cindy" and I said "NO, you're not" and she said "Cindy Yuan" and I said "Okay but you're not MY Cyndi. Where's MY Cyndi?" and then there she was for a good couple of hours. Yay!
I was also happy to see Rainie Yang, not only in a drama of her own but also in a jeans commercial. Yes, Rainie Yang was in a jeans commercial, which is surprising because she is really thin. Yet there she was and she looked great. Yum. So I guess the message to young girls is "No matter how thin you are you can find a pair of jeans small enough that can make you look like you have a great figure". Well, frankly, it's hard to argue against that logic after seeing that particular commercial. Now I want to see Cyndi and Jolin doing jeans commercials: it's the next best thing if they're not going to do porn.
Oh, one last thing: I was surprised how much Korean and Japanese content is on Taiwanese TV, especially as much of it is not dubbed but in the original language with Chinese subtitles. Korean and Japanese women look great on TV, much better than Korean and Japanese women on the streets of Korea and Japan. To be fair, Taiwanese women look better on TV than in real life but not by much: women on Taiwanese TV look like ordinary Taiwanese women after a quick make over. Taiwanese women on TV really do fairly well represent how women in Taiwan look in real life. Yes, yes, I do love living here.
By contrast, women in the Philippines are actually better, on average, than the women you see on Philippine TV. Women in the Philippines are spectacularly beautiful but you wouldn't know it by watching Filipino TV: women on Filipino TV have much lighter skin than the average Filipina and some Philippine TV stars (eg Marion Rivera) look more Spanish than Filipino. The Filipino obsession with lighter skin tones has always been a pet peeve of mine - why should Filipinas spend so much money on skin lightening products that, in my opinion, make them less attractive (assuming they even work: my wife says that Filipino stars usually opt for skin bleaching teahniques instead of cosmetics)? It says something when I find myself enjoying Taiwanese TV much more than Filipino TV. (Mind you, it doesn't help that I don't understand anything that they say on Filipino TV and therefore can't follow any of the storylines, but if the women on Filipino TV were all spectacularly beautiful then I wouldn't mind.)
Martin
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Friday, 6 November 2009
Shortened vowel sounds
It occurs to me that a lot of common words in English are exceptions to the regular phonetic rules as a direct result of being used so often. What I mean is that people tend to shorten words when they speak and cause long vowel sounds to become short vowel sounds. When this is done often enough the short vowel sounds become the standard pronunciation. Examples below.
Good and hood do not rhyme with food or mood. Ditto for blood.
Foot does not rhyme with boot or moot.
Favorite does not rhyme with kite and site.
Live (the verb) is pronounced differently from live (the adjective). Nor does give rhyme with five and hive.
How, now, brown and cow do not rhyme with glow, know, mow and stow.
Bear and pear do not rhyme with ear, fear and near. Nor do break and steak rhyme with beak and teak.
Read (the past tense verb) is pronounced differently than read (the present tense verb).
Said does not rhyme with maid. Nor does mountain or fountain rhyme with grain, rain or stain.
Curiously enough, my mom has at home a book that is over a hundred years old. In it there is a poem in which said and maid are used as rhymes. Believe it or not.
It is also worth noting that a lot of the words above are German words and that the corresponding words in German do rhyme AFAIK (as far as I know).
Martin
Good and hood do not rhyme with food or mood. Ditto for blood.
Foot does not rhyme with boot or moot.
Favorite does not rhyme with kite and site.
Live (the verb) is pronounced differently from live (the adjective). Nor does give rhyme with five and hive.
How, now, brown and cow do not rhyme with glow, know, mow and stow.
Bear and pear do not rhyme with ear, fear and near. Nor do break and steak rhyme with beak and teak.
Read (the past tense verb) is pronounced differently than read (the present tense verb).
Said does not rhyme with maid. Nor does mountain or fountain rhyme with grain, rain or stain.
Curiously enough, my mom has at home a book that is over a hundred years old. In it there is a poem in which said and maid are used as rhymes. Believe it or not.
It is also worth noting that a lot of the words above are German words and that the corresponding words in German do rhyme AFAIK (as far as I know).
Martin
TV Show I'd Like to See
Tracy is not only gay but he's flamboyantly gay. This limits his job opportunities as he doesn't want to be a fashion designer or a hairdresser. That's why he's asking for help from
STRAIGHT EYE FOR THE QUEER GUY
JIM: Straight guy food expert
"Tracy, I'm sure your Thai food take out is delicious and nutricious but it isn't very manly. I recommend meat and potatoes TV dinners every night. And forget the wine and cheese midnight snacks: stick to eating beer and pretzels in the evening. And don't worry about putting on a bit of weight because straight guys don't care so much how they look."
JACK: Straight guy fashion and grooming expert
"Tracy, jackets, ties and pants come in two colours: black and blue. And shirts have to be either white or blue. Pink is definitely out of the question. Oh and make sure that when you go to work that you're not wearing any make up! Also go easy on the hair gel."
JOHN: Straight guy design expert
"Tracy, you need to compromise a bit over your decor: I know you don't want to put up posters of women because that's not what you're interested in but if you're going to put up pictures of men could you at least make them baseball or basketball players? That would be a little bit less obvious."
MACK: Straight guy social expert
"Tracy, is that the name your parents gave you? Did they somehow already know you were gay when you were born? How about calling yourself Trent instead? Oh and you might want to learn the names of the local sports teams so you at least know what people are talking about when they ask you about them."
Now Tracy -or rather Trent- is firmly back in the closet. Way to go guys!
Martin
P.S.: This is a satire. People can be gay if they want to be gay and they can put up whatever posters they like. :)
STRAIGHT EYE FOR THE QUEER GUY
JIM: Straight guy food expert
"Tracy, I'm sure your Thai food take out is delicious and nutricious but it isn't very manly. I recommend meat and potatoes TV dinners every night. And forget the wine and cheese midnight snacks: stick to eating beer and pretzels in the evening. And don't worry about putting on a bit of weight because straight guys don't care so much how they look."
JACK: Straight guy fashion and grooming expert
"Tracy, jackets, ties and pants come in two colours: black and blue. And shirts have to be either white or blue. Pink is definitely out of the question. Oh and make sure that when you go to work that you're not wearing any make up! Also go easy on the hair gel."
JOHN: Straight guy design expert
"Tracy, you need to compromise a bit over your decor: I know you don't want to put up posters of women because that's not what you're interested in but if you're going to put up pictures of men could you at least make them baseball or basketball players? That would be a little bit less obvious."
MACK: Straight guy social expert
"Tracy, is that the name your parents gave you? Did they somehow already know you were gay when you were born? How about calling yourself Trent instead? Oh and you might want to learn the names of the local sports teams so you at least know what people are talking about when they ask you about them."
Now Tracy -or rather Trent- is firmly back in the closet. Way to go guys!
Martin
P.S.: This is a satire. People can be gay if they want to be gay and they can put up whatever posters they like. :)
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Posters I have
I forgot that my wife had written on some of my Cyndi Wang posters.
A few of the pictures here are pictures of my wife that she made using imikimi.com.
I have some more posters of Yao Yao and Elva but my wife got angry when I asked her where the tape was.
Martin
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Albums I have.
I have all of Cyndi Wang's albums: Begin (2003), Cyndi Loves You (2004), Honey (2005), Shining Cyndi 2005 (2005), Cyndi With U (2006), Magic Cyndi (2007), Fly! Cyndi (2008) and Red Cyndi (2008). I also have all of Rainie Yang's albums: Ambiguous (曖昧, 2005), Meeting Love (遇上愛, 2006), Anywhere Door (任意門, 2007) and Not Yet a Woman (半熟宣言, 2008).
I barely have most of Jolin's albums: Born To Be A Star (Universal, 2004), Magic (看我72變, Sony, 2003), Castle (城堡, Sony, 2004), J-Game (野蠻游戲, Sony, 2005), J-Top (Sony, 2006), Jolin's Final Wonderland (Jolin夢綺地精選, Sony, 2007), Dancing Diva (舞孃, EMI, 2006), Dancing Forever (唯舞獨尊, EMI, 2006), The Acquired Talent (地才, EMI, 2007), Agent J (特務J, EMI, 2007), Flower Butterfly (花蝴蝶, Warner, 2009) and Jolin Love Live (Warner, 2009). What I don't have are Jolin's first four albums with Universal, the two remix and three live albums she did with Sony, the English album Love Exercise (愛情練習語) she did with EMI or the compilation album Jeneration (J世紀Jeneration 大牌新曲+精選盤2006-2009).
I have a few Elva Hsiao albums: Tomorrow (明天, EMI, 2001), Love Elva... Remix & More (最熟悉的...蕭亞軒, EMI, 2006), 1087 + 137 (Warner, 2007) and 3 Faces of Elva (3面夏娃, EMI, 2008). She has eight other albums including her latest Diamond Candy (鑽石糖) which I might buy later. I've also downloaded a lot of her songs: I don't feel guilty doing that because most of her albums are hard to find now. I also have three A-Mit albums: Regardless (不顧一切, Forward, 2000), I Want Happiness? (我要快樂, 2006) and Star (EMI, 2007). She has fifteen other albums. I've also downloaded a lot of her songs: I don't feel guilty doing that because most of her albums are hard to find now.
I have Yao Yao's (郭書瑤) only album, Ai de Bao Bao (愛的抱抱), which I just realised is only an EP with only four songs. (I only bought it because there was an accompanying picture book and DVD and I never got round to listening to the CD.) I also have the Vicki Zhao (趙薇) album Swallow (小燕子, 1999) which I bought for cheap at an electronics store. Looking at Wikipedia, I was shocked to discover that Vicki has had six other albums since then including one released this year! Indeed, in 2006 she was "MTV Asia's Favourite Artist from Mainland China"! This tells me two things: 1) artists from Mainland China are not popular here (because her album received little or no promotion at record stores and may not even have been in stock) and 2) I'm not really all that impressed with Vicki's singing because I had never bothered to ask if she had any other albums come out. By extension then, I guess I'm not all that impressed with music from mainland China. (I've tried downloading Chinese music from the internet and the only stuff I like is from Taiwan and Hong Kong: I actually find the stuff from Mainland China slow and boring. Even Wu Bai's (伍佰), the famous singer "from China" who I had heard about before I came to Taiwan is actually from Taiwan and not the Mainland. So is Zhang Hong Liang [張洪量], the singer who Karen Mok sang the song Hiroshima Love [廣島之戀] with.)
The only Coco Lee albums I have are in English: Just No Other Way (1999) and Exposed (2005). Accrording to Wikipedia she has had a total of 24 albums! I've downloaded a lot of Coco Lee songs but I didn't realise she had that many albums. My favorite Coco Lee album would probably be Discoco from 2002, based on the songs I've downloaded. I've also downloaded the karaoke version of the live album L!VE is… KAREN MOK (拉活…莫文蔚) from youtube: it's subsequently been removed, obviously for copyright reasons, which I think is a bit unfair because I can't find Karen Mok albums at record stores here in Taiwan (other than the compilation album that was released last year) so it's not like I would have had the choice to simply buy the album rather than download it.
Oh and as for albums by non-Chinese performers, I do have most of the Destiny's Child albums (of which there were only seven altogether) and a few Bon Jovi albums. I also have all the Beyonce and Pussycat Dolls albums (if you include internet downloads). I used to use those albums in class and ask students what the songs were about. I eventually stopped doing this because it was too difficult a task for students, especially the Destiny's Child and Beyonce songs which were, after all, hip hop songs and a bit too fast for the students. Nowadays if I use music in class I use a karaoke video instead: there are plenty of English-language karaoke videos that I've downloaded by artists they would be familiar with (Jolin Tsai, Karen Mok, Coco Lee, A-Mei and Stephanie Sun [孫燕姿]).
Martin
I barely have most of Jolin's albums: Born To Be A Star (Universal, 2004), Magic (看我72變, Sony, 2003), Castle (城堡, Sony, 2004), J-Game (野蠻游戲, Sony, 2005), J-Top (Sony, 2006), Jolin's Final Wonderland (Jolin夢綺地精選, Sony, 2007), Dancing Diva (舞孃, EMI, 2006), Dancing Forever (唯舞獨尊, EMI, 2006), The Acquired Talent (地才, EMI, 2007), Agent J (特務J, EMI, 2007), Flower Butterfly (花蝴蝶, Warner, 2009) and Jolin Love Live (Warner, 2009). What I don't have are Jolin's first four albums with Universal, the two remix and three live albums she did with Sony, the English album Love Exercise (愛情練習語) she did with EMI or the compilation album Jeneration (J世紀Jeneration 大牌新曲+精選盤2006-2009).
I have a few Elva Hsiao albums: Tomorrow (明天, EMI, 2001), Love Elva... Remix & More (最熟悉的...蕭亞軒, EMI, 2006), 1087 + 137 (Warner, 2007) and 3 Faces of Elva (3面夏娃, EMI, 2008). She has eight other albums including her latest Diamond Candy (鑽石糖) which I might buy later. I've also downloaded a lot of her songs: I don't feel guilty doing that because most of her albums are hard to find now. I also have three A-Mit albums: Regardless (不顧一切, Forward, 2000), I Want Happiness? (我要快樂, 2006) and Star (EMI, 2007). She has fifteen other albums. I've also downloaded a lot of her songs: I don't feel guilty doing that because most of her albums are hard to find now.
I have Yao Yao's (郭書瑤) only album, Ai de Bao Bao (愛的抱抱), which I just realised is only an EP with only four songs. (I only bought it because there was an accompanying picture book and DVD and I never got round to listening to the CD.) I also have the Vicki Zhao (趙薇) album Swallow (小燕子, 1999) which I bought for cheap at an electronics store. Looking at Wikipedia, I was shocked to discover that Vicki has had six other albums since then including one released this year! Indeed, in 2006 she was "MTV Asia's Favourite Artist from Mainland China"! This tells me two things: 1) artists from Mainland China are not popular here (because her album received little or no promotion at record stores and may not even have been in stock) and 2) I'm not really all that impressed with Vicki's singing because I had never bothered to ask if she had any other albums come out. By extension then, I guess I'm not all that impressed with music from mainland China. (I've tried downloading Chinese music from the internet and the only stuff I like is from Taiwan and Hong Kong: I actually find the stuff from Mainland China slow and boring. Even Wu Bai's (伍佰), the famous singer "from China" who I had heard about before I came to Taiwan is actually from Taiwan and not the Mainland. So is Zhang Hong Liang [張洪量], the singer who Karen Mok sang the song Hiroshima Love [廣島之戀] with.)
The only Coco Lee albums I have are in English: Just No Other Way (1999) and Exposed (2005). Accrording to Wikipedia she has had a total of 24 albums! I've downloaded a lot of Coco Lee songs but I didn't realise she had that many albums. My favorite Coco Lee album would probably be Discoco from 2002, based on the songs I've downloaded. I've also downloaded the karaoke version of the live album L!VE is… KAREN MOK (拉活…莫文蔚) from youtube: it's subsequently been removed, obviously for copyright reasons, which I think is a bit unfair because I can't find Karen Mok albums at record stores here in Taiwan (other than the compilation album that was released last year) so it's not like I would have had the choice to simply buy the album rather than download it.
Oh and as for albums by non-Chinese performers, I do have most of the Destiny's Child albums (of which there were only seven altogether) and a few Bon Jovi albums. I also have all the Beyonce and Pussycat Dolls albums (if you include internet downloads). I used to use those albums in class and ask students what the songs were about. I eventually stopped doing this because it was too difficult a task for students, especially the Destiny's Child and Beyonce songs which were, after all, hip hop songs and a bit too fast for the students. Nowadays if I use music in class I use a karaoke video instead: there are plenty of English-language karaoke videos that I've downloaded by artists they would be familiar with (Jolin Tsai, Karen Mok, Coco Lee, A-Mei and Stephanie Sun [孫燕姿]).
Martin
Sunday, 1 November 2009
More Pictures
I added more pictures to the right, namely of Kristara Barington, Annabel Chong, Tera Patrick, Envy Mi, Tanner Mayes, Sunny Leone, Solange Lecarrio, Shay Jordan, Renae Cruz, Persia Pele, Nautica Thorn, Nadia Nyce, Mya Luanna, Mai Lin, Mai Ly, London Keyes, Lana Croft, Lacey Tom, Tabatha Cash, Keymore Cash, Jazmine Lieh, Kea Kulani, Recbecca Linares, Jasmine Byrne, Isis Love, Tyra Banxxx, Lacey Duvalle, Heather Hunter, Angel Kelly, Finesse Navaro, Eva Lopez, Emy Reyes, Dana Despoli, Cris Taliana, Ann Marie Rios, Amia Miley, Leanna Scott, Yumi lee, Maja Lee, Ariella Lee, Haylee Lee, Tia Tanaka, Tila Tequila, Thai Michelle, Soolin Kelter, Roxy Jezel, Nicole Oring, Mia Smiles, Max Nikita, Lana Violet, Gianna Lynn, Kaila Lynn, Veronica Lynn, Kiku Wu, Jayna Oso, Asa Akira, Christina Aguchi, Ashley Marie, Daisy Marie, Carla Maria, Asia Zo, Lyla Lei, Leanni Lei, Bliss Lei, Arcadia Davida, Ange Venus, Akira Lane, Mimi Miyagi, Lucy Thai, Lily Thai, Stephy Thai, Luxi Thai, Sai Tai and Lena Li. I can't be bothered to move them down with the others.
Some of these pictures I didn't put up before because their names are misleading: Tia Tanaka is Vietnamese, not Japanese; Lucy Thai is Cambodian, not Thai and Lily Thai is Filipino, not Thai.
It occurs to me that I now have 200 pictures to the right. These pictures are all fairly contempory with the exception of the pictures of Yoko Shimada (who is now 56) and Nancy Kwan (who is now 70!). I submit then that the 200 women pictured on the remaining 198 pictures constitute my list of the 200 sexist women of the world, sort of like a combination of the top 100 sexist women of the world lists from FHM Taiwan and FHM Philippines but with half the women on this list being porn stars.
Martin
Some of these pictures I didn't put up before because their names are misleading: Tia Tanaka is Vietnamese, not Japanese; Lucy Thai is Cambodian, not Thai and Lily Thai is Filipino, not Thai.
It occurs to me that I now have 200 pictures to the right. These pictures are all fairly contempory with the exception of the pictures of Yoko Shimada (who is now 56) and Nancy Kwan (who is now 70!). I submit then that the 200 women pictured on the remaining 198 pictures constitute my list of the 200 sexist women of the world, sort of like a combination of the top 100 sexist women of the world lists from FHM Taiwan and FHM Philippines but with half the women on this list being porn stars.
Martin
In Depth Political Analysis
Democrats good. Republicans bad.
Conservative Party of Canada okay. Liberals so so.
Guo Ming Dang not so bad. DDP getting on my nerves.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo hanging on. Noli de Castro hanging out.
Free trade good. Protectionism bad.
Martin
Conservative Party of Canada okay. Liberals so so.
Guo Ming Dang not so bad. DDP getting on my nerves.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo hanging on. Noli de Castro hanging out.
Free trade good. Protectionism bad.
Martin
Friday, 30 October 2009
Cat to English Dictionary
Maaa! (i) You stepped on my tail!
Mao (i) Sorry for scratching you earlier. (v) Move over.
Marrr! (i) There's a lizard on the ceiling! Kill it! Kill it!
Meow (v) 1. Get up. 2. Feed me. 3. Change my litter. 4. Let me out. 5. Go to bed. 6. Change my water. It's dirty again.
Merar! (v) Come back to bed!
Merow! (i) No, not that! I want tuna!
Merrr (v) Hurry up.
Mew (i) Thank you.
Mmmm? (i) Why do I have to come inside now? I haven't finished playing with the neighbour's shoes.
Mrrrow (v) Go back to sleep.
Martin
Mao (i) Sorry for scratching you earlier. (v) Move over.
Marrr! (i) There's a lizard on the ceiling! Kill it! Kill it!
Meow (v) 1. Get up. 2. Feed me. 3. Change my litter. 4. Let me out. 5. Go to bed. 6. Change my water. It's dirty again.
Merar! (v) Come back to bed!
Merow! (i) No, not that! I want tuna!
Merrr (v) Hurry up.
Mew (i) Thank you.
Mmmm? (i) Why do I have to come inside now? I haven't finished playing with the neighbour's shoes.
Mrrrow (v) Go back to sleep.
Martin
Crossword theme fills
Across
20. Audition: CASTING CALL
26. Black forest: CHOCOLATE CAKE
34. Money maker: CASH COW
38. Massachusetts destination: CAPE COD
42. Playing the fool in school: CLASS CLOWNING
52. Overseas calling requirement: COUNTRY CODE
Down
1. Mexican destination: CANCUN
7. Boo: CAT CALL
41. Ear: CORN COB
45. African fly and a hint to this puzzle's theme: TSE TSE
Bonus Fill
37D. Savings: COST CUTS
Martin
20. Audition: CASTING CALL
26. Black forest: CHOCOLATE CAKE
34. Money maker: CASH COW
38. Massachusetts destination: CAPE COD
42. Playing the fool in school: CLASS CLOWNING
52. Overseas calling requirement: COUNTRY CODE
Down
1. Mexican destination: CANCUN
7. Boo: CAT CALL
41. Ear: CORN COB
45. African fly and a hint to this puzzle's theme: TSE TSE
Bonus Fill
37D. Savings: COST CUTS
Martin
Saturday, 24 October 2009
Chinese Characters
There's one thing about Chinese that really bothers me and that is how characters can look a lot alike and yet have very different meaning and pronounciation. Here's an example I show to students in class:
書晝畫
The first character means "book" and is pronounced shu1. The second character means "daytime" and is pronounced zhou4. The third character means "paint" and is pronounced hua4.
Here are some characters that often appear in students' names:
予子
The first character means "give" and is pronounced yu3. The second character is a diminuitive form equivalent to the Japanese "ko" and is pronounced zi3.
And here are some characters that I see on signs and posters:
亨享亭
The first character means "to go through smoothly" and is pronounced heng1, the second character means "to enjoy" and is pronounced xiang3 and the third character means "booth" and is pronounced ting2.
There are a lot of other examples I could come up but you get the picture. Sometimes you can guess at the pronunciation of a Chinese character because it looks a lot like a character whose pronunciation you know but often it'll just be a single stroke that changes the meaning and pronunciation of a word completely.
English is a relatively phonetic language: we can add a prefix or a suffix to a root word and the root word usually retains the same pronunciation. Even when the pronunciation changes it is a realtively minor change: for example, when we add -er to photograph we get photographer and the second o changes from a long to a short o. As a result, native speakers of English can usually guess at the pronunciation of a word they have never seen before.
The ability to guess at the pronunciation of a word they have never seen before is a skill that many Chinese learners of English never master. This is because they are taught to look up the pronunciation of new words in a dictionary as opposed to attempting to sound the word out. This also makes it difficult for them to learn how to spell new words in English because they focus on memorizing the spelling of the word instead of attempting to write the word out the way it is pronounced.
In all fairness, memorization would seem to be a necessary thing when you are learning Chinese because there is often nothing to indicate how the word is pronounced. As I said above, you can sometimes guess at the pronunciation of a new word but you often can't. Chinese students will tend to apply the methodology they used to learn Chinese to learning English and, as a result, never bother to learn the phonetic rules for English. This is unfortunate because they would be able to sound out correctly most words in English if they only knew how to go about it.
Martin
書晝畫
The first character means "book" and is pronounced shu1. The second character means "daytime" and is pronounced zhou4. The third character means "paint" and is pronounced hua4.
Here are some characters that often appear in students' names:
予子
The first character means "give" and is pronounced yu3. The second character is a diminuitive form equivalent to the Japanese "ko" and is pronounced zi3.
And here are some characters that I see on signs and posters:
亨享亭
The first character means "to go through smoothly" and is pronounced heng1, the second character means "to enjoy" and is pronounced xiang3 and the third character means "booth" and is pronounced ting2.
There are a lot of other examples I could come up but you get the picture. Sometimes you can guess at the pronunciation of a Chinese character because it looks a lot like a character whose pronunciation you know but often it'll just be a single stroke that changes the meaning and pronunciation of a word completely.
English is a relatively phonetic language: we can add a prefix or a suffix to a root word and the root word usually retains the same pronunciation. Even when the pronunciation changes it is a realtively minor change: for example, when we add -er to photograph we get photographer and the second o changes from a long to a short o. As a result, native speakers of English can usually guess at the pronunciation of a word they have never seen before.
The ability to guess at the pronunciation of a word they have never seen before is a skill that many Chinese learners of English never master. This is because they are taught to look up the pronunciation of new words in a dictionary as opposed to attempting to sound the word out. This also makes it difficult for them to learn how to spell new words in English because they focus on memorizing the spelling of the word instead of attempting to write the word out the way it is pronounced.
In all fairness, memorization would seem to be a necessary thing when you are learning Chinese because there is often nothing to indicate how the word is pronounced. As I said above, you can sometimes guess at the pronunciation of a new word but you often can't. Chinese students will tend to apply the methodology they used to learn Chinese to learning English and, as a result, never bother to learn the phonetic rules for English. This is unfortunate because they would be able to sound out correctly most words in English if they only knew how to go about it.
Martin
Friday, 23 October 2009
Crossword Puzzle
Across
1. Rank above Lieut.
5. It may be lost
9. Roger or Demi
14. Fire remains
15. ___-Mart
16. Make use
17. Final four grp.
18. Consumes
19. Baby insect
20. Audition
22. Samuel's Salt
23. AP rival
24. Alias
26. Black forest
32. MTV show
33. Company that went bankrupt in 2001
34. Money maker
38. Massachusetts destination
40. Actor Sal
41. Trig. ratio
41. Trig. ratio
42. Playing the fool in school
46. Sault ___ Marie
47. R&B Singer Ballard
49. Dad's wife, usually
52. Overseas calling requirement
56. Gerald's goodbye
58. Srgts.
59. Pained
60. Emphatic refusal
61. Cannes' Palme ___
62. Tenths of a
63. Gruwell and Brockovich
64. Hautbois
65. Yay!
Down
1. Mexican destination
2. Songwriter's org.
3. Temporary
4. Nipple
6. Swinging
7. Boo
8. Born Free's lioness
9. Paul Blart's job
10. Eggs
11. Canoe paddles
12. Tear apart
13. Israeli airline
18. Opposite of veto
21. Baltic capital
25. Breakout
27. UTE distributer
28. Curve
29. Crazy person
30. Termination
31. Heavy snow?
34. MTV for rednecks?
35. Spanish Mrs.
36. Nazi Rudolf
37. Savings
38. Bovine
39. Edward and Jules
41. Ear
43. Mgr. in chief
44. Sesame Street's Oscar the ______
45. African fly and a hint to this puzzle's theme
48. Guitarist Hashim
49. Manufactured
50. Smell
51. Short skirt
53. Delete
54. Matador's opponent
55. Gnaw
57. Looong time
Martin
Chinese Crossword 6
橫跨
1. 中國諺語
6. 罕見
8. 香港歌手
9. 中國諺語
13. 紳士不再有妻子
14. 一百零一加上一百零九
1. 中國諺語
6. 罕見
8. 香港歌手
9. 中國諺語
13. 紳士不再有妻子
14. 一百零一加上一百零九
15. 臺灣飲料
18. 為什麼電話水管工?
21. 可疑
22. 卡特里娜, 例如
23. 當有白葡萄酒?
25. 中國諺語
27. 無法見
18. 為什麼電話水管工?
21. 可疑
22. 卡特里娜, 例如
23. 當有白葡萄酒?
25. 中國諺語
27. 無法見
28. 機會
31. 中國諺語
31. 中國諺語
下來
1. 中國諺語
2. 美元和歐元
3. 國際新聞
4. 優越
5. 不陳舊
7. 中國諺語
9. 中國諺語
10. 英語諺語
11. 微弱
12. 中國諺語
13. 中國諺語
16. 在哪裡烹調?
17. 中國諺語
19. 中國諺語
20. 神的力量
1. 中國諺語
2. 美元和歐元
3. 國際新聞
4. 優越
5. 不陳舊
7. 中國諺語
9. 中國諺語
10. 英語諺語
11. 微弱
12. 中國諺語
13. 中國諺語
16. 在哪裡烹調?
17. 中國諺語
19. 中國諺語
20. 神的力量
Martin
Chinese Crossword 5
橫跨
1. 中國諺語
6. 二十七年多
7. 危險
9. 畫像
10. 尊嚴
11. 年輕棘手
13. 不壞不好
16. 大家
17. 床單
18. 他不在
20. 社會病
21. 蔡依林歌曲
23. 粗魯
25. 倉促!
27. 天下本無 __ __ __ __ 擾之
28 單獨
29. 中國諺語
下來
1. 中國諺語
2. 很多
3. 臺灣风景区
4. 蒼白臉色
5. 美丽的婦女
8. 尊嚴強加
12. 中國諺語
15 在午夜 __ __ __
19. 不合邏輯
22. 鎮定自若
24. 不可能
26. 每個人有 __ __ __
Chinese Crossword 2
橫跨
2. 中國諺語
5. 補全
6. 人人
7. 直接
9. 無政府狀態
10. 生病
13. 有一個嬰孩?
14. 中國諺語
16. 很長時間
17. 小點
19. 六十四加上六十六
21. 周潤發電影
22. 為國外的銷售
24. 成龍電影
26. 中國諺語
下來
1. __ __ 坐 (老人公共汽車位子)
2. 道德准则?
3. 长大?
4. 中國諺語
5. 中國諺語
7. 在昨天以後的二天
8. 王心凌歌曲
11. 病假?
12. 做了
13. 軌道?
15. __ __ 愛 (蔡依林歌曲)
18. 臺灣的城市
19. 二十四個小時
20. 一個月
23. 出去
25. 可口
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Chinese Crossword 1
橫跨
1. 嘆氣以前
2. 中國諺語
6. Ph.D要求
9.小朋友
11. 提出不同的事
1. 嘆氣以前
2. 中國諺語
6. Ph.D要求
9.小朋友
11. 提出不同的事
12. 不可能
13. 承認
14. 機場袋子
15. 是我!
18. 減速!
13. 承認
14. 機場袋子
15. 是我!
18. 減速!
20. 中國諺語
22. 三乘七
24. ____快乐!
25. 方法
26. 給政府金錢
27. 昂貴的汽車
28. 做比喻
30. 孩子的電視
31. 失望
32. 中國諺語
33. 否認
22. 三乘七
24. ____快乐!
25. 方法
26. 給政府金錢
27. 昂貴的汽車
28. 做比喻
30. 孩子的電視
31. 失望
32. 中國諺語
33. 否認
下來
1. 中國諺語
3. 更多或同樣
4. 像佩格瑟斯
5. 中國諺語
7. 評估并且獎勵
8. 所有新
10. 中國諺語
16. 不能獲得
17. 中國諺語
19. 六百零一加上五百零九
21. 脱口说出
23. 沒有法律沒有顺序
28. 嚇唬
29. 繁忙
31. 賭氣
27. 昂貴的汽車
28. 做比喻
30. 孩子的電視
31. 失望
32. 中國諺語
33. 否認
Martin
1. 中國諺語
3. 更多或同樣
4. 像佩格瑟斯
5. 中國諺語
7. 評估并且獎勵
8. 所有新
10. 中國諺語
16. 不能獲得
17. 中國諺語
19. 六百零一加上五百零九
21. 脱口说出
23. 沒有法律沒有顺序
28. 嚇唬
29. 繁忙
31. 賭氣
27. 昂貴的汽車
28. 做比喻
30. 孩子的電視
31. 失望
32. 中國諺語
33. 否認
Martin
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Crossword Construction
I really suck at constructing crosswords. Well, actually "suck" is probably too harsh as constructing a crossword seems to be an impossibly difficult exercise: you need to construct a 15x15 grid, place words symmetrically, place theme words symmetrically (or else go themeless and have 72 words or fewer), have fewer than 43 black squares and fewer than 78 words and have each letter belong to exactly two words. That last requirement seems impossible to fulfill and yet there are dozens of professional crossword constructors able to churn these things out on a regular basis. I constructed a crossword myself and satisfied all but the last requirement.
The puzzle is posted above. The solution appears below. (Scroll down.)
Martin
The puzzle is posted above. The solution appears below. (Scroll down.)
Martin
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Countries I've visited
I don't want to write my entire lifestory in one post so I'll try to keep this brief: I've visited Canada (of course because that's where I'm from), the U.S. (again, of course, although not as often as you'd think), England, France, Morocco, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Korea and Taiwan. I've never been to Thailand, Vietnam, Australia or New Zealand but I've met enough people from those countries over the years that it feels as though I have.
I went to England in 1975, 1980 and 1985 with my parents, each time for two to three weeks and over the summer vacation. I didn't ever visit the U.S. until I was an adult and then the only places I've visited are Rochester, New York and New York City. Oh I had a stopover to Chicago once on the way to Japan but I never left the airport. I did leave the airport when I visited New York and Paris, France but that was just so I could go to city's other airport and catch a connecting flight.
The less I say about Morocco the better: I was only there four months. Let's just say that it is better to be happy and make a little bit of money than to be miserable and make a lot of money.
My first trip to Asia was in 1991: I went to Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. I had penpals in Signapore and Malaysia (and Taiwan and the Philippines) and I went to meet them.
Let me explain: I desperately wanted to get married, even at a young age. This attitude seems silly to me now: I now realise 1) that people really need not get married unless they want to have children and 2) that a relationship should be about more than satisfying one's need for companionship and sex. I now believe that two people need to be friends first before they get married: a physical attraction alone is not enough, although it is obviously necessary. Back then I was just interested in finding someone who looked nice and then marrying her. I can now see that this is actually demeaning: it would actually be less demeaning to have cheap, meaningless sex with somebody and move on then expect someone to be with you for the rest of your life simply so they can continue to satisfy your needs. What about their needs? Basically I was being influenced by my parent's religious values but I can see now that such values harken back to a time when women were considered property and not individuals.
The second time I travelled to Asia I went to the Philippines (via a stopover in Hong Kong during which I didn't even leave the airplane). That was when I met my wife.
What can I tell you about when I met my wife? The good news is that she was somebody like me: like me she wanted to get married and like me she wanted to marry somebody from the other side of the world. It worked out perfectly. Oh and she's only two years younger than me so we have more in common than you'd think. On top of that, there was a great deal of mutual physical attraction. Like I said, it worked out perfectly.
After Imelda and I got married, we lived in the Phillipines for two years. I stayed long enough to see my first son, Michael, start walking. But even though it is better to be happy than wealthy, you can be neither on the kind of salary that they pay in the Philippines. I reluctantly decided to seek a job in Korea (because teaching in Taiwan would have meant having to teach young children which is something I didn't want to do) and spent the next four years being pretty much miserable.
Things turned around after I came to Taiwan. For a long time I had wanted to come to Taiwan because I didn't like the winters in Korea (although I was able to bring Imelda and Michael to stay with me and they did get to see snow it was a thrill for Imelda but old hat for me). Besides, I could speak and read a little Chinese (having studied Chinese for two years and Japanese for one year back in Canada) whereas after four years I was still struggling with Korean.
It turns out that I've liked Taiwan a lot more than Korea. Yes, I know I'm sounding like a broken record but it happens to be true: the food, the people, the language, it's all better in Taiwan. I hated eating kimchi everyday, I hated not understanding anything that people said to me and I hated the fact that Korean lessons in Korea charged more per hour than I'd make in a day. (I guess they were expecting wealthy businessmen to sign up.) I learn more Chinese everyday here in Taiwan than Korean I would learn in Korea every year. I've been here six years now, by the way.
Oh and on top of my previous trips to Japan and Hong Kong, I've also had to make visa runs to Japan and Hong Kong over the years: including stopovers at airports I've been to Hong Kong and Japan five times each. I feel as though I have deep familiarity with the Philippines, Korea and Taiwan and passing familiarity with Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. People have told me in the past (including Imelda herself) that I should have gotten -or could still get- a job in Hong Kong or Japan and then make more money than I make here but, like I said before, it is better to be happy and make a little money than be miserable and make a lot of money - not that I would necessarily be miserable in Hong Kong or Japan but I am happy here and I remember how things were in Morocco and Korea. Quite frankly I'm on to a good thing here and I wouldn't want to mess that up.
Martin
I went to England in 1975, 1980 and 1985 with my parents, each time for two to three weeks and over the summer vacation. I didn't ever visit the U.S. until I was an adult and then the only places I've visited are Rochester, New York and New York City. Oh I had a stopover to Chicago once on the way to Japan but I never left the airport. I did leave the airport when I visited New York and Paris, France but that was just so I could go to city's other airport and catch a connecting flight.
The less I say about Morocco the better: I was only there four months. Let's just say that it is better to be happy and make a little bit of money than to be miserable and make a lot of money.
My first trip to Asia was in 1991: I went to Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. I had penpals in Signapore and Malaysia (and Taiwan and the Philippines) and I went to meet them.
Let me explain: I desperately wanted to get married, even at a young age. This attitude seems silly to me now: I now realise 1) that people really need not get married unless they want to have children and 2) that a relationship should be about more than satisfying one's need for companionship and sex. I now believe that two people need to be friends first before they get married: a physical attraction alone is not enough, although it is obviously necessary. Back then I was just interested in finding someone who looked nice and then marrying her. I can now see that this is actually demeaning: it would actually be less demeaning to have cheap, meaningless sex with somebody and move on then expect someone to be with you for the rest of your life simply so they can continue to satisfy your needs. What about their needs? Basically I was being influenced by my parent's religious values but I can see now that such values harken back to a time when women were considered property and not individuals.
The second time I travelled to Asia I went to the Philippines (via a stopover in Hong Kong during which I didn't even leave the airplane). That was when I met my wife.
What can I tell you about when I met my wife? The good news is that she was somebody like me: like me she wanted to get married and like me she wanted to marry somebody from the other side of the world. It worked out perfectly. Oh and she's only two years younger than me so we have more in common than you'd think. On top of that, there was a great deal of mutual physical attraction. Like I said, it worked out perfectly.
After Imelda and I got married, we lived in the Phillipines for two years. I stayed long enough to see my first son, Michael, start walking. But even though it is better to be happy than wealthy, you can be neither on the kind of salary that they pay in the Philippines. I reluctantly decided to seek a job in Korea (because teaching in Taiwan would have meant having to teach young children which is something I didn't want to do) and spent the next four years being pretty much miserable.
Things turned around after I came to Taiwan. For a long time I had wanted to come to Taiwan because I didn't like the winters in Korea (although I was able to bring Imelda and Michael to stay with me and they did get to see snow it was a thrill for Imelda but old hat for me). Besides, I could speak and read a little Chinese (having studied Chinese for two years and Japanese for one year back in Canada) whereas after four years I was still struggling with Korean.
It turns out that I've liked Taiwan a lot more than Korea. Yes, I know I'm sounding like a broken record but it happens to be true: the food, the people, the language, it's all better in Taiwan. I hated eating kimchi everyday, I hated not understanding anything that people said to me and I hated the fact that Korean lessons in Korea charged more per hour than I'd make in a day. (I guess they were expecting wealthy businessmen to sign up.) I learn more Chinese everyday here in Taiwan than Korean I would learn in Korea every year. I've been here six years now, by the way.
Oh and on top of my previous trips to Japan and Hong Kong, I've also had to make visa runs to Japan and Hong Kong over the years: including stopovers at airports I've been to Hong Kong and Japan five times each. I feel as though I have deep familiarity with the Philippines, Korea and Taiwan and passing familiarity with Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. People have told me in the past (including Imelda herself) that I should have gotten -or could still get- a job in Hong Kong or Japan and then make more money than I make here but, like I said before, it is better to be happy and make a little money than be miserable and make a lot of money - not that I would necessarily be miserable in Hong Kong or Japan but I am happy here and I remember how things were in Morocco and Korea. Quite frankly I'm on to a good thing here and I wouldn't want to mess that up.
Martin
Friday, 16 October 2009
Funny but true
When you live in Taiwan for a long time it is fairly easy to spot someone who is Japanese or Vietnamese. Japanese men, for example, tend to look a bit thinner than Chinese men, perhaps as a result of a different diet at home and Vietnamese women tend to be really short, something which is quite obvious if you see them in a group. (It's also true -and documented in Chinese medical books- that people in Southern China are shorter than people in Northern China so perhaps this is just an extension of this rule.) I was also once able to tell that a man was Japanese because he had a full beard, something you'll never see on a Chinese man.
I could also probably pick out the Chinese person out of a group of non-Chinese people: I actually did that back in Canada one time, namely pick out a Chinese woman out of a group of Korean women and start speaking to her in Chinese. She asked me how I could tell she was Chinese and I told her that it was because she was the prettiest one there. Yet for some reason she didn't give me her phone number. True story. Long before I ever met my wife, by the way.
Anyway, a similar thing happened to me a few weeks ago while I was visiting the National Taichung Institute of Technology: I spotted a student who looked very pale and thin and I asked him "Are you Japanese?"
"Hai (はい)," he said.
"You're not here studying English, are you? I mean you can do that in Japan."
He shook his head.
"So you must be here studying Chinese."
"Aso (あそ)," he said.
"Oh so Japanese people really do say that!"
"Eh?" he said.
"Nevermind," I said.
"Aso" is a well known expression in the West because Charlie Chan used to say "aso" in movies when he found a clue. It's Japanese for "So it is!" Why Charlie Chan would say something in Japanese when he found a clue is baffling. In movies I never hear Japanese people say "aso": rather they say "So des ne!" which I imagine is a more formal expression. Still, my Japanese textbook from back when I was a studying at McGill said that "aso" was a real expression meaning "So it is!" and I was delighted to find that the expression actually does get used by real Japanese people, especially when it the word keeps appearing in crossword puzzles.
Martin
I could also probably pick out the Chinese person out of a group of non-Chinese people: I actually did that back in Canada one time, namely pick out a Chinese woman out of a group of Korean women and start speaking to her in Chinese. She asked me how I could tell she was Chinese and I told her that it was because she was the prettiest one there. Yet for some reason she didn't give me her phone number. True story. Long before I ever met my wife, by the way.
Anyway, a similar thing happened to me a few weeks ago while I was visiting the National Taichung Institute of Technology: I spotted a student who looked very pale and thin and I asked him "Are you Japanese?"
"Hai (はい)," he said.
"You're not here studying English, are you? I mean you can do that in Japan."
He shook his head.
"So you must be here studying Chinese."
"Aso (あそ)," he said.
"Oh so Japanese people really do say that!"
"Eh?" he said.
"Nevermind," I said.
"Aso" is a well known expression in the West because Charlie Chan used to say "aso" in movies when he found a clue. It's Japanese for "So it is!" Why Charlie Chan would say something in Japanese when he found a clue is baffling. In movies I never hear Japanese people say "aso": rather they say "So des ne!" which I imagine is a more formal expression. Still, my Japanese textbook from back when I was a studying at McGill said that "aso" was a real expression meaning "So it is!" and I was delighted to find that the expression actually does get used by real Japanese people, especially when it the word keeps appearing in crossword puzzles.
Martin
Thursday, 15 October 2009
TV and Movies
I want to talk a bit about what TV shows and movies I watch.
I grew up looking at reruns of TV shows from the sixties and seventies, namely Star Trek, Lost in Space, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, Charlie's Angels, Battlestar Galactica and the Wild Wild West. All these shows spawned movies, remakes and/or spin offs. I liked Star Trek, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise but Voyager left me cold: it was basically Star Trek meets Lost in Space and it didn't mesh very well. I posted pictures of Linda Park, Zoe Saldana and Rosalind Chao to the right.
Rosalind Chao was also in The Joy Luck Club along with Tamlyn Tomita, Ming Na-Wen (溫明娜)and Lauren Tom. Tamlyn Tomita had her debut in The Karate Kid II: I remember really, really wanting to see that movie and then anxiously waiting for the DVD to come out. I wasn't disappointed: Tamlyn Tomita was a living doll. Similarly, I watched Ming Na-Wen on ER but turned the channel whenever one of her scenes would end: I was more interested in watching Ming Na-Wen eat ice cream than in the storyline. Lauren Tom also had a role on Friends for one season in which she was Ross's girlfriend before he went back to Rachel. What an idiot! Anyway, The Joy Luck Club was the first movie that ever made me cry. (The second was The Colour Purple.) I remember when The Joy Luck Club came out I was thinking "Rosalind Chao! Ming Na-Wen! Tamlyn Tomita! Lauren Tom!" and being so anxious to see the movie and then ending up feeling so embarrassed crying in the middle of the movie theatre!
A movie I was similarly anxious to see was Ang Lee (李安)'s Eat Drink, Man Woman (飲食男女) starring Yang Kueimei (楊貴媚), Wu Chienlien (吳倩蓮) and Wang Yuwen (王渝文). When Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, with Michelle Yeoh [楊紫瓊]! She was also in Jacky Chan's Supercop and the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies) came out I was already in Korea so when I rented the video tape to watch at home I ended up feeling disappointed that the only subtitles were in Korean! I watched it anyway. I recently watched both movies again on DVD here in Taiwan and I wanted to try watching them without reading the English subtitles but it turned out to be too difficult.
Now that I'm in Taiwan I get some American TV shows through the internet and some from Filipino channels that I pick up by satellite. I watch shows like CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Bones (with Tamara Taylor and Michaela Conlin!), Law and Order, Heroes, Smallville (with Kristen Kreuk for the first seven seasons!) and America's Next Top Model (with Tyra Banks!). I also was able to watch Ally McBeal (with Lucy Liu!) and Dark Angel (with Jessica Alba!) back when I was in Korea. I mainly watch the CSI shows just for the drama, although Kelly Hu did appear as a detective in Season 1 of CSI: New York. She was also in The Scorpion King and X-Men United (with Halle Berry!).
One TV show that probably had a life changing effect on me was the mini-series Shogun that came out in 1980. It portrayed living in another country and not knowing the language as an exciting, adventurous thing, especially with somebody like Yôko Shimada (島田陽子, the actress playing Mariko) there to help out! (A movie that no doubt had a similar effect on me was The World of Suzie with Nancy Kwan [關家蒨]) Well, as it turned out, living in Korea and not knowing the language turned out to be more Hellish than exciting: most Koreans -like a lot of Americans, to be fair- seem to expect foreigners to arrive in their country already knowing the local language.
My experience in Taiwan has been far more positive with the people here being relatively more inclined to demonstrate patience with this poor sap who can't understand half of what people say to him: most people in Taiwanese seem to understand that Chinese is a difficult language to learn and seem surprised if a foreigner manages to speak -let alone read and write- any Chinese whatsoever. In the past six years I've only had one person ever telling me that I "should learn Chinese" as opposed to praising me for what I've been able to accomplish so far. I consider that to be a fair track record and thus have no major complaints about how people treat me here.
Martin
I grew up looking at reruns of TV shows from the sixties and seventies, namely Star Trek, Lost in Space, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, Charlie's Angels, Battlestar Galactica and the Wild Wild West. All these shows spawned movies, remakes and/or spin offs. I liked Star Trek, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise but Voyager left me cold: it was basically Star Trek meets Lost in Space and it didn't mesh very well. I posted pictures of Linda Park, Zoe Saldana and Rosalind Chao to the right.
Rosalind Chao was also in The Joy Luck Club along with Tamlyn Tomita, Ming Na-Wen (溫明娜)and Lauren Tom. Tamlyn Tomita had her debut in The Karate Kid II: I remember really, really wanting to see that movie and then anxiously waiting for the DVD to come out. I wasn't disappointed: Tamlyn Tomita was a living doll. Similarly, I watched Ming Na-Wen on ER but turned the channel whenever one of her scenes would end: I was more interested in watching Ming Na-Wen eat ice cream than in the storyline. Lauren Tom also had a role on Friends for one season in which she was Ross's girlfriend before he went back to Rachel. What an idiot! Anyway, The Joy Luck Club was the first movie that ever made me cry. (The second was The Colour Purple.) I remember when The Joy Luck Club came out I was thinking "Rosalind Chao! Ming Na-Wen! Tamlyn Tomita! Lauren Tom!" and being so anxious to see the movie and then ending up feeling so embarrassed crying in the middle of the movie theatre!
A movie I was similarly anxious to see was Ang Lee (李安)'s Eat Drink, Man Woman (飲食男女) starring Yang Kueimei (楊貴媚), Wu Chienlien (吳倩蓮) and Wang Yuwen (王渝文). When Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, with Michelle Yeoh [楊紫瓊]! She was also in Jacky Chan's Supercop and the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies) came out I was already in Korea so when I rented the video tape to watch at home I ended up feeling disappointed that the only subtitles were in Korean! I watched it anyway. I recently watched both movies again on DVD here in Taiwan and I wanted to try watching them without reading the English subtitles but it turned out to be too difficult.
Now that I'm in Taiwan I get some American TV shows through the internet and some from Filipino channels that I pick up by satellite. I watch shows like CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Bones (with Tamara Taylor and Michaela Conlin!), Law and Order, Heroes, Smallville (with Kristen Kreuk for the first seven seasons!) and America's Next Top Model (with Tyra Banks!). I also was able to watch Ally McBeal (with Lucy Liu!) and Dark Angel (with Jessica Alba!) back when I was in Korea. I mainly watch the CSI shows just for the drama, although Kelly Hu did appear as a detective in Season 1 of CSI: New York. She was also in The Scorpion King and X-Men United (with Halle Berry!).
One TV show that probably had a life changing effect on me was the mini-series Shogun that came out in 1980. It portrayed living in another country and not knowing the language as an exciting, adventurous thing, especially with somebody like Yôko Shimada (島田陽子, the actress playing Mariko) there to help out! (A movie that no doubt had a similar effect on me was The World of Suzie with Nancy Kwan [關家蒨]) Well, as it turned out, living in Korea and not knowing the language turned out to be more Hellish than exciting: most Koreans -like a lot of Americans, to be fair- seem to expect foreigners to arrive in their country already knowing the local language.
My experience in Taiwan has been far more positive with the people here being relatively more inclined to demonstrate patience with this poor sap who can't understand half of what people say to him: most people in Taiwanese seem to understand that Chinese is a difficult language to learn and seem surprised if a foreigner manages to speak -let alone read and write- any Chinese whatsoever. In the past six years I've only had one person ever telling me that I "should learn Chinese" as opposed to praising me for what I've been able to accomplish so far. I consider that to be a fair track record and thus have no major complaints about how people treat me here.
Martin
More pictures
I added a bunch of new pictures.
First, we have Nina Jose who was a contestent on Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Edition (which Kim Chiu won).
Say Alonzo, Chx Alcala and Cassnadra Ponti were contestants on the first season of Pinoy Big Brother. Wendy Valdez and Saicy Aguila were contestants on Season 2.
Pamela and Vanessa Chong and Paula Taylor and Natasha Monks were contestants on the Amazing Race Asia, Season 2. They are from Malaysia and Thailand, respectively.
Aubrey Miles was a contestant on the first season of the Amazing Race Asia andwas a member of the Viva Hot Babes, along with Maui Taylor, Andrea del Rosario, Katya Santos and Gwen Garci, amongst others.
Mariel Rodriguez is the host of both Wowowee and Pinoy Big Brother.
Valerie Conception and RR Enriquez are both Mariel's cohosts on Wowowee and part of the original cast of the comedy show Banana Split which also featured Angelica Panganiban, Princess Ryan, Valerie Garcia, Anne Curtis, Kristine Hermosa, Lauren Young, Diane Medina, Riza Santos and Christine Reyes.
Ara Mina, Rufa Mae Quinto, Francine Prieto, Maureen Larrazabal and Diana Zubiri are similarly part of the cast of the comedy show Bubble Gang. Christine Reyes and Ara Mina are also sisters. (Ara Mina is a stage name.)
Like Angel Locsin, Allesandra de Rossi, Katrina Halili, Jennylyn Mercado, Rhian Ramos, Erich Gonzales, Pops Fernandez, Iya Villiana and Toni Gonzaga are Filipino actresses.
Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif are Indian actresses.
Priya Rai, Anjali Kara, Sasha Grey, Alexis Love, Adriana Sage, Asia Carrera, Charmane Star, Sabrine Maui, Loni Punani, Michelle Maylene, Keanna Reyes, Francine Dee, Kaylani Lei, Keanna Lei, Akira Lei, Kina Kai, Teanna Kai, Kitty Yung, Kobe Tai, Aliyah Yi, Jade and Nyomi Marcella are porn stars. Jade and Nyomi are also sisters.
Martin
First, we have Nina Jose who was a contestent on Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Edition (which Kim Chiu won).
Say Alonzo, Chx Alcala and Cassnadra Ponti were contestants on the first season of Pinoy Big Brother. Wendy Valdez and Saicy Aguila were contestants on Season 2.
Pamela and Vanessa Chong and Paula Taylor and Natasha Monks were contestants on the Amazing Race Asia, Season 2. They are from Malaysia and Thailand, respectively.
Aubrey Miles was a contestant on the first season of the Amazing Race Asia andwas a member of the Viva Hot Babes, along with Maui Taylor, Andrea del Rosario, Katya Santos and Gwen Garci, amongst others.
Mariel Rodriguez is the host of both Wowowee and Pinoy Big Brother.
Valerie Conception and RR Enriquez are both Mariel's cohosts on Wowowee and part of the original cast of the comedy show Banana Split which also featured Angelica Panganiban, Princess Ryan, Valerie Garcia, Anne Curtis, Kristine Hermosa, Lauren Young, Diane Medina, Riza Santos and Christine Reyes.
Ara Mina, Rufa Mae Quinto, Francine Prieto, Maureen Larrazabal and Diana Zubiri are similarly part of the cast of the comedy show Bubble Gang. Christine Reyes and Ara Mina are also sisters. (Ara Mina is a stage name.)
Like Angel Locsin, Allesandra de Rossi, Katrina Halili, Jennylyn Mercado, Rhian Ramos, Erich Gonzales, Pops Fernandez, Iya Villiana and Toni Gonzaga are Filipino actresses.
Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif are Indian actresses.
Priya Rai, Anjali Kara, Sasha Grey, Alexis Love, Adriana Sage, Asia Carrera, Charmane Star, Sabrine Maui, Loni Punani, Michelle Maylene, Keanna Reyes, Francine Dee, Kaylani Lei, Keanna Lei, Akira Lei, Kina Kai, Teanna Kai, Kitty Yung, Kobe Tai, Aliyah Yi, Jade and Nyomi Marcella are porn stars. Jade and Nyomi are also sisters.
Martin
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
How I study Chinese
I want to talk a bit about how I study Chinese. First, of all, I listen to Chinese music.
There are two kinds of listening: passive listening and active listening. Passive listening involves listening to the music but not thinking about its meaning. Active listening means listening for comprehension. Both kinds of listening is intructive. Passive listening enables you to get exposed to the language and it helps your pronunciation: you might find that the song you listened to all day you can now sing back even though you didn't understand a word. Active listening is more involved and it requires you to try to make sense of what you are listening to.
I have learned a lot of Chinese vocabulary by listening to Chinese songs, especially words meaning "heartbreak" (傷心 or 心碎), "loneliness" (寂寞), "tears" (流淚), "doubt" (懷疑), "ambiguity" (曖昧), "strange" (可怪), "reason" (理由), "impatient" (不耐煩), "freedom" (自由), "choice" (選擇), "courage" (勇氣 or 勇敢), "responsible" (負責), "believe" (相信), "change" (改變), "love" (愛情, 戀愛 or 好喜歡), "happiness" (幸福 or 快樂), "smile" (微笑), "passionate" (熱情), "rose" (玫瑰), "hug" (擁抱), "forever" (永遠), "strong" (堅強), "ideal" (理想), "lover" (情人 or 戀人), "angel" (天使), "taste" (味道 or 滋味), "reckless" (不顧一切), “confession”(自白 or 承認), "mood" (心情) and "pretence" (假裝). (In fact, Cyndi Wang has songs called 熱愛and 彩虹的微笑, Jolin Tsai has songs called 檸檬草的味道, 看我72變 and 假裝, Rainie Yang has songs called 曖昧 and 理想情人, Vivian Hsu has songs called 好眼淚壞眼淚 and 假扮的天使, Elva Hsiao has songs called 表白 and 幸福的地圖, Coco Lee has songs called 好心情 and 爱你是我的自由, Karen Mok has songs called 我不耐煩, 寂寞的戀人啊 and 堅強的理由, and A-Mit has songs called 不顧一切, 我要快樂 and 永遠的快樂 and I listened to these songs constantly over the summer so it wasn't hard to learn these words.) You can tell that I have been listening to a lot of love songs, can't you? I can also learn how to write the words by watching the karaoke versions.
A combination of passive and active listening can enable you to both sing back a song and understand what it means and that means learning a lot of new vocabulary and impressing people with your Chinese, which is seriously cool.
I wish I could say that I picked up a lot of Chinese from meetings but the truth is I understand very little of what is said in meetings: academic Chinese is much harder than regular Chinese and, besides, people at meetings are usually talking very quickly so they can get the meetings over with (which is probably why they don't want to use any English). I do, however, engage in a lot of conversations with people in Chinese (at restaurants, in stores and in taxi cabs). I also sometimes translate what I say in English to Chinese for the benefit of a student who obviously didn't understand me. Sometimes I will even hear students talking in Chinese in class (which they are not supposed to do) and I will jump right into their conversation and absolutely stun them. (I can also do that, to a limited extent, in Korean, Japanese or Cebuano -my wife's language- provided I am not expected to speak the languages themselves and have enough context to have been able to simply guess what was being said.)
I also wish I could say that my writing in Chinese was as good as my speaking but, frankly, Chinese writing is difficult and involves a lot of memorisation. This is, of course, again, where karaoke works wonders, because I can see words in Chinese and, if I bother to look the words up in my Chinese-English dictionary, know what they mean and the constant exposure means I have a picture of the word in my mind that I can just copy if I need to write the word. It also helps that I see Chinese words around town on signs. I've downloaded a lot of Chinese songs and burned them to disk: at first it was easier for me to write pinyin on the labels but eventually I started writing Chinese characters. It's becoming more natural for me.
Finally, I've read a lot of Chinese, mostly storybooks (that I read to my sons, Michael and Ian) but also magazines (FHM Taiwan) and newspaper articles (from the Shuang Daily). I also get a lot of practical reading experience surfing the net, say for example when I download Chinese videos from youtube. Everything I read has a lot of pictures because I need the context: it is very hard to understand written text if there's even one word you don't understand, especially when Chinese grammar is so different from English grammar.
Basically then I find myself working on all four of my basic skills, reading, listening, speaking and even writing. I really should work more on my writing because it is very useful, say for example when somebody doesn't understand what I say in Chinese and I need to write it down for them. Being able to write full length essays in Chinese is a long, long way off for me though.
Martin
There are two kinds of listening: passive listening and active listening. Passive listening involves listening to the music but not thinking about its meaning. Active listening means listening for comprehension. Both kinds of listening is intructive. Passive listening enables you to get exposed to the language and it helps your pronunciation: you might find that the song you listened to all day you can now sing back even though you didn't understand a word. Active listening is more involved and it requires you to try to make sense of what you are listening to.
I have learned a lot of Chinese vocabulary by listening to Chinese songs, especially words meaning "heartbreak" (傷心 or 心碎), "loneliness" (寂寞), "tears" (流淚), "doubt" (懷疑), "ambiguity" (曖昧), "strange" (可怪), "reason" (理由), "impatient" (不耐煩), "freedom" (自由), "choice" (選擇), "courage" (勇氣 or 勇敢), "responsible" (負責), "believe" (相信), "change" (改變), "love" (愛情, 戀愛 or 好喜歡), "happiness" (幸福 or 快樂), "smile" (微笑), "passionate" (熱情), "rose" (玫瑰), "hug" (擁抱), "forever" (永遠), "strong" (堅強), "ideal" (理想), "lover" (情人 or 戀人), "angel" (天使), "taste" (味道 or 滋味), "reckless" (不顧一切), “confession”(自白 or 承認), "mood" (心情) and "pretence" (假裝). (In fact, Cyndi Wang has songs called 熱愛and 彩虹的微笑, Jolin Tsai has songs called 檸檬草的味道, 看我72變 and 假裝, Rainie Yang has songs called 曖昧 and 理想情人, Vivian Hsu has songs called 好眼淚壞眼淚 and 假扮的天使, Elva Hsiao has songs called 表白 and 幸福的地圖, Coco Lee has songs called 好心情 and 爱你是我的自由, Karen Mok has songs called 我不耐煩, 寂寞的戀人啊 and 堅強的理由, and A-Mit has songs called 不顧一切, 我要快樂 and 永遠的快樂 and I listened to these songs constantly over the summer so it wasn't hard to learn these words.) You can tell that I have been listening to a lot of love songs, can't you? I can also learn how to write the words by watching the karaoke versions.
A combination of passive and active listening can enable you to both sing back a song and understand what it means and that means learning a lot of new vocabulary and impressing people with your Chinese, which is seriously cool.
I wish I could say that I picked up a lot of Chinese from meetings but the truth is I understand very little of what is said in meetings: academic Chinese is much harder than regular Chinese and, besides, people at meetings are usually talking very quickly so they can get the meetings over with (which is probably why they don't want to use any English). I do, however, engage in a lot of conversations with people in Chinese (at restaurants, in stores and in taxi cabs). I also sometimes translate what I say in English to Chinese for the benefit of a student who obviously didn't understand me. Sometimes I will even hear students talking in Chinese in class (which they are not supposed to do) and I will jump right into their conversation and absolutely stun them. (I can also do that, to a limited extent, in Korean, Japanese or Cebuano -my wife's language- provided I am not expected to speak the languages themselves and have enough context to have been able to simply guess what was being said.)
I also wish I could say that my writing in Chinese was as good as my speaking but, frankly, Chinese writing is difficult and involves a lot of memorisation. This is, of course, again, where karaoke works wonders, because I can see words in Chinese and, if I bother to look the words up in my Chinese-English dictionary, know what they mean and the constant exposure means I have a picture of the word in my mind that I can just copy if I need to write the word. It also helps that I see Chinese words around town on signs. I've downloaded a lot of Chinese songs and burned them to disk: at first it was easier for me to write pinyin on the labels but eventually I started writing Chinese characters. It's becoming more natural for me.
Finally, I've read a lot of Chinese, mostly storybooks (that I read to my sons, Michael and Ian) but also magazines (FHM Taiwan) and newspaper articles (from the Shuang Daily). I also get a lot of practical reading experience surfing the net, say for example when I download Chinese videos from youtube. Everything I read has a lot of pictures because I need the context: it is very hard to understand written text if there's even one word you don't understand, especially when Chinese grammar is so different from English grammar.
Basically then I find myself working on all four of my basic skills, reading, listening, speaking and even writing. I really should work more on my writing because it is very useful, say for example when somebody doesn't understand what I say in Chinese and I need to write it down for them. Being able to write full length essays in Chinese is a long, long way off for me though.
Martin
More About the Pictures
I want to reassure people that I am not going to put up any naked pictures here. It's not that I have anything against nudity: it's just that I don't want to have to put up any warnings or be accused of operating a porn site.
The pictures I will put up on the right will all be pictures of celebrities, public figures. This includes porn stars. I haven't put up pictures of models because then I could easily end up with hundreds of pictures. They've all done something other than modelling. I am also making a point of only including celebrities with full names, not necessarily their real names because even some of the actresses and singers here are just going by stage names. I started by posting pictures of Taiwan and Hong Kong celebrities but then moved on to Korea, the Philippines and Mainland China. This just simply reflects my personal tastes. Finally, I will not post someone's picture unless I can find a clear headshot. (I'm not posting pictures of Nikki Chao or Annabel Chong because I couldn't find any decent ones.)
I understand that some people consider the human body offensive but this is the first time - outside of muslim culture - that I've ever been told that the human face is offensive
Martin
The pictures I will put up on the right will all be pictures of celebrities, public figures. This includes porn stars. I haven't put up pictures of models because then I could easily end up with hundreds of pictures. They've all done something other than modelling. I am also making a point of only including celebrities with full names, not necessarily their real names because even some of the actresses and singers here are just going by stage names. I started by posting pictures of Taiwan and Hong Kong celebrities but then moved on to Korea, the Philippines and Mainland China. This just simply reflects my personal tastes. Finally, I will not post someone's picture unless I can find a clear headshot. (I'm not posting pictures of Nikki Chao or Annabel Chong because I couldn't find any decent ones.)
I understand that some people consider the human body offensive but this is the first time - outside of muslim culture - that I've ever been told that the human face is offensive
Martin
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Tuesday, October 13th LAT Crossword
Theme: Gone fishing
Martin here. Surprised? Me too. I think C.C. is letting me blog today provided I 1) don't make (or link to) any off colour jokes, 2) don't link to any erotic pictures or videos and 3) don't add fuel to any fires. In other words, it's just like any day posting to this blog: we all have to second guess ourselves before we post. :)
Anyway...
16A: "Window treatment support" CURTAIN ROD
22A: "Proceed cautiously" WALK A FINE LINE
46A: "Sports show staple" HIGHLIGHT REEL
56A: "No longer in trouble" OFF THE HOOK
I didn't need perp help to get HIGHLIGHT REEL because I already had CURTAIN ROD and WALK A FINE LINE: the expression "ROD and REEL" came to mind and I expected to find REEL after getting ROD and LINE. If you solve a puzzle from starting at the bottom and working up then you probably had a different experience: HOOK and REEL would have made WALK A FINE LINE a gimme because you would be expecting HOOK to be followed by LINE and perhaps sinker.
A lot of strightforward clues today. Personally I think this is a good thing, a very good thing in fact, because not only did it mean I got to finish this in about twenty minutes without googling but, as I've said before, cryptic clues often tend to be a cheat designed to make the puzzle harder than it really need be. I'll talk about this more as we go over the clues and fills.
Warning: some pictures below are pictures of animals wearing no clothing and are therefore naked. :)
Across:
1A: "Magic amulet": MOJO. I originally wrote MORO which is a word that refers to the people of Mindinao. There's an old terrorist group in the Philippines that called themselves the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF. They are now called the Abu Sayaf. Can't imagine why they'd want to change their name.
5A: "With 13-Across "Lonely Boy" singer" PAUL and 13A: "See 5-Across" ANKA. PAUL ANKA was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. There's a Paul Anka Drive in the south-eastern part of the city, obviously named after him.
9A: "UPS deliveries requiring payment" C.O.D.S. Cash on Delivery. UPS is United Parcel Service. I'm surprised that it wasn't clued as a kind of fish.
14A: "Ship to remember" MAINE. The USS MAINE "exploded and sank on February 15, 1898 in an event that precipitated the Spanish–American War and also popularized the phrase Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!" Again, the obvious clue "Fish producing state" was apparently deliberately avoided so as to not hint at the theme too early.
15A: "Related" AKIN. Straightforward clue.
18A: "Christmas trio" MAGI. The three wise men. As in the O'Henry Christmas story The Gift of the MAGI.
19A: "__ Beso (That Kiss!): 5- & 13- Across hit" ESO. Spanish for "that". Sorry, no video.
20A: "Prefix with China" INDO. Straightforward clue.
21A: "Lukewarm" TEPID. Straightforward clue.
26A: "The flu, for one" ILLNESS. Straightforward clue. C.C. can correct me if I am wrong but my students tell me that the word for cold/flu in Chinese is 感冒 (gan3mao4) but there's also the word 流感 (liu3gan3) that means simply flu (as opposed to cold, I presume). This would seem to imply that Chinese people consider the flu to be a type of cold as opposed to a separate disease. Several years ago, the big scare here was SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Symdrome) which was caused by a mutated coronavirus. Coronaviruses along with rhinoviruses pretty much account for the common cold. Nowadays, people are worried about H1N1 or swine flu which is a form of influenza. The good news is that if you've been exposed to a specific virus in the past then you are less likely to get sick again: you'd be considered "immune". The bad news is that colds and flus can kill you. Good luck this winter, everybody. :)
28A: "Dynamic start?" AERO. Also a delicious chocolate bar.
29A: "God" DEITY. Extremely straightforward clue.
30A: "Most intelligent" SMARTEST. Straightforward clue.
34A: "Looooong time" EON. Fairly straightforward clue. "Long time" could have been ERA.
35A: "Blocker of offensive TV material" VCHIP. Aren't people more concerned about internet porn than what appears on TV? Back in the late seventies people used to complain about Charlie's Angels.
37A: "Penn & Teller, e.g." DUO. Why not Batman & Robin?
38A: "Put your John Hancock on this line" SIGN HERE. Straightforward clue.
41A: "Desert rest stops" OASES. Plural of OASIS. Straightforward clue.
43A: "Chaplin's fourth wife" OONA.
44A: "Weepy people" SOBBERS. Straightforward clue.
50A: "Orderly display" ARRAY. Straightforward clue.
51A: "Has a meal" EATS. Straightforward clue.
52A: "Repair" FIX. Very straightforward clue.
55A: "Reddish horse" ROAN. I knew ROAN was a horse colour but I didn't know it was also a breed of horse.
59A: "Oklahoma city" ENID.
60A: "Numerical relationship" RATIO. Fairly straightforward. My first thought was SERIES but it was too many letters.
61A: "One-named Deco artist" ERTE. I think we've had this clue before.
62A: "Personal dept. IDs" SSNS. Social Security NumberS. In Canada, we have SINS, Social Insurance NumberS.
63A: "Greenish-yellow pear" BOSC. If you don't remember this fill from previous puzzles then you might have been stumped but I imagine most of us here go this one.
64A: "Treos and iPhones, briefly" PDA. Easy guess. In Taiwan, the most popular feature on one of these things is the ability to translate English to Chinese. That and games.
Down:
1D: "Riot squad spray" MACE. I was surprised to learn that mace and pepper spray are not the same thing: the confusion arises because the Mace Security International company that used to supply tear gas to the police now manufactures pepper spray for personal protection.
2D: "Weighty obligation" ONUS. Fairly straightforward clue.
3D: "Harry Potter's creator" J. K. ROWLING.
4D: "Bit of granola" OAT. And 48D: "Smidgen of sand" GRAIN.
5D: "Bamboo-eating critters" PANDAS.
6D: "___ superiority: obvious confidence" AIR OF. When you go overseas to teach English it is very easy to assume an AIR OF superiority because you speak English and they don't. You have to keep in mind that you can't speak their language. Of course, once you do manage to learn their language that AIR OF superiority returns. :)
7D: "Juan's one" UNO. Spanish for "one".
8D: "Was in first place" LED. Fairly straightforward clue.
9D: "King Arthur's realm" CAMELOT. A lot of the King Arthur legend may have been myth. The 2004 movie portrayed him as a Roman.
10D: "Giraffe relative" OKAPI.
11D: "Let's eat!" DIG IN. Straightforward clue.
12D: "Like a catty remark" SNIDE. Very straightforward clue.
14D: "Expensive furs" MINKS. Straightforward clue.
17D: "Dance company founder Alvin" AILEY.
21D: "La. on old U.S. maps" TERR. Territory.
23D: "Bug in a colony" ANT. Fairly straighforward clue. "Bug in a hive" would be BEE.
24D: "__ Said: Neil Diamond hit" I AM...I.: See this clip.
25D: "Minimum-range tide" NEAP.
26D: "March 15th, e.g." IDES. In the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, Caesar was told to "beware the ides of March". This foreshadowed his assassination by the senate.
27D: "First of 13 Popes" LEO I. "Last of 13 Popes" would be LEO XIII.
30D: "___ Believes in Me: Kenny Rogers hit" SHE.
31D: "His name wound up on a lemon" EDSEL FORD. Easy guess.
32D: "Plaintiff" SUER. Fairly straightforward. In criminal law the plaintiff is the level government whose law you broke but in civil law the plaintiff is filing a lawsuit.
33D: "Partner of turn" TOSS. You TOSS and turn when you can't sleep. I found the clues and fills starting to get a bit trickier at this point, which is fine.
35D: "___, vidi, vici: Caesar's boast" VENI. Another Julius Caesar reference.
36D: "Mountain goat's perch" CRAG.
39D: "Words after Look, Ma" NO HANDS. Also, words before "Ow ow! My arm!"
40D: "Sanctified" HOLY. Very straightforward clue.
41D: "Way beyond pleasantly plump" OBESE. No comment.
42D: "Prez on a penny" ABE. President Abraham Lincoln.
44D: "Kind of electricity" STATIC. As opposed to electricity that flows in a current.
45D: "Big name in garden care" ORTHO. Manufactured by the Scott's Miracle Gro Company. From the Greek word meaning "straight" or "correct".
46D: "Rabbit look alikes" HARES. Rabbit. HARE. Frog. Toad. Turtle. Tortoise. Alligator. Crocodile.
47D: "Smooths, as hair" IRONS. Also for getting wrinkles out of clothes.
49D: "Tests by lifting": HEFTS. We've had that clue before.
53D: "Greek i" IOTA.
54D: "Vintage jaguars" XKES.
56D: "Planet" ORB.
57D: "Toy magnate ___ Schwarz" FAO.
58D: "Like cool cats" HEP.
Okay, so a lot of clues were fairly to very straightforward but, as far as I am concerned, that's a good thing. As a teacher, especially a teacher of English as a foreign language, I can't help but feel sympathetic to people non-native speakers of English, for example, who might find these clues hard enough to endure. I can pretty much guarantee that none of my students here would find this as easy as I did. Besides, there were words and names like ENID, OKAPI, AILEY, ORTHO and FAO that definitely needed perp help as well as words and names like ERTE, BOSC, NEAP and CRAG that are easy to us because we've seen them before in crossword puzzles. All in all then, I would consider this a fair test of one's Tuesday crossword puzzle solving ability.
Martin
Martin here. Surprised? Me too. I think C.C. is letting me blog today provided I 1) don't make (or link to) any off colour jokes, 2) don't link to any erotic pictures or videos and 3) don't add fuel to any fires. In other words, it's just like any day posting to this blog: we all have to second guess ourselves before we post. :)
Anyway...
16A: "Window treatment support" CURTAIN ROD
22A: "Proceed cautiously" WALK A FINE LINE
46A: "Sports show staple" HIGHLIGHT REEL
56A: "No longer in trouble" OFF THE HOOK
I didn't need perp help to get HIGHLIGHT REEL because I already had CURTAIN ROD and WALK A FINE LINE: the expression "ROD and REEL" came to mind and I expected to find REEL after getting ROD and LINE. If you solve a puzzle from starting at the bottom and working up then you probably had a different experience: HOOK and REEL would have made WALK A FINE LINE a gimme because you would be expecting HOOK to be followed by LINE and perhaps sinker.
A lot of strightforward clues today. Personally I think this is a good thing, a very good thing in fact, because not only did it mean I got to finish this in about twenty minutes without googling but, as I've said before, cryptic clues often tend to be a cheat designed to make the puzzle harder than it really need be. I'll talk about this more as we go over the clues and fills.
Warning: some pictures below are pictures of animals wearing no clothing and are therefore naked. :)
Across:
1A: "Magic amulet": MOJO. I originally wrote MORO which is a word that refers to the people of Mindinao. There's an old terrorist group in the Philippines that called themselves the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF. They are now called the Abu Sayaf. Can't imagine why they'd want to change their name.
5A: "With 13-Across "Lonely Boy" singer" PAUL and 13A: "See 5-Across" ANKA. PAUL ANKA was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. There's a Paul Anka Drive in the south-eastern part of the city, obviously named after him.
9A: "UPS deliveries requiring payment" C.O.D.S. Cash on Delivery. UPS is United Parcel Service. I'm surprised that it wasn't clued as a kind of fish.
14A: "Ship to remember" MAINE. The USS MAINE "exploded and sank on February 15, 1898 in an event that precipitated the Spanish–American War and also popularized the phrase Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!" Again, the obvious clue "Fish producing state" was apparently deliberately avoided so as to not hint at the theme too early.
15A: "Related" AKIN. Straightforward clue.
18A: "Christmas trio" MAGI. The three wise men. As in the O'Henry Christmas story The Gift of the MAGI.
19A: "__ Beso (That Kiss!): 5- & 13- Across hit" ESO. Spanish for "that". Sorry, no video.
20A: "Prefix with China" INDO. Straightforward clue.
21A: "Lukewarm" TEPID. Straightforward clue.
26A: "The flu, for one" ILLNESS. Straightforward clue. C.C. can correct me if I am wrong but my students tell me that the word for cold/flu in Chinese is 感冒 (gan3mao4) but there's also the word 流感 (liu3gan3) that means simply flu (as opposed to cold, I presume). This would seem to imply that Chinese people consider the flu to be a type of cold as opposed to a separate disease. Several years ago, the big scare here was SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Symdrome) which was caused by a mutated coronavirus. Coronaviruses along with rhinoviruses pretty much account for the common cold. Nowadays, people are worried about H1N1 or swine flu which is a form of influenza. The good news is that if you've been exposed to a specific virus in the past then you are less likely to get sick again: you'd be considered "immune". The bad news is that colds and flus can kill you. Good luck this winter, everybody. :)
28A: "Dynamic start?" AERO. Also a delicious chocolate bar.
29A: "God" DEITY. Extremely straightforward clue.
30A: "Most intelligent" SMARTEST. Straightforward clue.
34A: "Looooong time" EON. Fairly straightforward clue. "Long time" could have been ERA.
35A: "Blocker of offensive TV material" VCHIP. Aren't people more concerned about internet porn than what appears on TV? Back in the late seventies people used to complain about Charlie's Angels.
37A: "Penn & Teller, e.g." DUO. Why not Batman & Robin?
38A: "Put your John Hancock on this line" SIGN HERE. Straightforward clue.
41A: "Desert rest stops" OASES. Plural of OASIS. Straightforward clue.
43A: "Chaplin's fourth wife" OONA.
44A: "Weepy people" SOBBERS. Straightforward clue.
50A: "Orderly display" ARRAY. Straightforward clue.
51A: "Has a meal" EATS. Straightforward clue.
52A: "Repair" FIX. Very straightforward clue.
55A: "Reddish horse" ROAN. I knew ROAN was a horse colour but I didn't know it was also a breed of horse.
59A: "Oklahoma city" ENID.
60A: "Numerical relationship" RATIO. Fairly straightforward. My first thought was SERIES but it was too many letters.
61A: "One-named Deco artist" ERTE. I think we've had this clue before.
62A: "Personal dept. IDs" SSNS. Social Security NumberS. In Canada, we have SINS, Social Insurance NumberS.
63A: "Greenish-yellow pear" BOSC. If you don't remember this fill from previous puzzles then you might have been stumped but I imagine most of us here go this one.
64A: "Treos and iPhones, briefly" PDA. Easy guess. In Taiwan, the most popular feature on one of these things is the ability to translate English to Chinese. That and games.
Down:
1D: "Riot squad spray" MACE. I was surprised to learn that mace and pepper spray are not the same thing: the confusion arises because the Mace Security International company that used to supply tear gas to the police now manufactures pepper spray for personal protection.
2D: "Weighty obligation" ONUS. Fairly straightforward clue.
3D: "Harry Potter's creator" J. K. ROWLING.
4D: "Bit of granola" OAT. And 48D: "Smidgen of sand" GRAIN.
5D: "Bamboo-eating critters" PANDAS.
6D: "___ superiority: obvious confidence" AIR OF. When you go overseas to teach English it is very easy to assume an AIR OF superiority because you speak English and they don't. You have to keep in mind that you can't speak their language. Of course, once you do manage to learn their language that AIR OF superiority returns. :)
7D: "Juan's one" UNO. Spanish for "one".
8D: "Was in first place" LED. Fairly straightforward clue.
9D: "King Arthur's realm" CAMELOT. A lot of the King Arthur legend may have been myth. The 2004 movie portrayed him as a Roman.
10D: "Giraffe relative" OKAPI.
11D: "Let's eat!" DIG IN. Straightforward clue.
12D: "Like a catty remark" SNIDE. Very straightforward clue.
14D: "Expensive furs" MINKS. Straightforward clue.
17D: "Dance company founder Alvin" AILEY.
21D: "La. on old U.S. maps" TERR. Territory.
23D: "Bug in a colony" ANT. Fairly straighforward clue. "Bug in a hive" would be BEE.
24D: "__ Said: Neil Diamond hit" I AM...I.: See this clip.
25D: "Minimum-range tide" NEAP.
26D: "March 15th, e.g." IDES. In the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, Caesar was told to "beware the ides of March". This foreshadowed his assassination by the senate.
27D: "First of 13 Popes" LEO I. "Last of 13 Popes" would be LEO XIII.
30D: "___ Believes in Me: Kenny Rogers hit" SHE.
31D: "His name wound up on a lemon" EDSEL FORD. Easy guess.
32D: "Plaintiff" SUER. Fairly straightforward. In criminal law the plaintiff is the level government whose law you broke but in civil law the plaintiff is filing a lawsuit.
33D: "Partner of turn" TOSS. You TOSS and turn when you can't sleep. I found the clues and fills starting to get a bit trickier at this point, which is fine.
35D: "___, vidi, vici: Caesar's boast" VENI. Another Julius Caesar reference.
36D: "Mountain goat's perch" CRAG.
39D: "Words after Look, Ma" NO HANDS. Also, words before "Ow ow! My arm!"
40D: "Sanctified" HOLY. Very straightforward clue.
41D: "Way beyond pleasantly plump" OBESE. No comment.
42D: "Prez on a penny" ABE. President Abraham Lincoln.
44D: "Kind of electricity" STATIC. As opposed to electricity that flows in a current.
45D: "Big name in garden care" ORTHO. Manufactured by the Scott's Miracle Gro Company. From the Greek word meaning "straight" or "correct".
46D: "Rabbit look alikes" HARES. Rabbit. HARE. Frog. Toad. Turtle. Tortoise. Alligator. Crocodile.
47D: "Smooths, as hair" IRONS. Also for getting wrinkles out of clothes.
49D: "Tests by lifting": HEFTS. We've had that clue before.
53D: "Greek i" IOTA.
54D: "Vintage jaguars" XKES.
56D: "Planet" ORB.
57D: "Toy magnate ___ Schwarz" FAO.
58D: "Like cool cats" HEP.
Okay, so a lot of clues were fairly to very straightforward but, as far as I am concerned, that's a good thing. As a teacher, especially a teacher of English as a foreign language, I can't help but feel sympathetic to people non-native speakers of English, for example, who might find these clues hard enough to endure. I can pretty much guarantee that none of my students here would find this as easy as I did. Besides, there were words and names like ENID, OKAPI, AILEY, ORTHO and FAO that definitely needed perp help as well as words and names like ERTE, BOSC, NEAP and CRAG that are easy to us because we've seen them before in crossword puzzles. All in all then, I would consider this a fair test of one's Tuesday crossword puzzle solving ability.
Martin
Monday, 12 October 2009
Mission Statement
This blog is not for posting pictures. My wife posts a lot of family and scenic pictures on her friendster account. To be honest, I'm not even sure how to put pictures in a post. I may have chosen the wrong layout for that.
This blog is not for whining and complaining about things. I could talk about how people in the Philippines are gradually losing their ability to speak English or how people in Taiwan have trouble pronouncing consonents that appear at the end of words but these posts would be too negative and would sound like venting.
I'll leave posting of pictures and/or complaining about things to every other blog.
I suppose a post declaring "Chinese is difficult!" sounds like whining and venting but it was actually intended as ironic. Of course Chinese is difficult! Chinese people (here in Taiwan anyway) seem genuinely impressed if a foreigner can speak let alone read Chinese: they seem to think of reading and writing Chinese as something that a foreigner simply can't do. I am actually impressed and flattered by this attitude: in many countries it seems that locals expect visiters to learn the local language. I really appreciate how much Chinese people (here in Taiwan anyway) appreciate the effort I've put into learning Chinese.
So that's the way I want to try to approach this topic: me genuinely trying to learn Chinese and finding it tough and people around me appreciating the effort. I think this is a positive thing: I sometimes feel like giving up but the feedback I get from people really encourages me to continue.
But, that being said, I will try to avoid negativity. It's easy to fall into that trap.
Martin
This blog is not for whining and complaining about things. I could talk about how people in the Philippines are gradually losing their ability to speak English or how people in Taiwan have trouble pronouncing consonents that appear at the end of words but these posts would be too negative and would sound like venting.
I'll leave posting of pictures and/or complaining about things to every other blog.
I suppose a post declaring "Chinese is difficult!" sounds like whining and venting but it was actually intended as ironic. Of course Chinese is difficult! Chinese people (here in Taiwan anyway) seem genuinely impressed if a foreigner can speak let alone read Chinese: they seem to think of reading and writing Chinese as something that a foreigner simply can't do. I am actually impressed and flattered by this attitude: in many countries it seems that locals expect visiters to learn the local language. I really appreciate how much Chinese people (here in Taiwan anyway) appreciate the effort I've put into learning Chinese.
So that's the way I want to try to approach this topic: me genuinely trying to learn Chinese and finding it tough and people around me appreciating the effort. I think this is a positive thing: I sometimes feel like giving up but the feedback I get from people really encourages me to continue.
But, that being said, I will try to avoid negativity. It's easy to fall into that trap.
Martin
Saturday, 10 October 2009
About the photos I just posted
Cyndi Wang (王心凌), Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), Rainie Yang (楊丞琳), Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒), Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄), Yaoyao and Shushu are singers from Taiwan.
Shu Qi (舒淇) is an actress from Taiwan. Vicki Zhao (趙薇) is an actress from China. They were both in So Close (夕陽天使).
Kim Chiu and Angel Locsin are actresses from the Philippines.
Jade Hsu, Lena Lang, Kita Zen, Nyomi Zen, Tia Ling, Kiwi Ling, Bella Ling, Anna Lee, Cali Lee, Kyanna Lee, Annie Lee, Abbie Lee, Avena Lee, Lucy Lee, Miko Lee, Mika Tan, Amai Liu, Niya Yu, Evelyn Lin and Jandi Lin are porn stars.
Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) is an actress from China. She was in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).
Joan Chen (陳冲) is an actress from China. She was in Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stalone.
Maggie Q (李美琪) is an actress originally from Vancouver. She was in Die Hard 4 and Mission Impossible 3.
Jeon Jihyun (전지현) is an actress from Korea. She was in the original My Sassy Girl (엽기적인 그녀).
Karen Mok (莫文蔚) and Coco Lee (李玟) are singers from Hong Kong.
Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and Charlene Choi (蔡卓妍) are also singers from Hong Kong. They form the pop duo Twins. I don't listen to their music because I don't understand Cantonese.
Isabella Leong (梁洛施) is a singer from Macao. She was also in the movies Spider Lilies (刺青, co-starring Rainie Yang) and The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
Zhang Xinyu (張芯瑜) and A-Mit (张惠妹) are singers from Taiwan.
Bai Ling (白靈) is an actress from China. She was in Red Corner with Richard Gere.
Martin
Shu Qi (舒淇) is an actress from Taiwan. Vicki Zhao (趙薇) is an actress from China. They were both in So Close (夕陽天使).
Kim Chiu and Angel Locsin are actresses from the Philippines.
Jade Hsu, Lena Lang, Kita Zen, Nyomi Zen, Tia Ling, Kiwi Ling, Bella Ling, Anna Lee, Cali Lee, Kyanna Lee, Annie Lee, Abbie Lee, Avena Lee, Lucy Lee, Miko Lee, Mika Tan, Amai Liu, Niya Yu, Evelyn Lin and Jandi Lin are porn stars.
Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) is an actress from China. She was in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).
Joan Chen (陳冲) is an actress from China. She was in Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stalone.
Maggie Q (李美琪) is an actress originally from Vancouver. She was in Die Hard 4 and Mission Impossible 3.
Jeon Jihyun (전지현) is an actress from Korea. She was in the original My Sassy Girl (엽기적인 그녀).
Karen Mok (莫文蔚) and Coco Lee (李玟) are singers from Hong Kong.
Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and Charlene Choi (蔡卓妍) are also singers from Hong Kong. They form the pop duo Twins. I don't listen to their music because I don't understand Cantonese.
Isabella Leong (梁洛施) is a singer from Macao. She was also in the movies Spider Lilies (刺青, co-starring Rainie Yang) and The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
Zhang Xinyu (張芯瑜) and A-Mit (张惠妹) are singers from Taiwan.
Bai Ling (白靈) is an actress from China. She was in Red Corner with Richard Gere.
Martin
Friday, 9 October 2009
It gets worse!
Further to my previous post, I completely forgot about the Taiwanese tendency to pronounce Sh like S so the Chinese name 蘇 as in Tarcy Su (蘇慧倫) - Taiwanese pop singer whom I hadn't heard of until just now - would sound the same to foreigners as the 舒 in Shu Chi, the 徐 in Vivian Hsu or the 許 in Evonne Hsu 's name.
Wow.
Martin
Wow.
Martin
Chinese is difficult!
I've been in Taiwan for six years, have been studying Chinese the whole time and am now a non-native speaker of Chinese and have a certificate to prove it (after taking a proficiency test at Feng Jia University back in May of this year) so I think I speak with some authority when I say Chinese is difficult.
Take for example something that happened today.
I was in class teaching students here (because I teach English at the Central Taiwan University of Science and Technology) about how people speak on the phone and we were listening to a lady spell her name "M I N G, M as in Mary, I as in India, N as in Nancy, G as in Girl" and I asked students how she spelt her name and they said they were confused by all the talk of Mary and Nancy so I explained.
"We say M as in Mary because over the phone M might sound like N. You do the same thing in Chinese, right?"
They seemed unconvinced so I checked the class list. I pointed to a student named Wang (王).
"Your name is Wang," I said, "but Wang can be written two different ways so you could say 我是國王的王 (I am King as in country king) to explain which Wang your name is" and they immediately got it.
I should have quit while I was ahead but I checked the name list for another good example. I found a student with the family name 許(Hsu).
"Your name is Shu," I said, "as in Hsu Chi (舒淇), right?"
"No," he said. "Her name is Shu and my name is Hsu."
"Oh, sorry!" I said. "Your name is Hsu as in Vivian Hsu(徐若瑄) then."
"No," he said, "her name is Hsu and my name is Hsu."
"Hold on," I said. "What's the difference?"
It turns out 徐 and 許 are prounced with different tones with the second being a rising tone (which sounds like a question).
"Okay," I said, "so 舒 (first tone) is 舒淇的舒 and 徐 (second tone) is 徐若瑄的徐. What's 許 (third tone)?"
It turns out that there's a famous 許, namely Evonne Hsu (許慧欣). All three of them are from Taiwan and all three names are apparently common here (the sisters Barbie and Dee Hsu are also 徐s). So, yeah, if somebody told me their name was "Shu" I wouldn't know if it was 徐, 舒 or 許, at least not without listening to the tones.
And that, frankly, is why Chinese is hard.
Martin
Take for example something that happened today.
I was in class teaching students here (because I teach English at the Central Taiwan University of Science and Technology) about how people speak on the phone and we were listening to a lady spell her name "M I N G, M as in Mary, I as in India, N as in Nancy, G as in Girl" and I asked students how she spelt her name and they said they were confused by all the talk of Mary and Nancy so I explained.
"We say M as in Mary because over the phone M might sound like N. You do the same thing in Chinese, right?"
They seemed unconvinced so I checked the class list. I pointed to a student named Wang (王).
"Your name is Wang," I said, "but Wang can be written two different ways so you could say 我是國王的王 (I am King as in country king) to explain which Wang your name is" and they immediately got it.
I should have quit while I was ahead but I checked the name list for another good example. I found a student with the family name 許(Hsu).
"Your name is Shu," I said, "as in Hsu Chi (舒淇), right?"
"No," he said. "Her name is Shu and my name is Hsu."
"Oh, sorry!" I said. "Your name is Hsu as in Vivian Hsu(徐若瑄) then."
"No," he said, "her name is Hsu and my name is Hsu."
"Hold on," I said. "What's the difference?"
It turns out 徐 and 許 are prounced with different tones with the second being a rising tone (which sounds like a question).
"Okay," I said, "so 舒 (first tone) is 舒淇的舒 and 徐 (second tone) is 徐若瑄的徐. What's 許 (third tone)?"
It turns out that there's a famous 許, namely Evonne Hsu (許慧欣). All three of them are from Taiwan and all three names are apparently common here (the sisters Barbie and Dee Hsu are also 徐s). So, yeah, if somebody told me their name was "Shu" I wouldn't know if it was 徐, 舒 or 許, at least not without listening to the tones.
And that, frankly, is why Chinese is hard.
Martin
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