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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: are you in the need of learning mandarin ?
If you are new in Shenzhen, are you having a hard time to understand the Chinese around you ?
Is it bothering you ?
If so, it might be the time to learn some Chinese. What do you think?
10 years 20 hours ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Are YOU (yes, you definitely are!) new to the English language? Are you having a hard time communicating in English?
Is it bothering you that it is perfectly clear that you cannot communicate properly in English (especially on an English forum)?
If so, it might be the time to learn some English. What do YOU think?
Having a hard time to understand the Chinese around you ? => Yes. They don't speak French. That, and Shenzhen's streets are different from Paris streets, so my Paris map is useless.
Is it bothering you ? => Talk to people, they answer gibberish. I love it.
If so, it might be the time to learn some Chinese. What do you think? => I think... "potatoes". Humm, delicious potatoes.
And if anyone answers yes the next reply from the OP will be to offer her services as a Chinese teacher! Not a very subtle way of advertising!
Is it bothering you ?
Damn straight! Them foreigners... ain't able to understand a word they say.
If so, it might be the time to learn some Chinese. What do you think?
I think they better learn themselves how to talk 'Murican... the language of freedom!
Valuable things I understood by learning oral/written Mandarin :
- learn traditional characters, there is nothing important or intellectually challenging being communicated in mainland Mandarin.
- no one does speak it correctly, nor write it, nor uses the correct punctuation.
- those guys yelling at their phones on public transport: it really could wait.
- most literature classics are goddamn overrated. Yeah, over-fucking-rated. Like the "Art of War", which is at best the art of petty deception.
- overly-long sentences do NOT look acceptable. They are a convention based on "everyone does it why not me" which turned into "It's OK in Chinese". It's not. Long and boring sentences are mostly used when someone needs to be confusing. Like in every other language around. What is well conceived is clearly said.
- modern vocabulary I hate lately : 抢购 / 狂抢, like people aren't hysterical enough, please make my purchasing a celebration of consumerist debauchery. 旅游产品, so kind of you for reminding me everything is a product and how conventional my experience is going to be. Sorry for those who don't understand.
DrMonkey:
+1 about the writing style in Mainland. Being precise is a big problem. The basics of writing, like having an introduction, a conclusion, coherent expositions of the ideas are not quite there. Most often, my students would write a free flowing stream of ramblings. They called me "too strict" when I asked them to rewrite their work in a more organized form.
RiriRiri:
But this is not a language problem strictly speaking, is it? It's more about organizing thoughts. But, yeah, I know what you mean. Though I don't think being precise is a problem. If they have a direct interest, they'll know how to be obscenely precise.