Yes, conjugation is very difficult. Just ask my daughter taking Spanish. For pronunciation it is a great language. But they have I think 16 ways to conjugate a verb. Very difficult to think of how you are using a certain word.
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Weiqi Gao <weiqi...@gmail.com> wrote: > That doesn't happen often, for the first thing kids learn when they starts > English is the proper pronunciation of syllables. The sounds that exist in > English but not in Chinese, such as th, dg, tr, dr, took a while to learn. > But they are not as hard as the French or German r, What trips people up > are things that are not 1-to-1 correspondences between the two languages. > If you say "my sister," my brain immediately start to wonder "an older > sister or a younger sister" because those are two different words. > Similarly "uncle" triggers thoughts of "maternal uncle or paternal uncle, > older or younger if paternal" because those are three different words. In > the other direction are third person singular pronouns, which is one word > (until about a hundred years ago, when they started to use three different > characters but still the same one sound) in Chinese. That's why you > sometimes may hear a Chinese referring a woman as he. We also don't have > the silly rules of matching your verb's number to the subject's, So you may > hear "he have ...". > > On Thursday, September 1, 2011 4:09:02 PM UTC-5, Ricky Clarkson wrote: > >> I'm glad you made that correction, it was very interesting. >> >> Does this oddity of the misused letters go the other way, leading Chinese >> people to mispronounce queen as cheen, for example? >> >> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 1:32 AM, Weiqi Gao <weiq...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Java Posse, >>> >>> Thank you for making me a winner of the strangest loop contest. I should >>> have mentioned that I do not need a pass. So I won't be emailing Alex >>> Miller for a ticket. >>> >>> I sensed some hesitation when you are reading my name. So here's some >>> background: >>> >>> The spelling of my name, and a lot of other mainland Chinese's names, >>> follow the PinYin system. This system is not only a Latin transliteration >>> system for Chinese words, but also a phonetic system used in Chinese >>> elementary schools to teach pupils how to pronounce the various Chinese >>> characters. They tried to fit the Latin alphabets into the Chinese sounds. >>> Most of the alphabets fits nicely, like b, p, m, f, etc. Some, such as q, >>> x, and v does not have a Chinese equivalent. And c is already covered by k >>> (the hard c) and s (the soft c). And, of course, there are a few Chinese >>> consonants that does not have a Latin equivalent. In the infinite wisdom of >>> the authors of the PinYin standard, they simply used q, x, and c to >>> represent these sounds that does not have a Latin equivalent. >>> >>> That was done in the 1950's. >>> >>> Then in the 1970's the government decreed that all Latin translations of >>> people's names and place names are to be done in PinYin instead of the >>> centuries old Wade-Giles system. That's when Peking became Beijing. The >>> PinYin is better for people and placed whose names does not involve the >>> messed up consonants, e.g. Bing, Dong, and Nian. >>> >>> For people who's name contains Q, X, C, and Zh, it's a different story. >>> We have two choices: either we accept the wrong (to the Chinese ear) >>> pronunciation that's a native English speaker's first guess; or, we correct >>> any instances of mispronunciation when we here them. >>> >>> I choose to correct people. So here it goes: >>> >>> It's not Wei-Ki, it's Wei-Chee. The Chinese 'q' has the 'ch' sound. >>> >>> >>> Off Topic is bliss, >>> (but I'm sure there is a way to morph this into something Scala :) ) >>> -- >>> Weiqi Gao >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "The Java Posse" group. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/** >>> msg/javaposse/-/gIJ2sMclP9UJ<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/gIJ2sMclP9UJ> >>> . >>> To post to this group, send email to java...@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> javaposse+...@googlegroups.com**. >>> >>> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** >>> group/javaposse?hl=en <http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en>. >>> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/olkqbXuC1aUJ. > > To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- Robert Casto www.robertcasto.com www.sellerstoolbox.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. 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