http://www.due-east.org Wed, 28 Sep 2011 05:54:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 http://www.due-east.org/2011/06/09/chengdu-living-five-must-see-websites-to-advance-your-chinese/ http://www.due-east.org/2011/06/09/chengdu-living-five-must-see-websites-to-advance-your-chinese/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:17:59 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/?p=658   Chengdu Living just posted an article entitled Five Must-See Websites to Advance Your Chinese. If your Chinese has become stagnant, why not check it out?   ]]>     Chengdu Living just posted an article entitled Five Must-See Websites to Advance Your Chinese. If your Chinese has become stagnant, why not check it out?   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2011/06/09/chengdu-living-five-must-see-websites-to-advance-your-chinese/feed/ 1 http://www.due-east.org/2009/10/21/top-10-reasons-to-learn-cantonese/ http://www.due-east.org/2009/10/21/top-10-reasons-to-learn-cantonese/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:29:49 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2009/10/21/top-10-reasons-to-learn-cantonese/ a New York Times article about how Cantonese is slowly dying out in New York’s Chinatown. I couldn’t help but get a little sad reading it. Sure, it’s a ridiculously difficult [...]]]>  
The awesomeness that is Hong Kong: Reason enough to learn Cantonese.   A friend of mine just sent me a link to a New York Times article about how Cantonese is slowly dying out in New York’s Chinatown. I couldn’t help but get a little sad reading it. Sure, it’s a ridiculously difficult language to learn (which is why it should be spelled Can’t-onese), but it’s also an amazingly interesting language brimming with character. So, here I make my case for why people should try to learn it in addition to Mandarin. Here you are: My top 10 reasons to learn Cantonese!   Reason 1: The Wow Factor – As I said above, Cantonese is ridiculously difficult. Nobody seems to agree on exactly how many tones it has. Some people say 7. Some say 9. And some say over 11, referencing so-called silent tones. Sorry, but if it’s silent, it’s not a tone. But the insistence on the existence of these so-called silent tones only ups the ‘cool factor’ of Cantonese. If you can master it, you’re pretty much an unstoppable language learning force. Native speakers will lavish you with praise, giving your self-esteem a temporary boost (at least until you say something wrong and get made fun of. See reason number 8). And also, I’ll be really jealous of you.   Reason 2: The Pronunciation – Mandarin pronunciation requires more precision than Cantonese. To speak Mandarin fluently and quickly, you have to train your tongue to make some pretty drastic motions in rapid succession. Cantonese, on the other hand, makes heavy use of the throat, and some words you don’t even really have to open your mouth to pronounce correctly. How cool is that?   Reason 3: The Slang – Cantonese is chock-full-o-slang and plays-on-words. Because there are 7 (or 9 or 11 or 7.5 billion or whatever) tones in Cantonese and because of the way the tones work, there are gobs of opportunities to coin new slang terms because so many words sound exactly like other words in every way, save for the pitch of the tone. It’s kind of like singing a word on an A instead of an A-flat changing the meaning of the word entirely. Yes, it’s hard, but don’t think about that…it’s also super cool.   Reason 4: The Particles – This is probably the coolest thing about Cantonese. There are tons of particles that native speakers slap on to the ends of sentences to stress emotion, and it sounds just plain cool. You know you’ve heard it in movies or on the streets: “something-something-something aaaaaaaahhh…something-something gaaalaaaaaahhh….something-something-something waaaahhhhh.” Total. Awesomeness. I swear, if I could can that and sell it, I’d be a rich man.   Reason 5: Hong Kong Movies – If you like Chinese movies, especially older ones, then you’ll enjoy them more after learning Cantonese. Let’s face it, sometimes subtitles don’t convey the same meaning as the spoken dialogue. So if you can learn enough Cantonese to follow along with the actors on the screen, you’ll enjoy Hong Kong movies more. Plus, remember the slang and plays-on-words? Yep, you’ll get a lot more of the jokes if you understand Cantonese.   Reason 6: The Music – If you’re a music lover like I am, learning Cantonese in addition to Mandarin (or any other language you may learn) will just open up that much more music to you. And who doesn’t want more music to listen to? Pretty much only deaf people. And maybe people who don’t like music, but I can’t understand that kind of person, so I don’t expect them to understand why I like Cantonese and thus don’t expect them to read this post.   Reason 7: The Food – Cantonese food is good. There’s a huge variety of tasty dishes to choose from, all full of flavor. Most are relatively tame, so you unadventurous people should be ok. But Cantonese food has those of you who like to try eating things you can’t quite identify but obviously came out of some animal’s nether regions covered as well. There’s something for everybody!   Reason 8: The Humility – Feel like you’ve got a problem with pride? Looking down on other people? Try learning Cantonese! Unless you have perfect pitch and unparalleled language learning abilities, you’re going to speak incorrectly. A lot. And you’ll get laughed at. Often. And may never be told why. And getting laughed at without intentionally being funny is a really good way to keep yourself humble.   Reason 9: Preserving Culture – I’ve heard that Cantonese is much more closely related to ancient Chinese than Mandarin is, so for you cultural purists out there, Cantonese is a good way to go.   Reason 10: Widening Your Horizons – Technically, this applies just as much to Mandarin as it does Cantonese, but this post isn’t about Mandarin, so let’s pretend Mandarin doesn’t exist for now. Learning another language is a great way to widen your horizons. Every culture has some distinct ways of thinking that other cultures just don’t have, and Westerners could stand to learn a lot about loyalty, hard work, and thrift from the Chinese.   Extra reason: To Get a Date – I hate to resort to this because I think learning another language for the purpose of getting a date is the epitome of lame (actually creepy), unless you’re doing it for the sake of impressing someone that you’re already interested in regardless of his or her cultural background, in which case it’s sort of romantic, so go with it. But in the interests of getting more people to learn Cantonese, I’ll go ahead and say it in the hopes that your motivations will change: girls and guys alike love it when you put forth the effort to learn to speak their native language. There, I said it.   Well, that’s it. Those are my 10 reasons for learning Cantonese. Interested? Then I suggest the following few methods to begin your learning:

• Pimsleur Cantonese – Pimsleur is a great start for learning any language, and Cantonese is no exception. It’s expensive, but you can get it for about half price here. There’s only one level of Cantonese to learn (compared to Mandarin’s 3 levels), but it’s a start.
• Teach Yourself Cantonese – This is a pretty good program for learning Cantonese. It includes a text book as well as CDs for you auditory learners. I never finished it because of getting sidetracked with life (only got through like 15 pages at most), but it’s a solid program. You can get it from lots of places, including Amazon.com. I’ll warn you; the binding on these books used to be pretty shoddy, but when I wrote the publisher to complain after my book fell apart for no reason, someone wrote back assuring me that their next editions would have upgraded binding. That was about 6 months ago, so hopefully it’s better now.
• Cantonese Help Sheets – It’s not exactly a course, more of a tutor in learning Cantonese. It’s well worth a look. Check it out.

  There you have it, my 10 plus reasons for learning Cantonese. Get started now, because it’ll take a lifetime to master…   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2009/10/21/top-10-reasons-to-learn-cantonese/feed/ 5 http://www.due-east.org/2008/12/26/8-mistakes-to-avoid-when-learning-chinese/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/12/26/8-mistakes-to-avoid-when-learning-chinese/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 06:48:13 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2008/12/26/8-mistakes-to-avoid-when-learning-chinese/ a great post on TheChinaExpat.com highlighting some common mistakes learners of Chinese make, and I thought I’d post about it here. The eight mistakes highlighted by the post are: 1.) Not mastering the tones, 2.) Not learning characters, 3.) Killing yourself learning characters, 4.) Focusing on progress [...]]]>     I just came across a great post on TheChinaExpat.com highlighting some common mistakes learners of Chinese make, and I thought I’d post about it here. The eight mistakes highlighted by the post are: 1.) Not mastering the tones, 2.) Not learning characters, 3.) Killing yourself learning characters, 4.) Focusing on progress over process, 5.) Not making good Chinese friends, 6.) Not using the best learning materials available, 7.) Choosing poor classes, and 8.) Not using [awesome] tools for learning Chinese.   Number one, I have to say, is usually a matter of ability. Some people I know who really try hard to learn Chinese just don’t have the ear for the tones. They try and try and try but never get the tones down. Everything they say is said with a rising tone, which is pretty hard on native speakers’ ears. So for those people not to master the tones is understandable. But I’ve also met some extremely arrogant foreigners who just plain don’t care about tones and don’t try to learn them. Not long ago, I talked to a guy who had lived in Shanghai for over 2 years. I had heard he had been living there before I met him, so I was fully expecting his Chinese to be pretty amazing. But then he opened his mouth to speak, and he sounded horrible. And he went on to say that he doesn’t care about the tones and doesn’t think they’re important to the language. Tones are an integral part of Chinese! To say they’re not important is incredibly disrespectful to Chinese speakers. It’s the equivalent of someone saying, “I don’t think consonants are important for speaking English.” It’s just wrong, and if you have that attitude, you don’t deserve to be understood.   I also appreciated number four. I at times struggle with this myself. It’s easy to get discouraged by the fact that you just can’t express yourself fully in any situation, read and understand any newspaper, and follow any movie’s plot without subtitles after studying the language for over five years. But apparently it’s realistic to expect to have to study Chinese full-time (and probably live in China) for 10 to 20 years before becoming truly fluent in all respects. But if you focus on what you can’t say/understand rather than on using what you can say/understand, you’ll have a hard time progressing beyond where you currently are. The ChinaExpat post links to some pretty encouraging (or discouraging, depending on your disposition) articles about the subject.   The other points seem to me to be pretty good advice as well, so if you’re just now beginning to learn the language, go check it out. You’ll save yourself time and frustration.   Link to article   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/12/26/8-mistakes-to-avoid-when-learning-chinese/feed/ 2 http://www.due-east.org/2008/08/04/chinglish-the-perils-of-computer-translation/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/08/04/chinglish-the-perils-of-computer-translation/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:50:31 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2008/08/04/chinglish-the-perils-of-computer-translation/     If you’re going to rely on a computer translation to name your restaurant in a foreign tongue, it’s probably best to follow these simple rules:

• Know enough of the target language to understand if your translation is at least somewhere in the general vicinity of being halfway near the point of possibly a tad bit close to what even unintelligent people may consider accurate.
• If you’re NOT familiar enough with the target language to do that, find someone that speaks the language and pantomime somehow to him that you’re trying to name your restaurant according to this translation. If he laughs or looks disturbed, it’s probably a good idea to try again with the translation.
• At least know enough about computers to know the difference between an error message and a valid translation.

  Link to source article ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/08/04/chinglish-the-perils-of-computer-translation/feed/ 0 http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/16/the-evolution-of-indo-european-languages/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/16/the-evolution-of-indo-european-languages/#comments Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:36:17 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/17/the-evolution-of-indo-european-languages/ Click here for a larger image (sorry, nothing hi-res).   Here’s something cool I recently came across in my web surfing. I’ve always found it really interesting to learn exactly how the languages we speak today evolved from earlier forms, so when I found this chart online, I thought I had come across the [...]]]>  
Click here for a larger image (sorry, nothing hi-res).   Here’s something cool I recently came across in my web surfing. I’ve always found it really interesting to learn exactly how the languages we speak today evolved from earlier forms, so when I found this chart online, I thought I had come across the coolest thing ever…until I realized that it was only a chart of the origins of Indo-European languages and didn’t cover Southeast Asia at all. Poop. Still, it’s pretty interesting, so I thought I’d share it here. Enjoy!   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/16/the-evolution-of-indo-european-languages/feed/ 0 http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/23/shanghainese-words-and-phrases-for-the-lazy-or-busy-linguaphile/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/23/shanghainese-words-and-phrases-for-the-lazy-or-busy-linguaphile/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:06:25 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/23/shanghainese-words-and-phrases-for-the-lazy-or-busy-linguaphile/ Linguaphile. I think I’d really like having a job where all I did was learn new languages 8 hours a day.　I love the thought of being able to communicate with anybody I want to, no matter where I happen to be. Of course, that’s not something I can [...]]]>   I’m such a Linguaphile. I think I’d really like having a job where all I did was learn new languages 8 hours a day.　I love the thought of being able to communicate with anybody I want to, no matter where I happen to be. Of course, that’s not something I can practically hope to achieve, since my name isn’t Ziad Fazah. But I can at least learn a few sentences in a few different languages. And I find Shanghainese fascinating, so I looked up a little about the language and found this cool page on Sinosplice that has a few words and phrases in Mandarin with their equivalent in Shanghainese. Very cool!   Click here to check it out.   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/23/shanghainese-words-and-phrases-for-the-lazy-or-busy-linguaphile/feed/ 3 http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/16/the-state-of-%e7%a7%91%e5%b9%bb-scifi-in-china/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/16/the-state-of-%e7%a7%91%e5%b9%bb-scifi-in-china/#comments Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:50:03 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/16/the-state-of-%e7%a7%91%e5%b9%bb-scifi-in-china/ this post [...]]]>   I’m a big fan of SciFi. And I’m a big fan of Chinese. So logically, I’ve always wondered about Chinese SciFi, how much of it existed, what it was like, etc…but I’ve never really taken the time to look anything up about it for whatever reason. Thanks to this post on RedKemp.com, I don’t have to. It’s pretty well laid out for me.   According to RedKemp, SciFi all but went away when the Communist Party took over, but it’s had a revival as of late, and some people are even saying China’s in the midst of a “golden age” of SciFi. That’s pretty exciting news to me. It’s always interesting to see other cultures’ takes on popular SciFi themes in general, so anything combining SciFi and the culture that I find the most fascinating is a winner to me. RedKemp does a pretty good job of rounding up info on SciFi in China, so I won’t comment any further. I’ll just link to some of the same things they link to for the lazy readers, including myself.  

• Twelve Hours Later – A blog about “Literature from the other side of the globe – Chinese SF, fantasy, and mainstream fiction”
• http://www.sfw-cd.com – The official site of China’s Science Fiction World magazine, which is apparently a really popular magazine in China. If only I could read more Chinese…
• Some guy’s research project on Chinese SciFi
• Lavie Tidhar‘s article on “Science Fiction, Globalization, and the People’s Republic of China”.

  ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/16/the-state-of-%e7%a7%91%e5%b9%bb-scifi-in-china/feed/ 1 http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/10/how-to-enable-chinese-input-on-your-blackberry/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/10/how-to-enable-chinese-input-on-your-blackberry/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:48:44 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/10/how-to-enable-chinese-input-on-your-blackberry/ NOTE (3/4/2009): I’m glad these instructions have been so helpful to so many people. Unfortunately, I’m way too busy now to be able to work on helping people troubleshoot why these methods don’t work for their Blackberry. So if you read this article and have any questions or problems, please click the [...]]]>   NOTE (3/4/2009): I’m glad these instructions have been so helpful to so many people. Unfortunately, I’m way too busy now to be able to work on helping people troubleshoot why these methods don’t work for their Blackberry. So if you read this article and have any questions or problems, please click the link at the bottom of the article and ask someone in the forums there. Thank you. – 孙智谦   I recently switched my phone service from Sprint to AT&T and somehow managed to sucker myself into thinking I needed a Blackberry so that I can keep up-to-date on all the unimportant e-mails I receive every day (the latest deals on erectile dysfunction medications, who wants help smuggling money out of what country, etc). I ended up getting a Blackberry Curve 8310. It’s a cool phone, but the only problem is that with the default OS, there’s no support for Chinese at all. It can’t display Chinese characters, and it can’t input them. That stinks since I do get e-mail from Chinese friends, and I’d like to be able to read and respond to what they write without having to be at home to do it. So I set about trying to find a way to make it work…and after lots of Google searching and forum reading, I came across a great forum thread (link at the bottom of this article) that gave me the general steps on how to get it done. I followed the steps (with some modifications) and was able to make it work pretty easily. I’ve posted the outline of the procedure that I used below in an attempt to hopefully make it easier for those who follow after me. Here goes…   I highly recommend backing up your Blackberry before you do anything. In the BlackBerry Desktop Manager program, click on Backup and Restore and choose the Backup option and export your data to a file.  

1. The first step is to download the latest HK CSL Limited (HK CSL is a Hong Kong cell phone carrier) version of the Blackberry OS for your particular model. You can download it here. It’ll ask you all kinds of questions and run through the whole “I’m not gonna use this to hack the planet” stuff, but you can at least download it.
2. Next, you’ll also want to download the Simplified Chinese font pack for Blackberry. I can’t find the link where I got it originally, but you can download it here. It doesn’t appear that the HK CSL version of the Blackberry OS supports simplified Chinese characters. It may, but when I installed it, it didn’t seem like it was going to, so just to be safe, I downloaded the fonts for it and installed them. After you’ve downloaded the package, extract the zip file to somewhere on your computer and note where you extracted the files. You’ll have to browse to that location in a couple of steps.
3. After you’ve obtained the software you need, I recommend uninstalling any Blackberry software you have on your computer (just for the sake of doing things cleanly). Logically, you’ll need your Blackberry User Tools CD (or at least a downloaded copy) for reinstalling the software later.
4. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\AppLoader
   and rename or delete your VENDOR.XML file if that directory and that file still exist. They may not since you just uninstalled all Blackberry software that was on your machine.
5. Open the downloaded OS file that you got in step 1 and install it. At the end of the install, it should ask you if you want to run the Application Loader program. I chose Yes, but then the AppLoader that it ran was in Chinese, and I didn’t feel like going through it in Chinese. So I canceled it and browsed to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\Apploader and double-clicked on Loader.exe That kicked off the Apploader program in English. Your mileage may vary, but that’s what worked for me.
6. At the screen where it gives you the option of what you want to install, make sure you check all the boxes that have to do with Chinese (and Japanese and Korean if you want to be able to read sites/e-mails in those languages – sorry, this OS doesn’t support writing in those languages). Also, remember those simplified Chinese fonts I mentioned downloading earlier? They may not be necessary, but you may want to browse to where that zip file was extracted and select the net_rim_font_chinese.alx file to install those simplified Chinese fonts just to be safe. Also on this screen, make sure you select the pinyin input option so that you can switch between inputting English and Chinese using your Blackberry. At some point during this step, it’ll probably also ask you if you want to backup your device. That’d be a good idea if you like what you have on your Blackberry. Once you’ve done all that, get ready to wait up to 30 minutes (maybe more, maybe less) for your device to become usable again. It’ll probably look like it’s hung at some point because the progress bar won’t move for a long time, but it’s just taking it’s sweet time. It’ll work.
7. You’ll probably have to go through the setup wizard on your Blackberry again, but the good news is that it should keep your messaging/e-mail set up (it did on mine, anyway). It’ll ask you what input language and screen language you wanna use. Unless you’re fluent in Chinese and can read it all, I recommend sticking with English on both. You can easily switch the input language within an application by pressing the “full” menu button (the menu button with the dots on it) and choosing Switch Input Language. Then, it’s just a matter of typing pinyin and selecting the appropriate character for what you want to say.
8. After you’ve done this, re-install Desktop Manager and other applications, set up your synchronization again, and you’re good-to-go.
  It’s pretty straight-forward. If I’ve left a step out, let me know by leaving a comment. And sorry about the lack of screenshots. I neglected to take any when I was doing this on my Blackberry, and I don’t feel like going back and doing it again just for screenshots, so this is all you get. If for some reason this process fails and your Blackberry is all jacked up, fear not. Just follow the instructions for using javaloader.exe on this forum thread (Or call support for help with getting it back to its like-new state) and try again. Happy hacking!   Link to article/forum posting that I used to do this to my own Blackberry   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/10/how-to-enable-chinese-input-on-your-blackberry/feed/ 66 http://www.due-east.org/2007/10/26/chinesepera-kun-the-most-helpful-firefox-extension-there-is-for-students-of-chinese/ http://www.due-east.org/2007/10/26/chinesepera-kun-the-most-helpful-firefox-extension-there-is-for-students-of-chinese/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:08:20 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2007/10/26/chinesepera-kun-the-most-helpful-firefox-extension-there-is-for-students-of-chinese/ Adsotrans.com or Babelfish to see what it meant. It can be really cumbersome, having so [...]]]>
Chinesepera-kun in action   I’m really excited about this Firefox extension! Up until this afternoon, if I ran across a Chinese character that I didn’t know, I would have to copy it and paste it into Adsotrans.com or Babelfish to see what it meant. It can be really cumbersome, having so many different browser windows or tabs open just to get the meaning of a specific character. But then Ole over on the forums at Mango Languages suggested this excellent Firefox plugin called Chinesepera-kun, and now gone are the days of bogging my system down with 5 different Firefox tabs being open at once just so I can learn a new character.   Here’s how it works: Once you’ve installed the plugin, you right-click anywhere in the Firefox window and choose Toggle ChinesePera-kun to activate it. Then, when you see a Chinese character that you don’t recognize on a website, you just hover your cursor over it and watch the definition pop up on the screen, along with the Pinyin pronunciation. For an larger image of it in action, click here. Totally awesome!   You can learn more about the plugin and download it here.   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2007/10/26/chinesepera-kun-the-most-helpful-firefox-extension-there-is-for-students-of-chinese/feed/ 12 http://www.due-east.org/2007/09/06/chinese-idiom-%e8%87%aa%e7%9b%b8%e7%9f%9b%e7%9b%be-z-xiang-mao-dun/ http://www.due-east.org/2007/09/06/chinese-idiom-%e8%87%aa%e7%9b%b8%e7%9f%9b%e7%9b%be-z-xiang-mao-dun/#comments Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:48:14 +0000 Due-East http://www.due-east.org/2007/09/06/chinese-idiom-%e8%87%aa%e7%9b%b8%e7%9f%9b%e7%9b%be-z-xiang-mao-dun/     Here’s another Chinese idiom with an interesting story. The idiomatic English translation of 自相矛盾 (zì xiāng máo dùn) is “contradicting oneself”. The story behind it goes like this:   In ancient times, there was a sword and shield salesman who would yell out to people passing by, “My spears are the sharpest in the world and can pierce anything.” But with the very next breath, he would say, “My shields are the strongest in the world, and nothing can penetrate them!” One day, someone asked him, “What happens if someone throws one of your spears at one of your shields?”   That’s where the story ends, and it’s where today’s idiom and the Chinese word for contradiction (矛盾 – máo dùn), literally meaning spear shield, come from.   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2007/09/06/chinese-idiom-%e8%87%aa%e7%9b%b8%e7%9f%9b%e7%9b%be-z-xiang-mao-dun/feed/ 0