Best Video Ever

I always wondered why the Western Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac were both called zodiacs if one was associated w astronomy and the other w time in general. Like what defines a zodiac that the word is only used to describe these two things? Looking up the word "zodiac" in the dictionary didnt help bc it only talked about the western one.

Well, I decided to look up the etymology for zodiac and it turns out it comes from the Greek for "circle of little animals." I love humans

看電視劇學中文：【開端】 第三集 【2/2】

這是第二部分，來自：【開端】 第三集 20:00-40:00 // 第一部分在這裡 你們可以在Youtube看：这里 看電視劇學中文Learn Chinese With a TV Series by Leila老師

單詞：(绿色=HSK4； 蓝色=HSK5； 紫色=HSK6)

反复 (-覆) / fǎnfù / repeatedly, over and over

药检 (藥檢) / yàojiǎn / drug test

惯 (慣) / guàn / to spoil

负担 (負擔) / fùdān / burden

从始至终 (從--終) / cóng shǐ zhì zhōng / from the start to the end

唯一/ wéiyī / only

相信 / xiāngxìn / to be convinced sth is true; to believe

交代 / jiāodài / to hand over; to explain; to brief (someone)

达成 (達-) / dáchéng / to accomplish

共识 (-識) / gòngshí / consensus

插曲 / chāqǔ / interlude (music); episode

必然 / bìrán / inevitable

炸药 (-藥) / zhàyào / explosive material or charge

痕迹 (-跡) / hénjì / mark, trace

倒计时 (-計時) / dàojìshí / countdown

装置 (裝置) / zhuāngzhì / device; to install

眼皮底下 / yǎnpídǐxia / right before one's eyes

资料 / zīliào / material, resources

人际关系 (-際關係) / rénjìguānxì / interpersonal relationships

不良 / bùliáng / bad, harmful, unhealthy

嗜好 / shìhào / habit

心理防线 (---線) / xīnlǐfángxiàn / psychological barrier

硬 / yìng / hard, stiff, firm, strong

性质 (-質) / xìngzhì / nature; characteristic

指使 / zhǐshǐ / to prompt, incite

套话术 (-話術) / tàohuàshù / testimony

依然 / yīrán / still; as before

指认 (-認) / zhǐrèn / to identify

采纳 (採納) / cǎinà / to accept

供词 (-詞) / gòngcí / confession; statement

残留物 (殘--) / cánliúwù / leftover, remains

检测 (檢測) / jiǎncè / to examine

薄 / báo / weak, thin, flimsy

没凭没据 (沒憑沒據) / méipíng méijù / no evidence (var. 无凭无据)

下面有句子：

我们会反反复复地过着一整天。We will repeatedly experience the same day.

准备药检。Prepare the drug test.

老张还是太惯着你了。 Mr. Zhang is spoiling you.

你有很重的心理负担。You have a heavy burden (in your heart/mind).

从始至终我没有向你做过自我介绍。This whole time (from start to finish) I never introduced myself to you.

对你来说，相信警察，诚实把交代问题是你的唯一的选择。For you, believing in the police and answering questions honestly is your only choice.

我们终于达成了共识。We finally reached a consensus.

公交车被引爆这才是必然。The bus exploding was inevitable.

你们是不是可以找到一些炸药的痕迹。 Could you find any trace of a bomb/explosive material?

倒计时装置是它的铃声。The countdown system is the ringtone.

在我们眼皮底下演这么一出，从目前掌握的资料来看两个人的人际关系简单。From what we see before us from the resources we've currently have, these two people have simple social histories.

没有不良嗜好。Don't have bad habits.

实际心理防线硬着呢。Really (her) psychological barrier is strong.

那可是完全不同的性质。That could be a completely different characteristic.

她指使你骗出了这个套话术。She incited you to lie on this testimony.

如果你依然不肯如实地告诉我们的话，我们最后只能采纳他指认你是案一的供词。If you still won't agree to honestly tell us (the truth), (then) we have no choice but to accept his identification of you as the case's only confession.

事故现场检测出了爆炸残留物。At the accident site, examine the explosion's remains/residue.

心理防线薄。Weak psychological barrier.

没凭没据什么关我。There is no evidence that it was related to me.

Reviewing tones as an intermediate in Chinese

As a beginner it takes a bit of time to become accustomed to be able to hear the difference in tones, yet alone pronounce them very correctly. By the time you get to intermediate you probably can hear the difference in tones but you may still have trouble pronouncing every single word correctly. However you most likely have a number of words that you have heard so often that you do pronounce correctly. For example 中国 zhong1 guo2, I bet most intermediates pronounce this is the correct tone as it is a word occurring so often that our brains automatically imitate pronunciations. However, when we encounter a new word we may have difficulty getting the tone just right, and then you need to remember it too.

I have two bits of advice that may help with this, that I myself am using to improve my tones over time:

As soon as you learn a new word, repeat at least 10 times in the correct tone.

As I said when speaking Chinese, you are speaking at a speed that you don’t have time to remember which tone the word is, you say it how you remember it. So when you learn a new word you want to try to cement the correct ‘rhythm’ (or tone) of the word in your head. If you remember the incorrect one it may be difficult to undo this. (i remember I pronounced 文化 as wen2 hua2 for the longest time and it was difficult to change this to wen2 hua4 in my head when i discovered i had been saying it all wrong!)

Memorise a few ‘tone pairs’ to remember the ‘rhythm’ when you learn a new word.

Hacking Chinese ( https://www.hackingchinese.com/focusing-on-tone-pairs-to-improve-your-mandarin-pronunciation/ ) has a great article on tone pairs and it’s merits. Recently when i learn a new word I recall the 'model’ word that I have for that particular tone pair, say it a few times to remember the 'rhythm’ of the word, the n say the new word I want to learn in that same rhythm, therefore it will help saying the word in the correct tone.

For example, lets say I learnt the new word  生活 sheng1 huo2, this has the same tone pair as 中国, therefore when i learn 生活 i can easily recall how 中国 is pronounced and imitate the same rythym when i said 生活. I created a table for myself with the tone pairs and so each time I encounter, for example any word that is first tone-second tone (such as 中国), then i can recall the rythym easily in my head.

This table has a list of words that I subconsciously pronounce with the correct tones as a result of hearing them so many times, there are however too many words that i don’t pronounce in the correct tone, hence i use this method to help :P

(ignore my terrible handwriting!)

Please try this out and let me know if you try this out and how it works for you??

Pronunciation Advice for Language Learners: How to Figure Out What You're Doing Wrong

The other day, my friend @calystarose was struggling with the phrase 出去吃 chūqùchī (go out to eat). This is a tongue twister for a lot of native English speakers. Even if we manage to get the individual vowels and consonant sounds correct, we often have a hard time stringing the words together.

I thought about the problem for a bit and then I told her to try saying it with her teeth clenched:

Why would that help?

Clenching your teeth forces you to hold your jaw still, and limits the amount of space your tongue has to move around. You can still make roughly the same sounds you were making before, but the new limitation forces you to make those sounds with smaller muscle movements.

Smaller movements reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to get from one syllable to the next.

.

Talking fast is more about efficiency than speed.

.

ɪᴘᴀ ᴋᴇʏʙᴏᴀʀᴅ ʀᴇꜰᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴄʜᴀʀᴛ ᴍsᴋʟᴄ_ɪᴘᴀɢʀᴀᴘʜɪᴄ.ᴘᴅꜰ [sᴏᴜʀᴄᴇ]

When I first started taking French lessons, I had an easy time pronouncing words like "grand" and "robe." But then I ran into the word "livre," and suddenly I was getting tongue tied.

I realized my r was too far back in my throat. Too guttural.

This worked for a word like "grand" where the r is next to a g, a gutteral consonant. A consonant like v, on the other hand, is right at the front of the mouth, on the teeth.

If I wanted to say "livre" smoothly, I'd have to push my r further forward in my mouth, closer to that letter.

.

There's almost always more than one way to make your mouth form a particular vowel or consonant sound.

.

I noticed a while back that I say these letters t & d differently depending on whether I'm trying to speak English or Mandarin.

My t's and d's are little firmer in Mandarin than they are in English — my tongue is held stiffer, and the tip is more pointed when it comes into contact with my hard palate.

The funny thing is, I can't really hear a difference.

But I can feel the difference in my mouth when I shape the letters.

I never made a conscious decision to change how I say these consonants when speaking Mandarin — this is just something I naturally started doing when mimicking the recorded dialogue in my Duolingo audio lessons.

I realized it wasn't about getting the consonants to sound correct.

It was about what came after those consonants. The vowel sounds:

Chinese vowels are really different from English vowels. By changing how I shaped these consonants, I was setting up my mouth for a smoother transition into the next vowel sound.

.

Proper enunciation isn't just about making the right sounds come out of your mouth. It's also about transitioning from one sound to the next as fluidly as possible.

this post is meant to be a directory of every resource I come across for Mandarin, often referred to as Chinese or Standard Chinese. It will be a continuous work in progress so thank you for your patience! if you have any issues or things to add, please reply to this post!

info

history of the chinese writing system

“in mandarin chinese, we don’t say…”

language learning profile

playlist of samples

the languages gulper

wikipedia

Keep reading

Moonlight At Suzhou ,China   -  Elizabeth Keith , 1924.

Scottish, 1887-1956

Woodblock , 17 -¼ x 13 -½ in.

A man in Inner Mongolia, China, comparing the sizes of goats at different ages.

English added by me :)

my favorite poetry books (free PDF or epub)

the complete maya angelou

don't call us dead by danez smith

all the flowers kneeling by paul tran

time is a mother by ocean vuong

madness by sam sax

mayakovsky's revolver by matthew dickman

soft science by franny choi

thief in the interior by phillip b williams

ariel by sylvia plath

calling a wolf a wolf by kaveh akbar

together and by ourselves by alex dimitrov

not here by hieu minh nguyen

brute by emily skaja

post colonial love poem by natalie diaz

unaccompanied by javier zamora

prelude to bruise by saeed jones

howl & other poems by allen ginsberg

the big book of exit strategies by jamaal may

look by solmaz sharif

the crown ain't worth much by hanif abdurraqib

eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers by jake skeets

finna by nate marshall

autopsy by donte collins

a place called no homeland by kai cheng thom

lunch poems by frank o'hara

lessons on expulsion by erika l sanchez

the new testament by jericho brown

said the manic to the muse by jeanann verlee

space struck by paige lewis

safe houses i have known by steve healey

the wound is a world by billy-ray belcourt

nature poem by tommy pico

owed by josua bennett

felon by reginald dwayne betts

come on all you ghosts by matthew zapruder

bluets by maggie nelson

life of the poetry by olivia gatwood

perennial by kelly forsythe

contradictions in the design by matthew olzmann

the big smoke by adrian matejka

peluda by melissa lozada-oliva

american sonnets for my past & future assassins by terrance hayes

king me by roger reeves

in a dream you saw a way to survive by clementine von radics

chinese artist 恽寿平 yun shouping (1633-1690)