I CAN ONLY TALK ABOUT TAIWAN. MY LIFE CONSISTS OF NOTHING ELSE.

[rocknload]

◈ I say "thànk yòu" roughly half the time now while speaking English. I sound like an idiot.

◈ I am picking up a Taiwanese Mandarin accent like nobody's business. I don't know if it's because I started out way behind most of my classmates in Chinese so I had a lot less time for the lovely Beijing Standard to really cement itself in place, or because I think the accent sounds pretty and friendly and my subconscious is embracing it. Or both.

◈ This probably hilariously stupid sounding American/Taiwanese accent deceives people into believing I can understand way, way more Chinese than I actually can. I guess they assume I'd have to have been here more than a month and a half before I started to crudely mimic them. I sound like an idiot.

◈ There's this tea shop I go to at least once a week even though their tea is only okay, because of the cute guy that works there. And I don't mean cute as in, you know, I'd hit that. I mean he is like fucking adorable like a puppy and he is all, ":D! :DDDD!!! Hello!!!!" whenever I go there, oh my god. Interacting with puppy!boy for one minute brightens my entire day.

◈ Which is good, because I usually see him on Thursdays and on that day I basically speak Mandarin and nothing else. At the end of it I feel like my brains are leaking out of my ears and then I dream in Mandarin. These dreams mostly suck. Everyone in them literally lacks the capability to say more than like, "Hello. Where did you buy that skirt? Do you come from America? Where are you going? Wait! No! I don't want rice with that!"

◈ Fahrenheit obsession is still going strong. I love this video, BUT I AM POSTING IT FOR LANGUAGE RELATED REASONS BELIEVE IT OR NOT. If you've heard me mention that Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese aren't the same thing at all, and you actually care about that, you can check out the end of it at 2:40, when Jiro is basically forced to sight-translate Mandarin into Taiwanese. I'm assuming it's a sight-translation anyway, because there's no standardized way to write down Taiwanese as far as I know, and also because it looks like whatever he's doing is hurting his brain.

◈ If I find that goddamn cricket that's been shrieking for like three days fucking straight in this room somewhere, if I find it—I DON'T EVEN KNOW and it doesn't fucking matter, I will never fucking find it anyway.

◈ Long week was loooooooooooooooooong fjfdksjlfdjfls ..........

Comments

[secret-hotel.livejournal.com]

I say "thànk yòu" roughly half the time now while speaking English. I sound like an idiot.

LOL! The tones are infecting your brain!!!

I think the accent sounds pretty and friendly and my subconscious is embracing it.

My main TA this year is from Taiwan, and I absolutely adore her accent (and just her in general)! I feel like she's the easiest to understand, and I agree it just sounds much more friendly. I'd study abroad in Taiwan, but I'm learning simplified Chinese. Traditional characters scare the shit out of me. Simplified is hard enough. Seriously...I just...HOW DO YOU DO IT?!

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

My Chinese program back home is basically insanely intense and they made us learn traditional characters (and a lot of them) for the first two semesters of study. In second year, they figured we had enough of a background in trad to let us pick which ones we wanted to study -- and that that point, 95% of the class was like, "... So, if we go simplified we'd have to ... learn like three hundred characters again...? NO THANKS." So basically they gave us no choice until it didn't matter anymore.

I KNOW RIGHT, GO GO TAIWANESE ACCENT. Except the barely perceptible distinction between s and sh that they've got going. It sounds nice and all, the Mainlander retroflex sounds are sorta harsh and all, but we were doing a tongue twister today, right? It's 十四是十四, 四十是四十! Taiwanese people practically say, "Si si si si si, si si si si si!" Me and my roommates were all like, whut.

[secret-hotel.livejournal.com]

OMG THAT WOULD BE HORRIBLE! My first year text book was simplified only, but this year my book has both - although fortunately we're still only learning simplified. I hope this doesn't change any time soon because...I think my hand might fall off if I had to write that many strokes.

Haha, we're learned that tongue twister our first year! I still can't really say it quickly.

Since our TA still has to talk to use like we're, you know, five I haven't really noticed the s/sh thing. But god if I were in your position my head would be spinning.

I'm planning on spending next summer in Tianjin, but I'm a little anxious since I've heard the accent there is really kind of slurred (or so a friend from Beijing has told me). I feel like the whole time I'm just going to be like, “对不起，对不起！什么？。。。什么？对不起，我不懂听。” D:

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Ha, you wouldn't be happening to be using the book with 張天明 would you? The pink one? God, I hated that freaking textbook, especially since the traditional section actually has errors where they'll write 还有 for 還有 or some other thing that had us going ... wait, we can't read that!

Oh, that's gonna be awesome. And haha, yeah, I think I say, "不好意思, 聽不懂!" like, several times a day. To be honest it sort of helps to have a few stalling phrases learned, like, "我想一下..." Just to buy yourself a few more seconds to figure out what they said.

[secret-hotel.livejournal.com]

Lol, I am in fact learning about the not-so-grand adventures of the Adidas-loving Zhang Tian Ming! I don't mind it so much, although sometimes they'll have the traditional form of the character and not the simplified form when I know there's one (granted there are just times when that *is* the simplified form as well).

Uh, yeah, I have a strong feeling that “太不好意思了！”，“我不知道。”，和 “我不懂听，对不起。” are going to be my most commonly used phrases. Also a good amount of "哎呀！”和“糟糕！”

[secret-hotel.livejournal.com]

Is it "ting bu dong" or "bu dong ting"? Possibly either? I need to review complements.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

I THINK IT'S 聽不懂 that is what I say at least.

Also, oh my god fucking Zhang Tian MIng and his fucking brand preferences. My oral final last semester was about ten or fifteen minutes where I had to recount every last detail of Zhang Tian Ming's stupid pointless life from the first seven chapters of that book. At like, random. Whatever my teacher asked from the book, I had to provide. I got a script from this guy I know in the class who's actually from Hong Kong, I studied nothing else for a week, and I got a C. Barely. I am so bitter oh my god.

[offense.livejournal.com]

Obviously you need to get us a picture of puppy!boy. >.>

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Ho man, if only I could even think of an excuse to do this.

[offense.livejournal.com]

Tell him you're doing a picture journal of a typical week for all your silly American friends :D

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT IDEA ACTUALLY

Well as soon as I get a camera, whipping out the cell phone might make me just seem creepy. Or like I'm hitting on him. Wait actually those two are the same thing in this case.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Fahrenheit, or the eighteen-year-old who only knows how to say "Hello?" in English? Seriously when my drink is done he goes, "Hello! Hello hello hello! :D!!" It's like, dude, you could actually talk in Chinese, but that would be much less adorable, so, you know.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

I'D GUESS YOUNGER ACTUALLY EXCEPT HE'S ALWAYS THERE SO PROBABLY HE'S DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL

ikr

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

chris hansen wants to have a word with you ko

he says it's important

[immelmanturn.livejournal.com]

What does "thànk yòu" sound like? DO A VOICEPOST!

[immelmanturn.livejournal.com]

Also, how is there no standardized way to write Taiwanese?

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

FALLING TONES. LIKE NOTES. GOING DOWN.

Because it's fairly marginalized, as far as a language that's spoken by like 70% of the population can be marginalized. Right now the official language of the government, business, and school is Mandarin Chinese, and for the fifty years before the ROC took over the island it was Japanese. After the first few years of primary school most kids here speak Mandarin as their primary language anyway, so like, nobody has really bothered to come up with a standard writing system? A lot of native Taiwanese people are sort of embarrassed by their lack of Taiwanese skills anyway, which you can also sort of see in the video.

YOU ALWAYS ASK QUESTIONS THAT REQUIRE LONG ANSWERS