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The Chinese Thread

#41
Originally posted by Sheep Man
Actually, if you're asking for someone else's name, it should be:

ni jiao shen me?

Of course, that's really just "What are you called?"
Ideally, if you're being polite, it would be:

qing wen jiao xin?

:p
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Ah yes...I did feel like something was missing. It's been a while. I never learned that polite stuff though...just learned how the chinese talk to each other, which usually isn't polite (at least not in dong bei region).

brad cook

brad cook
 
#43
Every time I was playing games in a Chinese net bar (which are always full of students) I would constantly hear the Chinese equivalent to the 'f' word shouted out to express displeasure at being killed in the game "Counter-strike." That started to grate on me after a while.

brad cook
 
#44
In general, I find Mandarin to be a not-so-vulgar language, especially when compared to Cantonese. Everyone I know who learned Cantonese from friends (yes, my friends who learned from me included...) without any prior exposure to the language learned some of the most vulgar expressions first. :p
 
#45
Originally posted by DigMe
Every time I was playing games in a Chinese net bar (which are always full of students) I would constantly hear the Chinese equivalent to the 'f' word shouted out to express displeasure at being killed in the game "Counter-strike." That started to grate on me after a while.

brad cook
Click to expand...

cao?
 
#47
Originally posted by unharmed
I'm fairly certain most linguists would disagree with you here. English is generally regarded as the hardest to learn of its family (which includes German)
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I have asked a professor at my university and she said that while English truly offers some though suprises at a very high level, German is still far more complex and difficult in general.

BTW, it seems to me that Chinese as a spoken language is easier to learn than either German or English. On the other hand: it is probably very hard to learn a language without learning to read and write. And that is, of course, much harder in Chinese than in any other major language.
 

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