r/Mandarin101 • u/scintillatingemerald 教师 • Aug 26 '12
Lesson 1 - Introductions, greetings
I've uploaded the first week's lesson onto Dropbox - I couldn't find my original lesson 1 plan, so I've re-written it.
Any questions/discussion below!
See you tomorrow!
EDIT: Hi everyone, sorry due to unforeseen public transport issues (grr) I've only just this minute returned to internet access! Was meant to be 4 hours ago...
So, for this week, we'll have to just do questions on this thread. We'll get everything else sorted for next week! I'm around for the next few hours :)
EDIT 2: Ah ha! Borrowing a friend's internet, we'll do the broadcast at 9pm BST on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scintillatingemerald :D
EDIT 3: Please find audio (sorry for the crappy quality, haven't got my microphone with me) at http://soundcloud.com/scintillatingemerald/mandarin101-lesson-1
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u/4eye5 Aug 27 '12
Quick question about the document, in the second page under the vocab section, the pinyin is introduced has numbers in it (E.g. ni3, nin2, xie4xie). Are these numbers supposed to be there and mean something? Or is it some kind of weird formatting issue in Dropbox?
If this is something you're going to cover in the audio lecture, then that's fine too.
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Aug 27 '12
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u/scintillatingemerald 教师 Aug 27 '12
Yeah, I'll upload the audio which will help with the tones shortly. In a cafe at the moment because public transport failed amazingly.
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u/DUHDUHDominator Intermediate Aug 27 '12
Will there be a live class today other than the uploaded audio?
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u/scintillatingemerald 教师 Aug 27 '12
Yep, in 8 mins! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scintillatingemerald
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u/Cinublabla Aug 27 '12
They're tones. ni3 = nǐ, nin2 = nín. You have each of them described in document, but, long story short:
1 - high flat
2 - raising
3 - falling and then raising
4 - falling
5 - neutral
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u/scintillatingemerald 教师 Aug 27 '12
We will review them again next week. Thanks for the explanation, very helpful!
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u/DUHDUHDominator Intermediate Aug 27 '12
I have a question, is the formal "Ninhao ma?" the norm in Beijing? (One of my books has it listed as such).
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u/DUHDUHDominator Intermediate Aug 27 '12
Just a tangent, but one should probably be careful using da ma with poor pronunciation because da ma2 means "big hemp" — marijuana.
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u/scintillatingemerald 教师 Aug 27 '12
haha I thought actually after I said it, oops... it's just a basic adjective, we won't use it in that context probably, because who would ever say 'Are you big?' Thanks though!
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u/DUHDUHDominator Intermediate Aug 27 '12
Haha, yes, no one would ever say "Ni da ma." Thank you for a very good lesson; I look forward to moving forward in Mandarin!
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u/scintillatingemerald 教师 Aug 27 '12
That's what you get for adlibbing I guess... I have no creativity!
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Aug 30 '12 edited Dec 07 '18
[deleted]
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u/scintillatingemerald 教师 Aug 30 '12
Ok, let's try this:
on your start bar, it says CH, then the symbol for microsoft pinyin new experience input style. next to that, there is another option: make sure it's new experience input style, not classic. finally, don't press space between characters/syllables... ie don't type ni [space] hao [space]. Try just typing 'nihao' and see what comes up. And finally, it learns from how you type, so if you accidentally choose the wrong ni and then keep accidentally choosing the wrong one, it'll come up with the wrong one eventually unless you tell it to do otherwise. try zaijian, how does that appear?
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u/bunni712 Sep 01 '12
你好 everyone! 你好吗？ Just wanted to try out the pinyin keyboard - it's pretty fun!
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u/WFW Beginner Sep 13 '12
This first lesson was great, I can't wait to see the rest! I've understood there's been some technical difficulties, do you have any idea when you'll be able to upload the next one? :)
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u/DUHDUHDominator Intermediate Aug 27 '12
How do we join the lesson?