Hello from 慢速中文 slow-chinese.com

[buzhongren]

I am with Ed.Log on this one. I think a separate pinyin page for us to follow along who cant read the language would be nice. If for whatever reason that is inherently difficult for Weng.Xinyu then I understand and there are workarounds as Ed and others suggested. As the site stands right now what is the point of Chinese characters and a slow Mandarin rendition. I would assume if I can 'read' the characters I would utter the 'sound'. This would suggest there are people who can 'read' but cant 'speak'. Is this for example people who speak Cantonese and want to speak Mandarin.

[jbradfor]

As the site stands right now what is the point of Chinese characters and a slow Mandarin rendition.

Because I use the site to practice my listening comprehension.

Because I can read much better than I can understand.

Because there are still words I don't know, so I use the text to learn words I don't know.

Back to you: what is the point of pinyin and a slow reading? The pinyin just gives the sound, as does the reading. So the pinyin provides no additional information, unless you are unable to follow the reading.

[buzhongren]

jbradfor: Back to you: what is the point of pinyin and a slow reading? The pinyin just gives the sound, as does the reading. So the pinyin provides no additional information, unless you are unable to follow the reading.

I largely view PinYin as a sound reproducing system. If interpreted correctly I should be able to accurately say any character and be understood. As part of a larger body I should be able to get a feel for the flow of the language. For example are pollysyllabic words emphasized more than monosyllabic characters known as word boundaries. In this case I think 'slowly' means succinctly instead of a measured time. If I come across a Chinese character I havent seen before I look it up in a dictionary using a radical index and learn the sound and meaning. I guess I could associate character and meaning and not sound. But then sooner or later someone wonders what sound goes with that character such as it is now. I admit I should be able to associate Chinese sounds and printed characters in a one-to-one correspondence but I know I would run out of sounds or characters the longer the message.

xiele,

Jim

[imron]

As the site stands right now what is the point of Chinese characters and a slow Mandarin rendition.

I think the first post explains the purpose of the site quite well. It's slow audio text to make it easier for learners to practice their listening, along with a written transcript. It allows learners who might be able to listen and understand 90% (just an example) of the audio, to then look at the transcript and figure out the remaining 10% and through this improve their language ability.

I would assume if I can 'read' the characters I would utter the 'sound'. This would suggest there are people who can 'read' but cant 'speak'.

This is correct to a certain degree. Some learners will be able to read something, but it will take them a (comparitively) long time to do so, and maybe they do so with several dictionary lookups etc. If they were to try and speak that same sentence/paragraph it would come out all stilted and broken. Having a clear example to go by can help them improve their own phrasing and fluidity when speaking.

[xianhua]

The Deng Li Jun podcast was brilliant. The timing was perfect for 'Goodbye My Love' to kick in at the end.

[Shadowdh]

I would just like to add my thanks and praise for this very awesome site... my Chinese has become rusty and following the news on cctv 4 has been fairly difficult, but now I have found this site and have it in my rss reader and can download podcasts and the text... best tool ever award mate... well done...!!! :clap:clap

[Meng Lelan]

The Deng Li Jun podcast was brilliant. The timing was perfect for 'Goodbye My Love' to kick in at the end.

Amazing podcast, I'm always wondering what Weng Xinyu is going to do next.

[Chinadoog]

I'm looking forward to when I'm at the point where Slow-Chinese will be a useful site to me. Seems like a great site. If all of those articles were in a book with an audio CD, I'd definitely buy it.

If you can't read all of the characters then you can just translate it into pinyin yourself.

[Weng.Xinyu]

Hi guys, I've change the looking of the content on the first page, texts are shown 2 or 3 paragraphs. I've also added difficulty rating, please help rate each post you've read, this may help others have a general idea of how difficult the content is. The rating is helpful to me too!!!

Recently I've been preparing for three exams and a graduation paper... appologies for updating so slow. I'll keep updating 3-4posts/month in the future, just as I used to do. Oh by the way, I've opened an twitter account twitter.com/slowchinese and I'm also a google buzz user, if you have interest, just follow either one, and exchange ideas with me!

I'm looking forward to when I'm at the point where Slow-Chinese will be a useful site to me. Seems like a great site. If all of those articles were in a book with an audio CD, I'd definitely buy it.

If you can't read all of the characters then you can just translate it into pinyin yourself.

Hi, this sounds like a great idea, I may earn some money by doing this, haha, but I'm wondering how many people would spend this money since there're free ones on the Internet already.

The Deng Li Jun podcast was brilliant. The timing was perfect for 'Goodbye My Love' to kick in at the end.

I read a lot of materials about her when I was writing this post with her music in my head, and when I typed the last paragraphs, I coundn't help crying. Deng once said, the day the fellow people in mainland china have reached democracy is the time she shall prepare concerts there. Now that she's gone, never be able to step on the earth of mainland china, I wonder, does her death mean that we'll never have democracy in mainland China? or we'll have to wait at least for decades.

Ed Log has given me a lot of suggestions on putting ad on the website, really a lot, with great patience, I must express my thanks many many times. After several attempts I failed because first I want to keep my page extremely neat, I tried many times but still can't convince myself to stand a mass of ads around the content, second, because of some reason my google adsense account was closed, which means I might find other vendors. This is not a big problem to me, but I still appreciate it when anyone shares with me some other thoughts...

[gato]

I read a lot of materials about her when I was writing this post with her music in my head, and when I typed the last paragraphs, I coundn't help crying. Deng once said, the day the fellow people in mainland china have reached democracy is the time she shall prepare concerts there. Now that she's gone, never be able to step on the earth of mainland china, I wonder, does her death mean that we'll never have democracy in mainland China? or we'll have to wait at least for decades.

That's really sad. Now you made me cry.

[Ed Log]

The fact that your site is visually very clean is good but perhaps you should try and have some banner adverts at the top and test adverts at the side and split the content to one article per page. If after a couple of months there you can see there is no income potential then go back to your clean and free service.

Again thank you for all your effort but I fear that someday you will be too busy to keep it running. That would be a shame, you should get rewarded for your effort.

Adverts are accepted by users and so long as they don't infringe on the use of the site they are not seen as a nuisance - see link below.

http://www.eblogtemplates.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ads-theme-blogger.jpg

[Meng Lelan]

If all of those articles were in a book with an audio CD, I'd definitely buy it.

I just print out the articles and put them together in a notebook.

[atitarev]

And you can download all MP3's and make an audio CD.

[Shadowdh]

Hi there all, if this is in the wrong section mods then please move it and if I have over stepped the mark posting this here please let me know and I will delete it... I love Slow Chinese... the podcasts are clear and easy to follow, even with hardly any study lately (combination of life and lazy) I find this is a great tool to help with listening and reading... I have Slow Chinese in my list of rss feeds and as a bonus copy and pasted the texts to a single document... so if anyone wants it here it is... again if this is not kosha then let me know...

Text from casts.doc

Text from casts.txt

[Meng Lelan]

Hi there all, if this is in the wrong section mods then please move it and if I have over stepped the mark posting this here please let me know and I will delete it... I love Slow Chinese... the podcasts are clear and easy to follow, even with hardly any study lately (combination of life and lazy) I find this is a great tool to help with listening and reading... I have Slow Chinese in my list of rss feeds and as a bonus copy and pasted the texts to a single document... so if anyone wants it here it is... again if this is not kosha then let me know...

There's a thread in here about Slow Chinese, I would have pointed you there but now that this new forum interface is so messed up that I can't find anything anymore. What does kosha mean or are you trying to say "kosher"???

[jbradfor]

I think the thread is here. http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?showtopic=22362

I'll merge the two. No, wait, I can't :blink:

[Shadowdh]

There's a thread in here about Slow Chinese, I would have pointed you there but now that this new forum interface is so messed up that I can't find anything anymore. What does kosha mean or are you trying to say "kosher"???

Yes its supposed to be kosher...

I do know of the other Slow Chinese thread but my favourites (which it was in) dont link anymore... sigh...

Thanks for the link Jbradfor...

[Meng Lelan]

I do know of the other Slow Chinese thread but my favourites (which it was in) dont link anymore... sigh...

Same story here too. All my favorites, otherwise known as subscribed threads, I can't find them anymore. I don't know where to find my favorites/subscribed threads, that is why I said the new interface has everything so messed up here. I hardly visit the forums anymore for that reason. Anyway Slow Chinese has just come out with a new entry on eating out.

[chrix]

merged.

[Shadowdh]

Same story here too. All my favorites, otherwise known as subscribed threads, I can't find them anymore. I don't know where to find my favorites/subscribed threads, that is why I said the new interface has everything so messed up here. I hardly visit the forums anymore for that reason. Anyway Slow Chinese has just come out with a new entry on eating out.

I got the new one too... I think once we get used to it the new style will be ok, another forum I go to uses the same format as this so its not too bad for me...

Chrix... many thanks...