My first year of Mandarin Chinese...I need help! T.T

[LordTacodip]

Alright, apparently my Mandarin Chinese teacher has "great expectations" for me since I've picked up a good handful of Chinese phrases back at Florida since there was a large Chinese community there.

I've moved to Utah about a month ago.

So he's been giving me Traditional Chinese phrases to translate on top of the Simplified and Pinyin systems that we're learning in class...

And I need help T.T I got the first phrase he gave to me with a little difficulty...but I need help with this phrase.

I'm sorry for taking the picture of the phrase with my webcam, but I still haven't figured out how to type out Chinese characters yet.

The phrase is this:http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j263/LordTacodip/Snapshotofme1.png

What I have in Pinyin is this so far: Shèng bù jíao bài bù níe

I needed help from a Taiwanese friend to translate that last character, but she didn't know how to write it in Pinyin...so I kind of BS'ed the spelling.

Can somebody help me find out the literal and then the correct grammatical English translations?

Thank you so much for your time and help T_____T

Edited September 15, 2009 at 01:23 AM by imron
fixed link.

[imron]

The phrase is 勝不驕，敗不餒, or in simplified 胜不骄，败不馁. It means, neither arrogant in victory, or discouraged in defeat. Literally it means victory not arrogant, defeat not discouraged.

The correct pinyin is: shèng bù jiāo, bài bù něi. One mistake you are making with your pinyin is that sometimes you are putting the tone marks on the incorrect vowel. The tone doesn't just go on any vowel, and there are rules as to which vowel it falls on (see here for more info). If you don't want to have to remember the rules, you can always use something like Pinyinput (see the link in my signature).

For typing Chinese characters, you probably want something like Google's pinyin IME.

[LordTacodip]

Omg...I LOVVE YOOUU ARAGHGHAHAHFBHKJSDBFSDF

I was freaking out because in my class not many students respect my teacher at all...and I feel so bad for him because he works so hard in doing his best to teach us, and he's really happy when he sees students take his class seriously. He asked me to present this phrase in class tomorrow X.x

Thank you so much again!

[Hofmann]

What school is that? I hope not the U.

[LordTacodip]

Oh, no, I'm currently a Junior in West Jordan High School.

It's really different than Eastside High School where I used to be in the IB program in Florida. I really miss it.

I'll continue to be active in these forums since I have a good feeling that I'll need a lot of help through my two years of Chinese! And this has been a pretty snappy and quick answering place so far.

Thank you for all your help everyone!