Feedback on Mandarin Video Draft

[malanting]

L-F-J

Using a noun as an adjective is a common occurrence in Chinese. I don't know why that would make it sound awkward. The only thing I can imagine is that 二年级 is coming before 大学.

You may be right. It's just that we don't really say it in this way in spite of all the Google entries. If you look at the results carefully, you can find that not all are used in the way described by you.

For example, the first result is actually 找教小学二年级的大学生家教老师 "looking for college students as tutors for grade-two elementary students"

Then there's 本片为一位大学二年级的大学生采访参战老兵拍摄而成的 It's 大学二年级的……

Another example is 二年级的大学生已经从对新环境的关注转向对自身发展的关注. In this case, the author is trying to emphasize 二年级. He're comparing 二年级学生 with 一年级学生 or 其他年级的学生. That's why, like you said , there are terms like 高年级大学生.

I'm not saying that 二年级的大学生 is incorrect.

However, when introducing ourselves, we would not say 我是一个二年级的大学生. Even on formal occasions, we use 我是大二学生 or 我今年（上）大二.

二年级的大学生 sounds too wordy. I think all of these Google results should be replaced with 大二学生. 大二学生已经从对新环境的关注转向对自身发展的关注.

[daofeishi]

Yakeyglee, another thing to keep in mind about your pronounciation: You keep pronouncing the pinyin z as an English z, the kind of z used in the word zoo and size (i.e. a voiced alveolar fricative). The pinyin z is a different sound altogether. It is an unvoiced consonant and is supposed to sound more like a hard ts. Have a look at Wikipedia's page about that sound, the (aspirated) voiceless alveolar affricate.

[陳德聰]

@malanting

At the risk of going terribly off topic, I'm just going to PM you.

@yakeyglee

If we're going to get nitpicky on pronunciation, I'd also double check your j vs zh.

[daofeishi]

A small follow up: If you have ever tried to beat-box the well known tsss-ts-ts-tsss-ts-ts open-closed hi-hat beat, the short ts is an aspirated voiceless alveolar affricate.

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[陳德聰]

@WestTexas

I already tried that through PM it returned no gains despite being true.

@yakeyglee

Any chance you could reupload another draft reading? :D

[imron]

Various posts on the differences between Mandarin and other Chinese languages split out here.

[malanting]

Thanks