It Only Took 3 Years! The Mandarin Blueprint Method is Ready

[alantin]

On 3/12/2022 at 9:05 AM, suMMit said:

Are you sure about this? I would say it would always be a younger person addressing someone older by 老X even if it was only by a small age difference and ditto for 小X it would always be an older person addressing a younger person.

 

As an example , in a program I'm watching , the boss calls several of his underlings 老李，老王 etc because they are older in age(not higher in rank), they call him 徐总. If you look at pic A the man he's addressing is clearly older(and has very bad taste in ties).

And almost all 老师 I have, are younger than me.

Also in Japanese a coworker who came to the company before you, is always your senior, regardless of age. I believe this is similar. Age is a factor, but not the point.

[suMMit]

On 3/12/2022 at 3:30 PM, alantin said:

And almost all 老师 I have, are younger than me.

I would say 老师，老婆，老公，老板，老外 etc are not in the same category as 老+surname

 

I asked my teacher 我应该怎么称呼你？ she said 叫我小陈 (though I do realize calling your teacher xiao...  might be a bit unconventional)

[Guest realmayo]

On 3/11/2022 at 5:17 PM, Moshen said:

Remember, even though “老” can have the meaning of “Old,” when used as a Chinese prefix it does not carry this meaning

Technically this is true I think? For names it carries the meaning "older", not "old".

 

On 3/12/2022 at 7:05 AM, suMMit said:

in a program I'm watching

Nice to see 奋斗 screenshots!

[imron]

On 3/12/2022 at 4:17 AM, Moshen said:

what in the world are they talking about to say that Lao with someone's name is simply an affectionate nickname and has nothing to do with being old?

It means being older, not being old.  You (30 years old) might call a 40 year old colleague 老王, but 老王 is not old, he’s just older than you. 

[alantin]

I asked a tutor about this. She said that 老 is mostly used with someone older than you but could some times be used with younger people if your are of similar age. I also showed her the description by Mandarin Blueprint. She said she didn't see anything in it that she disagrees with.

[Moshen]

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It means being older, not being old.  You (30 years old) might call a 40 year old colleague 老王, but 老王 is not old, he’s just older than you. 

 

This seems exactly right.  Therefore to say that this locution has nothing to do with being old is at best highly misleading.  On the other hand, my 60-ish female colleague said she hated being called "Wang Lao Taitai" because she didn't like the connotation of "old" in it.  Or maybe it was that she didn't like being reminded that she was the oldest person working in the office?  She had had to get special permission to work past the normal age of retirement for women, which she got because of her special skills.

 

Compare in English someone who is pretentious (like a high school teacher I once had) calling his students "old girl" or "old boy."  This was something that we could say had nothing whatsoever to do with age.  Usage of "Lao" and "Xiao" is not at all like that, which seemed to me to be what Mandarin Blueprint were saying.

[杰.克]

On 3/29/2020 at 12:32 PM, 杰.克 said:

The Mandarin Blueprint...

 

... something about the name of this programme really irks me. I think it was perhaps the seeding of me making this post

 

(https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/59660-wow-the-1-tip-to-fluency-in-chinese-that-actually-worked/?tab=comments#comment-464984)

 

Anyone reading this - THERE IS NO MANDARIN BLUEPRINT  that will lead to " guaranteed rapid fluency" *

 

Thats not to say this course, isn't useful, it may very well be. And thats not to say the designers and owners of this course, aren't using the same money making click bait ideas that everyone else is using (I imagine they have put alot of work in and you have to do what everyone else is doing). In fact I watched a few of their videos, and they seems to have pleasant personalities and good mandarin. But just to repeat , this is a marketing gimmick/lie

 

*As their website advertises

 2 years on, I still think this guy speaks absolute sense. The name of this product really really irks me, "A Mandarin Blueprint" that leads to guaranteed rapid fluency is such a gimick.

[Jan Finster]

On 3/12/2022 at 6:45 PM, 杰.克 said:

On 3/29/2020 at 1:32 PM, 杰.克 said:

The Mandarin Blueprint...

 

... something about the name of this programme really irks me. I think it was perhaps the seeding of me making this post

 

(https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/59660-wow-the-1-tip-to-fluency-in-chinese-that-actually-worked/?tab=comments#comment-464984)

 

Anyone reading this - THERE IS NO MANDARIN BLUEPRINT  that will lead to " guaranteed rapid fluency" *

 

Thats not to say this course, isn't useful, it may very well be. And thats not to say the designers and owners of this course, aren't using the same money making click bait ideas that everyone else is using (I imagine they have put alot of work in and you have to do what everyone else is doing). In fact I watched a few of their videos, and they seems to have pleasant personalities and good mandarin. But just to repeat , this is a marketing gimmick/lie

 

*As their website advertises

 2 years on, I still think this guy speaks absolute sense. The name of this product really really irks me, "A Mandarin Blueprint" that leads to guaranteed rapid fluency is such a gimick.

 

There is nothing like a good pat on your own back ?

[suMMit]

On 12/2/2020 at 1:31 AM, Jan Finster said:

Why? Because your bombardment with promotional emails every 1-2 days is borderline abusive and certainly does not encourage anyone to join. There are penis enlargement spam mails that are less intrusive ?

They are not the only ones. Lately I've been bombarded by spam from Ollie Richards and Lingq. I signed up for one course 2 years ago with Ollie and did a free trial on LingQ that I tried exactly once. Steve Kaufman seems like a good guy and so does Ollie, but do they really need to send an email every single day?

[Jan Finster]

On 3/14/2022 at 1:11 PM, suMMit said:

They are not the only ones. Lately I've been bombarded by spam from Ollie Richards and Lingq. I signed up for one course 2 years ago with Ollie and did a free trial on LingQ that I tried exactly once. Steve Kaufman seems like a good guy and so does Ollie, but do they really need to send an email every single day?

 

Sure, they are not the only ones. I googled "Star Trek: Picard" once out of nostalgia 2 weeks ago, and since then Google's news feed believes I must surely want to read about the series every day (no matter if the article is in "Mumbai's teens magazine" or "Sri Lanka Weekly") ?

 

The emails I get from Lingq are less obnoxious in my opinion. Yes, they want to sell, but not in this dodgy, pseudo-discount-ish style the TheMandarinBluprint guys subscribe to.

[杰.克]

On a personal level - I imagine all of them are great guys. Fundamentally their Mandarin is excellent, and this (although not definite) leads me to think they are high calibre people. When I watch their video content I connect with them as humans. Furthermore, they have the get up and go to set up a business.....

 

That being said, they are wading into murky waters, because the industry demands it. The horrendous snake oil marketing tactics of this shill FLUENT IN 30 DAYS titles are horrendous (and any serious learner knows this), and the infuriating email you get every single bloody day with a SPECIAL DISCOUNT (how special can it be when its a daily occurrence). The thing is, they are just following marketing practices they will have learnt online. I bet their are a million 'internet marketing gurus' who suggest this is the best way to do business. And it possibly is. What do i know?

 

Anyway, no hate on them personally.  I bet they would be a great friend, and good laugh down the pub. But yeah, as a wider industry practice, it absolutely kills me how gross the 'language learning' industry can be. ...

 

[Moshen]

Quote

That being said, they are wading into murky waters, because the industry demands it.

 

Based on my business experience, I totally do not buy this argument.  In any marketplace, it is possible to make a good living doing what you love and what you are expert at while having integrity and not lowering yourself to any sleazy tactics "everyone" else seems to be adopting.  This may not satisfy one's greed, and marketing with integrity may get results slower than flashy hype and obnoxious badgering, but it works.

 

For the language learning marketplace, I think we can all name at least half a dozen operators who offer solid programs and don't exaggerate or offer false hope. 

[杰.克]

Let me change then to say -

 

"That being said, they are wading into murky waters, because they believe the industry demands it."

 

My point being, my gut tells me they are good people. I've watched a few of the "Mandarin Blueprint" trailer videos on youtube, and I see lovely, clever, warm, personable, hardworking humans (my gut instinct, not any personal knowledge). My estimation is, and the point I am making is, they most likely believe to succeed they have to do this (the prevailing trend in the language industry is sleazy tactics imo).  And as such, its a reaction to the industry they believe they sit within, rather than a manifestation of their own personal principles and values.

 

So when I say I detest the name of Mandarin Blueprint, I focus my ire on the market conditions , rather than the individuals. And i do believe it to be the overall market. In my own country of the UK (which has low levels of multilingualism), societal maturity about the difficulty of language acquisition is so infantile. Go to a WHSMITHS (a popular book chain) and 99% of the books in the language section have utterly ridiculous titles. 95% of brits would probably entertain the idea that they might be able to become fluent in Spanish, by listening to a CD on their commute to work, for the 4 weeks before they go of to Benidorm, or something equally flashy and ridiculous. The society is deeply ignorant of the struggles of language learning, the industry is jam packed with modern E-commerce snake oil tactics, even this forum alone has regular beginner posts about Mandarin acquisition aspirations that are beyond farcical.  I think these fellas are good guys and just seemingly just adapting to the environment...

 

...they just happened, in an industry full of stupid course titles,  to chose an especially irksome name (IMO) ?

[Moshen]

Quote

"That being said, they are wading into murky waters, because they believe the industry demands it."

 

In my view, you are responsible for what you believe - and for what you do.  I know dozens of business people faced with the same kind of pressures who stand on their values and refuse to do anything sleazy or underhanded regardless of the advice of others.  I know plenty of others who just halt in confusion because they find the apparent yellow brick road to success repellent.  Whether or not a company is comprised of guys you would like to go have a beer with is not relevant to me in the slightest.

 

Of course, your conclusions may differ.

[Jan Finster]

On 3/16/2022 at 12:08 PM, 杰.克 said:

My point being, my gut tells me they are good people. I've watched a few of the "Mandarin Blueprint" trailer videos on youtube, and I see lovely, clever, warm, personable, hardworking humans (my gut instinct, not any personal knowledge). My estimation is, and the point I am making is, they most likely believe to succeed they have to do this (the prevailing trend in the language industry is sleazy tactics imo).  And as such, its a reaction to the industry they believe they sit within, rather than a manifestation of their own personal principles and values.

 

Do not be fooled by the public persona you see.

It is a bit like in a job interview: people may appear super nice and friendly only to turn out to be a pain in the b*tt later on. The opposite is slightly more true: if someone acts like a d*ck in the job interview, believe him. If he cannot even get his act together for 1 hour, then this is quite telling.  

 

I am not saying they are bad people, but the Youtube or internet persona says nothing. 

I fully agree with Moshen.

[杰.克]

I was trying to emphasize my criticism was orientated towards industry norms, rather then the people themselves, because I didn't want it to get to personally orientated. We don't really know much about them, nor really the company itself. My personal thought is you two are veering to far towards judging their characters prematurely.

 

On 3/16/2022 at 11:30 AM, Moshen said:

is not relevant to me in the slightest.

 

My gut is tells me the two chaps leading Mandarin Blueprint are most likely lovely, clever, warm, personable, hardworking humans. As you said, its not in the slightest bit relevant, and as I said, its just an estimation. I don't deny this. I barely know them. But this swings both ways. Neither do you. Their title and strategy i can critique because its public. Anything further than this, well as you said, its irrelevant.

 

That being said, you both seem ready to close the book on them both as individuals , because they have a clickbait title and send too many emails!.......

......Gosh, don't ever try to buy anything on the internet, if that is the morale hill you want to die on!

 

 

[Moshen]

Quote

That being said, you both seem ready to close the book on them both as individuals ,

 

Not at all.  How they are as individuals is uninteresting to me and irrelevant to what I wrote.  My comments were directed toward you implying that certain business behaviors are acceptable - or beyond criticism - because the people involved seem to be nice people.  You may well be right that "the two chaps leading Mandarin Blueprint are [snip] lovely, clever, warm, personable, hardworking humans."  So what? 

 

And that's all I have to say on this topic.

[杰.克]

On 3/16/2022 at 3:58 PM, Moshen said:

My comments were directed toward you implying that certain business behaviors are acceptable - or beyond criticism - because the people involved seem to be nice people.

 

How could I possibly imply their business behavior is beyond criticism and also be the person that started this thread of conversation by criticising their business behaviors...

 

Isn't that a contradiction?

[Lu]

Please note that I am keeping an eye on this thread and if it veers any closer to name-calling or useless bickering, I will close it.

[alantin]

You do know that if you don't want their emails, there is an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of each email, right?

Since there seems to be so much veiled interest in them as people, I have used their course extensively and I've also exchanged emails with one of them and had a conversation on Skype with the other (he called me when I reached a certain level in the course!). Based on actually using the course and actually having interacted with them, I find their course helpful and regard them as people who actually want to help people learn the language. Also knowing my own progress, having done some simulations, and having discussed the subject with them, out of pure curiosity, I happen to know that the numbers they quote in their marketing, aren't just pulled off their hats but are based on their users' actual results. My impression two years ago also was that they seemed to be working their butts off while making ends meet.

 

I personally don't really care whether their marketing is good or bad. As a customer, I only care about the value of the product for me personally.