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Hello from 慢速中文 slow-chinese.com


Weng.Xinyu

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Hello everyone, I'm Xinyu Weng from Taizhou, Zhejiang.

As I studied English and German, I benefited a lot from listening-materials like Slow English and Slow German. I also have international friends, from whom I lerned that there's hardly Chinese material in form of which I just mentioned. So I built a website called 慢速中文Slow Chinese, (www.slow-chinese.com). It's actually a simple Weblog with Chinese articals as transcript and an audio stream of each reading of the text. The text is simple, and the reading is slow. I hope you take a look at it, I'll be very happy if it's helpful to your Chinese. Any advice and critic is welcome!

I started 慢速中文Slow Chinese several months ago, and keep updating every week. Then Roddy and some other friends from this Chinese-forum reminded me of posting an ad here. At first I didn't have enough posts, after working on the content and other technical problems of the site, I think it's time to let people know about it. So I'm doing it.

 

Visit us:www.slow-chinese.com

 

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Thanks for attention!

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端午节並非在"中国农历的五月五日" 的节日.

If you really know the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and its usage, you would call it "中国农历五月初五", where 的 is omitted for simplicity. "五月五日" / "五月五号" is reserved for "fifth day in May" per the Western / Gregorian calendar.

"Fifth day of the fifth month" in the Chinese lunar calendar is NOT "中国农历的五月五日", but rather "中国农历五月初五".

There's no celebrations of any Chinese "holidays" on May 5th [Gregorian calendar].

慢速中文

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慢速中文, great site, love the sound of the guy's voice!

It's the only podcast I now listen to these days. And he's very on-topic. Take a look at what he did for the character 囧 recently.

I tried all kinds of podcasts including Chinese Pod, Popup, etc and their rapid recordings of Chinese chat melted down my hearing aids. Plus the content of those podcasts kept drifting off all over the place like they have attention deficit disorder.

谢谢 to Xingyu for doing this.

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端午节並非在"中国农历的五月五日" 的节日.

If you really know the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and its usage, you would call it "中国农历五月初五", where 的 is omitted for simplicity. "五月五日" / "五月五号" is reserved for "fifth day in May" per the Western / Gregorian calendar.

As a native Chinese speaker, I would say it is pretty OK to say "中国农历的五月五日". You can consider it a long version of "(中国)农历五月初五". Although "五月五日" (or the like) is usually used to refer to "the fifth day of May, the fifth month" of the Gregorian calendar, it is also a general term that can be used to refer to "the fifth day of the fifth month" of any calendar. In this case, people usually put the name of the specific calendar before it. And "的" is used to make the whole expression, which is not commonly seen, easier to understand. The long expression instead of its short counterpart was used in the blog to make it easier to understand, I guess.

Similar expressions like "农历的五月五日" (for 五月五) and even "农历的一月一日" (for 一) are actually used in circumstances where the the speaker or the listener is not familiar with the Chinese lunar calendar, or sometimes, the Chinese lunar calendar is the very subject of the conversation.

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Quote:

端午节並非在"中国农历的五月五日" 的节日.

If you really know the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and its usage, you would call it "中国农历五月初五", where 的 is omitted for simplicity. "五月五日" / "五月五号" is reserved for "fifth day in May" per the Western / Gregorian calendar.

As a native Chinese speaker, I would say it is pretty OK to say "中国农历的五月五日". You can consider it a long version of "(中国)农历五月初五". Although "五月五日" (or the like) is usually used to refer to "the fifth day of May, the fifth month" of the Gregorian calendar, it is also a general term that can be used to refer to "the fifth day of the fifth month" of any calendar. In this case, people usually put the name of the specific calendar before it. And "的" is used to make the whole expression, which is not commonly seen, easier to understand. The long expression instead of its short counterpart was used in the blog to make it easier to understand, I guess.

Similar expressions like "农历的五月五日" (for 五月初五) and even "农历的一月一日" (for 正月初一) are actually used in circumstances where the the speaker or the listener is not familiar with the Chinese lunar calendar, or sometimes, the Chinese lunar calendar is the very subject of the conversation.

Many thanks to both trien27 and seesaw, thanks for pointing out the problem.

Surely you're correct trien27,农历的五月五日 is not the perfect way, but try google it, you'll find a lot of results of people using the same expression. As here 农历 has been mentioned , then followed by 五月五日, it is quite clear what I mean.

At first I was thinking about the level of the language I use, that brings the question - how hard should I write? The text is intended for those, who understand 85~90 percent of the reading for the first time. As a native speaker, I have no idea which words are easier and what kind of expression is taught in the teaching material. It takes time to find the suitable level the keep the balance. So when started the first posts, I cared too much about the choice of word and expression. Then some people told me, they don't want it to be too easy and the most important thing is, it should be original. I really appreciate that sense of uplift, so please expect 慢速中文's better articals.

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@Weng.Xinyu: I don't mind the changes of the kind as the mentioned "农历的五月五日". It's your judgement as to what would be best for the majority of your listeners and I do indeed appreciate your trying to make things easier for the users.

However, since you speak very clearly and slowly, and you also give out the transcript, I think users can look up things for themselves. So it seems advisable when possible to preserve the Chinese, idiomatic ways of expressing things; and simplify things only when you think there are reasons for the users not being able to look them up or to get the right meaning.

I enjoy your reading and thank you for the effort. The podcasts are fine at the moment but I would suggest that at some later stage, you could consider getting a co-worker to relieve you a bit of the hard work and to give the podcasts some varieties.

Congratulations & best wishes!

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It really has to be a lot of work doing all that by yourself. Do you write all the articles yourself or do you find them in the Internet, the news, etc?

Nowadays I write all the articals, for historical or cultural articals, I mostly collect material from the Online-Encyclopedia like Wiki and 百度百科 to process, it's impossible to conduct research into all those subjects in the lab, my job is only simplifying and introducing. For some other topics like Chinese people's personality and preference I just write down my experience. What different people say are different, I try to close to the mainstream and bring you fresh ideas.

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Weng.Xinyu

I really enjoy the articles that are based on your own observations.

For some other topics like Chinese people's personality and preference I just write down my experience. What different people say are different, I try to close to the mainstream and bring you fresh ideas.

My area of interest is society, culture, technology and social change. You personal views provide some very good insights into some of the things I find very puzzling about modern China.

I find that studying the precommunist period, particularly the era 1910 to 1947 helps me to understand a lot of the things I encounter in discussions with Chinese people. So many personal ideas seem to have survived the communist era or have been only slightly modified by it.

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