What's the worst Chinese Language Course you've ever seen?

[roddy]

What the worst course you've ever seen / taken?

This one gets my vote, although I'm damned if I'm paying $8.95 to carry out a comprehensive review . . .

The Mandarin for MEAT is SOW

Imagine you show everyone a lump of meat.

The Mandarin for WATER is SHOOAY

Imagine you pour water in your shoe

[Tsunku]

I should show that to a friend of mine who just started learning Chinese. He was complaining that pinyin didn't match the way things are pronounced in English. He'd certainly appreciate shoo-ay more than shui!

[roddy]

Of course pinyin doesn't match the way things are pronounced in English - it's not English. Tell your friend to stop whining . . .

Roddy

[Guest Anonymous]

Of course pinyin doesn't match the way things are pronounced in English - it's not English. Tell your friend to stop whining . . .

Roddy

OMG, amen to that!

[Tsunku]

Yeah, I couldn't get that point through to him, that pinyin wasn't even designed with English pronounciation in mind. There are Japanese, Korean, Thai, Russian ... you name it ... all kinds of people using pinyin to learn Chinese. I felt like beating my head against a wall after talking to him for 10 minutes, but finally convinced him to give it up and just learn pinyin for love of gawd, it's not *that* hard.

[smithsgj]

How do they get y'a for tea, though? And sow for meat? wtfigoh?

Pace Confucius, best avoid these "customised" (but to what?) pronunciation schemes. Byow-jwoon t'e Hann-eu peen-yeen wahn soo-ay!

[Guest Ch1nam4n]

hahahaha, ronny! If you're gonna learn a foreign language, you've gotta learn to think of the letters you read in English as sounding different.

It's just like French or Italian in that respect.

[Guest Anonymous]

hahahaha' date=' ronny! If you're gonna learn a foreign language, you've gotta learn to think of the letters you read in English as sounding different.

It's just like French or Italian in that respect.[/quote']

Yup. I have a friend who's a native-Spanish speaker. She was complaining about how English vowels can sound in so many different ways where as in Spanish, the sound of the vowels only has a single sound, and the same goes for Hanyu Pinyin. "A" is always "ah" for example.

[Guest Ch1nam4n]

Yep, but the differences in the languages are what make them so amazing to me!

[Quest]

lol the pronunciations remind me of sites that "teach" you chinese "names" such as "Wai Yu Hai Ding"(why you hiding), "Ai Bang Mai Ne" (i bang my knee), "Dung On Mai Shu" (dung on my shoe). well i m sure you've seen those too