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Not posted on here for years but here goes. While there's some fairly awful stuff going on around the world at the moment and we're currently in lockdown, it's given me an opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for years - pick up the Chinese books again. In fact, I'm astonished with how much I've enjoyed it after almost 20 years. I've always wanted to do a HSK exam and I might even give it a go this year. I realise the HSKs aren't the be all and end all but it's still a good goal (as per thread title). Normally live life at a million miles an hour, it is just amazing to be able to completely wind down, re-evaluate life and do stuff that has been on the back burner for so long. For the first time I can really see the possibility of heading for 3/4 months study in China, perhaps that will have to wait until a 2021 thread - looking at maybe Kunming or Chengdu.

My word of the day is both Chinese and its English counterpart: 鼻翼, the 'alae' of the nose. It appears in some dictionaries as the 'nostrils', the 鼻孔, but this seems to be inaccurate. The word 鼻翼 seems to turn up a lot in plastic surgery descriptions, and the same seems to be true of the word 'alae' (interestingly, I feel like I have heard of 'the wings of the nose' before at some point, which matches the Chinese here). While I was previously unfamiliar with the term ala, I realised I knew 'septum' in English, but not Chinese, which for those interested turns out to be 鼻中隔

I would be glad to go back into the trenches. The Texas Medical Board passed a regulation allowing physicians with expired licenses to return to active practice to meet increased staffing needs during this epidemic. I called them and the person I spoke to on the phone said this would apply only if the license had expired less than two years ago. Mine, unfortunately, expired much longer ago and would not be covered by this "licensing amnesty." Bill Bishop's Sinology blog yesterday had a very moving article about a 73-year old Chinese doctor (Li Lanjuan) who returned to the front lines in Wuhan. At an early age she was a "barefoot" village doctor. Subsequently became a specialist in viral illness. She was courageous and tireless. A real role model 好榜样。

“人有三急”

尿急 urinary urgency = really need to go to the loo 😆

How come you've had such a change of heart about living in Kunming? I mean, you've been there or elsewhere in China for several years. This virus thing is no doubt an inconvenience, but the restrictions associated with it cannot last indefinitely. Of course, there may be some as yet unknown factor that definitively puts paid to any idea of going back (such as visa restrictions), but that notwithstanding, surely this virus pandemic will just be a blip in your overall China experience?

Yes, A-levels, GCSEs and Scottish exams also cancelled in the UK, and International Baccalaureate and iGCSE are cancelled world-wide too. This creates a new problem of course — what you do when the results are used for university entry requirements. In the UK they're looking at coursework grades, predicted grades, and teachers' evaluations and they will award the certificate based on those with no exam taking place.

There isn't a way to export them, but there is a way to access them. Assuming you are on Windows you can open file explorer and go to: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\ChineseTextAnalyser\wordlists\cache Where USERNAME should be replaced with your computer username. Each file in that directory corresponds to each wordlist, and will be a .txt file with one word per line. NOTE: You should copy/open these files after closing CTA as recent changes might not have been written out to disk. Also note, these are not the actual saved wordlists themselves, just a cached copy that CTA uses so it doesn't have to rebuild the full list from the actual saved format. If you edit these files, those changes will be overwritten when CTA detects changes have been made and recreates the cached copy.

Also saw that APP crashed because, once this news came out, all the customers tried to help out by buying more luckin coffee 😂 With that kind of brand loyalty they might be ok. Unless this was also creative branding?!

It’s the most visible. 90% of non-chinese in HK central district are now wearing masks in public areas although the new case figures haven’t exploded. A nice change from a couple of weeks ago. Even if it may only have a slight effect, it’s better than having one extra case. Every place is doing a temperature check now. Customers in shops, at the post office, eating at lunch ... every person gets a temperature check with a device pointed at your forehead. It’s pretty inaccurate. I had two checks within the space of five minutes and had a temperature difference of 1 degree being hypothermic for one of them. I suppose it catches people who have a raging fever but I doubt many of those will be out and about. Dubious on the spot effectiveness but the public are happy to comply. In restaurants, there now also has to be spacing between people so every other table can’t be used. I was at McDonalds and got a bit concerned with the lady coughing into her tissue a few times (and not the discreet type of cough) two tables away. It was even more surprising when another customer asked to sit on the same table as me to eat his food. We are limited to no more than four people to a table. I finished up quickly and left. Relatives ask me about working in the medical facility as a perceived risky environment. With the low case rates and the amount of screening going on, my workplace is very safe. After all, when standing next to someone in public, we don’t ask if they have a fever, recent travel, got a fever or cough etc whereas we do that at hospital. However, in those severely affected places around the world, medical environments are high risk areas. I have suggested to a couple of people to shave off their beards. From my perspective, beards can harbour viral material with a big surface area and the face will be less easy to clean - it is not evidence based but an action based on trying to think of being comprehensive. The suggestion was taken very well and the wife of one of them was very happy not to need to moan at her husband! The frequent cleaning of common surfaces in Hong Kong is good. Every hour or couple of hours. Lift buttons , door handles etc. No doubt some areas are less good at it. I don’t think that’s so easy to be comprehensive in western cities. The HK government was pretty quick on stopping schools and implementing work from home. Kids haven’t been to school for over two months now. That would account for a big decrease in public transport usage.

I can think of a couple of other reasons, though there may be more. First, the city is compact enough and the number of daily new cases few enough -- around 40 recently -- so that tracing and isolating contacts remains feasible. Second, there were some 300 deaths from SARS in Hong Kong, so everyone knew what this could become and took precautions from the start. Without that history, I think people elsewhere were largely caught off guard by the seriousness of the epidemic, and began to react too late.

One way is to find a teacher who talks to you normal like. A big problem is often studying hard in class, then heading to China and finding nobody really talks like your teacher in real life. Except on CCTV news.

Hello everyone! I am the developer of this tool, and roddy invited me to join this discussion. First, big thanks to tysond for this great explanation of how to work with WAB and creating this topic! And thanks philwhite for sharing the info. tysond made a great work of describing how to use the app, so I have just a few additionals notes: -- Pay attention, that once you have subtitles (you downloaded them or created yourself) -- you can hide them. Sounds illogical? But from my experience of learning English it is useful to listen without seeing text, and only when you are lost, click to peer into it. -- If you have subtitles that has approximately right time, but imperfect, you may prefer to choose "Subtitles don't affect phrase selection" option in Settings, Subtitles tab. -- Subtitles Editor has "Shift Time" button on its toolbar to shift timing of current and all subs after it. For more editing options use Aegisub, as tysond recommended. -- There are some basic functionality for repetition inside the WAB -- see "Bookmarks and Grades" section of User Guide: http://www.povalyaev.com/WorkAudioBook/How-to-use--Bookmarks(Windows).aspx For more options, I think the Anki is better. Feel free to ask questions. I am glad that more people use the app to learn more languages!

I'm on a lovely long holiday in Greater China. On the basis that if it's greater, I should go see it. Reminds me, in China, smoking is worse for your health.