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sid_guardian2019-02-19 08:48 pm
mecurtin) wrote in sid_guardian2019-02-19 08:48 pm
Entry tags:
Language confusion
[to the tune of "Land of Confusion"]
I'm only up to Episode 9 so far, but I already have SO MANY QUESTIONS. And feelings!!
As you probably recall, in Episode 6 Zhao Yun Lan says, in the English subtitles:
(How does one extract the Chinese subtitle characters for running through Google translate etc? Is there a trick to it?)
Anyway, I was quite startled because what he says while the screen is saying "Just like that" sounds to my ear like je ne sais pas, French for "I don't know". (I am, or used to be, fluent in French.)
Is this a trick of my ears/brain? Is he actually speaking French, as an American might who jokes, "Affected? Moi?" Is there a more idiomatic English translation that "Just like that"?
So many questions! I'm actually really tempted to look for a way to learn ONLY spoken Chinese: I'm over 60, and I don't have the time or neurons to learn Chinese writing.
I've never listened to so much Chinese in a row before, and I'm struck by how different it sounds in Guardian than what I overhear (not infrequently) in central NJ. In particular, the actors' accents seem much less tonal and less nasal than what I hear around me.
In a bit of dialogue from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Michelle Yeoh sounds to my ear as though she's speaking the same dialect (or maybe topolect) as they do in Guardian, while Zhang Ziyi has a little bit of the tonal, nasal quality familiar to my ear. In some "Chinese on the Street" interviews, done in Beijing, there seem to me to be a range of speech styles, mostly much more tonal & nasal than in Guardian.
Is there a distinct "acting dialect" in Chinese, like the old Mid-Atlantic accent in English? Or is my ear just not attuned to what's actually going on?
I'm only up to Episode 9 so far, but I already have SO MANY QUESTIONS. And feelings!!
As you probably recall, in Episode 6 Zhao Yun Lan says, in the English subtitles:
I don't know!
Just like that
(How does one extract the Chinese subtitle characters for running through Google translate etc? Is there a trick to it?)
Anyway, I was quite startled because what he says while the screen is saying "Just like that" sounds to my ear like je ne sais pas, French for "I don't know". (I am, or used to be, fluent in French.)
Is this a trick of my ears/brain? Is he actually speaking French, as an American might who jokes, "Affected? Moi?" Is there a more idiomatic English translation that "Just like that"?
So many questions! I'm actually really tempted to look for a way to learn ONLY spoken Chinese: I'm over 60, and I don't have the time or neurons to learn Chinese writing.
I've never listened to so much Chinese in a row before, and I'm struck by how different it sounds in Guardian than what I overhear (not infrequently) in central NJ. In particular, the actors' accents seem much less tonal and less nasal than what I hear around me.
In a bit of dialogue from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Michelle Yeoh sounds to my ear as though she's speaking the same dialect (or maybe topolect) as they do in Guardian, while Zhang Ziyi has a little bit of the tonal, nasal quality familiar to my ear. In some "Chinese on the Street" interviews, done in Beijing, there seem to me to be a range of speech styles, mostly much more tonal & nasal than in Guardian.
Is there a distinct "acting dialect" in Chinese, like the old Mid-Atlantic accent in English? Or is my ear just not attuned to what's actually going on?
no subject
As for looking up stuff on Google Translate: I open up Pleco on my phone, scribble what I think I see into the "draw here" screen, and then the easy mode would be to copypaste and place into Google Translate, but I actually just look at the pinyin, open up Google Translate on my desktop, use the pinyin to write the hanzi using Google's IME, and copypaste the hanzi into MDBG. (I have enough grasp of the grammar that this is viable, and I prefer MDBG's dictionary to Pleco's.)
no subject