So I was playing around on Kaixin001 and wound up writing this silly little story. It’s been proofread by lzh, so if you have any disputes regarding the grammar, direct your accusations at her (but good luck. With a couple of phrases I said, but no, this is what I want to be saying. She said, No. You’re not allowed. End of story. And that tone of voice….). Any criticisms of style, character development, anything like that… well, it’s just me being silly and playing around, so forget it. Anyway, here it is, in homage to this morning’s autumnity:
早上六点多一点，太阳大爷慢慢地起床，红头发老爷们也慢慢地起来。太阳大爷和红头发老爷们互相说一声“早上好”。寒冷干燥的西北风吹过来，把灰色的云都赶 走了。外面那些越来越虚弱的树哆嗦着把红叶抖落下来。快八点的时候，红头发老爷们出门了，他上了自行车，向西北风那位冷酷的家伙说“千万不要欺负我”，向 太阳大爷说，“帮我暖和一下“，然后骑车上课去。过天桥往北瞭，红头发老爷们看到了北山卫兵严严肃肃地站着。在他的背后那大丑怪物冬季大哥正准备从北边冻 冰的荒地往南来袭击可怜的市民。爬上了一教的五层，红头发老爷们往西看跟西山卫兵打招呼。西山卫兵比他在北边的兄弟还踏实一点，稍微温柔一点。西山、北山 两位卫兵拥抱着城市，太阳大爷把阳光撒向城市的每个地方，三位都对市民说“西风那家伙又来了，冬季那老混蛋也快过来了，请市民小心点，好好准备“。
Oh, and while I’m at it, I’ll admit: I have only one friend on Kaixin001, and that is my wife. I’ll quite happily send off invitations to those wanting one, but if you’re already on Kaixin001, add me please….
Chris-
How do you like kaixin001 so far? The only Chinese social networking site I’ve been sucked into so far is Xiaonei. It’s basically the same as facebook, but I am finding that a lot of my Chinese friends don’t use it.
Ben, it’s hard to say right now. Having only one friend- my wife- doesn’t really help show the potential of the site. However, I do prefer the lay-out, or set-up. It’s much more elegantly simple than Facebook. I dunno, Facebook and Kaixin001 seem to get the stereotypes all backwards, with Facebook’s lay-out being busy and noisy and Kaixin001 going for elegance and simplicity.
There’s a lot of Wang Bo’s in Beijing… but there’s only one 席麦卡 in Shanghai. Add me, please!
Done.
写得好，王博！太厉害了！
不知你学汉字有没有同样的体会。对于我来说，当新碰到一个英语单词，查字典知道了意思后，感觉要在会话或文章中用到至少一次后才算真正掌握。以此类推，我想用外语写文章对提高语言能力很有帮助。
我不知你是以何种方式来写中文。从1995年来美后到2003年写博客起，我基本没写过中文。2003年左右开始写一点的时候，我发现了一个有趣的现象：我很不习惯在电脑上直接写，要用笔在纸上起草后输入电脑，到现在还基本上如此。短的东西，现在可以强迫自己直接打字。长一点的，还是喜欢先用笔起草。我想这大概和输入的速度有关系。你是用中文输入直接写得吗？还是要先在纸上起草？
红头发老爷们儿(ye mei’er, not ye men’er, just like chuar you blogged earlier)汉学家横空出世，在下领教了！ 再接再厉，加油！
Mr Ji, allow me to get some tea before I reply…
Actually, I would usually write on paper first, then type, but I suspect for reasons different from yours. I am well used to speaking Chinese all the time, and think and dream in Chinese, but I’ve not yet gotten used to writing directly in Chinese. Somehow it’s a different skill and it causes me a lot of trouble. I usually write on paper first because I’m frustrated with how much I rely on technology (cellphones and computers in particular) and how badly this technology erodes my ability to write the old-fashioned way. Technology seems to be slowly rendering pen and paper obsolete, but writing by hand is still a very necessary skill and likely will be well into our grandkid’s lifetimes. Usually I then get my wife to correct my grammar and ‘spelling’, then type it up. Yesterday, though, I just started typing on a whim, I was just playing around. I still got my wife to correct my grammar before I hit ‘publish’, but I was very much just playing around on the spur of the moment.
I dunno, I’m a very conservative language learner, and although I appreciate and use the new-fangled technological tools, I just can’t bring myself to abandon good old fashioned pen, paper and books. There’s a certain romance to the old methods that no amount of technology can replace, and I’m convinced that the old methods have a much more solid grounding in real world pedagogy than all this new gimmicky stuff. I’m much more likely to remember a word I learned the old-fashioned way than one I quickly checked in an electronic dictionary.
I agree completely with the learning of new words. It’s one thing to hear or read a word, but you need to use it to really master it.
And sorry for replying in English, but as I said, I’m not used to writing directly in Chinese, that’s something I really need to work hard on, and I just got back from Friday lunch with the boys, which doesn’t help. Thanks very much for the encouragement, writing is by far my weakest point and something I need to and will continue to work hard on.
Good point on thinking and writing with paper and pen. I am with you.
I need to explore other Chinese entry methods, wubi and such. Maybe I can do that faster than Pinyin…
Yeah, I should try wubi some time, too, not because I might write any faster, just because it might be a cool skill to know.