MetaFilter posts tagged with mandarin

Goodbye, "Leih Hou Ma," Hello "Ni Hao Ma!"

zarq — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:57:09 -0800

"Chinatown" communities across the United States (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco) are undergoing a shift in linguistic identity, as recent immigrants are more likely to natively speak Mandarin (the official spoken language of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan,) instead of Cantonese. Also see these anecdotal reports about similar changes in Vancouver and Oakland, CA. Good news for the tri-literate: signs like this may soon become commonplace. :) The Language Atlas of China The PopUp Chinese Podcast and Arch Chinese site provide basic Mandarin lessons. Also see: Mango, ZhongWen and LiveMocha

One Minute Languages

sveskemus — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:34:32 -0800

At One Minute Languages you can learn greetings, talking about names, counting, and more in Catalan, Danish, French, German, Irish, Japanese, Luxembourgish, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Russian.

Evolution : Gorilla to Monkey

mannequito — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:21:00 -0800

Damon Albarn’s career reads like a roadmap to some musical no-man's land: start a pop band, turn into an indie/hip-hop/dub “virtual” group, followed by a supergroup featuring Tony Allen and Paul Simonon, and throw in an album of Malian guitar music for good measure. Not enough variety? The latest effort, Monkey - Journey to the West, took 4 years to prepare and debuted last summer at the Manchester International Festival. The accompanying soundtrack is out today in North America. (previously)

Lao wai!

banishedimmortal — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 10:33:11 -0800

American businessman "stranded" in China. Now safe back in Seattle, Eugene Nelson could barely restrain his tears as he told his harrowing tale of accidently being put on a flight to "remote" Western China ("literally 200 miles south of the Mongolian border"!), "damn near fight[ing his] way out" of a brothel, and barely making his way back to civilization. While Eugene seems a bit unresourceful, his story does illustrate how difficult travel in China can be without Mandarin skills, despite the supposed prevalence of English speakers. Maybe someday his employer can hire one of the legions of students (and toddlers) now studying Mandarin. Or maybe they won't need to.

Mandarin Farewell

grandcrewno2 — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 05:22:55 -0800

Mandarin: 1998-2005, R.I.P. (warning: 21 MB QT Movie) A farewell slide show with musical accompaniment by/to a great Denton, Texas band: Mandarin. Many of the images are of Denton and the surrounding area, tour photos and various other bric a brac captured beautifully by Peter Salisbury, the bass player who compiled the slideshow. They were my friends and Denton was my home for many years. Their music will be missed by many.