Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

[Wurstmann]

I live in Shanghai and hear both 打电话给我 and 给我打电话.
As for the numbers, I don't know about 110 specifically, but for other numbers I always hear for example 一百五 for 150.
When talking about height it's also 一米九 for 1.9 m.

[alexkelbo]

... I always hear for example 一百五 for 150 ...

OK, that's confusing. What do you hear for 105 then?

[snowflake]

Wurstmann, thanks.

Alexraasch, 105 should be 一百零五.

[smallwhite]

In general, with Chinese, if a 萬/千/百 etc "place" word is omitted, I think you can safely assume it's the one immediately to the right. So if the 萬 place is read out and then a place is omitted, the omitted place would be 千.

三十八 38
三百八 380
三千八 3800
三萬八 38,000
三億八 380,000,000

三塊八 $3.80
三毛八 $0.38
三米八 3.80m

"三萬八" can't mean 30,800 and 30,080 and 30,008 all at the same time or else how would anyone understand! So, 三萬八 can only mean 38,000. Or 3.8萬. And using the same logic:

三萬八 = 3.8萬 = 3.8 x 10000 = 38,000
三千八 = 3.8千 = 3.8 x 1000 = 3,800
三百八 = 3.8百 = 3.8 x 100 = 380
三十八 = 3.8十 = 3.8 x 10 = 38

But that's just my interpretation, Mandarin is not my mother tongue, and there's a lot of regional difference within the Chinese-speaking world.

[alexkelbo]

Thanks for the summary. I haven't done much numbers in my Mandarin studies yet, so this helps.

PS: Why the sad face in your signature?

[smallwhite]

PS: Why the sad face in your signature?

The two progress bars are meant to be read together, to represent my goal of creating 30 new cards per day. Right now, the cards bar is shorter than the days bar, meaning I'm behind I guess it's not clear enough, and the bars don't even show on my phone, so I guess I should change it. To something not so depressing, at least!

[snowflake]

I’m thinking about taking classes in Taiwan next year that cover some specialized vocabulary. Part of me is says this is an insane idea. I don’t tend to do well in language classes and on top of that my memory retention for Mandarin is pretty bad. I also already have resources to cover this type of material and can easily get more. Then I think about doing this to be able to say that I did it, a sort of benchmark. Taking the HSK or TOCFL doesn’t have as much value for me as those tests do for others. When I mentioned the idea of taking these classes, my husband and overseas chat partner separately were taken aback and asked why. When my husband saw the text books then he thought it could be valuable. Given my memory retention issues, I will have to study some of the material beforehand. I also will need to switch focus to traditional characters as some of the textbooks do not have simplified character editions. And a lot of the books available here for this subject area use traditional characters.

Since I have to be concerned about the standard body of knowledge for the intermediate and advanced levels to pass the schools’ evaluation to take those classes, I’m thinking to prep as if sitting for the HSK and/or TOCFL tests. The AP test is reportedly equivalent to HSK 3 with some level 4 vocabulary so that can be a “warm-up”. Anyhow, there are be a good number of practice tests available for these so that should be very helpful.

I’ve started looking for my graded traditional Chinese readers and of course cannot find all of them.

[lorinth]

Hello Snowflake,

graded traditional Chinese readers

Any title or suggestions? I'll be in Taipei just for 1 week next month, so I'd like to purchase some while I'm there...

[snowflake]

The graded readers I was referring to are the older Far Eastern Publications Series books. From what my friends and friends of my kids have said, learning characters in both the mainland and Taiwan seems to be what I consider as brute force. I don’t expect to find graded readers overseas which are similar to the Far Eastern Publications, Chinese Breeze, new Mandarin Companion series, etc. Or are you looking for primary school readers?

[mminer]

Since you seem to be very involved with Taiwan, have you contacted the Taiwan consulate in Chicago? Your profile says Midwest USA, so I'm assuming Chicago is the closest for you. I'm not sure if it's officially called an consulate, for political reasons, but it functions like one. I'm sure they would be happy to help you out with your language needs, or at least they could point you in the right direction.