I’m watching the swimming comps in Beijing Olympics on a English-language channel.
There’s quite a few swimmers surnamed Zhou and Zhang.
The commentators have reduced both Zhou and Zhang to…
Shoo (rhymes with su)
Zhou I can understand… because you need some pinyin knowledge of Zh, but how do confuse shoo with zhang?
Just imagine if we sent a properly educated person to be an announcer. Their producer would probably correct them if they said it RIGHT. “No, no, it’s shoo!”
The fact is, nobody actually gives a shit what they’re called. Just like when it was the East Germans and the Russians roiding themselves up for the medal table. No-one gave a shit what the individual athletes were called in those days, either – “some consonant-heavy tonguetwister of a name” was more than enough.
Today the roided up kids are Chinese, and their names are no more important now than they were back then.
Well, you can’t roid up on all the sports in the olympics… anyways, testing is a lot tougher now. and they’ve cleaned up a lot in swimming.
I’m watching the women’s shooting.
Now that woman surnamed Guo… her name is now pronounced as Gu.
apparently, everything must rhyme with sue.
Oh, please don’t get me started. 
The worst person of them all is Bob Costas, who’s been commentating on the Olympics since 1890.
The comments I heard from him during the opening ceremonies made me wonder if he had done his J-school studies via correspondence.
Example: Introduces Iran as a country that antagonizes others. [sic]. Well, duh, but aren’t the Olympics about 17 days off from all the political BS, and true spirit?
I guess I’m naive…
hah, i was just listening to the commentators on women’s swimming, and this white Zimbabwean girl takes the gold.
The commentator then goes on to say what a basketcase country Zimbabwe is… as the anthem is being played, and that the girl trained in the States.
Slap.
Then, womens 10M air rifle.
I’m watching badminton, and now Zhang is being pronounced
Zang
Zeng
Chang (like Michael Chang).
by the SAME commentator. he’s not even trying now.
When I was in the UK, BBC broadcasters generally pronounced foreign names words fairly accurately compared with those on independent channels. I think it is because the BBC people can easily call through to the relevant section of the BBC World Service to get pronunciation advice from native speakers.
Sky News has a lovelly blond haired white lass presenter fluent in Mandarin doing intervies with people in their homes, and their views on the Beljing Olypmics.
Well done Sky NEws UK
[quote=“Satellite TV”]Sky News has a lovelly blond haired white lass presenter fluent in Mandarin doing intervies with people in their homes, and their views on the Beljing Olypmics.
Well done Sky NEws UK[/quote]
Got any clips?
[quote=“Juba”][quote=“Satellite TV”]Sky News has a lovelly blond haired white lass presenter fluent in Mandarin doing intervies with people in their homes, and their views on the Beljing Olypmics.
Well done Sky NEws UK[/quote]
Got any clips?[/quote]
No I don’t bother to record news or other content really. I should have perhaps but not really necessary.
Well, no surprises, considering they don’t even say Beijing correctly. They say it as though there were an s or a z in there somewhere. C’mon, it’s a freaking J, exactly the same as in English.
I’ve actually been glad to see less of Costas than normal, though the others aren’t that much better. At least for the most part at least one commentator knows something about the sport they’re commentating on, that’s better than it sometimes is. And yeah, I cringe every time they talk about Zhou or Zhang.
Sky News has a lovelly blond haired white lass presenter fluent in Mandarin doing intervies with people in their homes, and their views on the Beljing Olypmics.
Well done Sky NEws UK[/quote]
That’s a damn shame. Not that Sky News decided to do it CORRECTLY and professionally, but that the world’s greatest country can’t try to have some professional standards (read:irony). :s 
I wonder if that’s an Australian woman called Holly Williams. I studied Chinese with her at the ANU in Australia and ran into her recently, not realising, because I never see Sky news, that she’d been their head producer for the region based out of Beijing for eons. She recently quit to go back and do some study, but it sounds like the perfect guest gig.
HG
Sky News has a lovelly blond haired white lass presenter fluent in Mandarin doing intervies with people in their homes, and their views on the Beljing Olypmics.
Well done Sky NEws UK[/quote]
Oh, she’s lovely indeed!
A little bit off-topic, but a gymnastics coach criticizes the Chinese for using underage girls says:
Well… no duh. I think once you understand that as a fundamental principle to the Chinese mind, you’ve taken a huge step in understanding the Chinese and China.
[quote=“Jack Burton”]A little bit off-topic, but a gymnastics coach criticizes the Chinese for using underage girls says:
Well… no duh. I think once you understand that as a fundamental principle to the Chinese mind, you’ve taken a huge step in understanding the Chinese and China.[/quote]
I don’t know…if this is nominated for classic post, would that be racist? 
Well lets see, imagine if all these centuries China was not closed to the outside world? Safe in the ““knowledge”” that China was the center of the known universe. IF China had always been open to the outside world and Chinese had spread far and wide around the globe, the world today may be 2/3 of ethnic Chinese origin instead of the fifth of humanity today. Or at least a lot more people would be partially Chinese?
?
Tommy, what are you talking about?
There’s commentators mangling English and then there’s newspapers mixing up surnames and given names, sometimes being both right and wrong in the same article with the same name!
[quote=“sjcma”]Tommy, what are you talking about?
There’s commentators mangling English and then there’s newspapers mixing up surnames and given names, sometimes being both right and wrong in the same article with the same name![/quote]
I was just elaborating on the Chinese mind a bit in association with this quote:
Jack Burton wrote:
A little bit off-topic, but a gymnastics coach criticizes the Chinese for using underage girls says:
Quote:
“They are using half-people,” Karolyi said. “One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid.
Well… no duh. I think once you understand that as a fundamental principle to the Chinese mind, you’ve taken a huge step in understanding the Chinese and China.
unquote
And thinking that if the Chinese had NOT largely kept themselves to China, then? The worlds population will be largely of more Chinese origin (not saying thats a bad thing tho).
[quote=“tommy525”]Well lets see, imagine if all these centuries China was not closed to the outside world? Safe in the ““knowledge”” that China was the center of the known universe. IF China had always been open to the outside world and Chinese had spread far and wide around the globe, the world today may be 2/3 of ethnic Chinese origin instead of the fifth of humanity today. Or at least a lot more people would be partially Chinese?
?[/quote]
I’m really tired of reading Chinglish at work…
WTF are you trying to say. I don’t understand the words that are coming out of your mouth. Did you even read your post?
sentence fragments and non-sequitur - the hallmark of Chinglish.