[quote=“cranky laowai”] FWIW, I warned Lonely Planet against that system before they put out their latest Mandarin phrasebook, for all the good that did. But I don’t think they’ll be repeating the mistake of omitting Pinyin again; they got a lot of bad reviews over that.
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I should think so. I used the old lonely planet in Pinyin so I couldn’t believe it when I saw that they had changed to some other idiotic system.
Pinyin should be promoted at every opportunity. These cards would be one such opportunity. Include some notes on the non-intutive letters on the back of one of the cards and explain that the rest are roughly as English and that’s it. Settled.
[li]ar/lyung[/li]
[li]sun (yes, S-U-N)[/li]
[li]sir (this book is really heavy on the R’s)[/li]
[li]woo[/li][/ol]The whole book is like that.[/quote]
That makes me want to punch the person that invented that in the ovaries. Straight shot, right to the babymaker. Even if they don’t have one.
[quote=“StuartCa”][quote=“Maoman”]Hey guys - Taffy, Goose Egg and I want to create some giveaway cards to promote Taiwanease.com, and we’d like to have essential Mandarin phrases on one side. (The other side of course would promote Taiwanease more explicitly through logo/artwork, etc.)
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Unless I’m missing something, the point of these cards isn’t to teach anyone Chinese, but to advertise Taiwanese. The Chinese Phrase is a gimmic to encourage people not to view it as just another business and file it in the bin.
Hanyu Pinyin with tones will get the message accross, pronunciation is always going to be a problem unless you have time to learn it.
In order to make these cards “keepable” I would suggest funny phrases that can be used during dinner after a beer or to. Nothing insulting or graphic but mildly funny that may get a laugh out of the locals who are entertaining their guests.[/quote]
It wasn’t meant as a “trick”.
When I first landed in Taipei many years ago business cards were one of the ways I survived the first few months here. I collected business’ address cards so that I could somewhat accurately make my way around town. On many of the cards I would write essential phrases that could get me through whatever “communicating” I happened to be doing there. Later I expanded these to include more survival phrases. I still have those cards somewhere, indexed by Taipei district and activity.
Might I had that any non-english speaker might also have dificulty in reading this. For me, I know how to say the “r” in many ways (because I speak portuguese, french, english, spanish and italian) and the mandarin one is not the worst.
Another thing that strikes me is the fact that most of the time I cannot say if they are speaking “b” or “p” (as basically, bu yao) I would allways say it as “pu iao” (well that is how I say it). So anyone care to explain what is the sound for the “i” and for the “y”.
Anyway, my wife tries to teach me how to say the sounds, and it is incredible that I cannot read a damn thing. Simply because I am not an english reader - I would allways read it as latin sound (well, I also get my revenge when trying to teach her portuguese).
