What's this word I keep hearing on the radio

I spend much of my working day with Taiwanese radio on in the background (I’m in the UK and moving to Taiwan in August).

I can recognise about one word in a few hundred at the moment, not surprisingly, but I keep hearing this one word a lot and I was wondering if anyone could guess what it might be.

It sounds like ying4wei2, but I could be getting the tones wrong. It isn’t ying1wen2.

Because? That’s why?

Thanks Divea. If that’s what it is, am I hearing the tones correctly do you know?

No can’t help with the written tones. Sorry.

If it’s because it’s:

因為
Yīnwèi
Yin1wei4

I’d agree that it’s probably yin1 wei4 (“because”).

Thanks guys. Now I just need to get better with tones and learn the other 99.9% of words I can’t understand. :slight_smile:

I’ve been in Taiwan for a year working full time / studying chinese part time, and am still pretty bad at recognizing tones. It seems that I do better to try and make sense of words without paying too much attention to the tones themselves and just pay attention to the way the words sound and try to make the connection. Tones are merely hints. For the most part, spending effort memorizing words is way more valuable than trying to pick out tones in conversations. The more words you know, the more connections you can make, the easier it is to hear the tones, etc etc. Plus, a lot of native speakers don’t even use all the right tones anyways. Especially the older generation.

In conclusion: Turn off the radio, pick up flash cards. I am quite sure that no matter how much you listen to the radio, you could have been further by memorizing 1 word a day. At least then you are guaranteed to know 200 more words by the time you get to TW.

And they’re using it at the beginning of each sentence which is why it’s so prominent. That’s a good way to immerse yourself with the language, I used to work construction jobs listening to Chinese tapes on my headphones all day, everyday because i knew i was heading over to China. I really caught shit from the other meatheads for that! I really suggest learning Zhu Yin Fu Hao/ Bo Po Mo Fo it will really help you replicate the sounds of Mandarin and familiarize yourself with character strokes. Pin Yin is just bullshit, I learned that too in the States. Good Luck!

Hanyu Pinyin is fine, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it and it is far more useful than BoPoMoFo overall (although BPMF is a tad more useful in Taiwan I guess), you just have to learn it well from the start.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about Chinese in Taiwan, the heavily misguided belief that pinyin is somehow inferior to bopomofo. This belief is “just bullshit”. This anti-china movement is probably responsible for 木柵 to be spelled “Mu zha” or “Mu cha” or “Mu jha” depending on the street sign you are looking at.

You should learn the sounds and how to associate it with ZhuYin/PinYin/Wade/Yale/? enjoy a handy chart: eng.umd.edu/~nsw/chinese/pinyin.htm

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about Chinese in Taiwan, the heavily misguided belief that pinyin is somehow inferior to bopomofo. This belief is “just bullshit”. This anti-china movement is probably responsible for 木柵 to be spelled “Muzha” or “Muzha” or “Mujha (Muzha)” depending on the street sign you are looking at.

You should learn the sounds and how to associate it with ZhuYin/PinYin/Wade/Yale/? enjoy a handy chart: eng.umd.edu/~nsw/chinese/pinyin.htm[/quote]

Well it was my opinion based on learning both systems and I found that Zhu Ying was way more helpful. There is no confusion with sounds when there is a symbol that doesn’t resemble a previously learned language system.And being a new writing system (as with any newly formed written system it is very close to the spoken sound)
Zhu Ying also has the basic stroke movements for classic Chinese characters. My pronunciation improved drastically after learning it. Also pin ying is worthless if the OP moved to Taiwan-that is until China repatriates us and makes Taiwan part of the Peoples Republic of Happiness.
Actually there is a world-wide Anti-Taiwan thing going on where most universities have to teach Pin Yin or face the wrath of all-loving Mother China. And that ain’t bullshit. I’ll try to get my friend who is finishing his Phd. in Chinese studies at Princeton to post here, we are in agreement about the subject.

Also if you learn to read Chinese characters you don’t need to pay attention to the fucked up romanization in this country which has more to do with screwed up local politics than it does with being anti-mainland.
Thanks for the chart!

No matter what you should learn all the sounds, but whether you learn to think of 高 as ㄍㄠ, Gao, Kao, or Gau is irrelevant, as long as it sounds like 高 in your head whenever you read your preferred writing method.

even with “bopomofo” does ㄏ+ㄨ+ㄟ really make 會? Not in my book. Untuitively, to me, that sounds more like “hwee”, so in the end all these are just tools to get you to the end result. I’m not doubting that bopomofo works better for you, but it was definitely not worth my time, and I’m happy with pinyin.

If a word is written in Hanyu Pinyin, I know I will pronounce it correctly. It works the best for me. I only find bopomofo useful when discussing pronunciation with locals or reading obscure characters annotated with bopomofo. It has no utility for me as a typing or learning tool.

Perhaps not as helpful as you may have thought: “yin” has no “g”! :slight_smile:

Actually, Hanyu Pinyin is very useful since it has been the official system since Jan 2009, and pretty much every street sign and MRT station in Taipei is spelled in HYPY. The freeway signs are being converted to HYPY. All divisions (townships, cities, etc.) below the County and Municipality levels are spelled in HYPY. Wade-Giles is becoming a thing of the past, and that egregious mistake called Tongyong Pinyin is thankfully being phased out.

Pinyin comes with a set of rules for writing Chinese without characters. Zhuyin is simply just a method to mark character pronunciations. Why compare them?

Thanks for the correction. You proved how much Pin Yin sucks. Just joking.
I’m going down south for 2-28 weekend so I’ll experiment and ask directions using both systems and see what I get. I agree with you on Wades Giles and feel that the country should just commit to one system for their public signs. I guess I was considering it as a learning /communication tool. Go write down
"Ni Kande dong Zhong gua hua ma? then wander down the street in Taiwan and see how many people say to you “I’m sorry I don’t read English!”

Yeah Bubba as I said BPMF might have slightly more utility than Pinyin here, but of course if you can speak or write Chinese using BPMF is mostly irrelevant.

Um…What? Zhuyin and Pinyin provide the exact same function. Zhuyin does it with 37 symbols, Pinyin does it with 26 romanized characters.

Um…What? Zhuyin and Pinyin provide the exact same function. Zhuyin does it with 37 symbols, Pinyin does it with 26 romanized characters.[/quote]

Wrong. There are a set of rules that say when to put spaces in between syllables and so on for pinyin. Zhuyin has none of this. I doubled checked this with a Taiwanese linguist awhile ago. 中文拼音正詞法基本規則