Cool Phrase of the Day

见机行事 - Play it by ear

In this case, think of 机 as meaning system. To play it by ear is to see what the system or pattern is and then proceed(行事). I think this sums up how I am going about learning Chinese. :-)

Is it my imagination or does 机 show up everywhere? 飞机， 手机，， 危机， 等等

A Photo/Video Exploration of 烦(煩)

So, I forgot to actually show each component for 煩 separately in the video to explain the whole thing but the point was to make a video reminder of the two components that make up this character, 火 and 页 (fire and page). It's a pretty simple character but I had to start somewhere, right? This is my first time using Windows Movie Maker so please...be kind. :-P

Postscript: My windows language translator thingy aka "Chinese (simplified) Microsoft pinyin IME" will only give me the traditional form of 煩 and not 烦 (I've copied this simplified version in from Nciku). Not sure the reason for this as I'm pretty sure most characters in its database are simplified as they are supposed to be.

Hmph.

A Challenge (一点儿很酷得课文！）

What does this text from an ancient Chinese scroll say?

迪士尼 (Disney)

Check out this fun page on Youtube by WeiFangX in China who has posted a number of videoclips from Disney movies in Chinese, some Cantonese some Mandarin...but probably most or all of them have subtitles. She has such a cute background image on her page.

Here is one of my favorites, from Mulan 2 (which I've never seen before)...
花木兰２ - Lesson Number One (Mandarin Chinese)

Insanity in Mandarin?

Video Notes from Nciku

Nciku, my favorite Chinese dictionary, is adding video animations to their definitions. For some words, you can already click on the video link and see a demonstration of the meaning of that word. They seem to be particularly targeting their new video definitions at explaining the difference between two or more words that might otherwise seem similar if not the same. I've also found some other Chinese software and such online but won't post just anything I come across, just the best...or the good stuff anyway. :-)

Dialects, Music, and Memory

Rhythmic Mandarin isn't a free resource but I thought it was certainly an amusing one. There are several demo audio samples available to listen to. I noticed a number of differences between the words common in Mandarin used in the Hong Kong vs. what I am used to from mainland Nanjing, Beijing, and Shanghai. I think they have a good idea however using music to help them to learn the language and aid the memory. It was fun to listen to anyway.