Kellen Parker, who has both been featured on and contributed to Lost Laowai over the years, is spearheading a new project called Phonemica, which aims to "record spoken stories in every one of the thousands of varieties of Chinese in order to preserve both stories and language for future generations."
We're a small group of linguists (and a growing group of volunteers) that believe that there is tremendous val…
After my last post for Lost Laowai, where I expressed my annoyance with the irritating and pointless public announcements in Chinese public transport, I will now move on to another aspect of life in China which I find irritating: the tendency of the Chinese to address foreigners in English even when it would be easier for both to speak Chinese.
This particular irritation is perhaps not shared by all the foreig…
I'm a busy guy. Or at least that's been my long-running excuse as to why I don't spend more time practicing my Chinese. Fortunately Skritter is making it harder for me to live by that self-defeating mantra with the release of their new iOS app.
Out just yesterday, the Skritter mobile app is set to revolutionize the way we study written Chinese. Already a popular browser-based resource, the app puts touch character…
Our Mandarin Monday interview for this week is none other than well-known blogger, podcast host and translator, Brendan O'Kane.
One of the original founders of Paper Republic, Brendan is a host of the Mandarin Chinese language learning podcast Popup Chinese, and teaches a course in Chinese-English literary translation at IES Abroad Beijing.
He also (and far too infrequently!) blogs at bokane.org (English) and 在…
I've taught English to two-year-olds in split bottom pants. The trick there is not letting them sit on your lap for storytime.
I've taught English to bartenders and asked them to repeat after me. Bud...Wise...Er...
I've taught businessmen and doctors, flight attendants and fry cooks.
I've taught Little Emperors in large classes, I've taught university students and training school students and done English Co…
For this week's Mandarin Monday, we've hit up the juggernaut of Chinese learning, John Pasden.
John surely doesn't need much introduction for anyone studying Chinese. In China for more than a decade, John's been mastering the language for most of that time, including securing a masters in applied linguistics in Shanghai. He pens the popular Sinosplice blog, oversees academic content and serves as host at ChinesePo…
Wha?! Mandarin Monday on a Wednesday? What the hell is going on. Yeah, I screwed up and totally forgot. Hopefully a bit of mid-week mandarin is just as good though.
For the third installment in our weekly Mandarin Monday series that discusses Chinese learning we've hit up David Flynn. Dave is originally from the UK, he's been living in Taiwan and learning Mandarin Chinese for the last five years. He founded and ru…
What follows is the second in our weekly Mandarin Monday series, that discusses Chinese learning. The series will deliver advice through interviews with long-time Mandarin learners, sharing resources and discussing learning techniques.
This week we speak to Kellen Parker, co-founder of Sinoglot, an organisation of Chinese linguistics researchers. Kellen is an American linguistics researcher who's spent the last fe…
In a recent post, the Atlantic's James Fallows talks about a song and video by a group of Harvard Chinese language students. The song, "Hāfó/Harvard Welcomes You! 哈佛歡迎你!", has the American students singing in Chinese, praising their studies and teachers in Chinese Bb - Elementary Modern Chinese.
Fallows draws a good comparison between the style of song and 北京欢迎你, the song that super-saturated every inch of China i…
London, not quite my hometown, but a city I know very well, has its own peculiar culture called Cockney, which is evident as an accent, in traditional clothing, and in the idiosyncratic 'Cockney rhyming slang'.
The Cockney accent and mannerisms were famously mis-represented by the actor Dick van Dyke in the Mary Poppins movie, and has also been butchered by Johnny Depp as the pirate Jack Sparrow. But forget all t…
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