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Lädt ... Dreaming in Chinese (2011)von Deborah Fallows
Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. I totally recommend this book to people who are interested in China and the Chinese language (especially Mandarin). I already knew about 75% of what she was talking about, but the vocab I did learn from reading it was very valuable, and the way she talks about the language and the culture is very engaging and I would say similar to my own experiences. ( ) Anecdotally written -- it almost reminded me of blog posts, although I don't know that it started out as a blog. Interesting, but slight. Recommended if you are interested in China or Chinese. If you know a lot about languages or linguistics you are likely to be disappointed, as it does not explore the Chinese language in much depth. 3.5 stars rounded up, because my interest waxed and waned depending on the topic, but overall I was pleased to find something like this, which I've been looking for ever since I started trying to learn Chinese: a book written by a native English speaker, with decent writing skills, who through hard-earned experience has grown familiar enough with the language and culture to go into detail with what makes learning Mandarin frustrating and fascinating, how it puts you through a life-long wringer but occasionally feels deeply rewarding. I appreciate that pinyin and tone marks were used throughout the book, and characters provided when relevant. I enjoyed meeting someone who liked to geek out and muse about the characters and components, much like I did. (How many times had I bored my friends with the story of how popcorn was literally "exploding rice flower"?) Wish the author had a running article somewhere where she muses on a word or cultural tidbit for the day. If it were a podcast I would totally subscribe. Deborah Fallows writes a simple and sentimental book correlating the Chinese language and her experience with it to her views of the culture itself, as a foreigner who lived there for three years. It is part travel memoir, linguistic essay, and Chinese cultural blog. What's impressive is not necessarily the book itself or its writing---it's that the author was able to conquer learning and using one of the most difficult languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, to learn, write, speak, and understand. And she does so with humble respect, quiet confidence, and affection. This book is a motivational piece to one who might consider tackling the language or backpacking to China for more than a week. Its cultural implications are as honest and politically correct as a foreigner can be, who attempts to integrate him or herself into the culture itself. It's a soft introduction to the ebb and flow of the life lived in Shanghai and Beijing and a kind discourse on learning a foreign language---its frustrations and its joys. Anecdotally written -- it almost reminded me of blog posts, although I don't know that it started out as a blog. Interesting, but slight. Recommended if you are interested in China or Chinese. If you know a lot about languages or linguistics you are likely to be disappointed, as it does not explore the Chinese language in much depth. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Deborah Fallows has spent a lot of her life learning languages and traveling around the world. But nothing prepared her for the surprises of learning Mandarin--China's most common language--or the intensity of living in Shanghai and Beijing. Over time, she realized that her struggles and triumphs in studying learning the language of her adopted home provided small clues to deciphering behavior and habits of its people, and its culture's conundrums. As her skill with Mandarin increased, bits of the language--a word, a phrase, an oddity of grammar--became windows into understanding romance, humor, protocol, relationships, and the overflowing humanity of modern China.Fallows learned, for example, that the abrupt, blunt way of speaking which Chinese people sometimes use isn't rudeness, but is, in fact, a way to acknowledge and honor the closeness between two friends. She learned that English speakers' trouble with hearing or saying tones--the variations in inflection that can change a word's meaning--is matched by Chinese speakers' inability not to hear tones, or to even take a guess at understanding what might have been meant when foreigners misuse them.Dreaming in Chinese is the story of what Deborah Fallows discovered about the Chinese language, and how that helped her make sense of what had at first seemed like the chaos and contradiction of everyday life in China. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers-AutorDeborah Fallowss Buch Dreaming in Chinese wurde im Frührezensenten-Programm LibraryThing Early Reviewers angeboten. Aktuelle DiskussionenKeineBeliebte Umschlagbilder
Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)306Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and InstitutionsKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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