I have a rather weird question...

[LiranTheWizard]

I have a rather weird question...

What this forum is all about? I'm trying to get the idea: let people jot down their thoughts in English? Encourage the use of English in order to build-up some confidence using it as a way of cumminicating with other people? Just curious to know... I hope Tapuz will open a new forum dedicated to Chinese, the language I like the most! Till then, hope I'll be able to find some Chinese guy down the street...

 

[ploper]

Amm

What this forum is about: http://www.tapuz.co.il/tapuzforum/main/forumpage.asp?forum=1603&firstmsg=75 But you can just read some threads in here to understand what this forum is made for! Chinese? How the hell can a man who is not a Chinese speaker from birth want to learn or even like that language? I don't know... But everyone has their own fetish. hehe Try to find some Chinese emigrant. good luck with that. And I? I am just keeping try to improve my English Ploper​

 

[LiranTheWizard]

Now I recall I've read the rules...

About my Chinese affairs - I think the best think to do under these circumstances would be to engage in some Chinese social gathering. The last one I attended, was at the Chinese new year celebration organized by the Department of East-Asian studies at the Tel-Aviv university where I study. The problem with Chinese tends to be the fact thet they have too many words that sound the same except for the tone used in order to pronounce them, and I know many people, who this thing drives them crazy (to say the least...). I'll give you an example: Suppose yuo have the word "ma" pronounced in four different tones. With each tone the meaning changes, so you have: 1st tone = Mother (as in Ma Ma) 2nd tone = A question particle added to the end of sentences in order to form a question 3rd = Horse 4th = To curse Sounds great, doesn't it? Personally, I don't have any peculiar problem with this issue - I think this is what makes the language stands out of the crowd - makes it unique in relation to other languages I've learned in my life. They also have a very strict set of grammatical rules to be learned, and basically the language tends to be somewhat abstract at various levels, and the reason has to do with the lack of prepositions - not too many compared to English and Hebrew or German for that matter. Ok, I think I've made myself clear. Good day to you mates!

 

[LiranTheWizard]

I forgot to add something

You mentioned something about improving your current level of English. Your'e absolutely right about it, but we should also should strive to learn as many languages as we can, because the world is not only in English. I can tell you that I have a good command of French and German, and am now studying Chinese at the TAU (Mandarin dialect, which is based on the Beijing colloquial language) I think that we strive or at least dream about becoming more Americans or foreigners and thus abandon our own culture (without really having this intention in mind) and culture also includes our Language - Maybe not that widely spoken around the world, but still, many loaned words have entered our language over the years and sometimes you hear the somewhat sarcastic comment: Here in Israel people use to speak Heblish - A combination of Hebrew and English - I feel it's a bad development, all the more so when I first heard that the ministry of education is considering teaching History and Civics in English in order to promote its usage among school students. Now, don't get me wrong about this; I think it's a welcome addition - Improve your English by enriching your vocabulary thereby help build confidence with using English as an everyday tool of communication, but I'm not sure if other countires too have considered this option, especially when you think about countries like Germany and French which are widely known for their fanatial attempts to preserve their languages, not to mention China. Why should we be different?

 

[AnnabeI Lee]

More power to you.

 

[LiranTheWizard]

Sure...