Google Translate on Android has pretty good handwriting recognition as well. But you have to be careful because there are some Cantonese pronunciations mixed in with the Mandarin. Not that I've anything against Cantonese, but not having them distinguished from one another is not at all helpful.
Another good resource is archchinese.com--except it's blocked most places on the mainland. For what reason I don't know, as I've never noticed anything political about it.
Unless your point was that everyone dealing with this problem should move to Sweden.
Or just possibly, "It's long since past time that you guys approached the people who run your telcos with tar and feathers instead of your chequebooks"?
And for people who said that Chinese is difficult, that's because you haven't really put efforts into it. Look, how many hours have you put into learning Chinese on a daily basis, as compared to the hours that Chinese people (and other people all over the world) had put into learning English? And you even complain that these folks can't speak English correctly, whereas the Chinese people would have congratulated you even all you can say is "nihao" and "xiexie".
My own experiences in China bear this out. As poor as my Mandarin is, whenever I tried to speak it, the locals (even in Guangdong) would immediately switch from "polite because of course we must be polite to visitors" mode to genuinely warm, friendly, and encouraging. Even more so when they discovered that I'd also studied and knew some of their writing.
Just to be pedantic... Cantonese and Mandarin are both dialects of Chinese in the much the same way that French and Portuguese are both dialects of Latin, yes.;)
Actually, people in China DO occasionally draw characters in the air with their fingers...
I've never seen Chinese people do this, but *I* often do it when I'm not sure of the pronunciation or meaning of a given character I've seen written somewhere.
I get a big kick out of it when a Chinese person's face lights up when I do this.:)
NB: You *must* know the stroke order rules for this to work!
You are making stuff up, or is perhaps based on a half-assed/selective reading of Wikipedia?
Cantonese as written in Hong Kong and Macau uses Traditional characters, along with some characters of its own. Some of the characters as used in Cantonese have different meanings as opposed to when they're used in Mandarin (and not just different pronunciation).
I live with a Cantonese speaker, and have visited Guangdong and Hong Kong numerous times.
Oh, and I've also got a English-Cantonese dictionary and phrasebook that includes words and phrases such as "shopping centre", "department of surgery", "Space Museum", and "hovercraft".
When I first ordered Internet service here, and asked them what my monthly bandwidth cap would be, their customer service guy responded with the following question:
"Bandwidth cap? I'm sorry, is that some sort of hat? And what does that have to do with your subscription to our service?"
First of all, I said "more or less like", not "[exactly] the same as".
Second, the difference between X and SH depends largely on the part of the country you're talking about. In the Beijing area, they're quite distinct. In Guangdong, not so much. And yes, I'm talking about different regional varieties of Mandarin, not about differences between Mandarin and Cantonese.
Third, your complaint about people pronouncing "xiexie" as if it were spelt "sheishei" is conflating this with an entirely different issue. I've never heard it pronounced this way--and I certainly did not suggest doing so, which is what you seem to be implying.
Fourth, how the hell is Guomei "unpronounceable" by English speakers?
Finally, I received quite a few compliments on my pronunciation last time I was in China, even when I was staying in Beijing, and while I'm sure it's far from perfect, I didn't have very much trouble making myself understood except in cases where I just plain didn't know the word for something. To be fair, I also freely admit that I had my pronunciation corrected a few times, but even so, I don't think I did too badly. Most people guessed wrongly that I was European and seemed genuinely surprised to find out that I'm originally from the US.
BTW, I do know quite a bit about languages and phonetics, and I'd've been happy to use IPA to represent the sounds correctly, but Slashcode strips out a lot of the symbols required.
And just so nobody thinks I'm trying to portray myself as a know-it-all, I'll be the first to admit (as I've said in some of my previous posts) that my Swedish is fairly horrid and I'm still embarrassed to speak it much, despite having lived here for years.
I also give a fuck about the Syrian civilians who've been gassed.
I also realise that bombing Syrian won't bring them back to life.
It also occurs to me that the Assad régime's reaction to strikes against their country might well employ some "Now see what you made me do" logic to justify gassing some more.
News flash: Court decisions that have the force of law are NOT covered in any size, shape, or form by attorney-client privilege. Stop making an ass of yourself.
The 'X' is pronounced more or less like English 'sh', and 'ao' is the same as the 'ow' in English 'how'. So it's 'shyow-mee'. First syllable's a high rising tone, second is low rising. For an English speaker, if you simply stress the first syllable, that's close enough.
It means 'millet' (a type of grain--nothing to do with the French painter).
I still send physical cards and letters to people from time to time.
In particular to my daughter, who lives on another continent. The least I can do to make up for not being with her full-time is to send her something of myself.
Nevertheless, the signs were there very early in the piece that they were going to take the douchebag route, I've seen no evidence to the contrary in the years since, and I prefer not to do business with douchebags, even if I'm not myself affected.
On what basis do you assume (a) that the operators of this botnet do not know exactly what they're doing, and (b) that this is not a deliberate attempt to break Tor?
1. The transaction is always processed on a page on my bank's domain. Most of the time, the merchant never sees my card number--in such cases, I never even enter the card number.
2. They allow me to set per-transaction and per-day limits. I can change these anytime I want through my online banking, and the changes take effect almost instantly.
3. Multiple-factor authentication--the card itself, a card reader which is supplied by my bank, my 4-digit PIN, and my 12-digit Swedish personnummer.
4. The challenge code they give me is good for 4 minutes, and the response code that I enter to confirm the transaction is good for an additional 4 minutes.
If entering my card number doesn't cause me to be redirected to a page on my bank's site to perform the actual authentication/authorisation, I simply cancel the transaction.
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Google Translate on Android has pretty good handwriting recognition as well. But you have to be careful because there are some Cantonese pronunciations mixed in with the Mandarin. Not that I've anything against Cantonese, but not having them distinguished from one another is not at all helpful.
Another good resource is archchinese.com--except it's blocked most places on the mainland. For what reason I don't know, as I've never noticed anything political about it.
Unless your point was that everyone dealing with this problem should move to Sweden.
Or just possibly, "It's long since past time that you guys approached the people who run your telcos with tar and feathers instead of your chequebooks"?
And for people who said that Chinese is difficult, that's because you haven't really put efforts into it. Look, how many hours have you put into learning Chinese on a daily basis, as compared to the hours that Chinese people (and other people all over the world) had put into learning English? And you even complain that these folks can't speak English correctly, whereas the Chinese people would have congratulated you even all you can say is "nihao" and "xiexie".
My own experiences in China bear this out. As poor as my Mandarin is, whenever I tried to speak it, the locals (even in Guangdong) would immediately switch from "polite because of course we must be polite to visitors" mode to genuinely warm, friendly, and encouraging. Even more so when they discovered that I'd also studied and knew some of their writing.
However, many Chinese characters do contain phonetic and/or semantic cues. E.g. pao2 'gun' = huo3 'fire' + bao1 'bag', 'package'.
Just to be pedantic... Cantonese and Mandarin are both dialects of Chinese in the much the same way that French and Portuguese are both dialects of Latin, yes. ;)
I've never seen Chinese people use anything but pinyin for keyboard input.
Actually, people in China DO occasionally draw characters in the air with their fingers...
I've never seen Chinese people do this, but *I* often do it when I'm not sure of the pronunciation or meaning of a given character I've seen written somewhere.
I get a big kick out of it when a Chinese person's face lights up when I do this. :)
NB: You *must* know the stroke order rules for this to work!
You are making stuff up, or is perhaps based on a half-assed/selective reading of Wikipedia?
Cantonese as written in Hong Kong and Macau uses Traditional characters, along with some characters of its own. Some of the characters as used in Cantonese have different meanings as opposed to when they're used in Mandarin (and not just different pronunciation).
I live with a Cantonese speaker, and have visited Guangdong and Hong Kong numerous times.
Oh, and I've also got a English-Cantonese dictionary and phrasebook that includes words and phrases such as "shopping centre", "department of surgery", "Space Museum", and "hovercraft".
Doesn't matter, since the official language of international civil aeronautics is English.
When I first ordered Internet service here, and asked them what my monthly bandwidth cap would be, their customer service guy responded with the following question:
"Bandwidth cap? I'm sorry, is that some sort of hat? And what does that have to do with your subscription to our service?"
Sometimes I really do love living in Sweden.
You apparently did not understand what I said.
And there many "white" Americans who've got some African ancestry and don't even know it.
Wrong. You're a primate, and a lot of your behaviour is very typical for primates. So am I, and so is mine, for that matter.
Neither is the cleverness you imagine that you've displayed by posting that fairly useless remark.
First of all, I said "more or less like", not "[exactly] the same as".
Second, the difference between X and SH depends largely on the part of the country you're talking about. In the Beijing area, they're quite distinct. In Guangdong, not so much. And yes, I'm talking about different regional varieties of Mandarin, not about differences between Mandarin and Cantonese.
Third, your complaint about people pronouncing "xiexie" as if it were spelt "sheishei" is conflating this with an entirely different issue. I've never heard it pronounced this way--and I certainly did not suggest doing so, which is what you seem to be implying.
Fourth, how the hell is Guomei "unpronounceable" by English speakers?
Finally, I received quite a few compliments on my pronunciation last time I was in China, even when I was staying in Beijing, and while I'm sure it's far from perfect, I didn't have very much trouble making myself understood except in cases where I just plain didn't know the word for something. To be fair, I also freely admit that I had my pronunciation corrected a few times, but even so, I don't think I did too badly. Most people guessed wrongly that I was European and seemed genuinely surprised to find out that I'm originally from the US.
BTW, I do know quite a bit about languages and phonetics, and I'd've been happy to use IPA to represent the sounds correctly, but Slashcode strips out a lot of the symbols required.
And just so nobody thinks I'm trying to portray myself as a know-it-all, I'll be the first to admit (as I've said in some of my previous posts) that my Swedish is fairly horrid and I'm still embarrassed to speak it much, despite having lived here for years.
I also give a fuck about the Syrian civilians who've been gassed.
I also realise that bombing Syrian won't bring them back to life.
It also occurs to me that the Assad régime's reaction to strikes against their country might well employ some "Now see what you made me do" logic to justify gassing some more.
News flash: Court decisions that have the force of law are NOT covered in any size, shape, or form by attorney-client privilege. Stop making an ass of yourself.
The 'X' is pronounced more or less like English 'sh', and 'ao' is the same as the 'ow' in English 'how'. So it's 'shyow-mee'. First syllable's a high rising tone, second is low rising. For an English speaker, if you simply stress the first syllable, that's close enough.
It means 'millet' (a type of grain--nothing to do with the French painter).
I still send physical cards and letters to people from time to time.
In particular to my daughter, who lives on another continent. The least I can do to make up for not being with her full-time is to send her something of myself.
Nevertheless, the signs were there very early in the piece that they were going to take the douchebag route, I've seen no evidence to the contrary in the years since, and I prefer not to do business with douchebags, even if I'm not myself affected.
I wasn't projecting--I was asking a serious question.
BTW, I like my bank just fine. But it's also not in the US.
Forgive me if this is a silly question, but...
On what basis do you assume
(a) that the operators of this botnet do not know exactly what they're doing, and
(b) that this is not a deliberate attempt to break Tor?
Yeah, I posted that somewhat in haste after a long day that started out short on sleep. Please accept my apologies.
Did you mean this word?
Yes, sometimes being one letter off makes a whole heap of difference.
Not that I would be inclined to use either one of them, since I have some idea what might (not) be good for me.
I use my bank card for online purchases.
1. The transaction is always processed on a page on my bank's domain. Most of the time, the merchant never sees my card number--in such cases, I never even enter the card number.
2. They allow me to set per-transaction and per-day limits. I can change these anytime I want through my online banking, and the changes take effect almost instantly.
3. Multiple-factor authentication--the card itself, a card reader which is supplied by my bank, my 4-digit PIN, and my 12-digit Swedish personnummer.
4. The challenge code they give me is good for 4 minutes, and the response code that I enter to confirm the transaction is good for an additional 4 minutes.
If entering my card number doesn't cause me to be redirected to a page on my bank's site to perform the actual authentication/authorisation, I simply cancel the transaction.