Talk:Youbian dubian

Huh?

Is this a wikipedia article or a school workbook?--Huaiwei 11:14, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Feeling pitiful to your unawareness. "Read the side if any" is a very important element in studying Chinese linguistics. Like in the Cantonese dialects, this rule helps to distinguish the n- and the l- words. -- Jerry Crimson Mann 17:34, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

lol You really love to jump several steps ahead (or backwards in this case) when I drop a simple comment. I was actually refering to the quality of this article. Not the existance of this "rule" (which is quite a debatably useless rule by the way). Very important element? Could you demonstrate it? Is this rule usefull only particularly to Cantonese, and only used by HKers?--Huaiwei 02:29, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

This is the first very chapter I learnt Cantonese Phonetics in my university. Nowadays people would say lung fu instead of nung fu for farmer, but the fact is quite the opposite. By this theory, other words with the nung like nung leek (pungent), jie jie nung (thank you, Shanghai dialect), siu nung (burnt) should have the n- syallable instead of the l- one. Of course there are exceptions: leoung ho (good) but neoung tsan (mother). Mind you, this is not a rule used by Hong Kong guys here, but it's simply part of the Cantonese linguistics. Debatably useless, huh? -- Jerry Crimson Mann 03:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Ever tried looking at this article's history of edits? The line "This way of reading unknown Chinese characters is mostly used by Chinese speakers in Hong Kong" was there before its removal, and the insistance on adding a HK stub was similarly well documented. I was beginning to wonder why some folks dare claim this rule is relevant only to HK, when I know about it since I was in primary school (you mean you only know in university? How sad). At a tender age of 7, I already discovered how useless the rule is in general, admittedly so even by my teachers. So how useful is it to the learning of Mandarin, may I ask?--Huaiwei 03:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

In general reading habits of Chinese people, this is the norm. But this is academically also a rule for Standard Cantonese Phonetics.

Did I say it's of much avail in Mandarin Phonetics? Touché, the deleted sentences are horrendously wrong. I've known this rule since I'd my lessons in primary school as well (and I started my school at 6 ;-)), but I never realised it's an important rule for Cantonese Phonetics before university. How useless is it can you demonstrate? I do wanna listen to more of your insightful viewpoint about the Cantonese linguistics - if any. -- Jerry Crimson Mann 04:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Did I say you said it's of much avail in Mandarin Phonetics? I would certainly think you would do yourself a great favour by avoiding jumping too many steps ahead and misreading people's comments or intentions. Oh so you know about it in primary school too. Did you find it useful at that time? If you found it suddenly useful now, why arent these details in the article proper, only coming forth when I lambasted this article for its lack of depth and poor quality writting? I do not major in the Chinese language, and I dont pretend that I know more about its relevance to the Chinese language in general. Hence I was the one asking you questions over its relevancy to Mandarin, and its relevancy to Chinese in general. Why dont you add the information, instead of asking me for comments? Oh..you started school at 6? That's real cool. I started kindergarten at 5, if that is of any relevance to you.--Huaiwei 04:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

That simply makes sense. But not the age-guessing na-na-lu-lu. -- Jerry Crimson Mann 04:29, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I am still awaiting for contributions to this article. If not, I am going to delete the last section entirely. That was just plain unprofessional and makes little sense to folks unfamiliar with the Chinese language.--Huaiwei 04:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Good to see that you have rewrittern that section with an entirely different point. Still, please expand on it, and please show its relevancy to other Chinese dialects.--Huaiwei 04:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Give it a bit of time, I'm watching this article. I will put some time into boosting it's quality of the next couple of days. novacatz 04:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for coming forth and being pro-active.--Huaiwei 04:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Expansion

Did a little by myself. A bit better I suppose. -- Jerry Crimson Mann 04:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Much better as a tentative step. Thanks very much.--Huaiwei 05:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry, but why has that "little question" thing crept back into the article again? Can someone who at least understand what it is trying to say do something to improve on its quality before I do something drastic to it?--Huaiwei 14:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

i tried to make a point, and i thought that's clear enough, but judging from ur comment, obviously i failed again. u can simply delete that, of course, but would u read that carefuly again before doing that? I'm not "protecting" my writing, I just want to know if others can see the point (assume there is a point, Ok?) --K.C. Tang 08:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Well...I tried to rewrite it. How does it look now?--Huaiwei 09:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Btw...how do you pronounce 水 in Cantonese? Would like to add it into the article.--Huaiwei 09:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

thanks for ur great effort!!! though i insist some of my wordings... the question sounds a silly one, but i always think that it involves a rather complicated linguistic-psychological process, the crux of the problem is that the common character 法 suddenly becomes "unknown" to the answerer... i don't know how to elaborate, and i must have expressed myself clumsily... anyway, u may try the quiz with ur friends to see their responses... :D --K.C. Tang 01:22, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The trick this quiz employs isnt exactly unique lah...like when you ask people to say "silk" ten times then ask "what do cow's drink"? Most seem to end up saying "milk" instead of "water". So I felt the extensive elaboration may not really be neccesary, expecially when, with all due respect, I feel some of the workings seem quite inappriopriate and the prose needs work on...--Huaiwei 03:22, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

just edit that as u see fit. thanks for trying to understand my point. i don't know why the quiz fasciante me so much... maybe it's really silly, and so am I. :D --K.C. Tang 04:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Hah nvm....will probably come back to it later. Nothing unusual about being fascinated by a simple quiz, and actually, that was a nice way of demonstrating how "useless" this rule is! :D--Huaiwei 04:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)