h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Guess I might as well...

U55742
WLTL: French
WLTL/P: German, Latin, ancient Greek, English
WLTT: Danish


cheers
~Bistro

And of course EVERYONE wants to learn Mandarin, don't they?

I'm sorry, i didn't hear you, I said "DON'T THEY?!?!"

Hi Bistroist,

I'll add you (and everyone else I've forgotten to add) to the list when I get a minute.

Oh, don't let Cat scare you, she just gets a bit insecure sometimes about the numbers of people interested in learning Mandarin.

Yeah, which is currently, me. With occassional outbursts from other people. But mostly me. And i didn't come here to teach it!! And I need tone marks if we're EVER gonna understand each other...

What exactly *is* a tone mark?

Tone mark??? Gimme me a break. I cannot handle the bookmarks...

So, mandatory mandarin, eh? Sounds quite catchy...

Afraid my only chinese skills come from http://www.insults.net/html/swear/index.html - and I'm quite happy to leave it at that



cheers
~Bistro

Right, to understand what a tone mark is you have to understand something about Chinese...

If you all see the Mandarin thread, you will notice we all say stuff like Wo jiao Chirs (my name is Chris) but we all know Chinese is written and stuff in funny little characters that look like strange pictures. Good, now that everyone knows that I can introduce some names...

Ok, the characters (funny little picture thingies) are called Hanzi. The little words we use are called pinyin. This is Romanised Chinese, ie, Chinese with romanised letters. Our alphabet.

Now, the thing is, Chinese characters a lot of them are said sorta the same, but their written totally different, so they use tones marks, which tell you how to say the word. So, if there is a line like a - on top op the vowel then you say it as if the ord is like - all flat and stuff. The other three are an up line, a down line and a line that goes down then up, so like ^ only the other way round. These tell you how to say the word.

Now, these little tone marks change the meaning or the word. For instance 'ma' with no tones is a question particle, but 'ma' with a second tone ( - ) on it means horse. When you write the characters for them they are very different, and you say them differently depending on the tone mark.

Everyone understand?

Cat

Yep . As I said, there are letters with various accents and tone marks in the Character Map.

---To access the Character Map---

> Click Start.
> Point to 'Programs' (or in Windows XP, 'All Programs')
> Point to 'Accessories'
> Point to 'System Tools'
> Click 'Character Map'

It's fairly self-explanatory, just click the thing you want and click 'Copy'.

Awesome, shall have to check it out...

RIght, so there's are the tones: (damn, doesn't seem to have all of them onthe same letters... No wait, we do for a, but the third one's a bit dodgy)

1st tone:
à

Second tone:
ā

Third tone:
ă

Forth tone:
á

Um, unfortuanetly 2 and 3 didn't turn out properly...

h2g2 has a couple of its own special rules for this sort of thing... there's a comprehensive list at A1098876.

Unfortunately, most don't fork in Conversation Fora

Right, I'll read it later...

Most don't fork?

Of course, that was a deliberate mistake to see if you'd spot it, and it should say 'most don't work'.

Yes, I saw it, but I knew what it was sposed to mean, so I couldn't be bothered pulling you up on it

U-number:
WLTL:
WLTP:
WLTT: Dutch
Anything else:

Can I make a Pig latin thread? Please please please!!

Although, pig latin is SUCH a give away when it's typed...

I love going up to people and talking in pig latin

Like, I went up to my friend one time and I've just gone "Oday ouyay eakspay igpay atinlay?" and she's looked at me and gone "If we learnt that yesterday in language, I don't want to hear about it..."

(Trans: Do you speak pig latin?)

I thought we already had one... oh no, that's just a link... feel free, go ahead

JC

By the way, I promise to get round to adding you all soon! It's been so busy... I also want to put a drop-down box with a list of all the languages we have, although that may put people off joining to start new threads...

U-number:680482
WLTL:Spanish, Korean
WLTP: English
WLTT: English
Anything else: I would like to learn the daily language, so that, when I get to England, people won't watch me as if I come from Mars.

Where are you now? I'm in Australia