June 21st, 2008 at 3:48pm
Hokkien is a language I bumped into a couple of months ago while looking for Chinese language lessons aside from Mandarin at the Internet. As I was a little familiar with Fookien counting, I recognized the similarity of Hokkien and Fookien immediately. I showed this to my Taiwanese classmate and true enough, she recognized this as Shaman Hokkien used somewhere in the province of Taiwan.
In my efforts of looking for audio training, I only found Mandarin podcasts, audio materials and youtube episodes from serious broadcasts to comical translations. However, the search for a Fookien audio material hadn’t brought any good print or audio space material.
All hail to Jason McDowell for being the first to provide a Hokkien podcast. In this iTunes era, podcast for Chinese have proliferated the scene but the focus is too much on Mandarin. I guess, the niche for Hokkien learners is latent in demand since there are only a few who is willing to learn the language. In McDowell’s case, the determination rose from the fact that his girlfriend is a Taiwanese and had pursued learning the language at a course subject and on his own. Now, he’s podcasting for free at iTunes and his website. It is my lucky day ^_^
Currently he have 2 podcasts uploaded. The first is his Introduction and the second is his First Episode. Well, I’m off to learn this language offline during the weekend.
Learn Taiwanese at:
My Taiwanese by Jason McDowell
November 7th, 2007 at 8:52pm
One stormy day of 2006 where trees were swamped away and power failure caused even MOA to close down at the hour of 6PM, 2 Chinese businessman, 1 Filiponly, and Maxx were fortunate to see a restaurant still open at BlueWave, Macapagal Boulevard. After dinner, I was pestering Mark (currently managing a packaging business) how to run a business as I am currenly developing a tool for our family business.
Read the rest of “pricing strategies according to a FilChi entrepreneur” »
November 6th, 2007 at 8:18pm
“Do you know how to speak Chinese?,” laime asks her friend Kiel at the mobile interface.
He replied in SMS, “Guwa buwe hiaw kong na nang whe.”
[Translation: I don’t know how to speak Chinese]
Just like when we say Mi hablo y Español.
November 4th, 2007 at 9:02pm
The number 9, as oppose to the common culture against the number 13, is considered as unlucky to Chinese tradition. For the celebration of post natal days or most commonly known as birthdays, Chinese people adds 1 unit to a celebrant’s age to avoid the first brush of 9 in their age. For example, an old age lady who is turning 90 is considered 91 (we add 1 unit to 90) years old than its real age to avoid unfortunate consequences. This is in reference to a narration of an old acquaintance of Maxx.
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November 3rd, 2007 at 9:05pm
I loved mushrooms. I could eat all kinds without eating the excess vegetables. In my lifetime, I have met five different kinds of tasty mushrooms: the ordinary mushroom found in cans that is either whole or sliced, the button mushroom that hides a smaller mushroom inside called mostly button mushroom, the long legged golden mushroom that I”ve met at Lao Chan Shabu Shabu, the mushroom looking like the ear of a rat, and the biggie mushroom found in fresh produce of supermarkets called shitake mushroom. We’ll collect more mushrooms in our way.
Read the rest of “for the love of mushrooms” »
