| Date: | May 1, 2006 / year-entry #152 |
| Tags: | non-computer |
| Orig Link: | https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060501-43/?p=31343 |
| Comments: | 19 |
| Summary: | Although I have been a passenger in a car many times, I thank my lucky stars that I have never had to be the person behind the wheel in Taiwan. But if you decide you want to give it a shot, you might want to pick up some driving tips from an American who spent... |
Although I have been a passenger in a car many times, I thank my lucky stars that I have never had to be the person behind the wheel in Taiwan. But if you decide you want to give it a shot, you might want to pick up some driving tips from an American who spent time in Taiwan as an English teacher, part of his Teaching English in Taiwan site. My conclusion is simply that one should merely avoid driving entirely. The text is largely disconnected from the pictures, but that's okay. The pictures just bring back memories of Taiwan in both its scenic and not-so-scenic glory. In the section on learning Chinese, he remarks:
I guess that's good news for me, as my sense for Mandarin tones didn't take long to develop (having grown up with a tonal language, albeit a different one). Too bad my vocabulary and grammar are still effectively nonexistent. Although I can pronounce each of the tones, I often just plain forget which tone a word is in! (My cousin lent me some textbooks that use a different system of representing tones: Instead of treating the tone as an add-on, it incorporates it into the spelling of the word. Words therefore have no superscripts or accent marks. This may actually stick, I'll have to try it out and see.) |
Comments (19)
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I guess that’s good news for me, as my sense for Mandarin tones didn’t take long to develop (having grown up with a tonal language, albeit a different one).
Which language is that?
I already answered that question last year.
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/11/10/491300.aspx
Sometimes I feel like I’m having the same conversation over and over again…
Which textbooks?
Wow, having read that I think I could copy the text and change the pictures and have a page called "Driving in Thailand"! The only difference is that here we drive on the left side of the road.
Hmm, actually thinking about it there are some more differences. There are no speeding cameras in Thailand (and no one seems to know the speed limit anyway (I know I don’t)) and be prepared for a 30 minute break if the king of Thailand happens to be out on the road. The police will stop all traffic in the direction the king is going well in advance.
It sounds exactly like driving in the Philippines, though I haven’t actually driven there; I’m always a passenger.
India too.
Just make the chaos 10 times more and make the roads 10 times worse.
Now, I may not be spot on on the numbers, but I’ve read that, though mainland China has only 12% of the world’s cars, it is responsible for over 30% of the world’s roadway fatalities.
This would make driving seem scary until reading further on, that 70% of these fatalities are people *not in the cars.*
And, of course, if you’re looking for a classic image of driving in mainland China, look no further than:
http://aperifle.sinosplice.com/uploaded_images/traffic%20jam-713465.jpg
I can only imagine that things are roughly the same in Taiwan.
"I already answered that question last year.
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/11/10/491300.aspx
Sometimes I feel like I’m having the same conversation over and over again…"
I guess if I read all the blog entries I could have found the post you linked to where you said:
Even though my meager knowledge of Taiwanese should’ve given me a head start (since about 80% of Taiwanese words are to varying degrees cognate with Mandarin Chinese), it doesn’t help with the grammar at all because I don’t understand Taiwanese grammar consciously. The words just make sense and I don’t know why.
Meagre knowledge makes me think that you Taiwanese is not your first language. On the other hand ‘I don’t understand Taiwanese grammar consciously .. the words just make sense and I don’t know why’ makes me think that you grew up with it, perhaps in a mixed English/Taiwanese environment, especially given you pointed the post out.
This reminds me of a funny story from Undocumented DOS. In the first edition, they did some tests of their file system redirector code on Windows 3.1. They reported "we were able to start Phantom, and it set up a drive. However it was only visible in the Dos box it run in, not in other Dos boxes or in Windows applictions". In the second edition, where they cover the fact that Dos boxes have effectively a private copy of the (undocumented) Current Directory Structure and thus drive mappings when Windows starts, they said that one of the tech reviewers commented on their first edition commented that "only an idiot would expect that to work". That made me laugh, since the assumption is that only an idiot would not know that some undocumented structure is instanced by Windows.
Maybe some things are obvious to you that aren’t obvious to the rest of us?
Phylyp
I’ve not been to Bangalore but I have been to Mahabaleshwar which is a hill station near Pune. I have some video of that trip – the overtaking around blind bends without any concern for oncoming traffic made it very interesting. There were some nice steep drops too – good fun!
I don’t know how it compares to Taiwan, but driving situation in mainland China is very bad too. The number one rule to remember is: vehicles do not yield to pedestrians.
JamesW: If those are your complaints about the M-P expressway (considered *the* best road in India), you really ought to come down to Bangalore, or take a trip up to any hill station!
Yeah, vehicles not yielding was a surprise. That, and the fact that Taiwanese love the privilege to turn right on red lights about as much as we Americans love our First Amendment :).
I think people make too much of a big deal about tones in Chinese. In my opinion, they aren’t so much of an "add-on" feature as a proxy for syllable stress and sentence intonation — things one has to learn to speak most any language well, including "atonal" ones like English.
To me, Chinese spoken with incorrect tones sounds like English spoken with incorrect syllable stress.
e.g., consider the different pronunciations of "perfect" as an adjective (stress on "per") and "perfect" as a verb (stress on "fect"). Take that distinction a little bit further, and you have tones.
(consider 事實 vs 時事… the tones dictate the stress)
Matthew:
Not exactly. Taiwan traffic police had done far a better job. In mainland China you can see people cutting lines even in major city area.
And beware of the army’s vehicles, they essentially don’t following traffic rules. For example, usually when a branch road entering the main road, the car in branch road have to stop and letting the car in main road pass first. But in case of army vehicles, they’ll simply go off the branch road to main road. The drivers in main road should be well alert of this issue or have some scary experience. (Usually scary only with no real harm done, because the driving technique of army drivers are usually excellent, and they could be get used to the "unprepared drivers")
Dan:
This reminds me of the old joke of "我想要水餃一碗"(I’d like to have a bowl of dumpings.) and "我想要睡覺一晚"(I’d like to sleep for a night.)
The slight difference in pronunciation totally changes the meaning of the sentence.
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