Using Putonghua to pronounce English? My Goodness!

維爾抗姆! Do you know what I mean? Try to pronounce it quickly in Putonghua! Can you guess? Tell you later!

As every one knows, Shanghai is going to hold an event which is as royal as the Olympics, the World Expo 2010. I learnt from the news report that some World Expo Bilingual Guide were given by the Government to the staffs of some shops. It was once a hit in the society of Shanghai. You may wonder what on that guide. This guide provided the Putonghua pronunciations of some simple English sentences. The Government thinks that it may help the staffs to communicate with the foreigners who travel there easier.

When I first saw that Chinese ‘translations’, I really couldn’t catch the meaning and found them funny! I know this is one of the preparations for welcoming the event. But I think it is hardly help for them to communicate with foreigners. TVB interviewed a foreigner and asked if he understood it or not. Of course the answer was not and even the locals couldn't understand it! For a long term consideration, I think it is not a good way to learn English like that.

I think the Shanghai Government may try to do what Hong Kong’s does. They may offer some classes for the staffs to study. This is the only way to let the locals to communicate with the world in the correct way. To me, sometimes using other languages’ pronunciations to pronounce English is useless. We cannot get the exact pronunciations and may make others misunderstand it. On the other hand, Shanghai is such a well-known city, I think this guide cannot help to upgrade the fame as the locals may keep trying to use this way to learn English. Thus, it may shows to the people from other countries that Shanghai is doing lazy and superficial works on learning English and welcoming the tourists. It gives the foreigners a negative image of Shanghai. Learning the ‘real’ English is always the best way.

P.S. '維爾抗姆' means the word 'welcome'!

Here is the news video (start from 15:26)
http://mytv.tvb.com/news/newsat630/105011#page-1

Here is the World Expo Bilingual Guide

My New Sharing!

Hello! Happy the New Year Of Tiger! (I know it is quite late to say) The Chinese New Year holiday is going to end. This year like the past, I went to my father-side hometown. Although we staid inside for 4 days because of the bad weather condition, I still enjoyed! Besides, I got over $1XXX of red packet money, much more than last year! I used the red packets to make a 金元寶 (a bigger one). Beautiful or not?!

This morning, I had a McDonald's breakfast with my family. And I found something interesting, I don't know whether it is a mistake or not.

Should there be 'That is' before 'because'?!

Please feel free to leave a message! :)

A Book Review

The 7th of last month was Reading Day of my school. I won the winner of my class by recommending this book, ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ and I got about $900 of books!
The book is written by Mitch Albom who also wrote a famous book, ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’ The story has filmed as a movie as well. Besides, the book was chosen by Radio Television Hong Kong as one of the Best Ten books. Here is some information about the author. He works as a newspaper columnist and a broadcaster and serves on numerous charitable boards in Michigan, United States.
By the title, you may think that it is about who you will meet after your death. But actually, the story is about a man called Eddie.
This story begins with two words, ‘The End’ and it wrote like this. ‘It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.’. Eddie was a soldier when he was young and he was a maintenauce worker in an amusement park before he died. On his 83rd birthday, he died because of rescuing a little girl in the park from an accident. When he woke up, he was already in Heaven. He meet five people that has been appeared in his life in Heaven. Some changed his life and some was affected by him. This five people told Eddie what he did correctly and wrongly and he was inspired by them. I am not going to tell you the whole thing. But after he was inspired, he forgave the others and also himself. And he wanted to be others’ five people meet in Heaven, to teach them what he knew.
Heaven, in everyone’s mind may be a peaceful place, nothing to be worried, but only happiness. But the Heaven in this book, is to let us review our life. See that if there is anything to introspect. Although it may be not as wonderful as you think, it let us to re-understand our new journey. As the first line of the book I mentioned. Endings are also the beginnings. Eddie did have love in his life but he didn’t enjoy the love or even he didn’t feel it. Actually, being alive with love is a kind of bliss.
I learnt lots of philosophies, it refresh the meaning of life in my mind. And by way of Eddie’s story, we can think of our future and walk foreword to it. So that we can find our Heaven. May be in the day I die, I may meet five people too telling me what I did right and wrong. I am not looking foreword to your deaths, but I hope you will find your five people someday and be other’s five people.
Lastly, here is a sentence to end my sharing. ‘Life ends, but love doesn’t.’(from one of the famous persons but I forgot who’s that.)

(I’m now sticking with Tuesdays With Morrie!)

My New Sharing!

Hello! I just finished my exam, the paper will be back tomorrow, hope to get a satisfied result. Before the exam, I worked with my group mates in the School English Gifted Class for a Documentary Making Competition. Here is a link to our work. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xeKJrZO-M