Comments by "" (@TheDavidlloydjones) on "Deng Xiaoping - The Making of a Leader (2007 documentary)" video.

  1. Gotta understand, they spent so much money on their brilliant writers and photographers, they didn't have any left for an editor...
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  2. The formula " "Thou shall not kill" sounds right. But..." is disingenuous, it seems to me. There are a small number of absolute pacifists in the world, but everyone else -- all conventional users of the phrase "Thou shalt not kill." -- agrees on the universal right to self-defence. This slightly different ("Thou" and "shall"??) phrasing is a bit odd., and there is no "but" for most of us. In the same vein, it seems to me that people whose main thing is opposition to cults very often have a cult of their own to push. What's up "Truthseeker"? Tell us more about this "justice" you stand for. -dlj.
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  3. Elenrai Elenrai: Agreed on your first point. My long-time partner's English was her eighth language, and she would make fun of my inability to understand songs in Jamaican English which she understood plainly. From her vantage point, like yours, the difference was like NooYawk to Jaw-jha, minimal. On your second,, you're right again, but lose, pronounced "loooz" is the opposite of find. That's what you want here.. Loose, pronounce "luce," is the opposite of tight, and is a common error among people who pronounce route "rowt." Loose usage makes you lose face. :-) -dlj.
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  4. Andrew Bishop What do you think, Andrew? Being polite to the furriner? The very frequent group dynamic of nobody wanting to make waves? One possibility might be that they all assumed that it was a Chinese dialect other than their own -- which in fact it very well might be. I don't know. The dialect thing is interesting: on very professional or competent language programs, e.g. Memrise (some of which is incompetent, but most of which is good), among people all of whom have spent their entire lives in Beijing, there will still be differences in pronunciation audible to us -- but perhaps not noticed by them. The difference between the BBC English of today and that of my childhood is huge -- which I expect might be denied by people who have lived in England and never noticed the change taking place, but is obvious to me, returning after a gap of fifty or sixty years. Putonghua, like BBC English, is an artificial and official language, and will both change and become more standard over the next fifty years, I imagine. Cheers, -dlj.
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  5. Andrew Bishop Andrew, Agreed on all points. I've just started with a tutor from Guilin, near the Vietnamese border, and run into some interesting problems. In some words he pronounces Beijing ze and zhe identically to my ear -- and then insists to me that I have to acqure a better understanding of the difference between tones... and I am nowhere close to being able to explain to him that, right or wrong, I disagree with him that that's the problem. Nice to make your acquaintance. Don't be a stranger. -dlj. david.lloydjones AT gmail DOT com. https://www.facebook.com/david.lloydjones.391
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