can chinese change the way you think

14. Can Chinese Change the Way You Think?

Podcast Duration: 00:57:37

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The Mandarin Blueprint Podcast focuses primarily on The Mandarin Blueprint Method online curriculum. Creators Luke Neale & Phil Crimmins answer questions and comments, discuss topics related to China and Mandarin learning and have special guests.

14. Can Chinese Change the Way You Think?

00:00 – A little bit about Chengdu and Chengdu weather

02:06 – Can Chinese change the way you think?

06:53 – Updates about the Method

23:36

CHAD RESSLER ON CHARACTER #108: 桌 ZHUŌ CASTING CALL

Jin Yichuan (Dong-xue Li’s character in Brotherhood of Blades)CHAD RESSLER ON CHARACTER #110: 禾 HÉ CASTING CALL

Hu JIntao

25:45

JULIA MELNIK ON CHARACTER #6: 半 BÀN PICK A PROP

A split heart.RYAN SMITH ON CHARACTER #132: 不 BÙ PICK A PROP

I ended up going with a TSA agentSIDNEY GREEN ON CHARACTER #250: 言 YÁN PICK A PROP

I picked a large copy of the book ‘The Oxford Companion to English Literature’.

27:54

SAMUEL THOMAS ON UNIT 1 WRAP-UP

Love this throat/mouth contrast explanation. So useful. A lot of this could probably be taught in reverse when getting Chinese speakers to speak English.

32:30

RYAN SMITH ON CHARACTER #133: 还 HÁI MAKE A MOVIE

Setting: My current apartment (it’s right by the tr*ai*n tracks)
Props: TSA agent & a road
Keyword connection: an alcohol still & “still waiting” action

The TSA is in my apartment and finds suddenly that he needs an alcohol swab to clean up a scrape he got in the line of duty (humor is good). He can’t find anything but beer, so he throws it in a pot on the stove with a small still attached to the top and starts waiting on the beer to boil so he can collect the pure alcohol from the top. There’s a timelapse as he keeps waiting and waiting and waiting. Still waiting after a long time, a road appears through the apartment and my H actor comes running through the wall of the apartment down the road (a la the looney tune’s Roadrunner), stops by the TSA agent in front of the road. He then reaches over and turns the stove on, before running back off down the road.

36:59

JULIA MELNIK ON CHARACTER #8: 从 CÓNG MAKE A MOVIE

It is obvious. This is the idea of birth. One person comes FROM another. The ancestor gets smaller and steps back into the background, giving space to the descendant, so the descendant comes forward and gets bigger. Yes, I know that this is not strictly the movie method, but very often I can’t help these associations which come from what I see. Again, “from”.
I think that is why it takes me a longer time to get my brain used to the new method of creating associations. Because at previous I got used to see associations inside the characters themselves. Because I didn’t know about the movie method. Now I enjoy the fun of this method, but sometimes I still have to remind myself that we actually make a movie.  Like, do not see two women side by side, one giving birth to another, see an actor with props at some space doing something to create meaning.

40:59

SAMUEL THOMAS ON “SIMPLE FINAL E INTRODUCTION: 饿 È“

If you are a good French speaker a good tip is to say the ou in vous but don’t round your lips. It is often a diphthong as well I believe. So is like the ou in vous plus the o in mot in French (ou-o) (but with the lips unrounded ) (ɯɤ for phoneticians)

42:40

SIDNEY GREEN ON CHARACTER #248: 发 FĀ IT’S A WORD!

几点钟发车?一点一刻。Where is the ‘train’ here?

45:39

JULIA MELNIK ON CHARACTER #6: 半 BÀN MAKE A MOVIE

Bruce Lee enters the bathroom of a double room of the “And” hotel in Istanbul. (-an final)
He’s looking for a piece of soap to wash. But for some reason, the chambermaid left only one piece of soap on the shelf. Bruce decides to split it in half so Chuck Norris also could have his piece of soap to wash. So, Bruce takes out a huge knife and cuts the soap together with the shelf. Shards of glass and soap flying up. Shards’ slow motion. Bruce’s knife leaves the shiny trace in the air. So, the half.
(In spite of that this sign means “horns”, I decided to use shards of glass instead of horns because it works better for me. And, In general, when you split something in half, there are some crumbs very often. Or drops of juice, if it is, say, an orange. But I can think of horns if I see a cow from the air, so its spine divides it into two symmetric parts, where two horizontal lines are shoulder blades and sacrum. And in that case, we draw horns, shoulder blades, sacrum and the spine.

50:47

SIDNEY GREEN ON CHARACTER #249: 六 LIÙ PICK A PROP

I’m a bit confused here! With the prop for ‘liu’ shouldn’t the illustration just represent the top half of the character? In the movie to follow you use the prop for the bottom half ‘animal legs’!

55:11

RYAN SMITH ON CHARACTER #136: 么 ME MAKE A MOVIE

Even though this is a pretty simple character and doesn’t need overly much thought to remember, “-suffix” is still amazingly abstract keyword. So I just imagined a simple scene involving the Tagalongs girl scout cookies.

55:22

JULIA MELNIK ON CHARACTER #10: 入 RÙ MAKE A MOVIE

I didn’t get it quite well, what place should be for the sound -u-. You mean, that in this case -u- is not a final. So, there’s no final in this word, right?

Hanzi Movie Method Articles (UPDATE: Now available as a free eBook!):

Part 1 – Intro

Part 2 – Props

Part 3 – Sets

Part 4 – Actors

Part 5 – Scripts

Part 6 – Inspiration for Scripts

Part 7 – Special Effects

Part 8 – A New Pinyin Chart

2 April, 2019
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