The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How does Mandarin put the “corona” in “coronavirus”? What is a “corona”, anyway?
An electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19
NIAID
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[NOTE: For spiritual food (which is for you yourself to learn spiritual things from, and which ideally should be in your own mother tongue), please go to jw.org.
The supplementary language-learning material mentioned in this post is for helping you to learn about how the Mandarin language is used in an official publication, so that you will be better able to help others in the Mandarin language field.]
Videos are used extensively in the Enjoy Life Forever! brochure and in the Enjoy Life Forever! book, and so a new feature has been developed for Pīnyīn Plus resources: Pīnyīn Plus video transcripts. These should help us Mandarin field language learners to analyze and understand the Mandarin speech used in the many videos referenced in the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! brochure and in the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! book. This in turn should help us Mandarin field language learners to make more effective use of these videos while participating in Mandarin Bible discussions using these publications.
Also, using the Pīnyīn Plus video transcripts while watching and listening to the corresponding Mandarin videos gives us good practice at listening to Mandarin speech, with help when needed so that we can actually follow along and understand it, and learn to use it ourselves in the future.
(Tapping/clicking on the above image will take you to the web page represented.)
The first resource to feature Pīnyīn Plus video transcripts is:
can be used offline in supporting browsers, icon can be added to the home screen(NOTE: While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING. See this disclaimer for more information.)
[NOTE: For spiritual food (which is for you yourself to learn spiritual things from, and which ideally should be in your own mother tongue), please go to jw.org.
The supplementary language-learning material mentioned in this post is for helping you to learn about how the Mandarin language is used in an official publication, so that you will be better able to help others in the Mandarin language field.]
The Enjoy Life Forever! (lffi) brochure is now officially recommended for use on Bible studies, and it is now part of the Teaching Toolbox in the JW Library app. To help us Mandarin field language learners to be prepared language-wise to make good use of this new brochure without being unnecessarily hindered by the Great Wall of Chinese characters that’s mandated by mere human tradition and cultural pride, the following unofficial Pīnyīn Plus web material resource is being made available:
can be used offline in supporting browsers, icon can be added to the home screenVideos are used extensively in the Enjoy Life Forever! brochure, and a noteworthy new feature that makes its debut in the above resource is Pīnyīn Plus video transcripts. These should help us Mandarin field language learners to analyze and understand the Mandarin speech used in the many videos referenced in the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! brochure. This in turn should help us make more effective use of these videos while participating in Mandarin Bible discussions using this brochure.
Also, using the Pīnyīn Plus video transcripts while watching and listening to the corresponding Mandarin videos gives us good practice at listening to Mandarin speech, with help when needed so that we can actually follow along and understand it, and learn to use it ourselves in the future.
(Tapping/clicking on the above image will take you to the web page represented.)
In the above resource, material matching both the current 2021-01 Printing of the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! brochure and the current 2021 Study Edition (nwtsty) of the Mandarin NWT Bible is now available that covers the following:
Material with a grey background has been partially proofread. Pīnyīn material with a golden-hued background has been proofread, but not all of its “flashcards” have been added and proofread.
More Pīnyīn and Pīnyīn Plus web material based on the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! brochure will be made available in the above resource as time allows.
(NOTE: While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING. See this disclaimer for more information.)
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the Mandarin NWT Bible, in the scripture about the fruitage of the spirit, how are the words used to translate “love” and “patience” related, besides that they rhyme?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Are we seeking glory from men? Or are we seeking glory from God?
Considering the cultural dominance of Chinese characters in the Chinese world, it’s kind of miraculous that there is now so much official and unofficial Pīnyīn-containing material based on the publications of Jehovah’s organization.
Comments are enabled on this blog, so if you are so inclined, comment away!
A news feed for this blog is available here.
[NOTE: For spiritual food (which is for you yourself to learn spiritual things from, and which ideally should be in your own mother tongue), please go to jw.org.
The supplementary language-learning material mentioned in this post is for helping you to learn about how the Mandarin language is used in an official publication, so that you will be better able to help others in the Mandarin language field.]
The Bible Teach (bh) book has been an important book for conducting Bible studies for a long time. Partially proofread Pīnyīn web material (more correct than computer-generated Pīnyīn like that displayed by apps like Equipd, and more mobile-friendly than PDFs) or more covering up to the end of Chapter 16 of the Mandarin Bible Teach book (2017-03 Printing) is now available here:
can be used offline in supporting browsers, icon can be added to the home screenIn the above resource, the following web material is now available for the Mandarin Bible Teach book:
Production work on the above resource had to be diverted for a while to focus on the Teach Us book Pīnyīn Plus web material resource, but fortunately, there is much overlap and synergy between these two resources. E.g., it seems that the scriptures used are basically the same. So, going forward, work on one of these resources will have an unusual amount of applicability to the other one as well.
(NOTE: While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING. See this disclaimer for more information.)
[NOTE: For spiritual food (which is for you yourself to learn spiritual things from, and which ideally should be in your own mother tongue), please go to jw.org.
The supplementary language-learning material mentioned in this post is for helping you to learn about how the Mandarin language is used in an official publication, so that you will be better able to help others in the Mandarin language field.]
Thankfully, an official Pīnyīn PDF file for the current songbook “Sing Out Joyfully” to Jehovah (sjj) is now available for download from jw.org. (The short link for the current songbook, tiandi.info/sjj, has the link and additional information.) Note, however, that the currently available official Pīnyīn PDF file (2020 Nián 3 Yuè Printing) only contains lyrics—it does not contain musical notation 🎼.
While we greatly appreciate the official Pīnyīn songbook PDF file that is available, the PDF format itself was conceived of in a world dominated by paper. Unfortunately, that means that PDF files are often not optimal for reading on the mobile devices that are now so prevalent among Mandarin field publishers.
Also, having to share limited display real estate with Chinese characters (and, in the past, musical notation 🎼) can in certain situations force the Pīnyīn text to be rendered in small type that can be difficult to read, especially for older people.
Another difficulty that is encountered, especially when one needs to quickly find the song that is about to be sung at a meeting, is that the official meeting schedules only list the numbers of the songs to be used, and the brothers announcing what song is about to be sung often only mention the song number, but in the current official Pīnyīn songbook PDF file, there is no listing of song links in song number order.
The official Pīnyīn “Sing Out Joyfully” to Jehovah (sjj) web material that is now available on jw.org and on the WOL addresses some of the above challenges, but it still does not put musical notation 🎼 together with Pīnyīn, and it still gives prime display real estate to Chinese characters, at the expense of the Pīnyīn.
Unofficial language-learning materials for all the Friday and Saturday songs for Mandarin 2021 regional conventions, in the forms of proofread musical notation 🎼 with Pīnyīn lyrics and proofread Pīnyīn Plus lyrics, have been posted to this resource that seeks to help with the above-mentioned challenges:
Screenshots of the above web resource on an iPhone 📱. (It can also be used offline with apps like GoodReader, Documents, etc.)
Scheduling notes:
The Pīnyīn song material in the above unofficial resource has been designed to be mobile-first, so it works well on mobile devices of various shapes and sizes, including tablets and smartphones 📱. Some of the ways in which it does so are:
The introduction for the above resource explains why it’s good to use Pīnyīn as a writing system on its own.
In the material with musical notation 🎼 in the above resource, expressions in the Pīnyīn lyrics do not trigger a Pīnyīn Plus “flashcard” to appear next to them as usual, because the lyrics need to stay aligned with the musical notation 🎼. As time allows, links will be added to Pīnyīn lyrics in the material with musical notation 🎼. Each of these links will cause a Pīnyīn Plus “flashcard” to appear near the top of the display.
Previously, musical notation 🎼 in the above resource was taken from screenshots of an official PDF file. Note (and make it a musical note ♪, at that 😄), though, that the musical notation 🎼 for song 77 marked the debut in the above resource of musical notation 🎼 produced “from scratch” to be mobile-first in design. This should provide for better and more consistent user experiences going forward, especially on smaller mobile devices like smartphones 📱.
[NOTE: While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING. See this disclaimer for more information.]
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the current version of the Mandarin NWT Bible, why is “peace” sometimes translated as “hémù” instead of as “píng’ān” or “hépíng”?
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