This recent post on the PandaGator blog offers a personal experience about an interesting concrete example of the kinds of sacrifices and adjustments some make to further their service in the Chinese field.
For those for whom English is not their native tongue, this dictionary page tells us that “nuts” does not necessarily mean “insane; crazy”, since another meaning is “extremely enthusiastic”.
A few have asked about the current Links email. For now, the “current” version is still the 2006-09-01 one. I realize that much time has passed since it came out, and I apologize for this long period without a Links email update. Several factors have contributed to this, including my being quite busy for a time working on my local cong.’s territory data system.
However, I would like to assure everyone that I am indeed working on the next Links email update. In addition to the reason mentioned above, it is also taking longer than usual to produce because I have redesigned the format with the goal of making it much easier to find things in the growing list of resources. Speaking of which, there will be a good number of new resources, and of updates to existing ones. I am confident that the next Links email update will be worth the wait.
Since several have requested it, all of the older NWT audio files, going back to when they began to be created with the Ps. 119 file, have again been made available for download from the NWT Audio Files page.
Re the Proofreaders Wanted post, Mark Lewis would like to offer this clarification:
'ALL I want is someone to check the pinyin against the Soc pinyin Wt. VERY easy. I think most think it's difficult. BUT it is VERY easy. The machine puts the English words in or I ask Babel or my students. I don't want anyone to translate it or even check the Chinese. Time: about 2 hours or less.'
Anyone interested in helping Mark out should email him here.
The audio files for Da., Ho., Joe., and Am. have been posted to the NWT Audio Files page.
The complete Chinese, Pinyin, & English Require br. material has finally been posted on the Chinese, Pinyin, & English Require Br. page! Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions are available.
Those of you who had printed out previous incomplete versions of the material may want to reprint with the current version, as the English translations have been revised from the beginning to the end to conform with the latest development of my English translation system. Basically, my current system follows these principles:
While some other recent 3-line material has been released by others without being proofread, which does have the benefit of allowing the material to be released more quickly, this Require br. material has been carefully translated and proofread so that those learning Mandarin can reliably use it to help increase their insight into the meanings of the Chinese characters and how they are used in various contexts. However, the material may of course still contain errors. If you find any, email me to let me know.
I recently came across this interesting article on overseas Chinese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese
A question arose regarding the population numbers used in the article, so someone clarified it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Overseas_Chinese#The_numbers_are_from.3F
Keeping in mind that these numbers are from a couple of years ago, that they're approximate, and that the actual figures are always changing, it is still interesting to note that if we for argument's sake say that there are now about 65 million Chinese outside of mainland China, and that there are about 1.3 billion Chinese inside mainland China (see this page, top left corner), that means that only about 5% of all the Chinese in the world are outside mainland China.