The writing at the end means “The chances of you being this lucky are 0.0000001%” and the voice-over coaxes Thai viewers to buy insurance. You need this!
Now, what are the chances of a tornado hitting Thailand? Something to look up for sure!
One trip around the sun for qqqqssss. Happy happy joy joy. Now get back to work.
The next trip will be like the first minute of this:
No more articles will involve reading, because reading will make the common people more intelligent than us and will rebel! Think of the anarchy!
So we must numb the masses! Numb them! Numb them all!
In my country, if you kill an Asian woman and permanently brain damage her 3-year-old son, because you were drunk driving, you only get less than four years in jail:
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_21918.aspx
Thank you Canadian justice system.
Also, in the country bordering mine, if I were police and killed an unarmed man at a nightclub on the night before his wedding day - no one will be responsible for his death.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/national/main4048328.shtml
Thank you American justice system.
“We have the best society of the planet.” says us to an advanced extra-terrestrial society.
Some Turkmen named Mowlam Nuryyew playing a dutar, a traditional instrument, while singing a folk-type song all improv-like.
It is not the type of music that will get into the Top 40 but it is certainly different from anything you normally see on MTV. Check out the clip after 02:45!
Non-commercial, with no care about being the best and full of emotion. That is the essence of a society the West improperly perceives to be “undemocratic” and “backward”.
Now that it’s exam season again and I was “studying” by looking at the Explosm webcomics, it’s time to meld the two ideas together:
I am posting the names of U.S. states in Simplified (Mainland) Chinese characters and their Pinyin equivalents. I found some are really creative in their “sinicizations” (e.g. Connecticut and New York). Others are very abbreviated (e.g. California). When a language pronounces foreign place names differently or uses a completely different name, e.g. in English, Bangkok; in Thai, Krung Thep, the former name is an exonym.
Chinese, more often than not, abbreviates place names to their first two syllables, making some places like South Carolina and New Hampshire almost far removed from their original names, especially since the first words are literally translated or calqued.
I looked up most of the names in the dictionary by primezero.com, a Chinese language specialty site. Each character will take you to that character’s definition in the dictionary if you’re curious about what each one means. By the way, if you don’t read about Pinyin first, chances are you will be pronouncing it wrong if you try reading it like in English.
Connecticut 康涅狄格 kāng niè dí gé
Louisiana 路易斯安那 lù yì sī ān nă
Massachusetts 马萨诸塞 mă sà zhū sài (!)
Nebraska 内布拉斯加 nèi bù lā sī jiā
New Hampshire 新罕布什尔 xīn hăn bù shén ĕr
North Carolina 北卡罗来纳 bĕi kă luó lái nà
North Dakota 北达科他 bĕi dá kē tā
Pennsylvania 宾夕法尼亚 bīn xī fă ní yà
South Carolina 南卡罗来纳 nán kă luó lái nà zhōu
South Dakota 南达科他 nán dá kē tā
Texas 德克萨斯 dé kè sà sī (or) 德州 dé zhōu
Washington 华盛顿州 huá shèng dùn zhōu
West Virginia 西弗吉尼亚 xī fú jí ní yà
I’ve posted this before elsewhere but never here before.
Most come across Fut-fut-freestylo on YouTube. I did too. It even amazed me that Kazakhstan had its own idol show (when it doesn’t even have a McDonald’s location) basically ripped off from American Idol (which itself ripped off from UK’s Pop Idol) and rebranded as “Superstar KZ”. This was, of course, not to say that in my mind Kazakhstan was “backward” but that in my mind Kazakhstan had not sold out to American “culture”. I personally despise idol shows.
But one audition on Superstar KZ stood out as impressive. It was Ernar, a simple-looking Asiatic dude with a traditional instrument known as a dombra. He was trying to sing Bomfunk MC’s “Freestyler”. It soon turned into a Kazakh song with Kazakh lyrics, possibly imitating an older song by R. Lizer. Ernar’s improvization amused the hell out of the judges:
The original Superstar KZ audition!
Partial lyrics:
Uigana shikan bildergen
turgyda osken buldirgen
ainalain kizdarau
kaderi kim belgenOu ou ue
suisen be
barim tastapsen
magan tisen be!Tiri-diri-dam, tari-duri-dam… (chorus)
(It beats me to know what these mean)
He then got a chance to perform at some “finals” show or something, in front of an actual concert crowd of about a thousand - and cheering. The judges are also seen appearing to love Ernar, as well as enjoying copious amounts of Pepsi.
The original pop song MV. It looks very old and badly choreographed but bear with it - it’s not exactly filled with juicy American MTV-style effects. Still, you’ll love the ending. He wakes up from a dream and we assume he’s a street rat but then still ends up driving off in a Mercedes-Benz. Perhaps in Kazakhstan, the Mercedes-Benz is the equivalent of a Ford in Canada? :P
Another clip of the original Superstar KZ audition with two other auditions in the beginning that clearly show that Superstar KZ judges are possibly as mean as American and Canadian Idol judges.
Some guys in Poland trying to sing and dance to this song. Hilarious stuff.
On top of that, there have been remixes and tributes all over YouTube. Finding them is left as an exercise.
This, of course, is an age old video. If you grew up with it, I apologize for bringing this back or whatever. But to my gen X/Y generation, this is of historic value. You may have heard jokes about something called “Duck and Cover”. Well, this is what it’s all made of.
In the 1950’s, this is what you were supposed to do when you knew an atomic bomb was going to hit your insignificant village of 100 people.
Somehow, I don’t feel we’ve advanced much from those days. Only now we don’t even really know or care when shit hits the fan. At least they had “duck and cover” to make them feel like they knew what they were doing. Of course, we might want to feel like (i.e. assume) we’ll be living a safe and secure society forever. But if we keep thinking that way, what happens when even something as simple as the lights go out for an entire day like in 2003, let alone being attacked by modern day pirates or space aliens?
Simple. We order pizza and drink lots of beer!
Here’s a legomation parody of the above if you’re all sad now:
Did you know that the true pronunciation of the name Tiananmen, referring to the square where a protest against the repressive Communist Chinese regime occurred exactly 32 years ago, is often done incorrectly by Westerners? Well, it’s the syllables they do incorrectly, not so much as the sounds and tones. Still, you can’t blame them, no one can know every language well enough.
But anyway, they usually would split Tiananmen as Ti-a-na(n)-men.
But it is really: Tian-an-men, with the only tone a rising one at the last syllable.
Hear it here: http://www.answers.com/topic/tiananmen-square?cat=travel
There are three syllables, one for each Chinese character: 天安门, each of which stands for “heaven”, “peace” and “gate”. One could translate this more fluently as “gate of heavenly peace”. Note how the Chinese name does not include the word “square”.
Also, there have been three different Tiananmen Square protests in history: one in 1919, another in 1976 and another in 1989. The protest most famous in the west, the one with a man standing in front of tanks (The Unknown Rebel or Tank Man), took place in 1989. That was not exactly 19 years ago today, but took place in June.
And as well, since this is Beijing Olympics year and since China is in the news a lot this year, you can also appear to sound more knowledgeable by pronouncing Beijing not as “bei-ZHING” but more like “PAY-ching“. The former is due to thinking that somehow Pinyin is supposed to be pronounced like French. It does not do justice to approximate the pronunciations like either, however, so it would be far better hearing a native speaker pronounce the names on this page. The “P” that I use also differs from the English “B” or “P” but closer to “P”. (Please be patient, I am trying to do this now without using crazy linguistics terms.)
But of course, if you’re pronouncing these words to an English-speaker, it really doesn’t matter which pronunciation you use, unless if you’re talking to an academic. Asking for directions in China to a Mandarin speaker, however, I hope this note will have somehow introduced to you the peculiarities of Western (English) pronunciation of foreign names.
Zaijian.
I really would have loved a “New airplane”:
Q4S4 is just something put together by some guy in Toronto, Canada named Jon whom you’ll probably never meet. He was born in 1984 and is one of the world’s youngest Gen Xers. He loves nomadic/lesser-known cultures, folk music and “strange things”.
Q4S4 stands for nothing in particular. Make up your own acronym to go with QQQQSSSS :)
