The Chinese must have been as fed up with that damn icon as some of us were. hooray!

incidentally, my chinese lessons have taught me that "wu hao" means "five good" (or at least it can if the appropriate tones are used). My chinese lessons also taught me to say "shong di jie mei ma" (my own romanization) means "do you have siblings?" which I'm sure will come in handy as conversation for the average tourist to china.

Is that in the "If you meet a hot, married person" section?

wo zai xue shuo Zhongwen.

funny enough, i didn't understand crazy monk's comments OR jbg's....something about your family?
wo jiao mei jian. ni jiao shen ma ming zu?

hmm. maybe it means you're in boston? i don't know what zhongwen is...

ah, got it (i had to look it up). i am learning chinese. my tapes didn't teach me that. right now it's all about the weather and family and hobbies.

So, you are going to translate it for me, right?

i am learning chinese. that was the translation. i guess that was ambiguous before. and now i get cm's comment, but i was more thinking about how if you asked that question (which is actually "ni yo shong di jie mei ma") to pretty much anyone in china they'll respond "wo mei yo" which means no. because nobody does. because they're not allowed.

one thing: it's insanely hard to learn chinese, especially from an 8-week course at the cambridge center for adolt education.

that's all i remember. wo zai xue zhongwen.

if you can keep it up, the cds are pretty good. i put it on my ipod and listen on the way to work. everybody recommends pimmsleur, though i did a competing (and cheaper) tape set. i'd probably recommend pimmsleur, too.

the problem with learning chinese from a cd, though, is that without a human being listening to you, they can't help you with the subtleties of the pronounciation -- you can hear it over and over and over again, but until you've told a chinese person that you want a toilet for dinner because you went with a rising A sound instead of a dipping A sound, you won't really be learning.

that's why it's a good thing i'm a cs grad student. we're not exactly lacking in native mandarin speakers around here.

well excuuuuuuuuuuse me, mr. fancypants. well, uh, we're not exactly lacking in, uh, native mandarin ORANGES here, either.

oh wait, we are.