Here are the results, by category into a few different classifications:

Just like everyone else, the Chinese are looking to solve scientific and technological problems, find love online, improve their business, or wallow in despair. The 27% of queries that challenge established Chinese tradition are also interesting–most focus around the long march, the Confucian tradition of the classics, or test-taking.

But, it’s the Love queries that are the most cute:

• Why do we love?
• Why get married?
• How to get pregnant?
• How to kiss?
• What is love?
• What is happiness?
• Should I have a child?
• Should I see an “internet friend” in person?
• Should I get married?

Hopefully everyone will have the chance to find the answers to these questions!

The one on the site is even better, tastefully layering some pretty white snowflakes. The button underneath still need major-work, but I really love the header…

?????????
Yesterday, the weather was fine.

We’ve also been taught to form questions and dialog:

????????
Today it’s very nice?

Words used to say things about weather can also be used in everyday conversation:

?????????
I’m quite cold, are you very cold?
??????
I’m not cold.

Interestingly, and probably sensibly, the spoken vocabulary in Chinese 101 goes much faster than the written vocabulary. We learn about 20 traditional characters a week, but probably twice as many new words. The hardest part, though, is learning some phrase and learning to apply it and its component parts properly in new contexts.

Here is an article that talks about the difficulties an international TA would face due to language barrier, cultural barrier etc. It also talks about a 0.2 drop in GPA for students taught by an international TA. So what to do. Cornell has a program called International TA Development Program. I work for it, and I think they do a great job of introducing international TAs to American culture, helping them with pronounciation and intonation. I also think ITADP is better than the “crash courses” other universities in the article implement because it runs all year long. TAs take classes, meet with language partners and are regularly evaluated during the year.

I think we(undergraduates) forget sometimes that graduate students who come to Cornell are very very smart. Their English is not an indication of their intelligence. If you read the article, you will see that trying to listen just a little bit harder to your TA who may be lost in this American culture might do some great things for your GPA, and you might even end up being friends with someone from another culture.

Read more at International Reporter, India  …

Read more at Bloomberg  …

There was a passage about a woman who was speaking Portugese, Japanese and English to different groups of people at a dinner party. She reflects on a comment by a guest who noticed that her personality seemed to change depending on the language she spoke. She wonders if she has split-personality, but concludes that all the personalities are hers.

According to the article, people growing up in different cultures acquire multiple sets of behaviours in order to fit in with different cultures. This is an unconscious process and when people first realize what they are doing, they wonder whether they have split-personality.

Interesting thing is, I’ve noticed myself doing the same thing. Languages bring out different personalities because they are so closely related with culture and different cultures call for different sets of behaviours.

The amount of respect accorded to the elderly is reflected in Korean and Japanese (don’t know about Chinsese) through the extensive use of honourific forms. While you can certainly be polite in English and show the same amount of respect in English, with Korean or Japanese, using a whole different form of the language automatically places the other person on a different level.

So if you want to know about the culture of a country, try reading their dictionaries.

• Truth via Eggs:
  

  The Chinese (and perhaps Asian in general) concept [of truth] depends on a human intent to deceive.

• Happy Corner:
  

  Suddenly, three to four students rush over to you. They lift you up, they split your legs apart and then they slam your sexual organ right into a post or a wall corner.

• Chinese Bloggers Arrive:
  

  I also see what Chinese bloggers’ energy, creativity and ingenuity has achieved over the last two short years to spread blogging from a handful of people to 600,000 and growing under the censorship regime.

• Kim’s Missing Portrait:
  

  A before-and-after photograph shows Kim’s portrait has been removed from its place beside his father’s, whatever that might mean.