cunning lnguist
- 2012-04-19
varium et mutabile semper femina. Indeed, but I'm willing to try to understand women of any nationality. :)
Which brings me to a language activity of a few days ago with a group of second-year uni students. The activity was based on a role-play and simulation, "The X Y Society" from Fredericke Klippel's Keep Talking: Communicative Fluency activities for Language Teaching, and we had a lot of fun.
Spread over two double-lessons during one week, the first session was in the form of a radio programme with the rest of the class, rather than passive observers waiting their turn, acting as phone-in callers to the programme. The second session, based on some refinement of the original concepts and done for homework, was set in a TV studio with a live audience, and those waiting for their call to present, asking questions of the group. Some of the students even mimicked various English accents as they were calling in from several countries. This was totally unexpected and very funny.
One of the groups created a "Big Uncle" society, a wordplay on the 'Big Auntie' in Chinese culture. The objectives for the society and the roles of the 'officers' were explained by the group's use of PowerPoint. I had limited the number of slides that could be used to a maximum four slides and a minimum of text with a focus on using a graphic to help explain the point. This society/organisation aimed to give men a feeling for what it would be like to be a woman - having babies, menstruation and pre-menstrual tension among other things. The ensuing "studio" debate was entertaining and I was very pleased that this group had considered the lexis of their topic in their preparation and used the words appropriately.
Another group established a company that would specialise in advising couples. There were two arms of the company: one would deal with keeping couples together, the other with showing the ways of breaking-up a relationship. They also covered clothing and cosmetics.
It goes to show that Chinese students, if provided with a secure and supportive teaching environment, can be both innovative and imaginative.
San Migs
- 2012-04-19
Completely lost here, but don't believe anything about that yin and yang stuff, it is up there with voodoo in terms of charlatanism.
Magister
- 2012-04-19
So when Chinese women state they are ‘traditional’, the subject of several recent posts, do those women comprehend what they are saying?
varium et mutabile semper femina
Perhaps the question should be do we ever comprehend women :)
cunning lnguist
- 2012-04-19
Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier. Literal translation - After sexual intercourse every animal is sad, except the cock [rooster] and the woman. In other words, the postcoital blues.
If you've read anything about sex in ancient China, the woman has plenty of Ying essence that needs to be accessed whereas the man has limited supplies of Yang essence that should be preserved (coitus reservatus). Sounds like a Chinese justification for the relationship between an Emperor and his numerous concubines, but interesting in itself in that different modes of thinking produce different effects. Not least, that of the concept of prolonging the life-span of the man.
“The subject of sex was central to early Chinese thought. Discussed openly and seriously as a fundamental topic of human speculation, it was an important source of imagery and terminology that informed the classical Chinese conception of social and political relationships. This sophisticated and long-standing tradition, however, has been all but neglected by modern historians.” *
So when Chinese women state they are ‘traditional’, the subject of several recent posts, do those women comprehend what they are saying?
Let ‘battle’ commence, but coitus reservatus, and remember that “a beautiful women can overthrow an Empire."
*Further reading:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/ealc/content/culture-sex-ancient-china
San Migs
- 2012-04-19
Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier.
?
I guess it is latin, my bad.
As for Esperanto:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
cunning lnguist
- 2012-04-18
I know little of Esperanto apart from that it exists. This Latin phrase I remembered from studying Chaucer at school. Amazing what sticks in the mind from one's education!
In looking for some joke material I stumbled, in an act of pure serendipity (honest, guv), on the video clip. One poster some time back in a thread on Chinese women was complaining that his "girlfriend" was negotiating for more money during the act, hence caveat emptor.
Magister's response in Latin was perfect and it reminded me of a married friend's comment when he was paying a little bit too much attention to some young ladies:" Just because I'm on a diet, doesn't mean I can't look at the menu."
Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier.