Hi, my name is Niel, otherwise known as Confused Laowai. I blog about my exciting, yet often confusing adventure learning Chinese.
2010: A Year in Review
So 2010 is almost over. I’d like to reflect this past year on my Mandarin. I graduated this year with a Mandarin (+ General Linguistics) degree cum laude. But, to me, it speaks more than my actual abilities. I have learned how to score really good marks, but doesn’t really reflect my knowledge of the language. One of the biggest things that helped me this year, was the choice of our teacher to give us [...]
Soccer World Cup South Africa
My country is hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup and it’s happening pretty soon. Kickoff is June 11. So, I decided to create a blog post with some soccer and South African related terminology in Chinese and English and for healthy measure my other native tongue, Afrikaans, which also spoken widely in South Africa. 1) Soccer: Mandarin: 足球 (zúqiú) Afrikaans: Sokker 2) World Cup: Mandarin: 世界杯 (shìjièbēi) Afrikaans: Wêreldbeker 3) Score A Goal: Mandarin: 进球 (jìnqiú) Afrikaans: [...]
