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Dr Zhivago http://urbangiraffe.com/2005/08/02/dr-zhivago/ http://urbangiraffe.com/2005/08/02/dr-zhivago/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2005 20:57:10 +0000 John http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/08/02/dr-zhivago/ I've been churning through a lot of books recently and so I thought I'd talk about some here.

First up is Dr. Zhivago. I'll admit a distinct liking for Russian literature, ever since Crime & Punishment blew me away. The country is so big and has so much history. I just wish I could explore it all. As I do not possess an unlimited budget I have to make do with whatever books I can get my hands on, and this was provided by Boris Pasternak.

]]> http://urbangiraffe.com/2005/08/02/dr-zhivago/feed/ Learning Chinese http://urbangiraffe.com/2005/07/07/learning-chinese/ http://urbangiraffe.com/2005/07/07/learning-chinese/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2005 01:37:48 +0000 John http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/07/07/learning-chinese/ I've been trying to learn Chinese for over half a year now and, well, it's kinda tough going. Not only do you need to learn a whole new way of speaking, but you also need to learn two written languages: pinyin (the English transliteration of Chinese words, so you can actually read anything), and Chinese characters themselves.

The spoken language is difficult in its own right due to tones. These are like the accents found in other languages, but more complicated and unfortunately much more important - getting the wrong tone in a word can change the meaning completely, to the extent that you could call your mother a horse by using the wrong inflection.

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