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Post by shades on Dec 28, 2015 6:13:41 GMT
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Post by 3piggles on Dec 28, 2015 14:50:11 GMT
They are adorable, and I love the cage The way you've set up the fleece in a tent for them is great They have a lot of good playing room, so getting exercise shouldn't be a problem. Great set up How high are the sides of the cage? I'm asking because you're handy, and you might be able to create a running mezzanine higher up in the cage, if you want them to have even more exercise space
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Post by jolovespiggies on Dec 28, 2015 19:19:42 GMT
They are really beautiful darling, thank you for sharing. Their cage looks great too, plenty of running space and it is amazing how fast they can run when they want to LOL!!
Hugs JO x
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Post by shades on Dec 29, 2015 4:19:00 GMT
...it is amazing how fast they can run when they want to LOL!! Thanks. The speed that reach when lapping their cage or chasing each other is unbelievable. I don't know how they manage to avoid hitting the side of the cage. The white-faced one is quite bold. He's always out to see what's going on. He's first to call for food. He's playful too. I'm sure he loves making me walk around the cage (it's too wide to reach across ) when I only want to stroke his side. He goes from corner to corner two or three times, then lies down in one corner and spreads his body lengthwise as if he's relaxing on the beach to let me stroke him. He's not stressed at all. He doesn't play this game with anyone else. He's also quick to tell me what he wants to eat. Yesterday I filled their food bowl with carrot hidden under some lettuce. I tried to hand-feed him some lettuce. He wasn't having it. He could smell the carrot on my hands. He politely ignored the lettuce and let me feel his teeth on my fingers. No blood, no marks. OK OK I get the message. Here's the carrot! He's settled in quite well, and is not phased by our kids. That's pleasing.
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Post by shades on Dec 29, 2015 4:30:36 GMT
They are adorable, and I love the cage The way you've set up the fleece in a tent for them is great They have a lot of good playing room, so getting exercise shouldn't be a problem. Great set up How high are the sides of the cage? I'm asking because you're handy, and you might be able to create a running mezzanine higher up in the cage, if you want them to have even more exercise space They love to chill out in their tent. That wasn't really by design. I bought the fleece direct from a fabric wholesaler. You have to buy in multiples of 0.5m lengths, and the fixed width is 1.5m. So with a 1m*1m cage, I've extra cloth to hang over to make their tent and they can also hide under the fleece around the other edges. Just lucky! The side walls are about 40cm high. Enough to keep unwanted hands out and guinea pigs in! I've thought about adding an extra level (just attach a new cage to the existing walls) but I'm not sure it's a good idea. At the moment, cleaning and changing the fleece is quick and easy. With an extra level, it'll probably be fiddly. Also with an open cage, there's a lot of interaction with the pigs. They can see out, we can see in. I don't want to lose that. I'm fearful they might spend more time hiding under the upper floor.
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Post by Bean on Dec 29, 2015 8:14:38 GMT
Oh they are adorable! I love the way they're looking at you when they're nestled under the tent, what cute little faces! What are their names? Sorry if you've said it two posts ago and I'm being blind!
Your set up is great too, they're lucky boys!
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Post by shades on Dec 29, 2015 9:11:31 GMT
Oh they are adorable! I love the way they're looking at you when they're nestled under the tent, what cute little faces! What are their names? Sorry if you've said it two posts ago and I'm being blind! Your set up is great too, they're lucky boys! I'm not sure if I've said before but their names are 哇哇 (Wawa) and 肥肥 (Feifei). Wawa is the darker one and Feifei is the fatter one with the white face.
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Post by Bean on Dec 29, 2015 12:44:13 GMT
Cute sounding names!
I'm just looking up the translations and the website I'm on says fei means fertiliser or get rich and wa means wail or vomit?!
Which Chinese language do you speak (my website isn't specifying!)? My husband said he wanted to learn Mandarin but he struggled to get past the different tones (and the toneless tone) and the distinction between sounds that sound so similar to us - I think he's going for Danish instead!
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Post by shades on Dec 29, 2015 15:24:44 GMT
Haha! The translations are terrible. There really aren't any good translation tools for the PC. There are better ones for the phone. There are two kinds of Chinese: traditional and simplified. The former is still used in Taiwan and the latter is used in China. It was simplified in an attempt to improve literacy. 哇哇 wāwā is the sound of a crying child. This is my youngest son's pet and he's often moaning like a baby 肥肥 féi féi means fat/plump. This little pig is a little chubby. At one point I thought he might have been a pregnant she :eek: I can understand why your husband found it difficult. The tones are often hard to hear especially when Chinese speakers, like the older generation, are a little lazy. But they're not impossible. I think the hardest thing is being able to make the sounds that don't exist in English. If you've studied other languages before, that should make it easier. I don't know if Danish will be any easier...
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Post by 3piggles on Dec 29, 2015 20:12:53 GMT
This is a 2x4' store bought cage I used to have for two boars. The tubing added 10' of running space, without taking any space out of the cage. I detached the roof of the cage, and attached the tube run to it. To clean the cage, or pick up the boys, I just removed the roof with the tubes attached, and put it back when I was done. As handy as you are, I'm sure you could find a way to add a run or just a loft on one side, not that they need it. It's just such a great cage space, with so much potential, says the woman who can never stop redesigning her piggy spaces
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Whimsy
Bronze Member
Posts: 400
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Post by Whimsy on Dec 29, 2015 23:55:46 GMT
Cute piggies! I like the whole language debate. I'm actually Danish and I've heard that it's one of the hardest languages to learn, so I'm curious to hear how your husband is doing with it Bean :-)
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Post by Bean on Dec 30, 2015 9:00:16 GMT
Oh he's not doing so well yet, but that's probably because he hasn't really started... I'll tell him it might be hard and I bet that'll be the end of it and he'll switch to German haha! He's better with languages than me, but I think the reason I struggle is because I'm not using them as I'm learning so my motivation goes. If I were living somewhere and learning I think I'd be much better. If anyone wants to offer me a free holiday somewhere nice so I can test that out, please feel free!
We've picked up a few Danish words and phrases from watching The Killing, The Bridge and Rita (not Borgen, we got bored by that one) so that probably made us think it might be easier than it actually will be?! We often 'tak!' each other! My dad's learning Norweigan at the moment - he says it seems to have a bit in common with Danish (he learned a little as he and mum went to Denmark last year - inspired by The Bridge and The Killing funnily enough!). He's great with languages - he also speaks Spanish fluently and some German and French.
Thanks for the better translations, Shades! The reason for wāwā's name made me chuckle! What does your son think of it?!
My parents were on holiday in Spain recently and ended up spending the day with a fellow tourist who was from Japan but spoke only a little English and my parents don't speak Japanese. Apparently they communicated almost entirely through a translation app on his phone which sounds fun, especially as not everything made sense!
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Whimsy
Bronze Member
Posts: 400
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Post by Whimsy on Dec 30, 2015 14:44:02 GMT
That's funny. I'm actually watching Borgen right now. I'm a little behind on it, because I live in Canada now, but I enjoy my Danish shows. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are very similar and we can understand each other quite well. It's amazing how you can communicate with other people without speaking the same languages, whether it's through an app or just with hand gestures and stuff.
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Post by 3piggles on Dec 30, 2015 17:27:14 GMT
I had a roommate from Thailand, and Thai is a language of sounds, also. I don't speak it, but she said there are different tones for the same word, 5 if I remember correctly, and each gives the word a different meaning. Her boyfriends name was Ood(sound, not spelling), in one tone, and the same word meant pig in another tone. Sounds extremely complicated, as I'm used to tonal changes adding emotion to words, since when we're speaking, we can't add punctuation to show how a word should be interpreted. I learned Spanish in school, and have since used it to translate Italian. I'm not at all fluent, but the way speakers of both languages run together words is the same. I learned what French I know watching the tv show Combat, and despite it being a Latin-based language, I can't see much similarity to Italian or Spanish. Online translators are really bad. I haven't tried phone translators, but nothing a translate from a Finnish friend ever makes any sense. Not sure about any of the other Scandinavian languages. Love the piggy names/translations. Your younger son definitely relates Shades, why do the Chinese drop their voice a lot, then raise it slightly, at the end of a sentence? They also seem to draw out the last word. Is that similar to English ending a sentence on a down tone for statements, and on an up tone for questions?
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Post by bazookagoof on Dec 31, 2015 20:56:51 GMT
Shades, why do the Chinese drop their voice a lot, then raise it slightly, at the end of a sentence? They also seem to draw out the last word. Is that similar to English ending a sentence on a down tone for statements, and on an up tone for questions? While you're waiting for Shades, I think I can partially answer that, being married to a Chinese woman- some words are pronounced the same, but it's how you give the intonations that can change the meaning entirely. Saying a word "flat", without any rising or falling intonations, means one thing. Raising your voice at the end of the word means another, and a third way involves raising and dropping it to give yet another different meaning. Shades, if I'm wrong or explaining it improperly, please correct me.
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Post by 3piggles on Dec 31, 2015 21:02:29 GMT
That makes a lot of senses, Bazookagoof. Thank you. I've always been fascinated by language, and love learning about other languages
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Post by shades on Jan 1, 2016 5:53:19 GMT
Shades, why do the Chinese drop their voice a lot, then raise it slightly, at the end of a sentence? They also seem to draw out the last word. Is that similar to English ending a sentence on a down tone for statements, and on an up tone for questions? While you're waiting for Shades, I think I can partially answer that, being married to a Chinese woman- some words are pronounced the same, but it's how you give the intonations that can change the meaning entirely. Saying a word "flat", without any rising or falling intonations, means one thing. Raising your voice at the end of the word means another, and a third way involves raising and dropping it to give yet another different meaning. Shades, if I'm wrong or explaining it improperly, please correct me. bazookagoof I've no problem with you butting in with a reply. That's the beauty of this forum. There's a wealth of info and experience. 3piggles I've never really noticed "Chinese speakers dropping their voices a lot, then raising it slightly, at the end of a sentence? They also seem to draw out the last word". Here comes Chinese class As you know, Chinese is represented by many characters and the characters are also represented by Hanyu Pinyin, which is a phonetic transcription system using the alphabet. In this system you can have more than one character represented by the same pinyin. Tones are used to differentiate the characters in pinyin. For example: 'ma' can mean mother, horse, to bother, or to scold. It all depends on the tone used. What we could class as a word usually has one to four characters. The tones themselves are (1) flat, (2) rising , (3) dropping then rising, (4) dropping. To confuse things further, there's also a neutral tone. You can find a good visual explanation of the tones here web.mit.edu/jinzhang/www/pinyin/tones/The tones themselves are not particularly difficult. Most learners struggle when you have to change tone for every character. It's quite normal to have different tones follow each other, but it needs a lot of effort to get your mouth and tongue working together to speak comfortably.
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Post by Bean on Jan 1, 2016 10:55:27 GMT
Very interesting, thanks. When English is taught in Chinese schools, what's the general consensus on how easy/ difficult it is and which parts of learning the language can typically cause problems?
Bazookagoof, I'm just curious - is your daughter learning Chinese? Kids are often so much better at getting to grips with new languages!
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Post by shades on Jan 1, 2016 11:58:38 GMT
Kids learn English from their first years in school. Some private nurseries also teach English pre-school. I think the general feeling is that it's not difficult compared to maths and Chinese. There's a lot of emphasis on grammar, memorising vocab, and written work. Speaking is always low priority; probably because of the large class sizes. I'd say the biggest obstacle is the lack of good teachers. The teaching methods are a little antiquated/exam-driven and little time is spent on pronunciation. So, what you end up with are students who can give standard replies to typical questions in the same Chinese accent. If you ask a question that's not on the script...
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Post by 3piggles on Jan 1, 2016 16:23:09 GMT
Sadly, grammar, sentence structure and pronunciation aren't taught very well in the English-speaking countries, either. People who speak English as a second language often speak better English than the natives. I've been out of the school systems since the very early 70s, so I have no idea why so few seem to be able to construct a sentence or get the grammar right. It also doesn't help that the media is dumbing down, so instead of even the nightly news broadcast being the one place where the language was used correctly, it's generally abominable.
We had language labs when I was in school, so not only did we have the classroom teaching time, we had time listening to tapes of the language being spoken. Unfortunately, I'm very good at the spoken part, to the point where people think I actually know the language, when I really don't.
Why do some Chinese speaking English pronounce R as L? Is there no R sound in Chinese? One of the most popular Chinese dishes in the US is fried rice, which many Chinese pronounce Fly Lice.
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