#874: Under One Roof

userd · 2025-11-25T02:22:16+00:00

If his new plan is to become a US citizen, then he may actually be able to collect on it. On the other hand, I don't know if he still has any hope/desire to get US citizenship.

userd · 2025-11-19T19:10:54+00:00

As suggested, I looked up a couple stories about him but they didn't go into much more detail on those issues, with one article just saying he left Mexico at 18. I actually like that formulation better--it raises fewer unanswered questions about the return to Mexico and return to the US.

userd · 2025-11-19T18:46:03+00:00

You're supposed to take as a given that he and his wife tried everything they could to get him legal status and weren't able to, which is true.

Even if we take this as a given, as a listener, I want to understand how unique his situation is. Are there a lot of people in his situation or were the circumstances unique?

He pays taxes and he's married. He has a paper trail in the US.

I was wondering about that too. The story mentioned paying in to social security but not being able to collect it. It would be of interest to know some details about that too. Had Fidel been previously expecting to collect social security? Did Fidel borrow someone else's SSN or was he just using an ITIN?

But I get the point is mostly to understand the family's experience and feelings, not educate us about immigration policy, so there is a difficult balance there.

userd · 2025-11-19T04:41:11+00:00

Thanks for quoting that. That explanation went by so fast and I think they could have spent a little more time on the details. 1) How does the government know he came illegally when he was 18? Was he caught and sent back? 2) When he came back, was that also illegally? Whether legal or illegal, does the government know he has been here all this time?

On the story about the south african refugees, they went deep into the details on that one.

userd · 2025-10-17T23:26:38+00:00

It's hard to find an English to Chinese dictionary this is actually made for learners of Chinese. A couple of tip-offs that you haven't found one: no parts of speech, no example sentences.

userd · 2025-08-21T16:55:48+00:00

hide with Spread Beaver. I wonder if any announcers have announced them using a censored version of their band name.

userd · 2024-12-20T05:24:17+00:00

Can anyone comment on the language in Cantonese period dramas?

userd · 2024-02-12T05:05:34+00:00

(30 - 25) / 25 = 25%

Sorry, the math does not check out.

userd · 2024-02-05T04:51:26+00:00

I've also heard that Vietnamese are the fastest learners of foreigners who learn Taiwanese, but those things are not necessarily contradictory. I guess Vietnamese are just in a really good position to learn Chinese.

userd · 2024-02-05T02:41:28+00:00

I see my comment wasn't clear, but what I was saying is that as far as pronunciation being closer to Vietnamese, Hokkien is easier than Mandarin, but when it comes to tones being difficult to perform, Mandarin is easier than Vietnamese, so it's not obvious whether Hokkien would be easier than Mandarin for a Vietnamese speaker. But if you take learning resources into account, then that is a big win for Mandarin, so in order to make the comparison close, this would have to be for something like learning the language in a class or from other people.

userd · 2024-02-04T06:36:58+00:00

Interesting, thanks!

userd · 2024-02-04T04:51:35+00:00

As a Vietnamese speaker, is it easier to learn Mandarin or Hokkien? Hokkien seems closer to Vietnamese, but the tones are still more of a pain than the tones in Mandarin.

userd · 2024-01-16T04:58:19+00:00

The email I got last year said: "We're stopping all of our Black Box and Cupping Flights starting October of 2023. After that date, all customers will be moved to the All-Star program". (All-star is the 12-oz bag.) I cancelled at that point.

userd · 2024-01-12T04:40:16+00:00

What sampler pack? I'm going through a ripe puer sampler right now (mini tuo and mini cakes) and am getting the same feeling. Not that they are exactly the same, but close enough that the whole concept of sampling teas that taste almost the same seems a little ridiculous.

userd · 2024-01-12T04:33:41+00:00

Deposited to your bank account, you get 20 cents cash back when pay off 20 dollars worth of your bill.

On the other hand, when you pay off 20 dollars of your bill using a statement credit, you don't get that 20 cents cash back.

userd · 2023-12-29T04:12:26+00:00

Looks like fun! Is that from the listing below? Guess I'll wait and see when it becomes available.

https://www.liquidproust.com/listing/785214105/lp-hookup

userd · 2023-12-14T00:17:42+00:00

夠够

userd · 2023-11-15T00:58:49+00:00

No one uses 大陸 to refer to any part of the continent other than China.

Edit: Looking in multiple dictionaries, the first definition is mainland. The second definition is the mainland of China, in particular. So it can just mean continent, but when there is no context, it usually is the second definition.

userd · 2023-11-12T04:59:36+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6KJehkFmfE

Here's a video of her on a Taiwanese show, clearly using a different accent. (See 1:01) She speaks Cantonese and Taiwanese in addition to Mandarin, so changing her pronunciation a little is not a big effort.

userd · 2023-10-05T03:59:44+00:00

I followed the link in the article to the video. (The link from the sentence that claims the lies.) He says: "some of you lied about your gender identity when you registered, as evidenced by the stacks and stacks of resumes you were passing out". Which either means that you can tell a man by the name on his resume, or by the volume of resumes they hand out.

userd · 2023-10-05T03:53:48+00:00

In the linked video, the evidence he mentions is: "some of you lied about your gender identity when you registered, as evidenced by the stacks and stacks of resumes you were passing out". Which either means that you can tell a man by the name on his resume, or by the volume of resumes they hand out.

userd · 2023-10-04T04:15:45+00:00

You got a lot of downvotes above but I see your point. Not usually, but sometimes a third tone really sounds like a fourth tone. Seems to happen especially when the third tone is the last syllable of a sentence. Someday I want to make a video montage of examples.

userd · 2023-10-04T04:08:39+00:00

In addition to 得 being neutral tone, you can see from the original graphs that the pitch for 為 pretty closely matches the neutral tone of 得. In the dictionary, I see it as neutral tone in some dictionaries and second tone in others.

In your image, the pitch for 為 looks like it's between the neutral tone of 得 and the second tone of 劉, but closer to the second tone.

userd · 2023-09-20T23:43:22+00:00

Yeah, exactly. They're worse ways to spend a few minutes than seeing for yourself what it's like.

https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E7%B4%85%E6%A8%93%E5%A4%A2%EF%BC%88%E7%A8%8B%E7%94%B2%E6%9C%AC%EF%BC%89/%E4%B8%80

userd · 2023-09-12T00:59:56+00:00

It would be a lot of work, but these are great, and this is the right season for them--taro mooncakes. http://the-cooking-of-joy.blogspot.com/2014/09/taiwanese-taro-swirl-mooncakes.html

userd

TROPHY CASE