Sunday, December 21, 2008

Big Brother Binky

Several have expressed interest in finding this Arthur episode where Binky's family adopts from China on DVD, so I thought I'd try to track down some online sources.

Check out:

BeachAudio.com -- $8.99

Overstock.com -- $10.43

ToysRUs.com -- $10.99

Amazon.com -- $11.49

ShopPBS.org -- $12.99

You can also rent it on NetFlix.

I'm glad so many people are interested in the DVD, but I think part of what my girls thought was so cool was that they saw it on "regular TV!" Amazing how powerful it is to see their story mainstreamed. Your local PBS station website should be able to give the schedule.

BTW, I can't vouch for any of the sources I've listed above (I've bought from Overstock, Amazon & PBS before with good success, but don't know about the others). And check out the shipping, not just the price of the DVD!

Wendy asks how xie-xie should be pronounced, if shay-shay is wrong. Well, I'm certainly not an expert, but the key, I think, is to see each "shay" as a two-syllable word. Each of the two syllables are said fast together, like "she-ey she-ey."

Anyone have a better explanation of how to say it?

5 comments:

Jeff and Madeline said...

Regarding Xie Xie, make sure you watch the tone as well. Xie also means shoe, but the tone is different. There are several online sources that pronounce words for free if you are interested.

The other Wendy

Anonymous said...

http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/wordlook.pl?word=xie+xie&searchtype=pinyin&where=whole&audio=on

The "xie" (4th tone) in thank you is pronounced with a falling intonation.

Anonymous said...

shoe = xie2 鞋
thank you = xie4 谢

(Just looked up "Shoe" in my dictionary.)

"shee-eh, shee-eh" might be a better way. Not sure how well written phonetics work.

Jeff and Madeline said...

Thanks for adding to my comment, I didn't have the info at the moment--I should have taken the extra step.
Mei-Ling--what program did you purchase to get characters on the computer? Thanks.

Wendy said...

Thanks. I just added it to my netflix queue.

Thanks too for the pr. I do actually pronounce it the way Mei-ling explained, but her written phonetic is much better. Camille and I were watching Kai-lan yesterday (as an aside- I do have a problem with their pr. of Lan since that is C's Chinese name) anyway, and they did pr. xie xie the correct way.

WendyN