Since Mandarin is spoken by more than 1 billion people in a whole China, there are different accents for sure from different area. Usually I can tell which area the guy from based on accent, however this speaker from the video has very light accent. Maybe because the other video you heard before has more accent than him making you think he has a strange tone.

 

Yes, hence the "flatness" of his enunciation, I suppose.

Most of my exposure to Mandarin is based on television, toy review videos, and my neighbors, so I'm guessing that whatever accents I hear most often might be a bit stronger.

z

 

Hey, anyone know where to get the Abyss ITF01?

 

I'm not sure where to find it these days, but I will just mention that I owned it, and I was quite disappointed with it. The plastic feels quite cheap, and the tolerances feel dangerously tight.

z

 

From all accounts its pretty shit. But I wouldn't mind one for display purposes

Edit :actually I'll take your advice and just look for the regular hasbro one

 

A lot of people complain about the Hasbro version... the transformation is a bit fiddly, but it's an interesting design, reasonably durable, and I think it looks pretty good in both modes. I would agree that it should be larger, but sadly these OS KO versions just don't feel right.  

z

 

Funny thing is that even without the accents, there are a lot of regional variations in propriety and word usage. My wife is Taiwanese and her parents have lived in Guangzhou for the last 10 years, so when we lived in northeast China for 4 years, the locals would always remark on my wife's Mandarin. Even when my in-laws would visit and try to use more of a mainline dialect, the Guangzhou usage is obviously far different than dongbei. Plus in the area I lived (Yanji), we had about a 50/50 mix of Han Chinese and Korean Chinese, who also had incredibly different accents. I'm Korean, and I always found both the Chinese accent and Korean accent of Korean-Chinese so fascinating - they speak Korean in a more sing-song way that sounds like they are trying to use tones similar to Mandarin in Korean, which has no tones normally. I loved it!

When I took Chinese lessons, I found out there were a lot of words that my wife taught me that were improper to use in dongbei region - like certain words that would refer to someone as a young woman or waitress in Taiwan would be construed as prostitute in the Northeast. Or certain ways of asking "Can I .... " were normal in Taiwan for both men and women, but only used by women in Northeast, so I was told if I use that word usage, I would be implying to others that I was either gay or wanted to be effeminate. I love learning these types of differences, as long as I learn them in the classroom instead of getting in trouble by using them improperly in practice haha. Heck, we commonly call tapioca milk tea "boba nai cha" in the US, but when I first visited Taiwan, I was given a lot of angry looks when I asked for it - my friend had to tell me that people really only used it as slang for boobs instead of tapioca pearls....

 

The accent from Taiwan is too soft to my like while the Dongbei accent is too rough on the other hand, they are both quite different than China's official Mandarin . If the reviewer were talking like that, I should be able to tell the difference pretty easy.

Lots of Chinese word changes the meaning in the past 20 years. For example: "someone as a young woman or waitress in Taiwan" (小姐) when I was young, it was polite to address lady like that, now it became prostitute.

Or "同志", it means comrade, thus a very common word in communist part country like China. Somehow in the past 20 years the meaning change to gay.

And among the words "boba nai cha", it's "boba" (波霸）causing problem, this word is from Cantonese, meaning biggest boobs. So it's something past from Hongkong to Taiwan.

 

I'm thinking about getting some Combiner Wars KOs, what's out there? What's good? What's bad?

 

Congratulations! Maybe you have any ideas where to get Eness sticker set for that trailer?

 

32 CM SENTINEL PRIME

 

That Sentinel seems nicely Decorated & 30cm is a nice size - not to small or to huge.
I'll strongly consider that one.

------

Fun little fact about Translations - if you have ever wondered why so many car names are nonsense words - it's because sometimes they were having trouble with the name sounding like something rude in another language so they pick a name that has no meaning in any language to avoid that.... though naming it after something safe sometimes works too.

 

Anyone know where i can get the ko undersized cw devastator?

 

This looks good. This has vibes of M01 Commander. I would like see more of this.

 

That's apparently the origin of the Kodak camera company's name. The word "Kodak" was invented because it had no meaning in any other major language.

Others can speak in more detail on this, but the CBB line of standard-size KO Combiner Wars figures are not bad. I have some of the figures from their multicolour sets, and they are very good. Plastic doesn't feel too cheap, decent joints, etc. The one exception I've found in that line are the Protectobots, specifically the box set in the Takara colours. The plastic is rather soft, and they don't feel great.

Also, the slightly oversized POTP Dinobot (by BM) and Terrorcon (by BPF) sets are both really excellent, and in both of these sets, the CW connector pegs have been kept at a standard size, so they are still compatible with normal CW (and ko) figures.

Other than that, there are a ton of cheap KOs from CW... usually with simplified parts, slight size differences, or non-functioning combining pegs. You probably want to avoid most of those.

This is based on the Studio Series version? Hmmm... 32cm is still pretty big, but the paint looks better than the old DOTM Leader. I'm not crazy about most Bayformer designs, but Sentinel's design always felt stylish and different.

z

 

OSKO Terrorcons by AOYI, which is also related/part of (?) Black Mamba.

BPF made the 1:1 KO POTP Dinobots. Don't have those but reviews seem fine.

 

Depends on the region though. In the north it is still common to use xiaojie en Tongzhi.

 

Wha--? I thought they were BPF. I didn't think they were Aoyi like the OS Siege stuff. Ugh, hard to keep it straight these days.

Sirtoys had the OSKO Dinobots listed as "BM"... and it makes sense that they would be from the same company, since the upscaling is about the same.

z

 

Can anyone tell me the difference between these two oversized versions of Brawl?

Weijiang WJ Brawl Oversized Armed Cannon
Black Mamba BMB LS-10 LS10 Brawl OS Oversized Studio Series SS-12 SS12

Afraid not. I ended up just removing the blank emblem plates and installing the replacement ones.

 

The first is a KO version of the 2007 leader, with some improvements, (the original was already full of gimmicks), although, for me it still looks like a robot ninja turtle, the second is the KO OS version of the SS,also with certain improvements compared to the original mold, and I think it's more movie-accurate than the first.