URLLesson Introduction
Unless you are a rainman-like genius, you may find attempts at reciting the fifty billion digit long phone numbers of China a challenge. Get help. Listen to this podcast to learn how to give out your number in Mandarin Chinese. You'll be counting spilled boxes of toothpicks in no time.
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misterjess says
July 29, 2008
nite nite kenny.
auroralicc says
July 29, 2008
What's your number?
你的电话号码是多少？
It's useful sentence.
johns says
July 29, 2008
I love you guys.
I think this lesson will go down in Chinesepod.com history as the most simple. I am still laughing. But, as always, I cannot wait for your next one.
In the expansion, I think the term 看看 is used quite often and would be useful to bring up. Those who do not have a paid membership I think are missing out on a very reasonably priced way to learn Chinese because the lookup, expansion and vocab portions are very good.
Please correct me if I am wrong but the only time I hear 幺 used is with phone numbers.
amber says
July 29, 2008
hi johns,
'1' is also pronounced '幺' (yāo) when giving addresses and room numbers.
Just a side note--it's often written as the regular 一 (yī), but when read orally pronounced as (yāo)
jasmintv says
July 29, 2008
The character for "zero" is too small. I can't see the steps. Is there anyway I can enlarge to see it better?
jennyzhu says
July 30, 2008
It's slightly ironic that the character for 0 is so complicated: 零.13 strokes.
shenhe says
July 30, 2008
Did the whiny Future Warrior bite the dust?
Jenny, what's your take on the origins of that overly elaborate character for 0?
Most Chinese I know have the tendency to slur numbers, so I almost inevitably overhear one.
At first I thought this lesson would be about buying a mobile number...
johns says
July 30, 2008
Thanks, Amber, for both tips. Jasmintv, in the bottom right hand portion of your screen or under "View" in the upper left is a zoom tool. I use it all of the time here to read characters.
lostinasia says
July 30, 2008
Elaborate Chinese number characters: you will sometimes see MUCH more complicated number characters to forestall bank fraud (think about how easy it'd be to change 一〇〇〇 to 九〇〇〇). I got this list of equivalents from chindict.php by searching with "banker's anti-fraud numeral":
- 一 / 壹
- 二 / 貳
- 三 / 叄
- 四 / 肆
- 五 / 伍
- 六 / 陸
- 七 / 柒
- 八 / 捌
- 九 / 玖
- 十 / 拾
- 廿 / 念
I think someone once told me these were archaic versions of the characters; I'm not sure if that's correct. I do know I've had to (very) occasionally write them on bank statements, which is an absolute nightmare.pretzellogic says
July 30, 2008
Not sure to where the "China surpasses US in Net numbers" link was supposed to point, but it doesn't point to a news article. It points to a questionable site that starts mentioning how it can crack Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites. Just FYI.
matthiask says
July 30, 2008
Funnily, in history, Zero is the most complex number. The idea to count "nothing" as "something" was a big step in mathematics. Before, babylonians used a void space as indicator in place of a zero, however, big numbers could only be guessed as 10 and 100 were written the same 1. In most cultures, negative numbers were easier to grasp and handle.
matthiask says
July 30, 2008
jasmintv: with a decent browser (opera, firefox 3 and internet explorer 7, the whole page can be zoomed), before this, you can change the fontsize by using the view menu. (text size -> largest) although this option might clutter the whole pagelayout. it's better to have one of the more recent browsers.
halfdutch74 says
July 30, 2008
Hey how do I write chinese characters in my comments like this one. Thats pretty cool..Anyone?
wjefferys says
July 30, 2008
@loveeverythingchinese
It depends on the computer you have; I am familiar with Macs, and if that's what you have you can use the International system preference panel to set up so that you can easily switch from English to type pinyin and get characters and vice versa.
I don't know about PCs. I think that there are some packages you can add that will do it.
There's another possibility. The MDBG online dictionary contains a lot of tools, including typing pinyin and converting to characters. It's very useful, although it is more cumbersome when in this mode than the built-in Mac method, so I don't use it.
trevorb says
July 30, 2008
@loveeverythingchinese
PC's do pretty much the same as Macs, just add keyboards in the regional settings, I use Chinese PRC and Chinese Traditional.
Best thing though is if you have a tablet PC you can write the charecters directly and have it recognise them. I use this a lot just to practice stroke order and stuff in tedious meetings ;-)
user2048 says
July 30, 2008
Great lesson! With the expansion and exercises this is a challenging Newbie lesson.
emeryj says
July 30, 2008
你好 wjeffereys,
谢谢你 我回写中文!
Thank you -- now I can start trying to write Chinese; I always wondered how it was done.
kwondo says
July 30, 2008
hey, i always mix up the chines pronunciation for have,want and now "one".
to make my life simple untill i get to grips with the tones will it be understood if i just stick to saying "yi" for one???
matthiask says
July 31, 2008
yeah, MDGB, you can even use a java applet to write the characters ^_^. 很方便
fengtianchishui says
July 31, 2008
fengtianchishui says
July 31, 2008
马做的卢飞快，弓如霹雳弦惊，了却君王天下事，赢得生前身后名，可怜白发生。
fengtianchishui says
July 31, 2008
Tiniao heard everywhere.
Ye Lai Feng Yusheng,
Whispering Colour.
处处闻啼鸟。
夜来风雨声，
花落知多少。
halfdutch74 says
July 31, 2008
stevev says
July 31, 2008
--loveeverytihng, It seems you've found something, but fwiw, I use pinyin input called Sogou www.sogou.com/pinyin
Also, one for the suggestion box...
I know the number words, but still have difficulty processing them quickly enough (especially in conversation) anyone else run into this?
I'm trying to think of a good way to practice this. Maybe c-p could just read a bunch of numbers in chinese then post the list so we could check? for ex: they say 一百三十六 and the list would have 136
baillies says
July 31, 2008
stevev,
Yes I have this problem. I learnt the portuguese numbers by listening to the radio in the car in Brasil, the adds give lots of phone numbers and often repeat them.
Maybe CPod could do a/some lessons with radio adds including numbers and then have the dialog discuss the product.
Another option may be with people at an auction discussing the products and the prices obtained with the auctionere calling prices and bidder numbers in the background.
stevev says
July 31, 2008
I like the auction idea, lots of repetition and 很快的对话
Joachim says
August 4, 2008
matthiask: zero is not the most complex, it's a real number. (remember this sqrt of -1 stuff, e.g. 3.14 + 7.225i??) did we have a lesson on those math numbers yet?
john says
August 4, 2008
Joachim,
Oh no, we have to do imaginary numbers now?? That's a little scary...
But just to show my good will, I'll tell you this: in Chinese they're 虚数 (xūshù).
Yikes, I thought this was a Newbie lesson...
Joachim says
August 6, 2008
john: maybe radii, diameter, circumference are something to start with.btw: How do you say "pull someones leg" or "practical joke" in Chinese?
macallus88 says
August 26, 2008
Can someone please explain the following from the Expansion:
你们公司有多少人？
(How many people are there in your company?)
Why is it "你们" and not "你的"?
amber says
August 26, 2008
hi macallus88,
Because generally a person is speaking of the company collectively, the plural is used.
john says
August 26, 2008
macallus88,
I once went into a rather detailed discussion of this topic on my blog: Semantic Flavors of “My” in Chinese and English. The entry deals with the word "my," but the concepts also apply to "your."
bababardwan says
September 3, 2008
Thanks Ken and Jenny,
Another great and entertaining lesson.I thought I knew my numbers,but hadn't picked up on the alternative pronunciation for 1 being yao till this lesson .I love the format of the podcasts and agree that overanalysing would possibly put many off.However,everyone has their own learning style ,and I would find it very helpful if somewhere on the site there was a more complete dissection of the dialogues if possible [though you do dissect it better than any other source I've come across ].That is not just to the word level,but to break words with more than one syllable/character down if possible.eg haoma;what does the hao refer to and what does the ma refer to? The reason is so that when individual syllables/or characters reappear in other words it will be easier to learn their meaning.So I find both the overall meaning and the literal meaning to be equally important.
Thankyou
zazen says
September 11, 2008
Besides learning the vocab and dialogue in this lesson, I found it to be quite good practice for distinguising tones. When you've got isolated words (the individual numbers) placed one after another, you can really pick out and differentiate the tones very easily.
Cheers Jenny and Ken.
P.S. John: Maybe something on transcendental numbers sometime :)