Newbie - That's enough tea

changye: Thank you very much! I'm glad you like it.

At that teahouse I went, I think I had about 30 cups, they were only small cups though, you were supposed to drink them in 3 mouthfuls I think.

I don't like small cups, that's why I like to drink 巴拉圭冬青 (bā lā gūi dōng qīng). Is it possible to find erva-mate in China? I was supprised to see a lengthy article in wikipedia in Chinese. If there is erva-mate in China, is it enough to say 巴拉圭冬青? Is it better to say 巴拉圭冬青茶?

hi marcosbento, Sorry! None of us have seen that tea in China yet!

I don't know about that, Bazza. She seems to be a little too eager to pour that tea. You might end up in a relationship with an OCD-mad-scientist-tea-hostess... And let me tell you, that's just going to lead to heartbreak... and scaldings in some hard-to-explain areas. Better hope there's a little aloe in that tea.

how would you say i want some more tea? not "just tea"

htsungy try this one: 请徕我一个杯子绿茶 qǐng lái wǒ yī gè bēi zi lǜ chá = please give me a cup of green tea :-)

excuter :Thank you! But what does this lai mean? Does'nt it mean to come?

Can 客气 kind of mean 'generous' as well? One of my phrase books has: 'that's very kind of you' as 你太客气了.

Da jia hao. Do any one knows of a Chinese movie that has very simple mandarin? You know, a level (shui ping) that a beginer or an elementrery level person can understand.

I love Chinese tea. Both hot, iced, and bubble tea.

我也喜欢喝茶， 但是我喝的太多我不能睡觉！ Sorry for my cantonese approach to grammar!

@htsungy & excuter: First, 来 in a restaurant-set context means to "bring". It can also mean, in other contexts, "to do", such as 请让我来 when you want to say "please let me do it." It's one of those multi-meanng words, like 打(hit, hail a taxi, play [a hand sport], ring someone, etc.) and 点 (dot, o'clock, a little, to order [at a restaurant) I'm not sure why excuter brought in ordering green tea. I assume you wanted to ask how to get the waitress to bring you MORE tea, right? I would say: 小姐，请再来茶 （xiǎojiě, qǐng zàilái chá） or, if you have a pot and just need water, you might say: 请再来茶水 （qǐng zàilái cháshuǐ), which is water for the tea. (hear some people say it, some people don't) Want more tea leaves, use the word 茶叶 (cháyè) And excuter, to make a few corrections to your sentence, 请徕我一个杯子绿茶, make sure you just use 杯 as the measure word without the 个 and the 子 （a cup of...), 杯子 is a noun. So you should say: 请(给我)(再)来一杯绿茶。 qǐng (gěiwǒ) (zài)lái yìbēi lǜchá. Please (for me) (again) bring a cup of green tea.

to zohar8353, The best for us is a cartoon that has been dubbed in Mandarin, like Shrek for example. Something you've already seen. Maybe there are other kid cartoons that are even simpler, but kids seem to use words we never learned in classes like animal names so we found that very frustrating in the beginning to know that Chinese kids had much bigger vocabularies than we did.

I have a question about this sentence: 他真的不够。(He really hasn't had enough.) Why doesn't it end in "le"? Is it because he's not had enough and therefore the action of having is not complete? This dialogue will come in handy this Thanksgiving.We're hosting several guests from the mainland and now I know what to say to urge them to eat more turkey and pumpkin pie. Still waiting though for the promised cpod Thanksgiving lesson featuring high frequency words and maybe even some history terms--how on earth am I going to explain in Chinese about the pilgrims???

Rich points out (IMO of course, not necessarily Rich's) the danger of group learning.

@nicolas: ah, but nicolas, we learn from each other's mistakes or just learn from each other even without mistakes... but most importantly, we have to be brave to write what we guess is the right Chinese with the fearlessness of making mistakes. We make mistakes, we learn from our mistakes and others. I've studied the Chinese language with Koreans and Japanese and, generally speaking, their written Chinese almost seems natural to them, but their oral needs a lot more work, as it carries a lot more of their home language grammar and the like than I would say Americans and other westerns have since we tend to pay more attention to speaking a language. So many westerns who knew I was studying with them thought it isn't good to study with them, as you will pick up bad Chinese... I beg the differ as I not only got to realize how important some Chinese grammar structures are when you hear sentence not use them correctly, but also picked up some ways _I_ should have been speaking Chinese more like a native than I was (they would use Chinese words I never thought of using, especially due to words I was not accustom to saying due to my culture) As long as there are enough people to check and correct each other, I think we will only get the right way to say something together but also learn new ways to say them we never would have though of ourselves or through a text book. Just my opinion.

htsungy, To say you would like more tea, you could say: 我还想喝茶。Wǒ hái xiǎng hēchá.

Hi Bazza, 你太客气了 Nǐ tài kèqi le doesn't really mean generous, but rather, very polite and thus generous, kind could be included in that. But the literal translation is "You are too polite".

谢谢琥珀 :)

excuter, Rich and nicolas, excuter, your sentence was almost right! The way you wrote it would be in the context of asking for more tea in a restaurant. Here are the most common ways to ask for another cup (or pot) of tea: 请再来一杯（壶）茶。Qǐng zàilái yī bēi（hú）chá. 请再来一些茶。Qǐng zàilái yīxiē chá. And... all of Rich's example sentences are correct. Good job Rich!

hi darylk, 他真的不够。Tā zhēn de bùgòu. There is no 了 (le) in this sentence because it is in the negative, and 了(le) is not used in negative sentences. The Thanksgiving lesson comes out on Nov. 22 (Shanghai time) so you'll have a few hours to cram before your dinner!

MARCOSBENTO - I also haven't seen that tea in a year in Beijing. Better bring it with you. :( ZOHAR8353 - For an adult movie, try "The Emperor and the Assassin". They speak very slowly with a lot of pauses, though you'll still have to pause, rewind, look things up, etc if you really want to learn. On the cartoon end, which I highly recommend, Peanuts dubbed in Chinese is pretty good, or other older things made a long time ago. A lot of cartoons nowadays speak very fast and have more advanced subject matter. If you're truly still a 100% newbie, movies will be hard, so you'll only need one scene to work on for a month or two, haha. Choose one you'll like even after 30x. I watched Charlie & the Chocolate Factory more than that, little by little (not the whole thing every time) and at first I understood only a few sparse words here & there; now I understand about 60% or more (this is months later, with pausing, using dictionary, etc, not just idly watching.) :)

Thanks Amber. I knew you would have some more ways to say it.

zohar8353, for a movie you could try Fearless, that's not too hard to follow. Don't attempt Suzhou River. ;) (I got lost by that storyline).

Not One Less is a good movie. Beijing Bicycle had some pretty good dialog if you don't mind the Beijing accent.

for movies, try TV series 电视剧 (diànshìjù) can be boring but lots of repeats and daily language, if a little mellow

Amber, thanks for your many lucid explanations and for the Thanksgiving update.

agreed with RonInDC, Not One Less (一个都不能少) is great, quite moving too. As far as I remember wasn't too difficult to follow. Don't try Hou Hsiao-Hsien, most of the movies are in dialect. There's also The Wedding Banquet 喜宴 (xǐyàn) from Ang Lee's (李安) which is good fun and I think not too difficult.

@ Rich I always suggest green tea because I almost only drink green tea :-) @Amber thanks for the context info. I would have used this for nonrestaurant tearequests too if you wouldn´t have said this... :-)

www.lost.eu/69d5e You're Invited!!

The dialog only downloads are no longer available on old lessons - can thay be reinstated?

steveme, we are getting there....

In the last sentence, 'gou4 le', what is the meaning of gou4? Is it something like 'to fill', and when 'le' is added it becomes full - i.e. the sentence becomes 'I'm full'? Or is the 'le' just there to make the sentence flow more, and 'gou4' on its own means 'enough'?

hi rsmith91, 够了 (gòu le) 够 (gòu) means enough. When you add the 了(le), it indicates a change in status. As in, 'now I have enough.'

Do all lessons come with traditional character PDF like this one. My American friend in China says that most people use simplified and my Chinese teacher from Hong Kong says that I need to learn traditional and then I will pick up the simplified later on, who is right? I will be living in the Qinghai area and my friend says that they just don't use trad. there.

hi matthews, Yes, here is a post about how to get the traditional character PDF plugin.

the great thing about the newbie lessons is that they cover the basics with such precision Good work!!

Someone needs to fix the transcript for this lesson. The translations of the last (2) entries are truncated. While we're at it ... what's the difference between 不要客气 (bùyào kèqi) and 别客气 (biékèqi)?

After my morning soy milk, I usually drink tea all day. I suppose its an aquired taste for an American.

I thought bu(4) changes to bu(2) when preceding a word with a (4) tone? the .pdf appears to suggest otherwise

hi user1196, Yes, the tone for 不 (bù) does change to second tone in combination with fourth tone words, however, when written in pinyin form, it is still written as fourth tone.

i don't think this has been caught yet, if so please forgive me.

found this in the expansion section, the pronoun is incorrect.

我还要喝咖啡。
(Do you want more coffee?)

Grammar question - I am confused by section 5 of the Expansion. I always thought that "zhen1 de" needed to be followed by a word such as "hen3" or "feichang", etc. And that you only drop the "hen3", etc, if you use "zhen1" instead of "zhen1de". So.... 我真的饱了 (wo3 zhen1de5 bao3 le5) should be either 我真饱了 (wo3 zhen1 bao3 le5) or 我真的很饱了 wo3 zhen1de5 hen3 bao3 le. Please could somebody explain the grammar point here? Many thanks, Chris

Hi chris

You can say 真的很漂亮 and 真的非常漂亮, for example. “真的” works as "really" in English, so 真的非常漂亮 means "really very beautiful".

Thanks Changye. However, this isn't quite my question. My question specifically is when we should use "zhen1" on its own and when we need to use it combined with "de5" as in "zhen1de5". To use your example above, can we say 真非常漂亮 and 真很漂亮? Or do we need to use the "de5" because of the presence of "feichang" and "hen", respectively? Hope that makes my question clearer (apologies for getting bogged down in the grammar!). Chris

Hi chris

I don't think that 真很漂亮 and 真非常漂亮 are natural Chinese. I don't know why, but perhaps two consecutive (similar) adverbs, 真+很 (or 真+非常), make it sound unnatural, and this might be the reason that "的" is inserted between them, like 真的很漂亮 and 真的非常漂亮.