Every once and a while we veer away from our “normal programming” and offer up some lessons on high-frequency phrases in Chinese that you will use everyday. Today happens to be “once” and now is actually “in a while” so grab that “authentic” Rolex you bought near your hotel and join us for a podcast on telling time in Mandarin Chinese.
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It's 4 o clock and no comments. Eeeek. Is anything wrong?
It's only 9:25am for me. ;) Good lesson, although I was hoping it might cover more on how to actually state the time ie. 6:25am or 11:47pm etc. I've read the basics from a phrasebook I have but I'm too sure of the correct pronunciations. Maybe we could have a follow-up elementary lesson or something? Very useful lesson if you've forgotten to wear your watch though.
Hmm...well the heat and coconut drink is making me a little lacadaisical. Then again, all the new stuff is totally overloading my limited-capacity organic file-swapping CPU. http://www.chinesepod.com/blog/2006/02/01/chinese-study-tips/#comments But rest assurred, the podcast is in the mp3 player, and on my way to the tennis match I will be 'learn'n my Chinese'. Wonder what everyone else is up to though? Wednesday, how does one say 'mid-week lethargy' in Chinese?
I agree with Bazza, telling the time correctly would b e a nice follow-up on this lesson. This is actually something that was covered really well in my evening classes. So we had some useful stuff there as well :)
For people like me who are lucky if we arrive during the correct hour, let alone at the nearest fifteen minutes, newbie podcast 28 sounds pretty good for how to tell the time. It makes the promise to explore this in more detail in a later podcast, but I'm more than provided for with fifteen minute time options (and I'm chicken, don't want to work that hard on numbers just yet). Someone like me could improvise for years on that much. It would be kinda neat though to be able to utter the precise time in Chinese with ease, one day. Think of all the practice opportunities! Also, I was amazed how well the "topic" link took me straight to the earlier lesson, very useful, and then the list of associated topic categories serves well for those occasions when that suggested topic is not exactly what I was looking for. I might try studying some related podcasts together in a couple of weeks. They think of everything round here! Do we ever find out what is that last thing Jenny says in the long intros to the earlier podcasts? And what the two characters are that appear with the title of each newbie lesson?
Lantian, Eating out, tennis match.. Gosh, you live well. Mid=week lethargy for you? Anyways, my attempt at translating it: 周半疲劳症/ zhou1 ban4 pi2 lao2 zheng4. AuntySue， The two characters next to newbie are 菜鸟/cai4 niao3. It is a Taiwanese slang for 'amateur', or in case case, 'newbie'. I guess it's a word in Hokkien dialect. It had been unknown in the non-Hokkien parts of China, but popularised by the almighty Internet. Now, most of the net-users and generation-now are aware of the term and using it. Bazza, All of us here at cpod are arts-majors and are sufficiently challenged to convert time-zones.
Thanks Jenny, now I can use that term with pride :-) And what about your last words in the old intros? I think you said I'm Jenny Zhu, can you speak Chinese, then something else. The nearest I can guess is je shi wo ke zhong wo but that makes no sense.
AuntySue, I found numbers probably the easiest things to learn. Try newbie lesson 16 if you haven't already, and here is a list I added to the wiki: http://www.chinesepod.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chinese_Vocabulary_Tips_and_Lists#Numbers Once you've got the hang of 1 to 10, it's pretty easy after that. It's easy to practise as well, you keep counting until you get bored, I counted up to 250 once, it worth trying to count backward from a 100 as well. It changes slightly when you reach a hundred, when you say 101 you need add the zero (ling) in, but you only say it once regardless of the number of zeros in the middle, for example: 1,001 - 一千零一 yī qiān líng yī.
Jenny, you just have to remember to think 4-dimensionally, either that or install the Foxclocks extension. ;)
Thanks Bazza, no I didn't know about lesson 16 yet. I want to get my pronunciation puzzles sorted first (won't take too long) so that I don't hammer-practise a lot of wrong sounds, then I'll be right into those numbers. Yes, I did a science major :-) It'll be good, too, having so many related lessons so I can put the numbers into various conversation contexts. Bazza, maybe _you_ know what it was that Jenny said in the early pod intros? (Tenacity is an attribute of good language students, isn't it?)
Hey Sue, I've spent a decent amount time wondering about that as well, but I think I've got it figured out. I'm still a beginner in learning Chinese as well (I started studying in January), so I'll give no guarantees on my listening abilities ;) She says: Ni3 hao3, wo3 jiao4 Jenny Zhu. (Hello, my name is Jenny Zhu) Ni3 hui4 shuo1 zhong1 wen2 ma? (Can you speek Chinese?) Zhe4 shi4 bo2 ke4 zhong1 guo2. (This is Chinese pod) The only part I'm not 100% sure on is the 'bo2 ke4'. I think it should be that, 'bo2 ke4' means blog according to www.zhongwen.com, an online dictionary which I often usen, but just by listening to it, I can't tell if the 'b' in 'bo' might be a 'w' so I might be wrong, there.
I think it should be 播客 bo1 ke4 meaning podcast and 博客 bo2 be4 is blog.
Sorry 博客 bo2 ke4 is blog. I quite difficult to tell the different between the two.
My English is getting worst as my Chinese gets better I think. Shame there's no edit button on here.
Hi Jenny, "周半疲劳症"...对， 我没有！ 时间过的太快，飞逝，太乐了。 今晚打网球赢了。我收到两百快的certificate，可以在饭馆用！ 我有时候用你的放发说”紧张“，就是好用，谢谢啊。 Hi AuntySue, Yes, tenacity is 99.99% of it. It's like a little kid asking dad for ice-cream, they NEVER forget. BTW, when you're ready, read out license plates. I learned numbers this way. Having the cars whiz away is like a timed-test. ------Transcript of the early intro ---------- K: Hi, I'm Ken Carrol J: Ni hao, wo jiao Jenny Zhu 你好，我叫Jenny 琦 (Hi, my name is Jenny Zhu) K: www.chinesepod.com J: Ni hui shuo zhong wen ma? 你会说中文吗？ (Can you speak Chinese?) K: This is Chinesepod J: zhe shi bo ke zhong guo (vs. je shi wo ke zhong wo ---looks like you almost got bo/wo and guo/wo!) 这是播客中国 (This is ChinesePod) ((This is podcast Chinese/China)) －－－－－－－－－－－－ Hi Bazza, Yah, the English only get's worse..it's like 'umm how do you say that?" 我不会说英语啊。。。
Hi Jenny, BTW, yah---she was scooping the rice out of huge pot, you're exactly right. It's like you have super-vision.
Thanks so much Lantian, I'll be able to sleep right through the night without wondering any more. Interesting how the Chinese goes after the podcast. My English hasn't deteriorated, but something amazing did happen. I did a few months of German in junior high school, then twenty years later spent a couple of days there and needed a phrase book to say where is the station etc. That was 1980. BCP (Before Chinese Pod) I had a short business email from a guy in German, used the computer to translate a reply with great difficulty. Then a few weeks later (ACP), I get another email which I mostly understand immediately, start to reply, and a whole page of German just poured out rapidly from my keyboard! I wasn't that good at school I'm sure. Learning Chinese seems to have unlocked another language without me being aware of it happening.
Ken, At a certain moment you say "xianzai shenme shi jian" at which Jenny replies that it's used sometimes. At our evening course, we were taught that 'shi jian' indicates a time period, while 'shi hou' indicates a point in time. So, shouldn't Jenny have replied that the correct question should have been 'xianzai shenme shi hou'? Or are we learning old-fashioned Chinese :-) Thanks to enlighten me! Jan
Hehe, the time for lesson 16 came unexpectedly today. Last night I figured out how to turn my cassettes into huge mp3 files, and today I was trying to split them into chapters. When I heard "san" (the only number I knew) I realised that each chapter started with the chapter number spoken, so I just needed to recognise those number words! Fine, click on A16 and make a coffee while it rolls. Compare that ten minutes it took to listen to the podcast plus meaningful untimeconsuming practise while getting my recordings sorted, with say a half hour of a lesson plus travelling time and then counting imaginary apples and gloves for homework. Getting the info you need the instant you need it, really works, and this has shown how well it can provide quick fix to a problem. Thanks Bazza for identifying the podcast so I didn't even have to look it up.
Jan, I always leave the last word on thse thigns to a native speaker, but I think you may have it the wrong way around: to my understanding, 'shi hou' indicates a time period, while ’shi jian' indicates a point in time.
Thanks a lot.
You make me confused about the classes because I arranged them and now I cant find them like what I did.
Please,tell me how to find the other classes
Hi all,
Happy to be a part of Chinese pod !
As a newbie here I have been assigned some of these earlier broadcast lessons such as this one and "working time". I find the newer lessons are much easier to learn from with the dialogue repetitions etc than these older lessons. Are there any more updated versions of lessons about time? If not, Jenny and Ken, maybe you could look at modernizing some of these older but quite crucial lessons to help some of us floundering beginners out a bit :-)
Love this site !
Good lesson! Today, but kind of slow.
Awesome. Good job everyone!
hi everybody or should i say ni hao im new to this sooooooooooooooooooooo yeah. im pretty cool. you should be jealous!!!!
wo ai chi zhanglang
i know how to tell the in chinese ;o)
xian zai ji dian,
damn forget the tones!!
arrgh
Is there a Chinese Pod lesson which walks beginners through the whole it's 2 o'clock, it's half past three etc?
If so, can someone please post the link.
Thanks in advance, people.
Hi thecomakid,
maybe there is such a lesson but I can't find it. This youtube clip deals with time.