Tossing and turning, lack of appetite, moodiness; these are all symptoms of one very common condition: jet lag! But the worst is when you forget to change the time on your phone and you show up somewhere at the wrong time! Find out how to describe this situation in today's ChinesePod lesson on time differences.
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Like the picture, go NY! 我爱纽约州！
@jimijames,
Very glad to see your comment. The supplementary vocab is a great way of building up vocabulary and communication skills. In our face-to-face class, we have a lot of fun with it.
@abbylovespeter,
Your baby is absolutely lovely/可爱/kě ài.
你好 Lily, welcome to Chinese Pod, you will love it here!
jet lag - shíchā - 时差
Beijing (China) Standard Time - Běijīng Shíjiān - 北京时间
Things get pretty interesting when one is trying to set up a meeting between people that live in a country that does observe daylight saving time like 美国 (Měi guó - USA) and people in 中国 (Zhōng guó - China). At any given time, is 加州 (Jiā Zhōu - California) 15 or 16 hours behind BST?? I can never remember! There are 4 time zones in the 美国大陆 （Měi guó dà lù - US mainland or Continental United States). Is Central Standard Time 1 or 2 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time? How about Mountain Standard Time? 别问我了！(Bié wèn wǒ le! - Don't ask me!)
Oh yeah, and the state of Arizona? Just like 中国: 没有夏令时 (see Lily's example above).
When I was in elementary school, China had summer time.
If I want to say "What is the time difference between Beijing and New York" can I say this:
北京在纽约周围时差是什么？
Welcome lily :)
To louisita72,
You can say,
北京和纽约的时差是多少？
běijīng hé niǔyuē de shíchā shì duōshao？
Hello, I'm a newcomer and recently, I had to talk about time zone and daylight saving time with your team.
I live in Reunion Island (Abou Dabi time zone): 留呢汪岛，比中国是很小，很小的地方。(bǐ Zhōngguó shì hěn xiǎo, hěn xiǎo de dìfang !)
I'm glad to hear about that lesson : 很有意思的棵 (hěn yǒuyīsi de kè)
谢谢
Thanks so much Lily!
Great Lesson - Very useful. Thanks guys.
Welcome Lily - always good to have a new team member!
Hi, lily_counselor. Thanks for the phrase 北京时间比GMT 早八小时 běijīng shíjiān bǐ GMT zǎo bā xiǎoshí Beijing time is eight hours before GMT.
How would you say it the other way round? Would it be GMT比北京时间 晚八小时 GMT bǐ běijīng shíjiān wǎn bā xiǎoshí GMT is eight hours after Beijing time.
Well, maybe you'd never put it like that, but you might want to say New York is five hours after London, for example.
Daylight saving is a nightmare for another reason: I'm in England but I used to deal daily with North America. We change clocks on different dates and there are a few tricky days when I get it wrong. Just as well I'm not running an airline.
Hurray for GMT, clears up any confusion. So, China still uses the phrase "GMT"? how is it pronounced? Nowadays, much of the world says "UTC" (Coordinated Universal Time ).
Hi liac_counselor
When I was in elementary school, China had summer time.
It's just surprising. The people in western China had to get up very early, when the sky is still very dark.
P/S. DST was first instituted in the RPC in 1986 and ended in 1991.
To doguprpatree,
We can also say, GMT比北京时间 晚八小时 GMT bǐ běijīng shíjiān wǎn bā xiǎoshí GMT is eight hours after Beijing time.
The translation of GMT is 格林威治标准时(gélínwēizhì biāozhǔn shí)， UTC is 国际协调时间（guójì xiétiáo shíjiān） or 世界标准时间（shìjiè biāozhǔn shíjiān）。
Welcome all new counselors! I think it is an excellent initiative to have native Chinese counselors looking after the boards. Already I have pasted many useful phrases in my study folder, and from a Newbie forum ！！
Nice work Cpod.
I never get any points correct when writing out the dictation because I can't seem to figure out what format the exercise is looking for. This lesson is particularly easy. What I wrote is exactly how I understand it, and I checked. It's correct, but not right for the exercise. What am I doing wrong?
I wrote: shi2jian1
xia4wu3
bu4
niu3yue1
Thanks for the fast response, Lily.
I don't think I'd ever have guessed Greenwich - 格林威治 gélínwēizhì. I'll stick to GMT - looks like Chinese understand it.
一般悉尼比北京早两个小时，现在悉尼有夏令时， 所以悉尼比北京早三个小时。可是布里斯班没有夏令时，所以布里斯班比悉尼晚一个小时。 西方的澳大利亚时间和北京时间一样。
yībān xīnī bǐ běijīng zǎo liáng gè xiǎoshí, xiànzài xīnī yǒu xià lìngshí, suǒyǐ xīnī bǐ béijīng zǎo sān gè xiǎoshí. kěshí būlīsībān mèiyǒu xià lìngshí, suǒyǐ būlīsībān bǐ xīnī wǎn yī gè xiǎoshí. xīfàng de àodàlīyà shíjiān hé béijīng shíjiān yīyàng.
(Normally Sydney is two hours ahead of Beijing, but at the moment Sydney is on Daylight Saving so it is three hours ahead. But Brisbane is not on Daylight Saving, so Brisbane is one hour behind Sydney. Western Australia and China are on the same time.)
Lily & Lilac
认识你们很高兴！
rènshi nǐmen hěn gāoxìng!
Pleased to meet you!
Welcome LiLY! It`s nice to have you with us!
Correction: GMT 和 UTC 不一样 GMT hé UTC bù yī yàng GMT and UTC are not the same.
GMT is derived from astronomical observations. UTC is derived from the average of readings from 300 atomic clocks around the world. Unfortunately, the Earth's rotation is slowing, so the two get out of step. Only occasional adjustment of UTC by "leap seconds" means that it differs from GMT by up to 0.9 secs. I wouldn't want to mislead anyone as this could matter if you have a very busy lifestyle. Whoops, you've just used a lifetime's ration of leap seconds reading this... 对不起 duìbuqǐ sorry.
With regard to timings: is the 24-hour clock commonly used in China?
Does the train leave the station at 1605 hours or at 5 past 4 pm?
@dogupatree
"you've just used a lifetime's ration of leap seconds reading this..."
Funny! Just think how many leap seconds ESL teachers must burn through trying to explain how Greenwich is pronounced.
@lily_councelor
可不可以说格林尼治标准时间?
@barbhong
Check at the upper right of the exercise. It should give you a choice of simplified, traditional or pinyin. If pinyin is selected, your answers should be correct.
Welcome to the new counselors!
Hi benchannevy,
可以说格林尼治标准时间。
大家好！
丽丽同学，有个问题想问你，你怎么能打出拼音上的平声去声之类的，这个问题会不会很小白啊，不过说实话，我真的不知道
redguard:
哈哈，Microsoft Word 有这个功能。
I am from British Columbia, Canada, been in Canada for a long while, we just change our time here last weekend, fall, one hour down, on Spring time, one hour up.
Hi redguard
Please just google "pinyin converter".You'll find a lot of pinyin tools available on the net.
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/converter-pinyin-unicode.html
你好Qianfanglei 欢迎你来ChinesePod!!
Very usefull lesson 谢谢
hello
082257,
Regarding how to re-set clocks for DST, have you heard the saying "Spring forward, Fall back"?
Everyone looks forward to the "Fall back" part because it means you can sleep-in for an extra hour on that day.
Thanks, Svik! Mystery solved!
@frognotinawell
下午四点五分 xiàwǔsìdiǎnwǔfēn (4:05 pm)
火车下午四点五分钟出发, 可是公交车内满了人的时出发。 huoche xiàwǔsìdiǎnwǔfēn chūfā, kěshì gōngjiāochē nèi mǎn le rén de shí chūfā.
(The train leaves at 4:05 pm. However the bus leaves when it is full of people.) :-)
@bodawei
哈哈。知道了。谢谢。
hāhā. zhīdàole. xièxiè.
Haha. I’ve got it. Thanks.
很好课. hen hao ke. very good lesson.
marchon
Re Barbhong and dictations...
I have stopped doing those exercises as they are more an exercise in frustration than in Chinese pinyin. Me too I often get zero or one out of five etc, even though I have both the pinyin and the one tone correct. After rewriting in all sorts of variations, with spaces or no spaces or trying different numbers or no numbers for the neutral tone I give up.
Chinesepod: would it be possible to give an example correct input form for the dictations? Such as they often do in forms where they ask for your telephone number (ie showing if they need spaces or not, parenthesis or not). Thanks so much. It would be great if they were userfriendly as it is so important to be able to write from dictation.
Another suggestion would be to indicate which word in an answer was wrong instead of the whole answer . Or to have a "correct answer" option where it would show us what we should have written after we have gotten it wrong multiple times. Thanks!
@wenjong
Don't the new exercises give the solutions after clicking the "submit answers" button?
I too have experienced that frustration when I couldn't figure out if I lacked a space, or had an extra one!
I can't figure out how to use tones in the dictation answers.
時差~~
我知道那很不舒服~~
@mocksnhongkong
The simplest way is to use numbers:
ni3hao3
with 5 for neutral tone
Thanks svik
Duh! you can tell i am truly a newbie.
@mocksnhongkong
It's a rich site. They've been building it for over 4 years. Keep at it!
I wish it had been available when I started learning Chinese.
Hi, I have maybe a silly question. I noticed that Tokyo is written 东京, not 東京. Does the character 東 exist in Chinese? Or is it different because of pronounciation reasons?
Thank you.
@munnin266
There are two sets of Chinese characters in use around the world: traditional and simpilified.
There's some more info at the following link:
http://chinesepod.com/learn-chinese/
Mainland China uses simplified characters, whereas Hong Kong and Taiwan (as well as the Chinese characters in Japanese) use traditional characters.
The default on the site is simplified, but you can enable traditional as well.
The simplified form of the character 東 is 东.
Hope that helps!
Hi munnin266
Exactly speaking, Japanese Kanji characters fall somewhere between simplified and traditional Chinese characters. Japan officially started using simplified Kanji soon after the war, but the degree of simplification in Japan is "modest" compared to that in the PRC. Below are some exmaples. Please be noted that there are still lots of characters in common, just like 我, among the three character sets.
Traditional.....機，學，單，藝，我
Japanese.......機，学，単，芸，我
Simplified.......机，学，单，艺，我
JasonSch, and changye, thank you.
I have only just started learning Chinese on Chinesepod, but I have been studying Japanese for a while so it surprized me when the characters were different.
Thank you for answering my question!
SCVV