Alas no. Minus one for bottling out, (as usual).

I got as far as the end of the block before I realised my leather shoes seemed more comfy than normal.............. 

Wearing slippers and pajamas onto the street is a cultural hallmark of Shanghai.

Who are you guys talking to?

情况很奇,但是词汇有用！ Qíngkuàng hěn qí, dànshì cíhuì yǒuyòng!

我以前有工作重要准时到。对我这事很难题。我担心全晚。有再发生梦没有时间穿裤子。把裤子带在巴士，在工作穿。没有人看我。我老板只说，“哦，橙色娜。。。”

I think the PDF and the audio are not exactly equal.

PDF: 那个老太太在笑我。That old woman is laughing at me.
Audio: 那个老太太还笑。The old woman is even laughing. (I hope that is a good translation.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI46nl9pkc

哪個老太太貽笑

Ｔhis old women is ridiculus!

Please, Cpod, confirm.

Besides, the 2nd sentence in the audio is 有一個美女. The PDF don't show it and Cpod skip it.

L.

Re 哪個老太太貽笑: I have a lovely little free app - Express Scribe - where you can run files down to 50% of the original speed without **too** much distortion, and I must agree with my fellow Swede dunderklumpen and suggest hai - 那个老太太还笑 - instead of yi. Honestly, I spend too many geeky hours in sound apps dissecting Mandarin and Japanese! :-)

你们在跟谁说话？

Nǐmen zài gēn shéi shuōhuà?

It seems in Mandarin, "taking about" takes a direct object (there is no preposition), while "talking to" still takes an indirect object.

Are there other common Mandarin verbs which change in meaning like this depending on whether they take a direct or indirect object?

"Tesco ban on shoppers in pyjamas" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8484116.stm

OK, youming8088, I don't know who you are, so don't take this the wrong way. Indeed, you are technically correct. As in another oft-quoted example:

"...and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. "

However, in this example, note the use of the word 'thee", which reflects the date of publication (1839). If your primary language is not English, you should be advised that "thee" is only used in a literary, ironic or Biblical context nowadays.

"whom" is not obsolete by any means. But it's use borders on the pedantic, at least where I live (urban North America). Sure, when I was young, "whom" was drilled into me with a wooden ruler by my English teachers. But (disclosure), I'm really ancient, so that training is now useless. For the sake of the primarily Chinese speakers (or non-Anglophones) lurking here, "whom" is only used nowadays by sniffy librarians in glasses who can't get dates. (****Political Incorrectness Alert****). If you're a non-Anglophone, I guess you can't win -- you can use "whom" to get points for having the know-how to use it grammatically correctly. But you lose points for sounding a little stiff. Or vice versa.

trivia: 'for whom the bell tolls' extends back to a poem writtten by John Donne in the early 17th century. Hemingway then made it better known with his novel by that name late in the 1930s.

I fully agree "to who are you speaking to" SOUNDS wrong and IS wrong. But most colloquial speakers around where I live (Urban West North America) would not use that construction. They'd say:

"Who are you talking to" or more likely "Who d'ya think yer talkin' to". In this construction, "whom" is still obviously the grammatically correct form, but "who" here doesn't sound so glaring. The speakers I'm talking about would not use "to who are you speaking to" any more than they would use "to whom are you speaking to" . IMHO this might be the beginning of one of those usage shifts that has been going on in English since English started being recognizable as English in Shakespeare's time, and obviously even before that, in 600-700 AD when Old English demanded the use of 5 declensions in Noun Use. But mine is a subtle point on whether a given usage is more common nowadays, and, even more tenuously, is it acceptable. Your point, that it is grammatically incorrect by Standard English Rules, is, of course, absolutely correct.

Oops, I'm sure I've strayed far from the original topic, so I won't say any more. It feels like a bad dream and I'm the only one talking loudly without any clothes on. Why is everyone staring at me?