Simple Chinese words you've never heard before

bababardwan

May 08, 2011, 05:21 AM posted in General Discussion

Ok, fess up time. I joined CPOd in Aug 2008 so the vast majority of lessons prior to that I've never gotten around to listening to. I thought I'd do a bit of lazy revision and just skim the old lessons starting with the earliest Newbie lessons just to check for holes in my basic vocab. I've just struck 苗条。 I don't recall striking that before. Looks like it's our equivalent of calling someone a bean stalk, or a stick. I'm curious how many others have heard of this if they hadn't done this early lesson:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/all-in-the-family/vocabulary

A google search seems to suggest that on the CPod site it is only mentioned in the above lesson and one other thread:

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/2852

which involved 2 poddies only [commenting wise anyhow].

I thought it might be fun [and possibly instructive] for other poddies to post here words that they felt were simple and should have known at their level. Come on, fess up, hehe

chris

May 08, 2011, 05:32 AM

Too many to mention to be honest mate ;-). That's one of the reasons why I'll always cast my eye over the Eles and Newbies as they come out in case there are any hidden nuggets, particularly in the 'supplementary vocab' sections.

I've been kicking around since Oct 06 so have less of a tail of earlier lessons than you that I still need to work through (I try to work through them all chronologically, since although one of CP's main benefits is that you can dive in anywhere, I actually find that when new patterns/new vocab come up in a lesson, CP whether intentionally or not does tend to use them again quite quickly in the following few lessons, so it's good reinforcement).

Anyway, interesting thread. I'll try to remember to add to it as I come across examples. The other words that would be interesting to add are new words with the same meaning as something you learned earlier. A recent example for me is 要不然 (yao4bu5ran2) which means 'otherwise'. I'd only ever learned 否则 (fou3ze2) for this. I'm coming across frequent other examples as my vocab improves.