New Topic Suggestions (Part 2)

hi, I was wondering if you guys could do a Qingwen on the different words for "type": 种 样 类 and others I might not know about, I'm not sure which one to use in phrases like "I've experienced this type of situation before" and "which type do you like?" etc

We had the Canadian salesman, the couple splitting up, strange land mystery and now manager Wang. How about a story with daily chores of a kid, a person staying at home etc.?

What about a series on all those dynasties - with an overview on main cultural and political developments in each of those epochs?

Joachim, they did have a quiz show on different tastes in Chinese cuisines.  I thought the format was effective, though the material was difficult.

How about some lessons in the fashion of a quiz show like "Who wants to be a millionaire?"

Questions could be on trivia, common knowledge topics etc.

Host: Now this is an easy question for 500 RMB: Who was the founder of the new China? Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Da Shan

Guest: History is not what I like best, but I think I know this one.

....

You could even leave the question (not this, actually) open for listeners to guess.

I'd like to make a couple of suggestions:

• I think it would be great if ChinesePod invited users to write a dialogue that the CP team would then record, perhaps as a monthly feature or something.  Us users could suggest dialogues and CP staff could pick the best ones.
  
• I'd like to see something like "voulez-vous chanter avec moi" that they have over at FrenchPod as it's great to learn a language through music.
  
• Perhaps a weekly "news" podcast that recaps the week's local and international news items in "easy" Chinese or "easier" Chinese.  A French radio station called RFI do a daily "news" podcast called "Le Journal en Francais Facile" which basically means "The News in Easy French".  It's very easy to follow compared to normal news which uses complicated words and sentence structures.
  
• Like I mentioned in another post, I'd love to see something on Cantonese as a regular feature, a montly CantoPod show.
  
• I'd like to know how to tell someone to "clear off" when it's really necessary.  Maybe you could have a regular "slang" feature. I have a book called "Streetwise Mandarin" and it's uses colloquial Mandarin and is a pretty fun way to learn the language.
  
• A lesson on nightclubs would be great :)

Just some of my thoughts for now, but CP does a great job already.

A lesson on Dr. Bethune, so that Canadians can understand the first word people exclaim when we say where we are from. This could even be a Newbie:

-我 是 加拿大 的。

-白求恩！

yah this is exaggerating, but just a little.

Tongue twisters? - no, even average sentences in Chinese are quite a challenge for my tongue.

How about lessons on lending and borrowing things, e.g. books at the (Shanghai) library. It could be extended to applying for a reading card etc.

Did we have expressions for feelings? Not just happiness and tiredness, but maybe exhaustion, depression, anger, envy, ...

Do they have colours associated with in Chinese??

Taekwondo/ Wushu lesson. I want to know the Chinese terms for some commands in Taekwondo.

Finding a good radio station - am/fm, what's the frequency, news, phone in shows, comedy.

Hah, yet another of my requests that we already have. Thanks Henning!

It would be great to have a lesson or Hungry Traveller episode or discussion on the extensive list of translations of Chinese dishes that the government just released to assist tourists at the Olympics.

About cultural differences : The TOP 20 dream jobs for chinese people

sushan,

like in

汉语中的外来词 ?

Some examples of Chinese words borrowed from foreign languages.

Topic suggestion : Accent and Class 口音和社会等级

Cpod could make a parallel of this interesting BBC podcast (mp3) with the chinese spoken in mainland China.

Could we have some quiz helping me - or anyone else for that matter - to better distinguish between different tones? I might be mistaken, but I do believe that I am quite able to reproduce tones by imitating words etc. Unfortunately, I seem to fail miserably when asked to identify tones and write things in Pinyin.

I do NOT like those drill patterns where you are asked to use all 4 (or five) tones with a certain syllable, e.g. you1, you2, you3, you4.

Would be nice to have a lesson on the novel 'Wolf Totem' 狼图腾 since it's such a blockbuster in China and is now available in English. I am in the middle of the book and am loving it so far.

Soccer, aka football. Fouls, outside, hands, etc. Small child appropriate language, for those of us who work in schools!

Did we have a lesson on how to complain, yet?

Examples:

You still haven't mended my trousers, when will you *###* get to it?

I'd really appreciate you getting this job done NOW!

etc.?

There is book called "Urban Chinese" which deals with current colloquial expressions in everyday life in China.

Maybe, some overview of more formal ways of expressing oneself might help to prepare for your next dinner party etc.

Not that I am currently in too much danger having to attend one - neither here in Europe nor in China. ;-)

多謝, henning! I'll check it out. :)

Hi Hitokiri,

this one comes pretty cloese:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/fast-food/

Possibly as lesson about McDonald's ?

Are there any "rules" in Chinese how to describe things, person and/ or characters that are foreign to foreigners? I am thinking of describing people: Hair colour and built are not that differentiating when describing a Chinese person. Furthermore, maybe shape is a more distinct feature than height or width in Chinese.

I like light487's idea of describing a day in the life of some ordinary person. In a similiar vain, something like the same situation the world over would be fun - this is how the movie "Night on Earth" was done. I'd also like to suggest something like "Coffee and Cigarettes", but this might get off topic ...

It would be nice to have a lesson on 母親節。。。

perhaps a lesson on "Making Out" with your girlfriend/boyfriend. Nothing too risqué of course but it's a topic that is hard to find in many places.

perhaps discuss about famous chinese song, or maybe popular pop songs

Standards for putonghua. The regional accents lesson reminded me of the 'Mandarin standard' that Chinese people use. Certain jobs require a certain level of Mandarin. For example, to be a newscaster you need A level Mandarin. This is an important topic for foreigners who look for a Chinese teacher; at times they get a private tutor and are learning something closer to the local dialect when they think they are learning putonghua.

Joachim,

until that grammar word lesson comes up, you can search through my little grammar point collection.

I noted down most of the language related expressions introduced in the intermediate lessons.

Search for "Meta language" and "meta language" (not consistent with capitalization there).

Nevermind.. I found the Bumming a Smoke lesson just now.. lol :)

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/bumming-a-smoke/discussion

I have suggestion I thought of today as I watched Chinese chickbabe smoke a cigarette. Even though I have given up now, I was wondering what the cultural and linguistic ramifications of asking strangers for things were. Like is is acceptable to ask someone for a smoke? spare change? a "lend" of something.

For example, if you are at work and you need an extra 50 cents for the soda machine, you would ask your co-worker "Can I borrow 50 cents for the soda machine?" or if you are without a cigarette and want to get one off a stranger in the street you would say "Excuse me, do you have a spare cigarette?".. I'm sure there are a few other common things that people borrow off of strangers and people they are not actually friends with but know through association (such as co-workers).

Also I was thinking of making a list of things I do every day.. "A Day In The Life Of" for myself mainly, so I can structure a set of lessons around. For example, I usually buy a coffee on the way to work.. so I would need to know how to say that, then I need to know how to buy a ticket for the train, etc etc.. May be a lesson could be done in that style.. not sure what the content would be entirely but that idea of a continuous subject-to-subject thing..

thanks light487. I have listened to that program about What Chinese Think of Foreigners.

I was referring to what native Chinese think of other Chinese people oversees.

I don't know if this is to be put into a lesson, but I'd like to know the Chinese grammar expressions and how they are used. Maybe, a non-latin-inspired grammar is more appropriate to Chinese that one with subject, object, predicate etc. Are there any rules if a word is equally likely to be a verb and a noun? (I guess the answer is as it is so often in Chinese: depending on the context, right?)

ewong:

You can find it by going to the Extras section of the lessons and then to Dear Amber, then to Roommates and What Chinese Think of Foreigners

Hi Joachim,

I unable to access the link :(

Also for further pronunciation assistance you can use the Pronunciation link at the bottom of all ChinesePOD pages as well as John Pasden's site.. I forget the correct url for it but if you go to John's profile you will find it.. I think it might be sinosplice.com or something like that

Hm... I could have saved myself some keystrokes back there with a search. mjchinese, here is a Newbie lesson that deals with this in the supplementary vocab and the banter: http://chinesepod.com/lessons/get-up/discussion

Hi mjchinese, until the "Sleepy" lesson comes out: I believe the word "sleepy" can be conveyed by: 困 (kun4) or 想睡的 (xiang3shui4de). A very common expression is: 打瞌睡 (da3 ke1shui4). I'm afraid I don't have usage examples for you, but you can probably find some in your dictionary.

I have trouble with the 'R' and 'x' sounds in Chinese and I know a few of my friends do too. It would be great if you could have a Newbie podcast using these sounds and explaining exactly how to make them.

I'd also like to have a Newbie topic "Sleepy", I would like to ask people if their sleepy and tell them I am sleepy, which I think is different from tired.

What about Chinese ads or advertising in China as a topic? There's probably more ads in China these days than ever before and the market is very fast paced.

ewong: For your latter suggestion see http://chinesepod.com/extra/roommates-and-what-chinese-think-of-foreigners/discussion.

I'd like to see more specialized topics..math, science so on and so forth. Keep up the amazing work guys!

I'd like to see a newbie topic on saying "See you later" or "See ya"

It would be lovely to learn about Chinese heroes ,martial arts, Chinese childhood stories, symbolisms of dragons, how native Chinese people see / think of overseas Chinese people

Searching - I often find the search tools are not adequate for my needs.. they don't seem to be robust enough. You basically need to know exactly what you are looking for or else have to wade through all the lessons in a particular difficulty level till you find what you are looking for. The lists of functions and topic are not sorted correctly and also don't appear to do what you would logically think they would. I often give up trying to search for something after a few minutes of fiddling around with the search tools...

请问 - I would like to see a Dear Amber or 请问 done on "Myths" in China. I've done a search on "Myths" and no results.. though after searching on the singular "Myth" I got Elementary - Scary Clown..

@ jennyzhu: Regarding improved usability or simply finding things, maybe some solution of content suggestion like amazon.com or last.fm could help, e.g. user who liked this lesson A also liked that lesson B etc.

There was a tag cloud in the past. I don't know if that offered any help.

I was watching Boston Legal awhile ago, with the Chinese subtitles and couldn't follow some of the 汉字。 Maybe Cpod can make some lessons (Intermediate or Upper probably) about law or lawyer speak?

sushan,

interesting. What I heard really often in front of a question or a request was 劳驾, and that might be even a bit more formal than 请问...

Perhaps this falls under linguistic complexity, but I appreciate seeing less formal ways of speaking particularly in the upper levels. I mean, I can't recall hearing a native speaker preface a question with 请问 qĭngwèn; I'm much more likely to hear something like

嘿！我想问一下 Hēi! Wŏ xiăng wèn yī xià。。

And for all the ways of asking what something costs:

多少钱 Duōshăo qián？ is like saying I'm a foreigner, charge me triple!

怎麽卖 Zĕnme mài? is way better. (hope that is the right mai)

Hăoduō qián 好多钱? is even better (好多 is the question; means how many or how much; not sure if this is regional or not. you can even leave off the 钱)

Zha ger mai? local (Sichuan) dialect, no idea how to write it, maybe the best.

In English, for very expensive items, we tend to ask the question in a way that conveys we don’t really want to hear the answer - What’s the damage, or what will that run me. It's helpful to know how to do this correspondingly in Chinese.

Joachim, yes you are right. Although I think that if I were to talk about my African DNA, people might think I was taking the piss...

auntie68: As far as we currently know, we ALL have African DNA as this where humanity came into being eons ago. ;-)

As I have asked for some lesson on how to describe people, in my case particularly Asian people, on facial features etc., I do support your intention, anyway.

Well, we have have several lessons plus a Dear Amber about toilets, but does that mean there will never be another one? Those of us who are familiar with most of the lessons are fewer and fewer, right? Seems there are at least two main classes of users - those who live in or out of Chinese speaking environments. I live in China and when I search for a lesson (sometimes with the native search, sometimes with a google site search) it is about something I want to do that day or something that I did kind of badly the day before. I usually find what I need, if it exists.

If I was back in my home country using CPod primarily to increase language ability I would be much more focused on functions rather than topics. I wouldn't have cared, for example, that there used to be several lessons on water by the glass but nothing on water delivery (thanks for that!!). However, as has been pointed out the search by function is much less helpful and using Google to site search is little help.

I would really like to see the Chinese and English broken out in the filtering as well, even to the level of a separate Chinese search and English search.

Maybe a lesson on "African Americans"? May be delicate, but if anybody can do it, surely CPOD can.

Even in the year 2008, a US presidential candidate who has African DNA is being made to tackle questions daily about what it means to be (or not to be) African-American.

Yet the delicate, sometimes painful, distinctions behind words like "black", "bi-racial", "negro", "coloured", "African-American" often seem to mean nothing the moment they hit the Chinese mind. Sometimes, everybody is simply “黑种人" (or worse still, 黑鬼).

As I write this I am thinking of one of my friends, a West African (naturalized) Singaporean married to a Chinese Singaporean, who in the early days of his marriage used to have his wife cut his hair at home for him because he couldn't find any local barbers with the right tools to handle his hair. His Singaporean Chinese in-laws used to pull up stools to watch, in total awe and fascination! Although my friend is not American, I think this story sums up average Chinese "black awareness" pretty well.

For me, "African American" means a whole galaxy of meaning: Everything from rappers to people who attend cotilion (sp.?) balls, summer in Sag Harbor, and have their weddings announced in the New York Times. Just curious...

How about a lesson on online privacy? A number of Chinese that have commented in blogs etc. appear to be quite naive by posting their email-address, QQ no, even mobile number. I guess that phishing is a massive issue in China.

henning: OMG, I didn't see that while searching. Thanks!!!:D

hennig, if the plastic bag lesson will really not be needed anymore, that will be one of the "Weltwunder"! In our area (rural area in Sichuan) they introduced a plastic bag ban twice over the last eight years, and the ways people packed their shoppings for a while, did not exactly change to "environmentally-friendly". and it did not take long for plastic bags to come back... I have little hope

hitokiri6993:

have you checked those two?

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/haircuts/

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/getting-your-hair-done/

Although "army cut" is not in there. Esp. that Intermediate seems to be slanting a bit towards the female part of the audience.

Possibly a lesson on how to say the right haircut in Chinese when you go to a barber shop... or a salon...'cause I want to find out how to say "army cut/crew cut" in Chinese...:D

@ sushan @ Joachim,

that plastic bag lesson will not be needed anymore in China in several weeks:

http://www.88groups.com/88news/lessons/archive/969

http://www.88groups.com/88news/lessons/archive/961

But that is a topic worth a lesson by itsself.

I'd like to see an index of the advanced & media lessons in english so people like me who are not up to that standard quite yet or who don't read characters well can find what we want and don't ask for stuff that is already there.

I'd like a lesson on sparing water? I can't do it, though, I always take long baths and thoroughly rinse my dishes.

I'd like a lesson on India as well, I know so little about them and Chinesepod might be a good cultural guide. the lesson could be a hazard, however, cause you might feel like learning Hindi and never sleeping again. thanks to c-pod i found s-pod and my free time is getting squeezed.

sushan: How about a lesson on plastic bags and (not) wanting one?

Thank you guys!! This is required reading for the Cpod team.

goulniky,

You raised an immensely important issue and in your signature style, offered brilliant suggestions. We do have a process and structure to guide lesson writing developed by the academic team in collaboration with user feedback. Key components are function, frequency, linguistic complexity. These help determine how we write a lesson. Your comment also touches on archiving and searching, which I think is an area with a lot of room for improvement. I really want to know that as a user, how do you find the experience? Do you feel overwhelmed and lost in the face of 800+lessons? What changes do you like to see in the design? Poddies, let us know!

I guess what I meant is you now have a multidimensional grid that's filling up (with levels, topics/vocab, function, grammar, etc.) how do you make sure you grow it up in a balanced way?

Now that ChinesePod is approaching 1000 lessons, I guess they'll need a somewhat systematic approach to content design if there isn't one already. Whatever metric you use, you're talking 100-200 content units, which starts looking like a small encyclopedia (ChinesePodia?).

Take lesson count : Newbie 248, Elem. 177, Intermed. 146, Upper 89, Advanced 120, only Media is a little behind with 53 but much richer. Take tagging, 128 functions, 172 topics across levels, albeit with redundancy. I'm sure the User Conversations are reservoir of lesson topics too, with their mix of situations / functions and specialized content / topics, not to mention specific patterns / grammar constructs.

I just wonder how it works in practice, does the academic team have brainstorming meetings on this, are they building some kind of roadmap?

How about 'can you wrap that in a bit more environmentally friendly manner?' It's easy to say that I don't want a bag, but when the incredibly helpful salesperson is trying to wrap things in a dozen layers for you or giving you a separate container + bag for each item of your takeout order, trying to convey that you want the packaging as little as possible for 'green' reasons is a bit more difficult.

lessons on "eating and drinking" are always good....there are a million different things that you can discuss about that...ecspecially in a country like China!

i agree with sushan on an 'I changed my mind' lesson...how exactly do you do that in a polite way?? there were a few times that i really needed to say that on my china trip!!! since i didnt know how, i just said "duibuqi!" and ran away...ha ha.

The function tags are a bit tougher to search, but a lesson (even a newbie) on 'I changed my mind' would be helpful.

I'm not sure if these actually have lessons already but I'm having a go. :)

Hmm.. how about a lesson on Chinese provinces and cities (or has anyone suggested that?)? LIke what people can see or expect when they go to Xi'an, or to Yunnan, etc.

And how about a lesson on music? Like the different kinds of music - pop, rock, hip-hop, house - what they're called, etc..