Great CPod grammar discussions

simonpettersson
October 28, 2009, 06:15 PM posted in General Discussion

Okay, let's try this thread in the Grammar Discussions group, instead.

1: Bookmark this discussion. This way you can be sure to be able to find it again. This is important for this to work.

2: When you see a discussion, either an old or a new one, on ChinesePod that you think illuminates some feature of Chinese or otherwise contains gems of wisdom on Chinese grammar, post a link to it here.

3: Please don't make any posts whatsoever in this discussion that do not contain links to great grammar discussions. Let's try to keep this list clean. It's not really supposed to be a discussion, but more of an archive.

The idea is that this will let people find the good grammar discussions easier by simply going to this topic and searchin on the page. And since we have it bookmarked, we can always find this page. Also, whenever we post to it, it will get bumped and thus show clearly on the discussions page.

Please write the name of the discussion and a short description of what's so great about it, and provide a link. Note that it doesn't have to be discussions solely about grammar. If there's something very interesting said about grammar in a lesson discussion, do post a link. But the interesting thing has to be in the discussion, not the lesson.

I'm not sure if this'll work, but it's worth a try.

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zhenlijiang
October 28, 2009, 07:09 PM

Qing Wen - The Magic Word 把
(April 18-20, 2009)

QW has covered 把 more than once, but this one is followed by a great analysis of the nuances conveyed by a 把 construction, tarcy being the key contributor. She starts it (the first April 18 comment is hers), and also adds a postscript June 29.
She links also to another QW - Dropping and Losing 丢,弄丢,丢掉 containing a 把 discussion (will create separate entry for it).

tarcy posts entirely in Chinese btw, but it is very worthwhile checking out.

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zhenlijiang
October 28, 2009, 07:41 PM

Qing Wen - Dropping and Losing 丢,弄丢,丢掉
(April 6, 2009)

This QW contains a discussion on what 把 is, what it does--with many participants and quite a lot of confusion.
The reason to look here is for Jiaojie laoshi's explanation of what it is, brought to us by Pete April 6.

(The "link to this comment" shortcut used to take us to the precise comment; recently that's changed apparently. It now only takes you to the page, then you have to scroll till you find what you want which is a bit annoying)

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zhenlijiang
October 28, 2009, 08:26 PM

Xiaophil - The Final Grammar Result
(July 21-29, 2009)

Xiaophil posted questions on how to express tenses
Those questions opened an odyssean discussion spanning three posts culminating in this one.
There's so much of value here, but in particular Jiaojie laoshi's responses are gold.

For those who have the time I think it's worth reading from the beginning--Xiaophil's original post Please give grammar help!!!,
which he has also linked to at the top of this one.

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sebire
October 28, 2009, 08:27 PM

Henning's legendary Grammar Points (Intermediate):

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/540

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zhenlijiang
October 28, 2009, 09:24 PM

Xiaophil - How to use 的?
(August 16-19, 2009)

Trying to clarify when and how to use 的 means clarifying when you can drop it. Many native speakers took part.
sun758816 contributed a great guideline on 的 and noun attributives--which ones don't need 的, what order to put them in etc
August 18.

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zhenlijiang
October 30, 2009, 05:09 PM

Intermediate - Excuses for Being Late
(May 5-7, 2009)

(The lesson is full of different uses of 了, which Jenny and John go over. Definitely worth re-listening to, particularly the chunk starting at 12:22.)

huasen and lujo ask for more clarification. Look for Jiaojie's answers May 7 and her guideline "Situations where you must use 了".