Lesson Comments

My response to this is that contractions are very common in spoken Chinese. The "了" and the "一" often disappear. However, I think the missing syllable... Read more

Thanks, Toianw, those are some very interesting statistics. Maybe, I should ask CPod for a partial refund, because they have been promising that... Read more

Thanks for the suggestion, liangaorong. I couldn't find Yu Hua's novels on the Web as easily as I found 《明朝那些事儿》, but "To Live" seems to be here:... Read more

what does 这回 in this dialogue mean? Read more

I was just wondering what the difference between using 倒 and 居然/竟然 was Read more

Here is a website where you can read -- or dip into -- 《明朝那些事儿》 http://vip.book.sina.com.cn/book/index_40931.html But it seems to be specifically... Read more

I don't believe in much I cant measure, or at least see the direct consequences of, but cultural traditions are way complex, and involve much more tha... Read more

So I guess we can take 18% as a reasonable estimate - or at least an upper limit - of the number who speak putonghua (or something very close) as thei... Read more

It doesn't entirely answer your question, but back in 2004 the government published results of a survey of Mandarin use in China. A summary of the res... Read more

Well, David mentioned that recently some children in Shanghai don't learn Shanghainese. I also think there are some areas where the local dialect is... Read more