User Comments - BillJefferys

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

In Northern China, 'sh' and 's' are distinguished and sound similar to the English consonants.

In the more Southern parts of China, they are not distinguished, and are both pronounced closer to 's'. "Southern" is not so far South as you might think. This happens as far North as the regions near the 长江 (ChángJiāng) (the Yangtze river).

I learned from a recent ChinesePod podcast that in a similar part of China, 'l' and 'n' are not distinguished (for example in Henan province, and I understand also in Liaoning province). Yet another regional accent difference.

So it may be that what we have learned to use in the West is simply a matter of the regional accents of the masters who happened to get here first, as your comment suggests. My comment is just to note that those regional accents range much farther North than just the Canton region (where the language is as different from Standard Chinese as French is from Italian, for example).

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

I have a rather different question.

In the dialog, the master says, '大家早' (dàjiā zǎo).

My question is, how late in the morning can you use this phrase without sounding silly? For example, if I get to the office at 11 AM, which is still officially "morning", would this be a silly thing to say when greeting my office mates?

Related, is the common morning greeting, '你吃了吗？' ('nǐ chīle ma?', "have you eaten yet?") Again, how late in the morning would that greeting be appropriate? Also, what if you haven't actually had breakfast? How should you respond in that case if you are asked this as a greeting? A native Chinese informant told me recently that if you hadn't actually eaten, then

'吃了' ([I've] eaten) would not be an appropriate response.

Posted on: Your First Mooncake

It's too bad that there was no mention in the English discussion of yuebing about the historical origins of this; especially how they were supposed to have been used to overthrow the Yuan dynasty.

The story may not be true, but it is widely believed.

Posted on: Separable Verbs

Two comments.

'吃' can be used without an object, as in the common morning greeting, '你吃了吗？' (literally, "have you eaten?" but colloquially, "how are you this morning?"). But this is an unusual colloquialism.

Also, an anecdote, on a second point. My principle Chinese teacher, who was Canadian (and not of Chinese ancestry), told us about an incident that took place when she was studying on Taiwan. She was in a crowded elevator, and someone elbowed her in the ribs, which elicited from her the cry, '啊唷' or more probably, '啊呀' (this was over 30 years ago and no characters were involved in her retelling, so I am not sure exactly what was said). The interesting (and also amusing) thing was that behind her, one Chinese woman said to her companion, based only on this outcry, "他中文说得非常好". I'm morally certain that this is how my teacher recounted it. Note that this is different from the construction used in the discussion, "他说中文说得很好", not because of the '很' vs. '非常', but because the verb '说' was not duplicated in this spontaneous comment, but was omitted in the first instance, since the rest of the sentence made it clear what was meant in the context.

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of native Chinese speakers about this.

Posted on: Nearby Tea House

When you use the wrong character there's a term for it: 白字. I always loved this term. My misuse of 再 for 在 is a good example. Same tone, same pronounciation, completely different meaning.

Posted on: Nearby Tea House

You're right. Careless on my part. Thanks for the correction. I just typed the pinyin into my Mac's Chinese input and without thinking took the first character it offered. I'm usually better than that.

Posted on: Nearby Tea House

I realize now that I misheard exactly what she said. It's at 7:24 into the podcast; what she actually said was "The way to ask 'where is something' is '再哪儿'. 咖啡厅再哪儿?" I didn't "hear" the period after the first '再哪儿'. I "heard" it combined as a sentence with '咖啡厅' ending the sentence.

My mistake. Apologies to all, especially to Jenny for not listening as carefully as I should. At least I now know that I was taught correctly!

Thank you, dunderklumpen, for making me go back and find this mistake!

Posted on: Nearby Tea House

I noticed an interesting discrepancy between the discussion of the lesson versus what was said in the dialog.
In the lesson, the English translation in the fifth line of the transcript reads: "咖啡厅再哪儿?" (Where is the coffee shop?). But interestingly, Jenny says "再哪儿咖啡厅?"
Now, I am not a native Chinese speaker, and Jenny is. The order of these two elements, as I have been taught, seems to me most natural if you mention the place first, and then the question, as in the written dialog. So, it seems that the order of these two elements is more free than I had been taught.
I wonder if Jenny or some other native Chinese speaker would comment. This is a very interesting subtlety of Chinese of which I was not aware. I know that sometime the order is very important (as for time markers). In what cases is it not so important?

Posted on: A Tour of the Office

Now, 天 and 年 are both measure words, so one says for example 三天半 for 3 1/2 days. But 月 is not a measure word, so one says 三个月。But what's the correct way to say 3 1/2 months? 三个半月? This duplicates the notion that the '半' comes after the measure word, but it's something I'd never thought about before.

Posted on: What have you done in 2009?

I think that this is the best lesson I've seen on ChinesePod so far on the uses of 'le' '了'. Some of the earlier lessons seemed to confuse the particle as a "past tense" marker, which it can be, but only in the context of a change of condition from what was before. Often, and usually, the change of condition happened in the past, so '了' looks like a past tense marker. But as this lesson shows, the particle can be used to note a condition that is about to change, or as in the case of our hero here, a condition that has already changed (because he has learned Chinese and fallen in love with it, since a year ago).