User Comments - Constance Fang
Constance Fang
Posted on: Nationalities at Work
July 05, 2017, 08:03 AMBasically yes. :) The official name of North Korea is朝鲜民主主义人民共和国 (Cháoxiǎn mínzhǔ zhǔyì rénmín gònghéguó).
Posted on: Your New Year's Resolutions
January 03, 2017, 03:35 AMHi Mingmao,
Happy new year!
You are right about 直播 as a live broadcast. However, this term is used to emphasize on there's no time difference. In addition, 直播 also imply that the TV channel or TV company bought the right to broadcast a particular show.
On the other hand, we consider 转播 as an abbreviation of 实况转播, which means live broadcast too.
If you are not sure the show will be directly broadcasted by a TV channel or will have some post production, the general term you could use is "转播".
I hope you find this information useful. :)
Posted on: Houses are So Expensive!
September 29, 2016, 07:52 AMThank you! :)
As for the question, these two characters are bassically the same. They are both correct in this case.
Posted on: What a Lovely Painting
September 29, 2016, 06:48 AMHi! si teng2,
If you want to use "zhe" to form this sentence, you could say "一个人在湖边坐着". In the conversation, they were talking about "画里有什么" so "(有)一个人坐在湖边“ would be the most natural answer.
When you just want to describe a scene with "zhe", you could say "湖边坐着一个人“ or “一个人在湖边坐着”.
Hope you find this helpful. :)
Posted on: 南海爭端 South China Sea Dispute
September 15, 2016, 04:12 AMHi podster,
Thank you for pointing this out. 愈 and 越 are two different characters. The recording in the dialogue tab was wrong. Sorry about this. We will fix it as soon as possible. ^^b
Posted on: Typhoon Holiday
September 01, 2016, 08:45 AMYes, that looks like a typo. We have fixed it now. Thank you.
Posted on: You Should Watch Game of Thrones
August 30, 2016, 02:45 AMIt’s great to see the discussion going on here. I think it’s a linguistics thing but also related to the daily usage. Actually, whether you pronounce xuè, xiě or xuě, it won’t effect communication. We mention it in the lesson just for learners to be aware of this phenomenon.
Is it regional? I won’t say it’s not. However, it’s not all about regional. Both 新华词典 and 國語辭典 (published in Taiwan) list xuè and xiě. In a book called 《汉语方音字汇》, edited by Chinese Language and Literature department of Peking University, shows that in Northern region, xuè is ‘colloquial reading’ (白读/语音) whereas xiě is ‘literary reading’ (文读/读音). The only regional thing is that HSK use xuè as the standard pronunciation whereas TOCFL in Taiwan use xiě as the standard pronunciation.
In my opinion, people in Taiwan prefer ‘literary reading’ in most cases. They are used to say xiě or xuě even xuè is also listed in dictionary. Both xuè and xiě pronounced in Mainland China by context.
I’ve wrote an article about this phenomenon and the evolution of these three pronunciations in my PhD program. The evolution of Chinese language is not just a single line.
The synchronic phenomenon are also on-going things. 普通话 and 国语 use same phoneme so there are not much differences. But if you are a student and want to take the language proficiency test, you’d better know the “standard”.
If you are a learner who’s interested in language and want to communicate with native speakers, just keep an open mind and enjoy the variety of language; the “alive language”.
Thanks for being so interested guys.
Posted on: How to Say 'Probably' in Chinese
August 25, 2016, 03:05 PMThese sentences are all grammmatically correct. The last two are so nice!
Only the first one, maybe you want to make the sentence sounds "more Chinese" in this way:
"我朋友最近大概太忙了，所以不能帮我。"
Hope you find it useful. :)
Posted on: How to Say and Write Your Address in Chinese
December 28, 2017, 02:36 AMHi si1teng2,
”启” is a formal way to say “to open”. It’s why people use it on envelopes. It sounds more polite and specifically tell people that only the person who named on the envelope can open it. Sometimes you might see people use “亲启” (please open it personally) to show the importance of the letter.
Hope you find this helpful. :)