User Comments - Jerry@ChinesePod

Posted on: Doing Things in Places

That's not a stupid question at all! It's actually quite significant: These videos teach both Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters. Most of these characters overlap, and are therefore the same. However, sometimes they are different. If the Simplified and Traditional characters are the same, there will be only one line of Chinese. If there is a difference, both versions will be displayed.

Posted on: CyberSpeak

Glad you enjoyed it! We do have other lessons regarding contemporary language in the planning process.

Posted on: 得到、获得、取得的用法

I'm seeing the same problem. We'll see what we can do.

Posted on: 66 Enjoyable Characters with Joy #6

There are a couple of good ways to remember Chinese characters:

There's a great article here with tips on memorizing characters. Videos like these with Joy are a great introduction, but if you're serious, you'll need to find additional ways to learn.

Another big factor in language acquisition is actually using the language. As a beginner, you will want to get practice physically writing the characters out with the correct stroke order, then before too long, writing out complete, meaningful sentences. After years of typing Pinyin, I still keep a little notebook handy for physically writing new characters out by hand.

Posted on: Misfortune from our mouths 祸从口入──管住嘴巴

Peony's voice is quite clear, but it sounds like Crystal may have been sitting a bit too far from the mic. I'll pass that feedback on.

Posted on: Heading Home

Have you seen our latest lesson? I find these two new hosts quite funny.

Posted on: Chinese Idioms - Lower than a pig or dog

Yes, this idiom is an extremely strong way to describe despicable people. It should not be used lightly.

Posted on: How to Say Your Name in Chinese

Yes, there are people with names more than 3 characters, especially among ethnic minorities in China. However, the vast majority of the Chinese population have a 1-character family name, followed by a 1 or 2 character given name.

A famous person in Chinese history with a 2-character family name is 诸葛亮 - the final character 亮 is actually his given name. If you've ever seen the movie Red Cliff, he's the really smart strategist who came up with a creative way of collecting a literal boatload of arrows.

Posted on: 4 Tones of Zhu

There are ongoing discussions on ways to help students remember the tones for different characters. One possibility is to use different colors for the different characters, as described in this blog post.

Another new option currently in development is ChinesePod's very own App Challenge winner. You can see this video regarding a game where you match up characters having the same tone. I've tried an early version, and it's quite engaging!

Posted on: Mobile payments in China 移动支付遍布中国

Hi Monika,

Great question! 基本都 and 都基本 are interchangeable.