User Comments - Tal

Posted on: Zombies: Deader than Ever

Here's a rough transcript of the podcast I've been compiling as I study. Anyone who might find such a thing useful is welcome to use it.

Don't expect perfection! It's just a draft and probably contains errors, (not a great deal of Pinyin either I'm afraid if you need that.)

If anyone does find it useful and/or worthwhile. I'd appreciate thanks and/or feedback. 让你们见笑了！

Posted on: Luke is Back! And So Are the Zombies!

"an african drug dealer kept pestering me to buy gocaine"

Too right, that gocaine is terrible stuff, cocaine though... mmm...

(no need to threaten me with an aerobatic descent from a balcony miantiao, I am, as ever, j/k!)

Posted on: Luke is Back! And So Are the Zombies!

哈哈！Nice homophones baba! I think a Jedi would be strong in 气! Maybe I've got it all wrong, but isn't it like the force in many ways?!

But then something tells me I'm about to be set right by someone! Angry Young Men please go easy on me, OK?

Posted on: Luke is Back! And So Are the Zombies!

How about Part 3: Luke becomes a Jedi! No? Err... I'll get my coat.

Thanks for the Qing Wen pdf light, glad your travels went well.

Posted on: Boston

As I've been studying this lesson, I've been having a go at writing a transcript of the podcast, and in the light of previous comments from people who might find such a thing useful, anyone who wishes to is welcome to take a look at it here.

Let me say at once that it's probably not perfect, maybe some mistakes in there. Also, there's very little Pinyin, (I just don't have the time and/or patience to convert all the 汉字 to Pinyin. If you can't cope with the characters use Perakun or the MDBG Chinese Reader to help you out.)

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

@ dogupatree - Ha! That's a good one that hadn't occurred to me. Also of course we Brits don't really use the word 'newbie' anyway do we? (or do we? I could be a little behind re. just how far US slang has permeated UK speech.)

Posted on: Boston

I'd just like to agree that a great many (perhaps the majority) of the UI lessons are so specialized and dull.

I'm at the stage where I usually find the Intermediate lessons no problem at all. They stretch me a little bit, and I find I now manage to understand 70% of what Jenny says in the podcast on a first listening. Over a day or two studying it, I feel I digest all of it and my ability in Chinese increases perceptibly. (Sorry if you don't wanna hear this newbies and ellies, but listening fluency comes with lots of practise and repetition, and an acceptance that you won't understand much at first!)

Upper Intermediate is a different ball game though. That level really stretches me, and it is tiresome to have so many new and difficult words, and I will often just not bother unless I think there's going to be a real payoff in terms of increased fluency and/or enjoyment.

UI lessons I have really enjoyed (even though they were hard work) include the Jizhou series, even though the ending was a big disappointment. The Pick Up artist was also great fun. UI lessons I gave up on after about 10 minutes include the one about Confucius (a potentially interesting subject that was just too much hard work), Chemistry (really not my cup of tea), and various ones about sport and business. I do feel those lessons should still be there though, I'd just like to see more stories and drama and real-life stuff that is fun and interesting to learn.

I know you can't please everyone though and CPod is great anyway.

mikeinewshot I want to thank and commend you for all the work you put into supplementary vocab lists (to assist in understanding podcasts) for older lessons in the archive, such as the Jizhou series. A really useful contribution! I'm currently contemplating doing something like that myself for certain lessons, (but once you get started you realize just how much time it requires!)

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

An English friend was telling me one day about the time he admired his (female) Chinese tutor's new pen, but unfortunately he was new to learning Chinese and his tones were far from perfect.

"Lǎoshī, nǐde bī hěn piàoliang," he told her.

A vivid blush instantly appeared on her face and a strict lesson on the importance of getting the tones right followed, especially the difference between the first tone bī 屄 and the third tone bǐ 笔.

There you go Henning, that's two of us banned!

对了, one way of saying that someone or something is really excellent in Chinese is to call it 牛屄 (niúbī)! e.g. 哎呀，你打篮球打得那么好，你真牛屄!   Āiyā, nǐ dǎ lánqiú dǎ de nàme hǎo, nǐ zhēn niúbī!  Whoa, you play basketball so well, you're really (like a ?) cow's primary female sexual characteristic!

This is very possibly 'boy talk'! Don't try using it to impress casual acquaintances (or potential girlfriends!)

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

Nice one, I'll have to try that! My wife sometimes tells me I should tell people I come from 新疆 (Xīnjiāng) because apparently a lot of people from there get taken for 老外!

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

哈陋! OK, I get it now!  (哈 = hā  =  sound of laughter  陋  =  lòu  =  from  chǒulòu 丑陋  = ugly)

Ho ho! Just shows you can be in China for several years and still not be aware of how the natives poke fun at you! And yes the "hello" game is another popular pastime for Chinese people encountering foreigners, (but of course it's not always meant mockingly when you hear the word shouted out at you in the street or wherever, even though the usual response is laughter if you say hello back!)

@light487 - I should perhaps also explain that I live and work in the south-east corner of Guangdong, in an area where the local people are proud not only to have their own highly distinctive 地方话 (dìfang huà = regional language or dialect) which is very different from both 普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà = Mandarin) and 广东话 (Guǎngdōnghuà = Cantonese) and is mutually unintelligible with either, but also proud to be 老封建 (lǎofēngjiàn = perhaps best translated as very old-fashioned or backward) in their thinking and attitudes. They have a reputation for being unfriendly even to other Chinese people who come here from other areas of China and who use 普通话 to communicate. Every year more than a few of my students will tell me that I am the first foreigner they have ever seen, and I'm sure that's true for many of the people here, (and here there's a clear analogy to zhenlijiang's description of Tokyo 35 years ago.)

Even though I've been in China for a few years now, I'm not actually that widely travelled. I still haven't made it to Beijing yet. I've been to Shanghai a few times, Guangzhou of course, Chongqing and Chengdu, (my wife comes from Chongqing), Suzhou and the surrounding area, but none of the other places you mention. I'm most familiar really just with the provincial and backward corner I live and work in, and my comments should I guess be taken in the light of that.

Also I think it's quite possible that beating a tourist trail for a few weeks you wouldn't necessarily have come up against the 老外 label too often. Even here where I'm living people rarely will use it to your face (unless they're teasing you for fun, like the little boys I mentioned), it's usually done indirectly, (as in "look at that 老外 passing by" or something like this.) It tends on the whole to be a label Chinese people apply to foreigners when they're talking amongst themselves, (just like the characters in the lesson dialogue), and as Chinese people almost always assume that foreigners will not understand them when they speak Chinese, they will usually use the word in front of you with no sense that they are being impolite in talking about you as if you are not present, (but if we get into this then we're likely to open a whole other can of worms about the Chinese concept of manners/politeness and how completely different it is (on the whole) from western concepts.)