User Comments - Unaha

Posted on: 少数民族

I haven't listened to the lesson yet, but the English translation for 潑水節 in the PDF appears to be a bit off.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 6: Up-and-Comer in the Office

Interesting discussion on LE. I haven't actually listened to the dialogue yet, so I'm not sure of the context, but nonetheless I find myself plunging forth into the discussion.

As far as I understand it, there's two types of LE. One that goes right after the verb (perfective -le), and one that goes at the end of a sentence.

1) post-verb le: This indicates completion of the action. However, it has no relationship with "tense", it can be used to indicate completion in the past or future.

2) sentence-end le: This one goes at the end of a sentence, and indicates the "relevence" of the utterence. There's a whole bunch of things that can come under this heading, like change of state, an order, or that something is still ongoing, etc.

Sometimes a LE will be at the end of a sentence, which happens to finish with a verb. If that's the case, then it could have either of the functions above, or both, and only context will provide the answer to that.

Well, that's the bookline, anyway. In reality it seems like everyone uses LE differently (especially north vs south). I'd love to see what John and JP make of it, and I wish you guys would do a few more linguistically in-depth Podcasts on this kind of thing. In fact, you could make a whole new channel: "Topics in Chinese linguistics". How about it? :)

Posted on: When 比较 (bǐjiào) becomes 更 (gèng)

I love Qing Wen, and it's definitely useful, but I fully agree with edward1980's suggestion. How about a few different levels of Qing Wen, and a few tougher grammar points or explanations of function words?