User Comments - baillies
baillies
Posted on: Hiking
June 9, 2008 at 8:45 PMI had initialy been confused as several chinese friends had told me that thousands of people went mountain climbing on public holidays. It was not until months later that I saw news footage of crowded staircases in the mountains and asked 'Is this mountain climbing?'. I then realised that the translation was difficult and it is easier to say 'mountain climbing' than 'walking up a mountain on a path with stairs'. It was not until after this that I learnt the term 爬山 and truly began to appreciate my initial confusion.
For me this is a big reason why I am learning Mandarin, there are lots of ambiguous translations and the more I learn the more I can try and improve my understanding even when speaking english with chinese people.
Posted on: Hiking
June 9, 2008 at 12:46 PMGood reinforcement of this topic. I just noticed that there are no related lessons listed even though there have been other hiking lessons. Is this a future plan?
Cpod teaches mandarin as it is actually spoken in China and given the constraints of 10 - 15 minute lessons every day they do an excelent job. I for one prefer a 10 minute lesson with one high use translation than a full in depth research of every word and grammar point in every lesson. The discussion is the place to seek and find clarification if needed and should be used for constructive discussion.
In Australia I have often been 'bush walking' which I would translate as hiking to people from outside of australia. To me this not only includes walking in both flat and hilly areas but also scrambling up and down rocky slopes possibly with the aid of ropes that have been left by other hikers.
Oh well, peace -- great line auntie68, if only everyone had this attitude.
Posted on: Working Hours
June 7, 2008 at 9:38 PMalwingate 早上九点 zao3shang jiu3dian3 means '9 o'clock in the morning', 早上 is morning
Posted on: I Don't Have the Strength (... 不动）
June 7, 2008 at 9:32 PM你们好 （ni3men hao3） just means 'Hello' to a group of people. 你好 is the singular version. Adding 们 to 我(wo)，你，他(ta)，她(ta) changes them to plural。他 = he, 他们 = they.
note: 们 is simplified and 們 is the traditional version. hitokiri6993 you beat me!
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Xinjiang
May 26, 2008 at 8:18 AMI figured out earlier this year that the different accents have been the main obsticle to me actually understanding people outside of cpod. i think having these accents in this lesson is very useful and necessary to attaining a true intermediate level. i think that if you have the dialog at the start you could reduce the number of replays during the lesson. At my current level I find the single readthrough OK but I think that twice is better. i like the elementary lessons as you can here Jenny reading every line which is often lacking in the intermediate lessons. I think that having Jenny read a few times is especially important for this lesson given that the accent is hard to understand for ele's. Maybe for newbie repeat three times, elementary twice and intermediate once (both for the dialog and the translation). The existing repeat 3 times was started before the availability of the seperate dialog download. Having Jenny repeat the lines in the lessons allows for the dialogs to contain more day to day accents. You can also contrast to the pronounciation of lamb kababs in this lesson http://chinesepod.com/lessons/street-food another good lesson in a great series. Sorry for the long post but Ken asked for feedback...
Posted on: KTV
May 25, 2008 at 8:54 AMI can't wait for V4 so I can edit the comments... should have said 'Im also sure... the second time. Also thankyou to whoever worked on Sunday to fix the lessons 辛苦你了 （xin1ku3 ni3 le）
Posted on: KTV
May 25, 2008 at 8:48 AMLight Note that it is 我唱得特难听 not 的。 Definition of 得 from http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php "structural particle: used after a verb (or adjective as main verb), linking it to following phrase indicating effect, degree, possibility etc" From what I understand if you are talking about your ability to do something you must use a verb+得+ability construction e.g 我普通話說的不好 wo3 pu3tong1hua4 shuo1 de bu4hao3 I speak mandarin badly 我做菜做得很好 wo3 zuo4cai4 zuo4 de hen3 hao3 I cook very well I am sure somebody can explain this better but I hope this can help for now. I am sure Amber or somebody would have given a better answer somewhere but I don't know how to find it.
Posted on: Chinese Music Taste and Registering with the Police
May 16, 2008 at 8:19 PMhey jp, can't wait for ipod (italian pod) they have to have an opera channel. I have listened to a lot of SHE but I have found wang fei better for learning as she has a lot of slower songs, i believe she became famous in HK.
Posted on: Chinese Universities
May 16, 2008 at 1:25 AMI am not really at this level but was wondering does the sign say 北京大学。 No wonder I can never read these signs. Also off topic but is there a timeframe for the new spod/fpod web layout to come to cpod?
Posted on: Hiking
June 10, 2008 at 1:59 AMAlwingate
'Boran's examples' are from the new Glossary. To get this example you can click on Glossary in the links at the bottom of the page and search on the word 太. Be careful as the resulting sentances can come from any level and may difficult to understand.
John/cpod is it an option to change the on click in the dialog tab to open a glossary lookup instead of the current add to vocab. I think this would be more useful to me as most words can be found on the vocabulary tab and saved to the users vocab from here. It would save a copy and paste to the glossary. Also it would be good for this to apply to the expansion sentances but may hinder adding these words your vocab unless the glossary can also be changed to allow saving vocab. I think this multidimensional learning is what praxis is now capable of that a normal classroom cannot achieve efficiently.
Lastly Alwingate it is easy to get distracted from learning chinese on Cpod but as you use the site more you hopefully will learn to ignore these distractions ... I only wish I also could do this today ...