User Comments - bill

Posted on: 扎着麻花辫的女孩三

这个片段又一点支离又一点匆猝. 如果更详细就真可怕！我想到Alfred Hitchcock的电影.

Posted on: Picking things up: 拿、带、取

这里是星期天上午. 今天天气很好. 我能一边喝一杯卡布奇诺 (Amber!) 一边听请问 ... Super lesson as usual. I, like a few of the others above, have listened to every 请问, and can honestly say, enjoyed them all.

I've always appreciated the skill the of Praxis Language Chinesepod teams, and the wisdom used in selecting their members.

I really think that bababardwan, and I must say "as usual," has hit the proverbial nail on the head. The world is becoming smaller and smaller, and more of us will be encountering on a day-to-day basis non-native speakers of nearly every language. What a joy! The musciality of the accents add so much beauty to our languages.

I've noticed that here in the San Francisco Bay Area that many Chinese are beginning to lose the clarity of their tones when speaking in Mandarin. Last night I asked a waiter， "请来菊花茶." He replied, "好." It sounded more like "how" or hao5. Of course a year ago I would not of have noticed (-: Still, the meaning was clear, and he was delighted albeit surprised to speak Mandarin with us. 

It brings up the difference between tone and accent. For me the struggle is speaking Mandarin fluidly with correct tones. My Californian accent will always be there unless I move to China for a few years.

In fact, as soon as I heard 大山 speak on CCTV, I immediately recognized his Canadian accent. Yet, his tones are perfectly spoken. So, we all listen to the beauty of Jenny's Mandarin, listen over and over and over. The other members help stretch our listening ability to hear multiple variations of Mandarin, and thus make us more capable, as bababardwan said, of understanding the various accents we will encounter.

So, as I see it, we should always encourage the effort someone is making to speak a new language and do so with a non-critical eye. Make that person comfortable. And in that way, open a doorway to another person's world, and if we are lucky, they might even invite us for a visit, and maybe 家常菜.

This has happened to me and my wife often enough when traveling in France. And hey, we are going to visit 中国 for three weeks next Spring with a 5 day stop in 上海 ！

Bill

Posted on: Expressing Location with 边 and 面

这节课有用 ...

Posted on: A Phone Call to the Moving Company

JasonSch,

Hmm ... What is heard and what is correct often are not the same (-: I often hear lots of statements, and well, languages do devolve. Too bad ... It's sort of like saying, "She's pretty much pregnant." While this is true for a few milliseconds before conception, it's really poor English.

What I'm getting at is that the translations are also there for people to learn correct English and so, I think a great deal of care should be taken to stay away from statements like "pretty much" in these cases. Now, "I've pretty much finished this message," is a correct and unambiguous use of the expression.

But, actually, since I'm on this point, I'd like to mention a couple of other things about the expansions since Pete has left. Pete was very careful in his choice of slang becuase he understood there are many non-English speaking CPod users. So, for example, in this lesson, "100 bucks" was used. "Bucks" I believe is exclusively American English slang for dollars. Why not say "dollars?"  I've never heard it subsituted for pounds in the UK. "Hey mate, that's 50 bucks!" Can you imagine someone looking for the exchange rate between "bucks" and RMB's?

Finally, there is the following from the expansion exercises:

你累的话，早点休息吧。
If you're tired, you should rest a bit early. 1 (If you're tired, you should rest a bit early.)

That's somewhat clumbsy English. Better stated is, "If you're tired, then take an early nap." One could say, "If your tired, then go to bed a bit earlier." To be honest, "you should rest a bit early," comes off as strange. Or, maybe the intent of the sentence is, ".., then you should've rested a bit earlier." Then again, when I looked up 早点 in my dictionary, it's a "light breakfast." Hmm ... I'm definitely done with this message (-:

Bill

Posted on: A Phone Call to the Moving Company

joeborn,

My guess is the person who did the translation does not know what "pretty much" means: Nearly, or almost. "She's almost his girlfriend" is a little strange here ...

I thought as you did with respect to 大概.

Bill

Posted on: With Regards to 对 and 对于

richnirish,

Try: http://chinesepod.com/lessons/to-do

Bill

Posted on: Love Tangle 5: The Mistress

这节课是一部电视剧 ... 但是又词汇又讨论区有意思.

Bill

Posted on: Flexible, Not Reflexive

Given the example, 我们互相爱着对方, can one also say, 他们互相帮助着对方?

It seems that 对方 applies to transitive verbs where the subject is plural (in context always two?) and the sense of the sentence is reflexive, 对方 roughly meaning "the other person involved."

Bill

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

By the way I do like British English. I was taught grammar by a teacher from England, Mrs. Shepherd, in junior high in the 50's. She was excellent. Much to my own disappointment the correct use of grammar in America is on the decline, and it is such a delight to speak with my English friends.

I adore ousijia's accent. But what's funny is that at times I did not understand her but happily knew the vocabularly well enough so that the Chinese clarified what she said. Sort of doing things in reverse (-:

Bill

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

Fun lesson even if one doesn't play these games. Also, 光 is a multi-faceted word. If you haven't yet listened to the recent 请问， “Nothing More Than Only and Just," I suggest you do so.

And, ah yes, the "Queen's English." One thing I like about it is that about 40% of English is French albeit quite badly pronounced (-: Beau champ == bee chum!?

Speaking of accents, I travel to London quite often (10 times or so since 2004) and people always ask me,"Where are you from? You have such a lovely accent." 真有意思 ... I'm from the "colonies" as my Brit friends say, i. e., California.

Bill