User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Bringing it All Back Home With 回去 and 回来
July 19, 2009 at 11:07 AMHi sebire
Please look at it this way.
回到美国 = 回(return)到(to)美国
The verb 到 means "go, reach, arrive".
Posted on: Big Bed
July 19, 2009 at 7:03 AMHi desluo919
My pleasure. Thank you for giving me the opportunities to look up in dictionaries. I love dictionaries very much.
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 13: Wang Meets the Big Boss
July 19, 2009 at 6:09 AMHi zhenlijiang
我相信你肯定喜欢《2001太空漫游》。跟最新《星际旅行》正好相反，这部科幻老片的结局太抽象了！我还记得，四十年前第一次看《2001太空漫游》的我当时没法理解这部电影。后来我看小说版的时候才能明白导演的意图。哎呀，今年已经是2009年了！
Posted on: Language Exchange
July 19, 2009 at 5:12 AMHi stevemisch
There are a lot of tone marks converters available on the Internet, like
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/converter-pinyin-unicode.html
As you said, tone marks can show Chinese tones visually, but personally I prefer the numbers to the marks because the tone marks are sometimes too small for me to read. Actually reading tone numbers is not hard once you get used to them. It's just a matter of habituation.
Posted on: Language Exchange
July 19, 2009 at 4:53 AMHi stevemisch
It's possible that 练习 (lian4xi2) is sometimes pronounced as "lian4 xi" (with neutral tone) especially when you speak fast, but I don't think that 练习(lian4xi2) can be mistaken for 联系 (?) （lian2xi4）. They are very different from each other in terms of tones.
Posted on: Bringing it All Back Home With 回去 and 回来
July 19, 2009 at 4:32 AMHi pchenery
Anyway, “我刚回去越南。” is a kind of faulty sentence both grammatically and logically, which I think is the reason pete intentionally said it in the lesson. Right sentences are as follows, for example.
我刚回来。
我刚回越南来。
他刚回去。
他刚回越南去。
Posted on: Pinyin Section 4: R
July 19, 2009 at 4:20 AMHi raygo
Thanks! The proxy site worked beautifully for me, although I don't know how long it will work here. Another proxy site www.proxyboxonline.com, Pete introduced us before, doesn't work anymore. 长城火墙很“勤劳”哇！
Posted on: Pinyin Section 4: R
July 19, 2009 at 3:36 AMHi light487
Thanks a lot for the link, but unfortunately it doesn't work here. The video seems to be originated in the youtube one. 该死的长城火墙，哈哈。
Posted on: Bringing it All Back Home With 回去 and 回来
July 19, 2009 at 2:53 AMHi sebire
回到美国 .... 〇
回到美国去 ....〇
回到美国来 ....〇
回美国到 .... ×
到 is a verb in Chinese grammar, but it sometimes works just like a suffix that means "to, toward, until" when combined with a verb such as 回 (回到). In other words, 到 is very closely attached to its preceding verb, and probably this is the reason that you can't separate 到 from 回, for example.
Posted on: Bringing it All Back Home With 回去 and 回来
July 19, 2009 at 11:53 AMHi sebire
回到美国 simply means "return to the US". The verb 到 means "go, reach, arrive", but in this case the 到 works just like a suffix that means "to", I suppose. For the record, 回美国 also means "return to the US".
You can show a specific direction of "return" by adding 来 and 去, just like 他回美国来 and 他回美国去. In the case of the former one, the speaker is in the US, and in the latter case, the speaker is in a country other than the US.