User Comments - chris
chris
Posted on: Raising the Rent
November 12, 2011 at 2:06 PMIn expansion sentence 1c (wǒ de xìnyòngkǎ dàoqī le, bèi tíngyòng le), please could somebody explain the use of the passive marker "bei"? I would've thought we could simply say "wo xiànzài bù néng yòng le"?
Posted on: Raising the Rent
November 12, 2011 at 1:29 PMI think it is safe to say that the apartment in the dialogue is not in middle of downtown Shanghai. Either that or I am being well and truly ripped off. 3000 seems to be a weekly rent rather than a monthly rent in the apartment complexes around jing'an temple, at least. (obviously not clear from the dialogue how big the apartment is, etc, so difficult to make comparisons!).
Posted on: How to Say "This"
November 12, 2011 at 5:45 AMAh, bodawei, wish I'd seen your comment here before I posted on another lesson last night. I was basically asking for exactly the same thing - some Upper Intermediate QW lessons on the characters you list above, in particular "yu" and "zhi" but the others you mention also bug me! Hopefully our friends at cpod will be listening!
Posted on: 过(guo)
November 12, 2011 at 5:06 AMI agree guolan, the general responsiveness from the team has been great the last couple of years, both in terms of preparing full lessons covering users' queries or simply responding to our questions on the comment boards. I do most of my studying at the weekend, leaving various questions on the comment board. By late morning on Mondays, Connie or someone else on the cp team has responded. Great stuff!
Posted on: The Glorious 了(le): Part 2
November 12, 2011 at 4:37 AMI have a couple of questions:-
1) For the uses of "le" immediately following a noun, are these not simply "change of state 'le' "? For example, "chuntian le" just means that Spring has now arrived compared to it having not yet arrived previously. Maybe this was the point that was being made in the lesson and I just missed it.
2) Something that always confuses me is when the "le" can be omitted if a time-indicator word has already been used in the sentence. For example, in your sentence "zuotian wo qu chaoshi mai le hen duo dongxi", the use of "zuotian" makes it obvious that we are talking about an action that occurred in the past. Consequently, why bother with a "le" after the "mai"? The other example that I always struggle with is "yiqian (before)". I can't help feeling that in many instances the use of "le" is redundant...
Any thoughts from the cpod team or fellow poddies appreciated!
Posted on: Visa Issues
November 11, 2011 at 1:46 PMIn the following expansion sentence: 我一定要在十天之内学会游泳. Do we need the "zai"? At first I thought the pattern was "zai.......zhinei". But then in other example sentences I see "zhinei" used without a preceding "zai". Perhaps the pattern still exists, it is just that it is possible to omit the "zai"?
Posted on: Visa Issues
November 11, 2011 at 1:44 PMOne of the expansion sentences uses 于 when I expected to see 在. I think I am correct in saying that this "yu" is the same as "zai" but is more formal. Is this right? It strikes me that this would be a good topic for a QW (if not already covered). I am coming across more and more words nowadays that, from what I can tell, are just formal versions of very basic words that we all know and love - this "yu" above being an example. Another example off the top of my head is 之 when it strikes me that "yi" would suffice, e.g. zhiqian vs yiqian, zhihou vs yihou, etc.
Posted on: Visa Issues
November 11, 2011 at 1:40 PMIn the dialogue sentence: 你以前在中国工作过吗 why do we need the "guo". Doesn't the use of "yiqian" at the beginning of the sentence already indicate that reference is being made to the past? Consequently, isn't the "guo" redundant?
Posted on: Cell Phone Connectivity Issues
November 8, 2011 at 8:55 AMAs well as 器 (qi4). I forget which recent CPOD lesson it was, but there was an interesting discussion comparing the machines that used 机 (ji1) and 器 (qi4). If I recall correctly there wasn't much rule logic to it - as usual, a case of just having to try and learn them rather than learn a rule. Usually, if I can't remember which one to use, I will plump for 机 (ji1). I'm usually understood and will get corrected if I'm wrong.
Posted on: Shopping for the Wife
November 14, 2011 at 1:50 PMyep, I'm also a member of this club. Not only that, but I must go through them all in chronological order of date published. This is part of the reason I'm struggling making the jump to Upper Intermediate - having to go back to 2005 again!