User Comments - chris
chris
Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made
July 17, 2011 at 3:59 AMHi babyeggplant. Sorry for not being particularly clear - re-reading what I wrote last night, it does sound a bit like a dry grammar book! My point was that as a general principle the "xiang" preposition is indicating the transfer of something from one noun to another. However, it does not indicate (or is at least ambiguous) the manner of that transfer. In our example, the additional word "jie" is needed to indicate this, i.e. that the nature of this money transfer was a borrow/lend relationship. I guess another verb could have been used in place of "jie" to indicate a different manner of tranfer, e.g. "dedao" ("obtained"), etc. Hopefully that clarifies my thinking of the use of xiang in these situations. I also agree with sclim that there are other prepositions that serve a similar purpose to xiang in these situations, "gen" being one of them.
Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made
July 16, 2011 at 3:53 PMI would have actually translated that Chinese as "He borrowed 500 yuan from me yesterday". Doesn't the "le" immediately after the "jie" indicate that the act of borrowing has been completed? I also agree with the comments above regarding "xiang". Xiang is a preposition that indicates the transfer of something FROM one noun phrase to another. In this example, the 500 yuan is transferred FROM the speaker (wo) to the other person (ta).
Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made
July 16, 2011 at 3:45 PMJenny, I would never have thought to use the passive marker "bei" in these sentences. Is there an alternative way of saying the same thing without using a passive marker? Thanks, Chris.
Posted on: Cold Noodles
July 16, 2011 at 6:17 AMReminds me of that scene at the drive-thru takeaway in the movie "Dude, where's my car?" . And then......and then......and then.......and then......
I presume the Chinese subtitles for that scene use 然后。。。。。然后。。。。然后。。。。。然后。。。。
I wonder if the humour works in Chinese (although I appreciate, depending on your taste, that humour might or might not work in English!).
Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made
July 15, 2011 at 2:29 PMSuo is to lock. the zai is a preposition meaning in or at. wuzi is a word for house.
Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet
July 11, 2011 at 4:19 AMWorking on a transcript for this lesson at this link:
http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/12008
Please feel free to come along and contribute, correct or simply just take a look!
Chris.
Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet
July 11, 2011 at 4:10 AMThanks again JiaoJie. Pleasingly, it seems I have been saying this particular phrase correctly!
Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet
July 11, 2011 at 4:08 AM谢谢，路交界 （我可能把你的名字写错了。。。）。 我明白了
Posted on: BBQ and the Little Trumpet
July 9, 2011 at 6:30 AMFinal expansion sentence uses the phrase 吵两句没什么的. I understand from the translation that it means "...argue a little bit it doesn't matter". I've not come across this 吵两句 structure before. I take it 两句 means something other than simply "two sentences"?
Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made
July 17, 2011 at 12:34 PMFull lesson transcription available here:
http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/12033#comment-219407
This was a joint project by waiguoren and me. If you spot any errors/typos, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks, Chris