User Comments - chris
chris
Posted on: Discussing Basketball Teams
May 14, 2011 at 10:11 AMWhoa, what's this 瞧 in one of the Expansion sentences? It appears to simply mean the same as 看 at least in the context of "Hey, look" (你瞧). I've done almost 200 Intermediate lessons now and don't ever recall coming across this word - how come? Is it simply that it is only rarely used?
Posted on: Discussing Basketball Teams
May 14, 2011 at 6:35 AMTwo quick questions:-
1) I understand the use of 上 in the dialogue sentence asking whether Yao Ming had played. I just wanted to check whether we could have also used 打, e.g. ‘姚明打了吗？’
2) "I haven't really been paying attention to the NBA" - could we have used 注意 rather than 关心? Up to now, I've only ever learned 注意 for meaning "pay attention to".
Thanks, Chris.
Posted on: Registering for a Dating Website
May 14, 2011 at 5:38 AMFor Expansion sentence 4c I would have come up with the following Chinese for "You can set your ringtone to something that you like":-
你可以把铃声设置根据你的喜好 instead of the actual Expansion sentence Chinese of 你可以根据你的喜好来设置铃声
Is my Chinese sentence still grammatically correct, does it have the same meaning and would a Chinese person understand me?
Posted on: By Myself, So Alone
May 14, 2011 at 3:53 AMGood stories Bodawei and Cinnamonfern! Reminds me of a drive I had as a kid through one of the UK's safari parks (Longleat if memory serves, but may be wrong) and we had a giraffe giving our passenger windows a knocking with its head - quite scary for a young kid!
Posted on: Flu Vaccination
May 12, 2011 at 11:54 PMI've just got round to this lesson and experienced exactly the same thing, albeit on my laptop external speakers. At a volume that is comfortable for Dilu's voice, John distorts a little. I haven't noticed it so much on the occasional more recent Intermediates that I've dipped into though.
Posted on: Flu Vaccination
May 12, 2011 at 11:51 PMI was wondering the same thing recently regarding 年纪 (niánjì) versus 年龄 (niánlíng). Can anyone provide any guidance?
Posted on: Dialing a Nonlocal Phone Number
May 12, 2011 at 4:38 PMHi Zhen. That is exactly what I had in mind when I heard it - but when I inputed the pinyin the 稍候 came up first which also seemed to fit, literally "a little wait". However, I prefer 稍后 which according to my mouseover means "later on".
Posted on: Dialing a Nonlocal Phone Number
May 12, 2011 at 6:18 AMOK, my curiosity got the better of me. I just called myself and strangely, for the first time, I understood the message completely. Maybe it was because I've just studied this lesson or maybe it's all the hours I've been putting into transcribing recently that has improved my listening comprehension. Anyway, my stab at the characters is as follows:-
您好，您拨打的电话正在通话中，请稍候再拨
nínhǎo, nín bō dǎ de diànhuà zhèngzài tōnghuà zhōng, qǐng shāo hòu zài bō
"Hello, the telephone you have dialled is currently in the middle of a call, please wait a little while and then dial again."
Let me know if anyone disagrees.
Posted on: Dialing a Nonlocal Phone Number
May 12, 2011 at 3:06 AMThanks for the prompt response jiaojie.
Posted on: Mild Swearing
May 14, 2011 at 5:30 PMAs with the government's policy to most Chinese cities, I do understand the need for continuous development and modernisation - but please do leave some of the original older lessons intact as they were (or least accessible somewhere). Nostalgism is great!