User Comments - everett

Posted on: Farm Animals

The expansion has a word yang3 for "raise" or "keep as a pet". Would it be right to say:

ta1men yang3 yang2

... to describe some people who raise sheep on a farm? And would the repetition of yang (though with different syllables) sound a little cute?

Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market

Great idea. Not sure if anyone else has suggested this, but these videos would be even better with more contextual chat... not important if newbie/elems like me can follow it all, just a voiceover saying stuff like "now we're going into the market and are going to look at different vegetables... etc etc" and then from time to time it's punctuated by the sign coming up with the character and the pronounciation of the vegetable. I really think this would aid recall and be very helpful.

Posted on: Equestrian

"here are more words 拍马屁 马屁精" Can someone translate the above for me? I ran the characters through the Yellow-Bridge dictionary but can't quite put it all together. thx...

Posted on: Hot Soup

The small-heart mnemonic of the mouse was perfect for remembering "be careful"... thanks!

Posted on: The Fourth Tone

Thank you, Tone Trio, for another great lesson, even if I was waiting for the slow mo the whole time, and it never came! ;-) The neutral tone still freaks me out, especially when it has trace sandhi effects on the tone of the preceding syllable. Will there be a neutral tone lesson as well?

Posted on: Whatever...

Lessons like this are worth their weight in gold, and are why I keep coming back.

Posted on: The Third Tone

Well this "gentle listener" is enjoying this experiment in tone lessons very much. I especially liked the comment about hitting the point where your voice starts breaking. That made it all come together. I hope there will be some lessons on tone combos down the road.

Posted on: Is someone in here?

Where I was staying in China two or three people would squat next to each other or stand at the bucket doing their business at the same time. What would be embarrassing would be excusing yourself and turning around if you came in when someone else was there. No one minded.

Posted on: No Kidding

Another great lesson, thanks! It's good to be warned when certain phrases can be a bit like playing with fire. It seems to me that there's an added danger when you're a language beginner, since you get positioned as low-rank within the conversation and are expected to signal meekness and niceness. Put-downs, even joking ones, are attempts to climb the ladder, which doesn't match the language-beginner persona. I've really screwed up a few times trying to use this kind of stuff jokingly in a second language, even among equals and friends.

Posted on: New Year's Song

I enjoyed listening to the song and looking at wolson's avatar at the same time. They suit each other, in some kind of hard-to-describe, wind-up music-box kind of way :-)