User Comments - frances
frances
Posted on: Visiting the Hospital with a Fever
June 8, 2010 at 12:03 AMHehe. It's a slip of the tongue, or a brilliant pun. In the dialogue discussion, when the nurse asked 发烧吗？ (Do you have a fever?) John helpful explains that the patient "answers in the infirmative."
Too funny. ;-)
Posted on: Shanghai Expo: Haibao
April 22, 2010 at 2:18 PMNo. Gumby was a fairly popular and long-standing children's TV show. He was always a character for kids, but I doubt most of the current generation of kids would know him.
Posted on: In a Moment
April 5, 2010 at 11:54 PMJiaoJie,
Does this apply only to situations where a time expressions are used (e.g. 马上就，快)? It seems that people often use 了 when they're making promises, and clearly do have control.
I'm thinking now that this use (making promises) should not include any time expressions, and that when time expressions are used, 了 should only be used if the speaker doesn't have control over the imminent event.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Posted on: Buying a Shirt
February 24, 2010 at 4:55 PMEnglish learners should be aware that the expression "my old man" can, in English, mean either "my father" or "my husband". Women should be very careful to be clear!
Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?
January 25, 2010 at 4:19 PMThe second line of the audio is skipped entirely in the transcript, too.
Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?
January 25, 2010 at 4:17 PMIt's so funny that this happened once and the metro outlawed it. In New York, riding the subway without pants has become an annual tradition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI46nl9pkc
Posted on: Office Lunch Options
January 18, 2010 at 6:20 PMIf you find a dictionary that is good about providing measure words, and a particular word has no mw given, then you can probably be safe using 个 gè with that word. 把 bǎ in this case is a general classifier for all kinds of things that you grip (often things with handles), but you'd get by using 个 gè if you didn't know it.
Posted on: A Charming Café in Shanghai
December 8, 2009 at 4:47 PMThat's interesting. Crepe is probably pronounced both ways, but I checked a couple of American English dictionaries, and both identified "crape" as the English pronunciation. Neither mentioned the more francophone version as an option. The British English dictionary that I checked listed only "crepp".
I was also stumped by f&b. Now that it's been explained, I'm still not certain what qualifies as a "food and beverage" store. Just restaurants, or also groceries? While I was listening I thought it must be "something & breakfast" since that seemed to be the kind of restaurant being described.
For 咖啡馆 (kāfēigǔan), Jenny suggested "café" as a translation. I've always understood there to be a significant difference between a café and a coffee shop. Can 咖啡馆 refer to either?
Posted on: Thank You Note
November 13, 2009 at 6:15 PMHow friendly is this note, on a scale from 1 to 10? In English, it sounds like Ting considers Zhenzhen to be one of her few closest human relationships of her life. Is this the intended impression, or are these very flowery compliments intended to be understood as polite exaggerations?
Posted on: World Cup Talk
June 24, 2010 at 8:45 PMI'm often entertained by which words make it into the supplementary vocabulary list and which don't. In this case I find it funny that 足球/soccer didn't make the cut. Apparently the word soccer is a strictly elementary-level term, since of all the soccer lessons pretzellogic linked to above, only the two elementary lessons do mention it.