User Comments - li4wei3

Posted on: It's Stopped Raining

What an appropriate lesson. It's been raining all day here.

I love the character 伞. It's like a little picture of an umbrella!

Posted on: Fruit Basket of Cause-Effect

For me, it makes sense that the character for "fruit" should also be used for things like results and effects. We use the same metaphor in English when we say "the fruits of someone's labor" (i.e. the results or effects of someone's labor).

Posted on: The Pen and Paper Mystery

Pete:

To me at least, the (written) characters *are* like (people) characters. You see, a language is a lot like a town. When you first arrive in the town of the Chinese language, you don't recognize any of the characters around you, and it can be kind of intimidating. But you notice there are plenty of them you start to see in your day to day activities, and the more you see their faces and the more you interact with them, the more you get to know them, the more you understand them. The ones you see all the time become your close friends, but there are some loners you hardly ever come across because they seldom venture outside their houses.

It's a metaphor I like to use a lot for words in any language I study. It helps me to learn words when I think of them like people I happen to stumble across, with their own personalities and their own roles to play in the town/language.

Posted on: Chinese Idol

This being the first Intermediate lesson I've really worked through, I have to say this one is a great first! I'll definitely be back for more. I'm surprised how much I understood; just a couple months ago I was worried if Elementary lessons were a bit above my level. You guys are really helping me piece this beautiful language together!

你们是真好老师！谢谢你们！

Posted on: Pinyin Section 15

Jenny, you mentioned that your lips look like a fish's lips when you make that sound. Isn't it funny, then, that the word for "fish" is 鱼 (yú)? I never thought of it that way before.

Posted on: Grammar Lesson

Thanks for the corrections, tal_ and connie.

P.S. In the future, just ignore anything I say about Chinese grammar, as I am probably wrong. ;)

Posted on: Pinyin Section 15

Good thing I already learned how to speak French before starting on Chinese!

This may seem like a daunting sound at first, but with enough speaking and listening practice, you will wonder how you ever confused 'ü' with 'u'. Trust me.

Posted on: Grammar Lesson

It's not really a verb. 听说 is a fixed expression so you never see a pronoun with it. It's just one of those idioms you need to learn as a single chunk -- and learn it well, because it pops up all over the place in Chinese!

Posted on: Grammar Lesson

The simple grammar of Chinese was one of the main reasons I started studying it back in college! After studying Russian, where every word has about a million different inflections, I was ready for a change. With Chinese, the only grammar is knowing the right words and putting them in the right order. 真不难！

@jenny: I never took a grammar class. What little we learned about grammar was integrated into our English classes, which were mainly focused on literature. And even then, it was never much more in-depth than being able to identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.

Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs

Pete:

One day at my parents' house, deep in the heart of the Adirondacks, I woke up to discover a 老鼠 (lǎoshǔ) between my head and the pillow! And this despite the fact that my parents have many many 猫 (māo).

Great lesson guys. Now I can talk about this traumatizing experience in Chinese!