User Comments - mark
mark
Posted on: Sleeping in
May 13, 2012 at 7:14 PMI believe 醒来 is waking without necessarily getting out of bed. I don't know the answer to your other question.
Posted on: Retirement Homes, ChinesePod and a Harmonica
May 13, 2012 at 6:56 PMHey cool! A News and Features with some interesting content and lots of chatter in Chinese, instead of just announcements.
Good luck hiewhongliang.
Posted on: The Stable 稳 (wen)
May 12, 2012 at 4:40 AM这个请问让我见识了，而不是复习。 加油！
Posted on: 国美永乐并购案
May 10, 2012 at 3:17 AMI think I may have found the most unsexy lesson in the entire archive; the mating of two companies, announced with dry statistics and the pontifications of market experts. It actually contains some useful vocabulary, and I read a lot of this kind of thing in English, but it is very unsexy.
Cpod, see what kind of dreck you make me go searching for when you get lazy and don't offer an advanced level lesson for a week?
Posted on: 上海法租界
May 8, 2012 at 2:14 AMWhere was this lesson before I went to Shanghai? I just got back.
Posted on: No Worries, No Problem
May 5, 2012 at 4:21 AMA net friend told me that "随便你“ was rude. Any tips on when and where it might be rude to say? The explanation in this qing wen didn't sound like it is particularly so.
Posted on: Turn It Down, Please
May 2, 2012 at 5:57 AMTell me about it. I had to learn to say 南门儿 when I stayed in Beijing. Otherwise, taxi drivers wouldn't understand how to get me back to where I was staying. In addition to tossing in spurious r's, when Beijingers talk, it sounds to me like they are holding some marbles in their mouths. However, it is Mandarin, and with a little bit of adjustment Beijing is a comfortable place for someone who has studied Mandarin, much more so than some places where the local 方言， really is a completely different language.
My impression is that 哪儿，那儿，这儿，and 点儿 are used more widely than other X儿 words. It is not too uncommon to encounter them in supposedly standard Mandarin. On the other hand, 门儿,etc. is just weird, unless you are trying to give a Beijing flavor to what you are saying, or you are tired, in Beijing and just want to get home.
Posted on: Turn It Down, Please
May 1, 2012 at 3:12 AMThe 儿 is optional and reflects Beijing style pronounciation.
Posted on: Focus and Specialization
April 28, 2012 at 4:46 AMI have kind of a split personality on transcripts. It seems to me that if the core lesson dialog doesn't have a transcript, it is not a usable lesson, but I have always taken the lesson banter as an extra. At first, much of it was mysterious to me, and I left it that way. Over time, I found I can follow more and more of it, though.
Posted on: Preparing for the Ironman Race
May 16, 2012 at 6:29 AMI have found that a number of CPod's lessons have a tongue-and-cheek flavor to them: Godzilla wrecking Shanghai, some naive girl pining for life on the farm... I wouldn't take any of them as authoritative sources on the topic being discussed, but I do enjoy them, and do learn ways of expressing myself in Chinese from these lessons, which is what I am here for.
As to earlier comments that CPod doesn't tackle anything controversial, I wouldn't want them to say anything so controversial that they get shutdown. That said, the media lessons do cover some pretty interesting and socially relevant topics (e.g. mishandling of environmental cleanups, a two year old girl being run over in the street and no one helping her, a farmer being censured by the authorities for building his own airplane, bureaucratic incompetence leading to the destruction of a national treasure ...) Sometimes lower level lessons have touched on things such as abusive city officials, giving bribes, counterfeit products.
My impression from my Chinese net friends, is that ordinary Chinese people don't always hold the views that most people in the west think they should hold. So, some controversy avoidance, might also be to avoid offending their audience. Consider, for example, David and Connie's comments in a recent lesson about the French Concession in Shanghai reminding people of an insulting period in Chinese history. Are you ready to accept that Western powers really were bad guys towards China? Would you want to listen to podcasts that hammered that point home everyday?
I suggest listening with an open mind, a suspended sense of belief, and a sense of humor. You might eventually learn something about China, and learn enough Chinese that you can have earnest conversations about this kind of thing in Chinese. If you really just want instructions on preparing for a triathlon, I'm sure you can find better sources.