User Comments - mbettinson
mbettinson
Posted on: Who's Been Spending My Money?
January 25, 2015, 12:47 AMJust to add, I agree with busybees on the dialogue. It's not quite textbook bad but it's certainly removed from natural, it sounds like it's read from a script (which presumably it is). That said, Fiona and Gwilym are excellent hosts. I've always enjoyed absurd content, jokes and so on. I know there's a tendency to vie away from it if you want to be taken seriously but it's long been observed by language teachers that this makes content more memorable.
To illustrate, I'm not sure I could tell you what happened in this lesson except for 你脑子烧坏了！:)
Posted on: Who's Been Spending My Money?
January 24, 2015, 10:48 PM"English also has measure words, like a "flock" of sheep."
Actually, those are mass nouns and aren't the same thing (classifiers), even though they sort of look like they are. And in fact we do use different mass nouns in English wordplay than the ones canonically for a particular purpose but they tend to emphasis counts, such as bunch, heap and load. A better example for this exact question would be: A herd of extremely fat people ate the entire city's cake supply.
Posted on: Who's Been Spending My Money?
January 24, 2015, 10:43 PMAh! Thank you Constance, your second example made me laugh. :)
Posted on: Who's Been Spending My Money?
January 22, 2015, 09:37 PMI wonder if you can abuse 量词 to add emphasis. Something like, err, 七艘超胖子吃掉了全部城市的蛋糕供应 ... you get the picture.
Posted on: Does It Suit Me?
January 14, 2015, 09:53 PMReally like the equivalence of the 'go down this route' 要走什么的路。I wonder if 要不走什么的路吧 would be an good suggestion to go down a particular route.
You guys make me laugh. I wonder how an old fat white guy would go finding clothes :)
Posted on: Does It Suit Me?
January 14, 2015, 09:44 PMAh, this podcast is a good improvement. Better microphone level placement, more appropriate material for 中级课程. Very nicely done guys.Fiona's fluent bilingualism is a strong asset to be sure! That said, I reckon you're leaning a bit much on English. The format with one host explaining mostly in Chinese is quite helpful. Gwilym, sounds Welsh?
P.S. always sounds weird in English to spell out tones. 第一声 is nice and fast, but maybe others prefer English?
Posted on: Simplified vs Traditional Characters
December 17, 2014, 11:13 PMI'm a little big baffled about 虫, the 繁体字 version of 风 is 風 and 虫 is used in tradition to mean insect anyway, I thought?
Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves
October 23, 2009, 04:21 AMI signed up to 开心网 for a laugh. It's sure stressing my ability but in a good way. There's probably a bunch of people laughing at me typing stuff saying "oo I just learned a new word because of what this thing was called" :)
I haven't listened to this yet but I will do. It's been a hard slog through lao wang, I think I need something a bit more light hearted :)
Posted on: City Series: Bali
September 13, 2009, 01:10 AMIt's a bit sad Bali is the safe destination for Aussie tourists but I guess every place needs to have one. Outside the tourist traps it's a wonderful place. As is the rest of Indonesia. The people are great and the language has to be one of the easiest in the world.
I love words like 漂流, so practical - wont forget that. I wonder if we have enough vocab to say something like 无桨的漂流在大便小溪? :-) I'm guessing 粪 might be the better choice of word here.
Posted on: Who's Been Spending My Money?
January 26, 2015, 09:50 PMYou're right of course, I'm not sure why I said mass noun when I meant collective. An embarrassing error given I'm a linguist :)