User Comments - mikeinewshot

Posted on: Funny Business, Part Two

Thanks for the xixi mystery solution.  I am so often caught out by Chinese names!

Posted on: Funny Business, Part Two

Can anyone tell me what Jenny says after the first dialogue is played?  It sounds something like: 我对赵 xixi。

Posted on: Funny Business, Part Two

There were a couple of phrases dealt with by Jenny and John but not in the PDF:

开支 kāi zhī expenditures / pay / expenses /
理清 lí qīng to settle the accounts

I noted the following from the banter

回到 huí dào return to
系列 xì liè series
违法 wéi fǎ illegal / to break the law
玩笑 wán xiào joke / jest
熟练 shú liàn practiced / proficient / skilled / skillful
具体 jù tǐ concrete / definite / specific
抽象 chōu xiàng abstract
违犯 wéi fàn to violate / to infringe
整理 zhěng lǐ to arrange / to tidy up / to sort out / to straighten out / to list systematically / to collate (data, files) / to pack (luggage)
黑市 hēi shì black market
犯法 fàn fǎ to break the law
骗人 piàn rén to cheat sb / a scam
疏忽 shū hu to neglect / to overlook / negligence / carelessness
威胁 wēi xié to threaten / to menace
警告 jǐng gào to warn / to admonish
领情 lǐng qíng feel grateful to sb / appreciate the kindness
插嘴 chā zuǐ to interrupt (sb talking) / to butt in / to cut into a conversation
介入 jiè rù intervene / get involved
考察 kǎo chá to inspect / on-the-spot investigation

There were some bits that I couldn't make out.  For example after the first dialogue Jenny says something like: 我对赵 xixi。

Posted on: Podcast Language 3

Here is my list of the words and expressions they discussed, but I haven't given the examples and chat around them:

语境    yǔ jìng  context

这个要看语境            zhè ge yào kàn yǔ jìng           this depends on context

上下文            shàng xià wén            (textual) context

固定搭配        gù dìng dā pèi            set expression (collocation)

固定说法        gù dìng shuō fǎ          fixed way of saying

成语    chéng yǔ         Chinese set expression,

俗语    sú yǔ   common saying / proverb

褒义    bāo yì  commendatory term / positive connotation

中性    zhōng xìng      neutral

贬抑    biǎn yì belittle / depreciate

口语    kǒu yǔ colloquial speech / spoken language

书面    shū miàn         in writing / written 

正式    zhèng shì        formal / official

术语    shù yǔ term / terminology

词性    cí xìng  part of speech (noun, verb, adjective etc)

动词    dòng cí            verb

名字    míng zi            noun/ name (of a person or thing)

形容词            xíng róng cí     adjective

副词    fù cí     adverb

程度    chéng dù        degree (level or extent) / level

量词    liàng cí            classifier (in Chinese grammar) / measure word

比如说            bǐ rú shuō       for example / for instance / such as

例子    lì zi       case / (for) instance / example 

流言    liú yán leave ones comments

告诉我们你的想法        gào su wǒmen nǐ de xiǎng fǎ      to tell me your opinion

Although I have never noticed Jenny say 语境 , I shall have to look out for it.

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

Henning

I just feel that in producing a lesson, one should decide what the objectives are, what one is trying to teach, or put another way, what one wants to students to be able to do after the lesson that they could not do beforehand.

I don't get the impression that this thought process is clearly employed here.  If it is applied then I feel that the objectives of most lessons are simply to introduce a number of new words relating to a particular topic.

I don't think expanding the ability of ourselves to express our thoughts is paramount.  Put another way, perhaps, we should be introduced to new structures (grammar) - your varieties of 'if' could be a case in point.  Have you not yourself understood this gap of obective, and tried to catalogue the grammar from each lesson in order to find some order and rationale?

Actually Qingwen does this sometimes quite well.  It is clear what they are trying to teach and you can evaluate afterwards whether this objective has been successful.

Maybe the objectives of the lesson should be stated at the top.  In the lesson I referred to above, Ken and Jenny developed a number of productive language patterns which were explored.  A satisfying objective to learn and use these patterns.

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

I always remember the old lesson on tea with Ken and Jenny and the lexical chunks/language patterns they played with eg 我不知道买什么礼物好 ...  Developing the language in the podcast (C0114)

Of course a lot of wather has passed under the bridge since then

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

Sorry folks - I must be in a critical mood.

First, in the dialogue 同志 does not mean 'notice', as in the PDF, it means 'to notify' as John says.  In the PDF we have 会议 to mean 'conference', but John says it means 'meeting' - these are not the same thing in English. 

Actually, my main criticism of this lesson is the following.  The discussion between John and Jenny before the second hearing of the passage adds very little - most of the time, John just tell you the meaning of the words and the tones which you can get from the PDF.  Jenny mainly repeats the phrases in the dialogue.

There is little added value of examples of usage or anything else, save Jenny's Chinese of course.  There are some exceptions eg very brief discussion of 约 and 把.

Of course at the end there is a useful discussion of modifying nouns with adjectival phrases.  I just think that the main discussion could have done so much more.  Am I just grumpy today?

I do have a question though.  Fly to Guanzhou is here 飞广州.  I would have guessed it would be飞到广州.  Can I use 飞 as a transitive verb?

Posted on: Podcast Language 2

rjberki

Someone told me a horrendous story of how someone did just that.  The bag apparently shot off down the mountain never to be seen again - somewhat frictionless against the snow and ice...

Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 1: A Fated Meeting

horrors - I just noticed that I commented on this lesson nearly 3 years ago - not sure that my Chinese feels much better....

I just listened to some of the lesson again - I think the dialogue is relatively easy and about the standard of today's intermediate.  The banter though is much harder than today's.

Posted on: Podcast Language 2

bababardwan

To my English eye, difficulty ratios - my gut feel!

French: Russian: Chinese = 1: 3: 6

Factors include

1. Closeness of vocabulary/roots to mother tongue: French is often English with a funny accent, and English is French with a funny accent.  After all they both in the same family and have swapped vocab over the centuries.  Whereas Chinese roots not only have nothing in common with English, the wierd sounds are completely alien (饿 for hungry for example).

2. Alienness of Grammar: You can often translate French to English word for word.  Actually we have to classify Russian as hard because of the various conjugations and declentions - but I was forced to do some Latin at school  - so the ideas were there already.  Then there is Russian verb aspects. Chinese grammar is actually not too hard, but the trouble is not many people know how to teach it!

3. Other factors - Russian has a different alphabet but that doesnt take long to get used to.  Chinese of course has its characters which blow difficulty factors out of the water.  Then for me there is the awful problem of redundancy - muliple characters with the same sound and the fact that even Chinese can't understand their own language until the context becomes clear. 

4. Pronunciation - One or two hard sounds in French, one or two tricks to learn in Russian (eg hard and soft), but how to fire out tiny staccato syllables in Chinese each with their own tone - that is the one to master.

5. Mindset - How well do English thought patterns map to the foreign language.  Well - French is pretty much word for word.  Russian is much harder with concise utterances with very different word order.  What can we say about Chinese - Chengyu!!

Postscipt: I was just mulling this over, and remembered that some languages appear to be relatively so easy (if you have the right background).  The first time I went to Spain without a word of the language, I found I could make out the gist of a Spanish magazine - with Latin and French roots...  Now how far away is that from Chinese?!  There is a web site somewhere that is all about languages and relative difficulty...