User Comments - mikeinewshot
mikeinewshot
Posted on: Watching the Sun Go Down -- 登乐游原
April 21, 2009 at 4:43 AMPete
Thank you once again. Very enjoyable.
However, you still go too fast for me. I can manage by continually stopping the track, but I would appreciate you pausing a little more, and not racing on to the next interesting point.
Also the proverb you mentioned was not something I could appreciate at my level without the text and a lot of reflexion.
Still looking forward to these though.
Posted on: The Magic Word 把
April 19, 2009 at 10:06 AMHei Bill
Then you should like Russian where the inflexion of the object generally means you can put it where you want in the sentence.
Posted on: Napkins, Facebook, and Ctrip -- What a Combination!
April 19, 2009 at 10:01 AMWho or what is Chuck Norris?
Posted on: The Magic Word 把
April 18, 2009 at 8:34 AMVery good lesson for me. Qingwen does seem to be getting more advanced.
I was interested to hear that you must use 把 in some sentences like 我把书放在桌子上了。 I had previous heard that you could always find a way to say it without 把.
How about using a topic? 书我放在桌子上了
Or would you have to say:
这本书我放在桌子上了？
Posted on: Business Card Gone Wrong
April 17, 2009 at 3:37 PMThe upside is that if you don't know how to say a new chinese character, it is most likely to be shi!
Posted on: Business Card Gone Wrong
April 17, 2009 at 7:43 AMbababardwan
You say "The more vocab I come across the more homophones I realise there are ...."
If you will excuse me saying this but in my opinion this phenomenon is the single most difficult aspect of Chinese for us. (And of course it just gets worse and worse as more words come in)
The ambiguity to the listener is such that even Chinese people sometimes don't understand what is being said initially until sufficient context is established.
Not only is it difficult for my brain to realise which of the many similar/same sounding words is being said, it is difficult to remember thousands of words many of which sound almost/just the same!
The more you learn the worse it gets, and the more the overloading interfers with what you have already learned.
Sorry, sometimes I just get depressed with this language! :-)
How about this:
|
current trends / the present situation / how things are going |
||
Posted on: GPS Fail
April 16, 2009 at 7:24 AMI was bought a TomTom GPS for Christmas. You are able to download voices from so I found the only Mandarin one and downloaded it.
This turns out to be a (male) voice that appears to mangle some of the words. My Chinese friend from Beijing says that the pronunciation is not very biaozhun (standard). She suggested it may be Taiwan...
Does anyone know where I could find another Mandarin voice?
Incidentally he says - youzhuanwan - for turning right (I think!).
Posted on: The Bride Makes Soup - 新嫁娘
April 15, 2009 at 12:23 PMBill
You managed to sound both creepy and profound in one post!
Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Music Class
April 9, 2009 at 12:25 PMI haven't listened to this yet but a quick look at the text puzzles me somewhat.
The talk is of 4/4 time and 4 beats, but then we get only 3 beat rhythms?!
Posted on: Rise and Shine!
April 22, 2009 at 4:52 AMActually maybe we should thank jevious for giving us a lesson in Chinese profanity - I believe the idea of such a Chinesepod lesson was suggested recently.
I loved Pete's explanation of the Pig insult.
I have a feeling that other languages' 'bad language' quite often appears hilarious.