User Comments - oolung

Posted on: Hiking

I have a grammar question (to change the subject)!

I don't want to sound fastidious, but I'd really like to know that. Shouldn't there be another 了 'le' at the and of the sentence: 我们才爬了半个小时 'women cai pa le ban ge xiaoshi'?

I've always though there should be a 'le' at the end to express the present perfect, like in: 我学了几年汉语了（wo xue le ji nian Hanyu le） - I've been learning Chinese for a few years - as opposed to 我学了几年汉语 （wo xue le ji nian Huanyu） - I learned Chinese for a few years. Please please tell me I'm not wrong and that it's just a possible （everyday) variation, or that it has to do with 'cai'! Otherwise all my hard earned knowledge of the uses of 'le' will have come to nothing!  

Posted on: Barbecuing

A small addition to what cassielin and wolson commented on the position of time words in chinese.

I think I've discovered a thumb rule:

the most common and simplest pattern of chinese sentences is like that: 1)who+2)does+3)what.

example: wo3 + chi1 + fan4 (I eat meal)

Now, every additional information we want to give (time, place, company, number of times etc.) goes BETWEEN 1) and 2), without changing all the rest. If we have more of those informations in one sentence, then usually the time goes before the place. 

Examples:

1.I'm eating a meal now:

 wo3 + XIANZAI + chi1 + fan4

2. I'm eating a meal in a restaurant:

wo3 + ZAI FANGUAN + chi1 +fan4

3. When I talked to her I was just eating a meal in a restaurant. 

wo3 + GEN1 TA1 SHUO1 HUA4 DE SHIHOU (when I talked to her: description of time) + ZHENGZAI (just, right at that moment: another timeword) + ZAI4 FANGUAN (place) + chi1 + fan4.

I hope someone will verify my post :). Of course there will be variations and exceptions, but I find it's a good and simple pattern to remember: 

Everything superfluent goes in between the basic 'who' and 'done-what'!

Funny that no teacher has ever told me that, it would have saved me so many mistakes and figuring out the proper places... I hope someone here will find it useful.

Posted on: Group Photo

I have a similar photo (ie similar to Jenny's grandfather's photo). I'm in the background, climbing over a fence, and in the foreground there's a small gate and a sign: "please use gate". How was I supposed to know, I was climbing the fence from the other side! :) Family photos have been my horror since childhood: every year the same poses, the same faces, the only thing that changes is maybe the way the Christmas tree is decorated, or the mountain in the background is SLIGHTLY different from the mountain shot in the previous year... So I much prefer to take people by surprise :) Jenny, the story about your Dad and his poor hand sounds like some bloody, Adams-family-style joke ;)

Posted on: #32

wheheee! I know this one! :) And I have to say the guy's voice is surprisingly fine, for a Chinese dubbing :) (Oh Jenny, I know you love that actor too :D)

Posted on: #29

You know, I knew exactly which movie was that as soon as I heard Jenny's remark about what it was going to be about :) And then the music came and all became clear (or is it too much of a spoiler?) :) Wow, at last I've got something!

Posted on: Beauty Ideals and Ayi

I agree, that's a wonderful pic, like something straight from a travel magazine: a beautiful, smiling girl sipping coffee on a sunny day :) Hey, here's an idea: maybe next year chinesepod could publish a calendar with amber's pictures and mottos from Dear Amber Show for every week? :D:D:D It would sell like crazy :)

Posted on: Adventures in Chinese Learning

A good way to memorise characters is to picture them in your mind in a way that helps you to keep it there. For example: I had big troubles trying to remember some word for 'stubborn', until I found the word 执拗. I immediately imagined a CHILD (the 'pronounciation' part of the second character: 幼) GRABBING (执) with his HAND (the radical 手 in the second character) the tail of a COW (the pronounciation of the character 拗). It's not always easy to find a good picture to match the Chinese word, but if you manage to do it, it sticks perfectly! Another good way is to remember some quirky translations of each character in a word. For example I only heard the word 'cactus' in Chinese once, but I've remembered it because it means 'an Immortal's hand': 仙人掌 （admittedly this usually applies to words that you won't probably need in everyday life, but still. And you'll be able to impress Chinese native speakers ;))

Posted on: Turbulence

I've just listened to the podcast - what a great lesson! Here where I live we'll be having direct flights to Beijing soon and the airlines are looking for Chinese-speaking staff: maybe I can get a job and use the sentences from the dialogue! :)

Posted on: Turbulence

mark, it might have been 各贵宾 - 'respected, dignified guests'. I've heard that one used by a trip guide.

Posted on: Using ChinesePod

goulniky and henning, I don't know if that's correct, but I think 门 is applied more to 'fields of study' or 'technical skills', for example: 一门功课，三门技术 (and my dictionary confirms that :) ) So maybe it would apply more to a 课程 as in 'a series of lessons on a specific subject' (as the word 程 implies). It seems that个 would be the measure word for 课程 as in 'the course of one lesson'. It was a question that bugged me for a long time, so I asked a Chinese person and she said this word had no specific measure word, so I guess it would confirm the '个 version'. :) I don't know if I'm right about all this, but hopefully Amber or someone else will help us to clear the matter up :)