User Comments - pretzellogic
pretzellogic
Posted on: What Would You Like to Eat?
July 7, 2009 at 2:54 PMI'd be interested to know what the rationale is for having 108 of 1488 lessons on food. I know that some of the 108 lessons are rerecorded and improved versions of earlier lessons, but it seems that 108 is a lot on a single topic. If anyone on the cpod staff would care to address this, i'd appreciate it.
Posted on: Baby Talk: Be good!
June 11, 2009 at 11:04 AM2 years later, but my add is: one thing i've noticed is that in mandarin, the Chinese don't really use "and" as frequently as in American english. You'd as likely literally hear, "he,I good friends" as "he and I are good friends". They also don't seem to connect sentences that way that often. You're more likely to hear the mandarin equivalent of "thanks Henning for effort, good will".
Posted on: Olympic Training
April 5, 2009 at 3:45 AMquestion: why was "li" used in this sentence? Could we have said "yundongyuan de shenghuo zhiyou xunlian"? Using "li" in the sentence isn't really intuitive. I can understand using li in "it was a sunny day in toy town", but not here, so i'm not sure when to use li if it isn't obvious where the "in" is. Any guidance is appreciated.
Posted on: Letting go with 放
March 23, 2009 at 1:17 AMthanks luobinzhenmei. you3 xiao3 bian4 le ma? Is that how you use it?
Posted on: Letting go with 放
March 22, 2009 at 10:54 PMluobinzhenmei,
I wasn't sure that my examples were correct about when "fang" could/should not be used. I think I remember correctly about putting on clothes ("chuan1 ni3 de chenshan"), but i defer to others on that.
I agree with lechuan that i'm not complaining, or maybe i've stopped complaining. I know i've posted multiple times on this site over the past year how great I think cpod and John, Jenny, Ken, (Amber and Clay before they left) and everyone else is. I know that like all customer service jobs, cpod staff are in a tough position in that people can abuse them because they feel the money they pay for the service entitles them to be jerks and impolite. I take care to make sure that my comments to staff and others are constructive and ACTIONABLE (lechuan, I like this word). That is, that cpod can actually go ahead and fix something because my feedback was specific enough to take a specific action, rather than "cpod sucks" for example. That was what I was talking about with the sentences. I agree with what was said earlier about discussions about the "old staff persons were really good" being pretty tedious, but such comments don't tell existing staff how to get better.
In my experience 放屁 fang4pi11 is its own sentence.
Luobinzhenmei, that was really helpful. It sounds like you just say "fart" in english if you use it that way. It's interesting that you can use it in Chinese that way. The uncovering of such indelicate words is another of cpod's strengths. (I thank Jenny and Ken for tackling "number 2" in another lesson. I don't know how mandarin learners are supposed to learn such biologically related dialog. Great stuff). Now if I could only get cpod or someone to tell me how the Chinese ask their one year olds, "do you have a poop?" or other baby-friendly bio related dialogue.
Posted on: Letting go with 放
March 22, 2009 at 1:35 AMYou guys should provide more sentences when you talk about the words. Like when you talked about fang pi, you didn't use it in a sentence. I can look up words in a dictionary with no problem; cpod's value (at least its value to me) is in using the words in context, and in sentences. Fangxin was another word that I remember meaning to relax, but it would have been helpful to use it in a sentence. Actually to use it in a few sentences, not just one, and find ways to work it into the conversation naturally.
Another value that you could have mentioned would have been to say when we can't use fang the way us English speakers might have used it. Can you say "fang wo", for "let go of me", or "ni fang wo", for "you're putting me on" (not that I ever hear that anymore). Or "fang ni de chenshan ba" for "put on your shirt". Not the best examples, but I hope you get the point.
Posted on: Explaining Your Occupation
March 20, 2009 at 10:11 PMwhat do other people do when after you're asked "what do you do?" (ni3 shi4 zou4shen2me de?), and then you tell them, and then you say, ni3 ne? (and you?). My normal reaction would be that after they spout out mandarin at 800mph, to just say very good, since it's likely I only understood 2 words out of whatever they said. From a Chinese cultural standpoint, should I be doing this? I could always say, "I don't understand", but that's a nice conversation killer.
Posted on: Explaining Your Occupation
March 20, 2009 at 8:58 PMAny chance anyone knows how to say, "I'm a market research analyst"? (wo3 shi1 ruan2 jian4 shi2 chang4 fen1 si1 shi1) or "I follow software trends and events of interest to software vendors", or "I track software vendor revenue"? Thanks.
Posted on: What Would You Like to Eat?
July 9, 2009 at 4:42 PMHi Kesirui, I know that China has a strong food culture, but food isn't the only aspect of Chinese culture. I would have thought that we could get more on the dynasties (17 lessons), on farming (3 lessons), on Kung Fu (6 lessons) and so on, and put the food lessons on hold for a bit. But I see we're getting the Menu Stealer as well, so it appears that the 108 isn't enough.
The cpod staff is busy, and this comment shouldn't be at the top of their lists to address. But it would be interesting to hear about this, given the topics that were asked for by Shenyajin. I noticed no one asked for another food lesson the last time I checked her lessons topic post (admittedly a few days ago).