User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn

I like the name of this lesson.  Cpod has always had a sense of humor, but I didn't know it was old school as well.

Posted on: In a Moment

after listening to an advanced lesson and getting lost, it's good to come back down to the elementary level and feel like I know/understand something. 

Posted on: 中国和西方的农民

being another elementary level learner, and attempting to learn by drinking through a fire hose, I gather from the dialogue that this lesson is something about Chinese farmers, American farmers, and foreigner farmers.  No doubt that i'm probably off by a lot.

I'm really happy that cpod added 1 more farming lesson to the large pile of lessons. 

Posted on: Stopping at a Friend's Farm -- 过故人庄

Hi Pete,

Thanks for the feedback and rationale on what you're doing.

Posted on: Stopping at a Friend's Farm -- 过故人庄

Hi Pete,

First time listening to Poems with Pete.  Interesting and helpful way to provide cpodders with additional content.  PWP is just another reason that cpod has been a better mandarin language resource than other mandarin teaching tools i've used. 

My 2 cents: you went through the explanation of the words character by character.  I thought that was interesting, but then it didn't help as much with explaining the meaning of the entire sentence as it should be understood in english.  I know that Ken's blog has terms for "what speakers mean" versus "what listeners hear"  and so on.  But of the many areas where I am weak in mandarin, the meaning of the entire phrase based on the characters in the sentence is one particular weak area.  The meaning of the sentence is lost on me when you take this word for word approach. Or rather, I don't get why you translated the phrase the way you did, given the words in the sentence. It seems that Ken's "inductive approach" might be more helpful in this case.  Or maybe PWP provides a nice contrast to the inductive approach.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Inner Mongolia

Bailey's Irish Cream?  then i'll have to try it. One can only hope that its available in Beijing....

As usual, this was a good lesson.  It sounds like each of the provinces will have some dish(es) that make it special.  the hard part will be for cpod to identify the dish unique to all the provinces.

I have a question more on the regional nature of Chinese food.  I've noticed that Americans that live in China tend to come back to the States and whine about the low quality of Chinese restaurants back here.   But I wonder if this isn't really due to the fact that many (not all) of the Americans that do this whining tended to live in Northern China (Beijing, Lanzhou, Xi'an, Heilongjiang, etc..) and then come back to the US which has predominately southern Chinese cooking.  I was hanging out with 2 professors from the English dept at Lanzhou university that were telling me as northerners, they hated southern Chinese food.  Acknowledging that 2 professors provide the randomness, and statistical significance necessary with 95% confidence  to extend this food observation to the 1.3 Billion Chinese :-), and Adding the usual disclaimers about not generalizing food preferences of people in regions, I wonder if others have noticed a strong distaste of southern Chinese for nothern cuisines not their own? or vice versa?

Posted on: A Day at the Races

ok, acknowledging that upper intermediate lessons are out of my league right now, my complete guess about this lesson is that the nag they bet on didn't win.  I couldn't figure out what the lesson was really about, but at least I could tell that the race was starting, and something about not enough money....

Posted on: Sign Here, Please

I would have thought that the speakers could have said, "qing zai zher qianming", which would have literally meant, "please sign here".  I understand Ken's inductive approach, but every once in awhile, I get confused by the inductive approach. Of course, it doesn't help that i'm here in the States where I don't hear that much mandarin spoken.

Posted on: The Broken Chair

bababardwan, chistudent, wchan, pearltowerpete, urbandweller, cleaver, (hopefully I didn't forget anybody)

Thanks for making the extra effort to provide your comments in mandarin, pinyin and english.  I appreciate it. I definitely recognize more characters from you guys when you do that.  

Posted on: The Broken Chair

urbandweller,

yeah, I heard the mild swearing lesson. It, and other lessons off the beaten path, are also why cpod delivers so much more value than other mandarin language programs.