User Comments - pretzellogic
pretzellogic
Posted on: Smelly Cheese
July 27, 2010 at 2:09 PMYikes. A thread about cheese, and no one has mentioned Wallace and Gromit.
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 27, 2010 at 1:44 PMHow do you say orgasm in Chinese? and what's the measure word for it in case it needs to be expressed that someone is having more than 1? :)
Posted on: Smelly Cheese
July 27, 2010 at 8:32 AMI didn't mind cheese looking like soap, but I minded when it smelled or tasted like soap.
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 27, 2010 at 5:24 AMHi barto: so 蟲蟻 - chóngyǐ - what's the measure word? How do you say something like, "this here critter tastes as bad as he smells"? zhè ge chóngyǐ chī qīlái bǐ qì wèi yìyàng nán? (forgive my pinyin).
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 26, 2010 at 1:14 AMThis is a good lesson. Good use of vocabulary we haven't had before, as well as for the overall plot, although I was hoping on the plot front that the couple would end up lost for a week or two instead of a few hours. I busted out laughing over a line in this dialogue,
5000 years of culture and history, and the Chinese don't have a word for small wild animals more interesting than "wild game"? Nothing likevarmits, critters?
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 25, 2010 at 3:25 AMbaba, I wish I had better analogies for the little pieces of knowledge we're going to need for the metaphorical language mountain. Ask me about the language rocks, mud, streams, leaves, fallen trees, moss, (not to mention language varmints and/or critters!)
Posted on: Child-Parent Fight
July 24, 2010 at 7:50 AMOn a scale from 1 - 5, where 1 is easy, and 5 is difficult, I'd rate this intermediate lesson at 4.
Mostly multiple sentence paragraphs. This lesson works in examples of the láibují phrase, zǎo jiù zuòwán le (for saying "I did this a long time ago") that is explained in the show, and used the ...bǐ... comparison sentence pattern, and the ...de shíhòu sentence pattern. Uses shǒubuliào. Introduced about 10-25 new words for someone at the early stage of intermediate. Fast speech in the dialogue at times.
This was a meaty dialogue that is a lot of fun to get into. If you can recite this dialogue to Chinese people around town, you will get accolades for knowing contemporary Chinese culture. Especially if you can scream "kǎo bu shàng dàxué, yībèizi jiù wán le! (don't scream this out at the taxi drivers).
Oh, and this is a good time to know how to say "I was just talking to myself" in Chinese.
My take is that if you could listen to this dialogue and get 80% of it on the first listen, go to upper intermediate and stay there.
Posted on: Recovering a Cell Phone Number
July 24, 2010 at 7:15 AMOn a scale from 1 - 5, where 1 is easy, and 5 is difficult, I'd rate this intermediate lesson is a 4. Mostly 1 sentence paragraphs. No major new sentence patterns, but this lesson works in the "shì...de", "duōshào". Introduced about 5-15 new words for someone at the early stage of intermediate. Fast speech in the dialogue at times. A couple of sentences are longer than average.
Posted on: Drinking Game
July 24, 2010 at 6:17 AMOn a scale from 1 - 5, where 1 is easy, and 5 is difficult, I'd rate this intermediate lesson is a 3 - intermediate. Mostly 1 sentence paragraphs, but a couple of paragraphs have long sentences. No major new sentence patterns, but this lesson works in onomatopoeia, "dàxué bìyè" and past tense using time-words. Introduced about 5-10 new words for someone at the early stage of intermediate. Fast speech in the dialogue at times.
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 28, 2010 at 2:19 AMGoogle and Nciku are cool sources. In an ideal world, a native speaker Chinese person would also weigh in with some guidance. It's times like this that I wish those Chinese students wishing for language exchange would start exchanging some language.