User Comments - ptrstv

Posted on: First Time in a Recording Studio

John

I find it very helpful when you break down two syllable Chinese words into their separate parts and give the meaning of each. However in this lesson you say that microphone  "hua tong"    话筒   is literally "speech bucket". This made me think that this was the "tong" as in lajitong 垃圾桶 "trashcan " / "garbage bucket".

Would it be better to think of  话筒 as speech tube?

Please keep giving these meanings whatever Dilu says. In the Broken Bone lesson you broke plaster "shigao"  石膏  into "stone paste" and this simple thing meant that I learned this somewhat obscure word instantly and was able to use it correctly about a month later. Otherwise I would not have learned it.

Keep up the great work !

Posted on: Looking for an Apartment in NYC (Part 1)

Please can we have Part Two of Looking for an Apartment in NYC soon please ? 

May be Mrs Ouyang might find something wrong with the apartment and the agent has to politely manage her expectations.

Posted on: The Trouble with Marrying a Foreigner

Just to add here - I am not saying that this idea fixes the real programming fault that causes these problems - it just seems to !

Posted on: The Trouble with Marrying a Foreigner

I have also had the problem where the content erased itself when outside WiFi range. I did two things

1. I always leave the Chinesepod app open on the earliest lesson I have recorded.

2. I have downloaded the iTalk app to record lessons from my iPad onto my iPhone. Yes you have to sit in a quiet room and wait in real time while it records but you can listen and learn at the same time.

Guess what - since I have done these two things I have not had any more lessons erased from my devices.

Very very pleased with Chinesepod. Keep up the good work. Thank you very much.

Posted on: Trip to Harbin

Does anyone know if I can get  哈啤 in London England? 

Posted on: Snake on a Plane

I am a UK based Airline Pilot and a Poddie. Recently I flew a flight from Cancun, Mexico to Glasgow, Scotland. After all the passengers had got off at Glasgow we found that we really did have a real, live SNAKE ON THE PLANE. 

Check out the story on the internet ! Lucikly it turned out to be a non venimous type and we easiliy caught it !   How did it get there ? Probably a passenger had smuggled it on board to keep as a pet. May be it escaped from a bag. i guess it can get out through the tiniest hole.

So John it is not as unlikely as you might think! 

Posted on: No TP

So many homophones !

Ever since I started learning Chinese, I had always wondered that there might be a lot of misundestandings with so many similar or identical sounding words in Chinese.

In this lesson for the first time John seems to suggest that there may be some issues. He says that there often seems to be 'a lot of confirming going on' in Chinese using "shi ma ?" I guess this must be when slightly unusual matters are being discussed and it is not possible to work out by observation what object / action is being discussed. The speaker may not consider that a homophone might confuse the other party.

(Having said that, I had a misunderstanding with a friend in English last night when she said she was 'chilling' and I thought she said she was 'chilly' (cold) so I guess it happens in all languages)

In addition to using 'shi ma?' are there any other ways of confirming (for example) which 'ji'or whatever it is someone is meaning.

Has anyone got any interesting stories to tell on this subject? We have just had the lesson about the Shanxi and Shaanxi misunderstanding.

What are common words that are confused and require the shi ma technique? 

Posted on: Which is better: China or the USA?

I would explain to the Chinese taxi driver that I think that America has a big problem looming over the horizon. Over a hundred years of very cheap gasoline has encouraged their cities to grow so big that they are now totally dependent on the automobile. This is bad news for the environment and has a bad effect on the fitness of most Americans. I am sure China will not make the same mistake!