User Comments - sideshowbob

sideshowbob

Posted on: Wake-up Call

June 30, 2008, 02:35 PM

Is there a c-pod lesson explaining the difference between: 时间 shíjiān and 时候 shíhou: time ?

Just when I think I have it figured out, the meanings seem to switch places.

Thanks,

sideshow

Yeah, I know - I was in Chengdu last summer for 3 weeks - Granted, my chinese wasn't what it is now, since I couldn't understand anything anyway. But with a little practice, I think the sichuanese is understandable, at least at a very simple level. I'm sure I'll get nowhere when the locals put it on thick, but maybe around the university it will come out o.k. Friends who have studied there seem to have developed an internal translator that allows them to go back and forth between sichuanese and putonghua. We'll see how it goes for me. The food in Chengdu alone makes it worth it !

Sideshow

Posted on: Instant Noodles

June 22, 2008, 03:13 PM

I'm thankfully getting over my initial frustration at hearing the lesson's actors speaking so fast, (I now think its going to help me when I move from the states to Chengdu in September), and like billm, I'm glad I'm getting pushed.

But my new frustration as a newbie/ elementary is my dismay whenever I look up a new character and see that there are often something like 2 -7 different meanings for the same "word" (i.e. same sound, same tone). Case in point - wei4 - when I look it up in Wenlin, I see, count 'em, 為, 位, 未 , 衛 , 味 , 謂 , 遺 , 慰 , 喂 , 胃 10! different common meanings for the sound "wei4". Someone more advanced please give me hope that I'm going to be able to sort this out conversationally in my already addled 40-something brain !

Ai ya !

Posted on: Paris

June 13, 2008, 10:19 PM

I'm unclear on the precise meaning of 去过 qu4 guo. Is this a common construction ? Means... "went" - i.e. past tense ? or as the lesson translates it, " been there" - i.e. have gone?

It would have been nice to include this in the lesson, unless its common elementary knowledge.

Bob