URLLesson Introduction
You may not be strutting on the catwalk, but your significant other is working it tonight! With this lesson, you can let everyone in the room know, hey... she's with me! And you'll do it in Mandarin Chinese.
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michele says
June 15, 2008
thanks John, everything works fine now, but I have to say that I even did'nt realized there was something wrong...
I would like to say something that may appears odd said from an user, or a customer who pays for a service...
did you ever think there should be some right, for you all of the CP staff, both academic, technical, or of any sort else, to have some little weekly... rest, like most of the people in word usually have. I know, I know... modern life, fear for other possible business competitors, the will to do more and more, and better and better.... that's all true, but I have to say that, sometimes, I feel a little worried about you...
After all, this is not an hospital, or an electric generator station, or even a blast furnace! isnt'it?
I remember the old times of CP when on saturday there was no lessons, but Aric's Saturdays'show, and on sunday nothing at all... well, this seemed to me quite normal, even useful for everyone, for you and for me too.
Yes, I'm wondering if what I'm saying now has something to do with the fact that, wrongly, I'd like to follow too much levels and too much lessons. In this perspective, a little break in this (precious, beautiful and rich, I reckon..) waterfall of lerning material would not be somehow.... healthy? Perhaps, sometimes, less could be better.
OK guys, don't take this too much seriously, only if you like it tell me what you think about. At any rate, it's clear, it is useful to warn you about some malfunction, and I've already done, nevertheless, on sunday, I feel somewhat empathetic with you, that must rush to fix some bug under pressing request...
ciao Michele.
changye says
June 15, 2008
Here is a well-known Chinese saying 女大十八变 (nv3 da4 shi2 ba1 bian4), which means “As a girl grows, her appearance and personality undergo a significant change.” Some people say 十八 suggests “to change eighteen times”, and others say “to change until eighteen years old.”
Anyway, its basic connotation is the same, which usually hints “a girl becomes beautiful when she grows up.” Do you think so? And as far as my female dog concerns, I must say this saying contains a truth. She has become very chubby (and pretty) with growth and is still changing..........
michele says
June 15, 2008
hi changye,
do you think is there any chance to get some hint for the best possible translation, looking at the order of the five charcters?
I'm thinking about 大十八变 . I'm wondering why 大 and 变 ,that is "the big change" has to be splitted, separated by 十八.
Does this sequence could be read as the will of constructing a single strong chunk, like "is to be expected a big change when eighteen years old is reached"? or even better, "it's great the change that happens on the eighteen years" In other words, how would you express this concept in currently spoken Chinese?
At any case I don't mean here to destroy the beutiful liquid uncertainty of a Chinese saying, in order to get an improbable definitive translatione!
kesirui says
June 15, 2008
Did China always have the words " 女朋友 (nǚ péng yǒu)" and "男朋友 (nán péng yǒu)" or was that added later as a result of western exposure?
changye says
June 15, 2008
Hi michele,
I really love your analysis on 大(十八)变！I couldn’t come up with this idea. It’s very interesting. Actually, some Chinese words often separate, for example, the word 结婚 (jie2 hun1, marry) changes this way；结了三次婚 (married three times). And in this case, the verb 结婚 has the structure “结 (V) ＋ 婚 (O)”.
How about 大变 (da4 bian4)？I’m afraid this word doesn’t have “V + O” structure. Probably it is translated as “change drastically” and its structure is “adverb (大) + verb (变)”. As far as I know, this type of Chinese verbs don’t separate like 结婚, perhaps. Let me try to translate 女大十八变 into modern Chinese.
女孩子长到十八岁就变漂亮。
女孩子长大时有十八次的变化。
I believe that a lot of Chinese people would agree with your translation "is to be expected a big change when eighteen years old is reached". Anyway, there seems to be still no accepted interpretation for this famous saying in China.
michele says
June 15, 2008
thanks a lot changye,
your reply introduces more interesting stuff about the splitting in two parts of a two character word.
I also guess that, even though this seems not to be a particularly tricky one, a saying, not perfectly following all the current grammar rules, perhaps has some good poetical, phonetic purpose; it's always acceptable a poetic licence!
suburbanite says
June 15, 2008
Q: did anybody else have difficulty with the pronounciation in the last half of the dialog?
(zhen v. jin and tiao v. piao) I thought that made the lesson a little more challenging from a listening perspective. A good challenge none the less.
user8877 says
June 15, 2008
I think that when there is a posting of a technical error, that posting should be removed after the error is fixed.
After all, the goal is the study of the language, not of the gliches.
shanyisheng says
June 15, 2008
Since e have the new CP layout I do not see chinese characters any more . Just:
一场çªå¦‚å…¶æ¥çš„地震夺去了多少人的生命，摧æ¯äº†å¤šå°‘个幸ç¦å®¶åº ，æ¯ç 了多少幢建ç‘，牵动了多少人的心ï¼ç¤¾ä¼šå„界，国内国外都å‘ç¾åŒºä¼¸å‡ºäº†æ•‘æ´ä¹‹æ‰‹ï¼Œå›½å®¶é¢†å¯¼ä¹Ÿäº²ä¸´ç¾åŒºï¼Œç»„织救æ´ã€‚今天我们节选了一段温家å®æ€»ç†çš„视频，看看å¬å¬è¿™ä½å¹´é€¾èŠ±ç”²çš„è€äººï¼Œæ€Žä¹ˆç»™ç¾æ°‘和官兵鼓劲，给大家勇气和信心。
Who has this same problem ? Its only in Safari, not in Firefox.
moniqueferreras02 says
June 15, 2008
elow, i'm a newbie, i find the language quite easy to understand, but some of the pronounciations are hard to do and even the characters itself, i don't know where to start studying about it...
shanyisheng says
June 15, 2008
In the expansion lessons there is the girl saying 是
in a strange way with the i of 七 (qi).
Up to now it was pronounced "uh", so: "shuh".
how come ? Shanghai dialect ?
monica5 says
June 15, 2008
I always learn so much from Changye´s posts!! Thank you Changye!
Does any one knows the answer to kesirui´s question? it´s something i´ve been wondering since i learned those words.
bababean says
June 15, 2008
You guys are fantastic. I say this as a language professional teaching in China. I will be recommending this website to all my colleagues and plan to upgrade shortly. Thanks especially to Jenny and Ken. It is evident you have done your work in contructing a pedagogically sound and fun system for people like me to acquire language.
Love and Peace to All!
John :-)
frognotinawell says
June 15, 2008
Is there any difference in usage between 真的 and 真? In today's lesson it's zhen1: 真漂亮; at other times zhen1 de: 我真的很热. Is there a rule, or is it purely a matter of personal preference?
evasiege says
June 15, 2008
shanyisheng
I don't think its a dialect issue. For some reason I think it just changes slightly with the context. The only time I stray away from pronouncing shi4 as "sher" or "suh" (southern dialect) instead of "shuh" is when asking who someone is.
So to me it would be ni3 shi4 "shuh" shei2.
And in most other contexts would use ni3 shi4 "sher" or "suh" mei3gou2ren2.
Don't know if that makes any sense, and there is probably a better explaination, but just throwing it out there.
dagah says
June 15, 2008
How do you know whether 女孩儿 (nü3 hair2) or 女儿 (nü3 er2) is reffered to a girl or a daughter? it means both right?
houban says
June 15, 2008
Why does he say Wo nǚpéngyǒu and not Wode nǚpéngyǒu?
almajors says
June 15, 2008
The de 的 is implied in some statements such as wo mama 我妈妈, wo pengyou 我朋友, and the such. wo+subject 我+主语 (zhu3yu3) implies the 的 in cases such as this.
Sorry, I'm not sure how to explain beyond this.
rjberki says
June 15, 2008
the possesive "de" (的) can be omitted when the possesor is represented by a personal pronoun and the possesed is a personal noun such as one's parents. This is roughly the rule.
RJ
johnb says
June 15, 2008
shanyisheng,
About your character display problem, can you check what character encoding Safari is using? Click "View" then "Text Encoding" and see what is checked. It should be either "Default" or "UTF-8." If it's neither of those (or if it's Default and it's still not working) trying changing the encoding to "UTF-8" and see if that clears things up.
Firefox is rather smarter about guessing the right character encoding and encounters these problems much less frequently than Safari.
HTH!
sophie20461 says
June 15, 2008
hi change and michele
in my opinion, "女大十八变“ here"大” its means "grow up" not a adj for "变“ if you want to translate it by literality you can say"女孩子长大到十八岁的时会改变“
but the free translation is "女孩子（长到）十八岁后会改变很多” or “女孩子十八岁后会改变很多” we alway omit the "长到”
clay says
June 15, 2008
shanyisheng，
in the expansions, the voice was not that of a girl from Shanghai, she is from Anhui, the northwest part of china. I went through and reviewed some sentences, and didnt find one in particular that seemed off. Can you tell me what sentence in particular you found odd?
michele says
June 16, 2008
hi sophie,
so, if I got the sense, 女大十八变 it could be read as
女 a girl (when has become great, that is, grow up) 大 great (up to) 十八 eighteen (years old), 变 changes.
But in that case, where do you find a character suggesting your final 很多?
I mean, that if you use 大 for the meaning of growing up, then, seemingly, you should have nothing remaining about the changes entity, great, small or what ever... More, I'd say, that in your free translation you pick up some of the current meaning of 大 to transfer it to the "change" chunk, in fact you say "very much" 很多.
What do you think about it? thanks a lot for your kind attention!
再见，Michele.
razz says
June 16, 2008
ma nam is greg bradley i wud lic tu toc chinese and mit frens tuw day and pen pals kk luflos
razz says
June 16, 2008
rat bac
x
badge says
June 16, 2008
Hi moniqueferreras,
I'm a newbie as well. Someone on CP recommended Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition by William McNaughton. It has helped me a lot with character recognition.
As for the pronunciation, I am in the same boat. I am going to be getting together with some Chinese students in my area to see if that helps.
billm says
June 16, 2008
shanyisheng says
In the expansion lessons there is the girl saying 是
in a strange way with the i of 七 (qi).
Up to now it was pronounced "uh", so: "shuh".
how come ? Shanghai dialect ?
shanyisheng,
I'm guessin your getting caught up with the combination of 是什 (shi4shen2) and/or 是上 (shi4shang4).
The shi4 sounds standard to my ears, but I can imagine you might be picking up a different sound given the second "sh" sound.
Maybe try practice saying the sentence a few times, then listen to the expansion.
shanyisheng says
June 16, 2008
johnb,
I changed to Firefox for CP.
The comical i sound in shi is in the first and fourth
sentence of the dialogue. Normally i hear it pronounced shuh4, but here it is the i of 7 (qi)
How come ?
shanyisheng says
June 16, 2008
Now some "logistic" problem. CP tells me that I am currently studying 81 lessons among which there are
a few advanced ones and some media - which I always skip. I never go further than intermediate level lessons (with great pleasure !)
If I look at them and I press "remove" at all the ones I never studied. But CP know better obviously and I cannot get them from my personal record....strrrange !
sophie20461 says
June 16, 2008
hi michele
"很多“ in this sentence is "补语”，so when we abbreviate this sentence,we omit it.
siciliazhang says
June 16, 2008
Anyone, can you help me ? why I can't save the "full lesson (radio quality)" now ? In the past I just clicked it, and then we can saved it, but now I click it and then I can listen it in the computer right now ?
susananna says
June 17, 2008
Thanks alot Ken n Jenny, i'm a newbie here and have alot to learn from others. I want to write chinese too, the simples but don't know how and where to begin. can someone help?
susananna says
June 17, 2008
siciliazhang, right click and save as so you can save the file. good luck.
siciliazhang says
June 17, 2008
susananna,
if you use the computer,
first you have to set the computer.
this one for windows XP.
open :Control Panel/Regional and Language Option/Language
Supplemental Language support, thick Install files for asian language (sometimes you need the windows XP CD installer)
text services and input language, click details
choose settings, click add
In Add Input Language/Input language choose
Chinese PRC. For Keyboard layout/IME choose Chinese(Simplified) - US keyboard (depend on your keyboard)
you can find the button on the task bar, bottom right, you can see "EN" for english and "CH" for chinese, you can swicth.
you can use this language in most of the program (the compatible one for this option )
for example in this discussion, for the chinese you click "CH" 你好苏珊娜! , "EN" Hello susananna!
The input for this is hanyu pinyin, you know this, right? the chinese romanization, type and then you can choose the character.
I hope this can help you.
good luck
horsiebabe says
June 20, 2008
Could you say '你是真漂亮' or would '你真漂亮' be more correct?
This is probably really basic, but when I was doing the exercises I just noticed #7 MC had answer C as 是 and I was wondering if that would be incorrect to use it in that sencence.
Thanks a bunch!
imbm says
June 21, 2008
Hi horsiebabe
你真漂亮 is more correct. actually Chinese people don't say 你是真漂亮'
chini23 says
June 24, 2008
:)
elroch says
July 29, 2008
A rather delayed footnote to imbm's comment above:
One thing that causes confusion sometimes is that Chinese words are often only partially equivalent to their translations in English. The English verb "to be" has two quite separate meanings. The first is that "A is a B" implies that A is an example of the type of thing B (eg "I am a teacher"). This is the meaning that translates to 是 in Chinese (eg 我是老师). The second meaning of the verb "to be" in English is that the subject has a characteristic (eg "He is tall"). This is not a meaning that 是 shares at all.