New Topic Suggestions

Since the new movie has come out, I would like to hear a podcast about Batman.

I also like the idea of doing one about the Beatles.

A lesson of spoken chinese interjection(惊叹词), exclamations (感叹词) or incantations (咒语) for : - wow - yikes - hey - "et voilà" (sorry there's no real english equivalent) - abracadabra (which come from the Aramaic) ... For abracadabra, can I really use 麻里麻里哄 like in this video ?

- More mild swearing/frustration lessons.

- More strange sayings that don't make a lot of sense in their literal translations but are used frequently.. such as: ma ma, hu hu. or: nali nali.

What about this one:

Playground

"Ah, the playground... fond memories of pushing, swinging, scraping knees, crying when it's time to leave. In our lesson today, we'll hear from the parents on the bench, as they wait for us to play off our extra energy." (cf. Spanishpod)

Certainly useful for parents.

Danjo,

The old american system is called United States customary units and the "old" british system is called "Imperial units".

From an European point of view, the strangest units would be the Gallon 加仑(jiālún) and the quart 夸脱 (kuātuō) which are unpractical and different between the US and UK.

I'm almost certain there was a lesson about getting a visa (Intermediate perhaps), and there are many lessons along those lines.

I would be interested in a lesson about the metric system vs. the American system (is it called the Imperial system?). Sometimes I am asked how tall I am and I have no idea in meters, and I'd like to be able to fluently say "we use a different system in America, with feet and inches." Also "pounds" in Chinese.

I think it would be great if you did a series of podcasts about preparing to go to China.

For example, you could have one about getting a visa, one about any vaccinations/health precautions, one about checking into the hotel, and so on.

I think a series like this would be very relevant and should appeal to loads of listeners.

that´s leading into another lessonidea:

protective wear e.g. welding goggles, sun glasses, (sun block), protecting shoes, gloves, helmet,...

We are approaching comment #100 on this thread!

I'd like to suggest a lesson on fruits, in particular the ones not so familiar to foreigners, e.g. hawthorn, jujube, pomelo etc.

Did we have a lesson on recipes with things like "boil at full throttle, add a tbs. of sugar and then stir violently. Be sure to wear protection goggles ..." ? (Sorry, got carried away. )

I'd like to see more lessons on Psychology, especially Abnormal Psychology, which deals with a wide range of issues such as depression, psychotic behavior, anorexia, criminal behavior etc..particulary in the context of how these are dealt with in Chinese culture.

By the way, the lesson on Phobias was great !

kuaizi,

I hope you already added your "Photoorganoheterotroph" to the CPod Dictionary. When I have too much time I might read what that nice little word is all about: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9F%BA%E6%9C%AC%E7%87%9F%E9%A4%8A%E9%A1%9E%E5%9E%8B

光能有機異養 might be cool too, for all Biology majors on CP ;-).

深海烟囱 (shēnhǎiyāncōng)

stumbled over that word in my dictionary and thought: "That could be the headline of a truely bizarre lesson!" (no, no, not "Black Smoker Ploy").

How about a lesson on the Beatles? :)

But where the Chinese allowed to listen to them in the 60s, with Chairman Mao and everything?

henning,

Really? Thanks a lot for pointing that out. I hadn't noticed it because, although being an upper intermediate/advanced student, I had decided to go through all the lower level lessons before moving on as I noticed that I still benefit quite a bit from them. I definitely should've checked out the Advanced section, you're completely right. (But with the headings being in Chinese their content is not so plainly obvious when you're merely skimming through the list) Please forgive my ignorance ;-)

kuaizi,

quite a few of the topics you listed have been covered in Advanced lessons, namely Gaming, Psycholgy (dedicated lesson on Autism), the Chinese educational system, the role of women in China, homosexuality (!), rare Animals and eating them, diverse Buddhism stuff, elections.

You should definately give that level a try.

I'd love to see lessons (in some cases, a Dear Amber feature would be more appropiate) on the following topics:

1. Classroom/Exam Talk : Phrases like "I'd like to elaborate a bit further on that." "I (dis)agree", "Moving on to the next issue", "Interesting point of view!", "He is straying from the point", "", "The examiner is very conservative and stubborn" could sure come in handy!

2. Skin care: I know we've had a lesson on protecting oneself from the sun, but what about baby powder, getting a face lift, tan, blemishes...

3. Chinese TV (but please, no general stuff, i.e "I like CCTV")

4.Politics - Enabling the student to say a few sentences about the Party, congresses, the terms for minister/foreign affairs/economy/health/... (it shouldn't be too tricky to produce a non-controversial episode); "I'm gonna vote for..:" "XY for President" etc.

5. Religion: This certainly hasn't been covered extensively enough. What about rituals, Buddhism, "Let's all pray together", "a Higher Being" (btw, The Transcript for the Church lesson still reads "Islamism" instead of Islam, unless CP is biased and really gave us the term for the fundie variant)

6. Animals - native wildlife; how they're treated,their role in Chinese cuisine. (I second tezuks suggestion for a vegetarianism lesson. What's the term for "vegan", by the way?;-) )

7. Literature! (they're is a wealth of material available, so it would be brilliant if you could give us some insight)

8. Chinese arts and culture definitely need to be explored more.

9. Some more infos on expressing one's occupation.

10. Gender (role of women; and is homosexuality a safe topic?)

11. The military. (Could be handled in a safe way as well. A bit of history [Anyone familiar with the series "Soldiers Sortie"?] and enrollment.)

12. The Chinese education system. (Going beyond the rare pieces of information on student life.)

13. A lesson on inquiring about explanations of grammar points, in Mandarin

14. Psychology - mental disorders, depression...

15. Gaming

How about an intermediate vegetarian lesson, I know there is a Newbie topic already but it was really basic. Perhaps including reasons for vegetarianism, as most chinese people can generally not comprehend any reason other than religion :). Also maybe something on how to ask a waiter if he can make a dish vegetarian, such as substitute meat for dofu etc.

Well just an idea, Thanks.

Hi Julesong, Joannah, there are some alcohol-related lessons available already.

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/too-much-to-drink/discussion

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/cold-beer/discussion

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/simple-toasts/discussion

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/drinking-ability/discussion

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/%E7%99%BD%E9%85%92%E5%92%8C%E9%BB%84%E9%85%92/discussion

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/%E9%85%92%E9%AC%BC/discussion

(I used the search with "alcohol" as keyword and voila´) ^_^

julesong, i think that one on alcohol is a good idea.

The cuisine-specific restaurant topics are really helpful. I can manage pretty well in a 家常 Sichuan restaurant because I live here but if I wander into a Cantonese place or visit a city in another area of China I am kind of lost. So for example we could have a visit to Xian lesson where people went to 回民街 huímínjiē (the Muslim quarter) and ate things like 羊肉泡馍 yángroù pāo mó,

肉夹馍 ròu jīa mó、 and 黄桂 柿子 饼 huángguì shìzi bĭng

Staying or eating at a 农家乐. (I was mystified when my students told me in English they had taken a tour and eaten very well at 'farmer happy'.)

Although we are all attempting to learn standard Chinese, I think a discussion of different dialects and their specific characteristics would be interesting.

shi3ma3ke4 suggested Dinosaurs in the Comments on Knitting. I definately support this parent-friendly proposal.

A visit to the fabric market. Silk, cotton, linen, natural or man made fibres. Is this fabric washable? Will it fade? Shrink?

A specific one on leather would be great too. Full grain, split grain, treated for water, dyability....

Another topic:

Alcohol consumption for those who do not drink. So that we can discuss alcohol in a way to be able to converse adequately that we (those who don't, that is) do not or cannot drink but understandably do not want to offend our hosts...

Henning: I second (or third or fourth) your suggestion (at least, I think it was you) for science fiction and/or fantasy as a topic. Both written (books) and in television and movies!

Well, it looks like my limited income includes limited access with my paid subscription. Appears that "Pronunciation" isn't included with a basic account. Ah well.

AuntySue - thank you so much for pointing out the link for Pronunciation! I'll check it out!

The songs I've found on Chinesepod so far:

* New Year's Song

* Colors Song

* Two Little Tigers Song

* Baby Talk Friends Song

* Head (Hair), Shoulders, Knees, and Toes (Body Parts)

I'd love to have more in lessons. :)

User3881, have you tried following the Pronunciation link at the bottom of this page, and exploring in there?

Some basic and/or children's songs that many US and European folks know, sung in Mandarin, would be *wonderful* if they could be covered.

Joachim: art and artists would be a terrific topic!

Of course, so would various music (if it's not already covered).

In particular, I'm in search of a mixture of Western (folk & country) music with Chinese music. I've been playing them on my online radio station when I find them. :)

Henning: I'm in agreement on the body parts topic. I was thinking about that recently, and about how helpful it could be in various situations. For instance - what if you are ill and need to speak with someone about which parts of your body are uncomfortable and how they feel?

AuntySue: whaling is a topic I'd like to hear about, too. From what I understand, whale was not a traditional Chinese (or Japanese?) food until it was subject to marketing by the government sometime ago (early 1900s?).

Other topics I'd like to get Elementary Lessons for:

1) more business specific dialogue for using with clients. Particularly, for administrative assistants and in the mortgage industry. I'm sure there are a lot of other business types that would like to see their type covered.

(Although I do hope to go to China some year soon, in the meantime I'm trying to also learn Mandarin for use with business here in the US.)

2) topics in environmental issues.

Other suggestions...

* Is there a cross-referenced and linked tag list somewhere? That could be really helpful!

* I know the focus is on spoken Mandarin, but as we're given access to the PDFs for lessons with a paid subscription, it would be *really* helpful if there was a guideline somewhere here that shows us how to accurately pronounce the pinyan we're given (espec for for the supplementary words we don't get to hear in the dialogue).

taxi lesson gave me another idea: the illegal taxis. (黑车）. These are pretty necessary if you are going out of the main cities. Different vehicles they use like 面包车 (hope those are the right characters)、 摩托车

The song clips that have been included in recent lessons made me think that a lesson on going to KTV (karaoke!) would be fun. Then we could discuss good songs for Chinese learners to sing - you know, simple words and lots of repetition or maybe Chinese adaptations of western pop songs.

bazza: wrong!

I seem to have a talent in ending topics. ;)

I just wanted to bring this thread back to the top to reduce duplication of topic/ lesson suggestions.

Telekinesis

Is 隔地促动 the power of passe-muraille ?

Btw, I'm not sure if "passe-muraille" is understood in modern english.

How about a lesson on the series Heroes, it could be a discussion about their favourite character and which super power they'd most like to have.

Personally I'd like 隔地促动, in fact I'm currently trying to learn it. ;)

That's one of those great long winding stories isn't it. What about the short fairy tale type of story, you know, the ones you can read to a child in bed over one or two nights. Does China have some of them, or not?

excuter: I just posted the link provided wih the lesson by Cpod. :-(

er...the link doesn´t lead to the lesson (at least not directly) so I think I better post this link:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/the-monkey-king/discussion

谢谢 and Danke schön :-)

excuter: Your Monkey King lesson is available at http://chinesepod.com/lessons/the-monkey-king.

at least the monkey king has I think ( hey there was a lesson about this story wasn´t it?) :-)

Aren't there any Chinese stories that have those same characteristics? Probably not ;-) I've never heard of any.

Although these were authored by 外国人: Could we have lessons on Alice in Wonderland, little red riding hood, snow white etc.

It's not that I dig fairy tales and such like so very much, but they do contain some easy story lines and slightly surprising characters, e.g. a red queen, talking rabbits, dwarfs etc.

Btw: Didn't I post something similiar some time ago? Or is this a déja vu?

Oh really? I thought that was typical male vocabulary.

There's also a potentially funny lesson to make with some typical female vocab :

随便 Whatever

都行 Anything

看你 You decide

...

yea since today it was left out, that would be great :-)

How about a lesson on CB radio lingo? ;)

I wonder how you'd tell someone about a dream you had, and relate the story and the crazy circumstances. "In this dream I was a trapeze artist, and was turning a flying somersault in front of a huge crowd when I suddenly figured out how to use 了 and lost concentration. The crowd cheered “了！了！了！“ and after I woke up, just before hitting the ground, I could still hear their voices." I suspect it wouldn't be anywhere near as complex as in English, but I could be wrong.

How about a Dear Amber on "turning or facing or directions" in Chinese. I'm sure I'm an idiot, but I still get confused sometimes between 往，拐，转， etc. and when to use one versus the other. I know specific examples, but mess up when I get outside my comfort zone.

I was wondering if Chinese art and artists might be a good topic. The lesson could either be a short one on traditional Chinese art like watercolours, scrolls etc. or on the traditional four treasures of study (brush, ink-stick, paper and inkstone) or else something more elaborate on contemporary Chinese artists doing performance art, landscaping and so forth. You could also mention some of the more or less famous names in Chinese art. Waddaya think?

In slight contrast to my funeral posting:

How about a lesson on partying with talk about music, gossip, and drinks?

(Searching Cpod for that only gave me the Cocktail Party lesson which to me is all about socialising with your boss and stuff.)

18844,

Comfort after a Breakup:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/seeking-comfort/

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/a-dad-gives-advice-to-a-broken-hearted-son/

If it is more dramatic (divorce) there might be some related vocab here:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/paying-child-support/

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%BC%8F%E7%A6%BB%E5%A9%9A/

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/consoling-the-bereaved/

I second a lesson on funerals and what to say to someone who's had a friend or family member pass away recently. Also how to comfort someone who goes through a breakup.

Bazza: Interview with a Chinese astronaut, err Taikonaut .

How about a lesson aboard a space shuttle mission? :)

send a replacment for Peter the canadian so he could fix the mess with the Chinese Hammer maker. And also inqlud some QS vocab, Sample inspection, first article, maerial inspection etc. And also some vocab about raw material cost increase, diffrent maerial steel, iron, plastic, stainless steel etc, shipping tariff change, Change in VAT discount for Chinese exporter.

How about a lesson on Moschops? :)

http://www.toonhound.com/moschops.htm

Loved that as a kid.

I saw a funeral procession (or something like it) here a little while ago and had no idea what it was...parade-like music playing, a row of people with a huge broad floral garland-thing at the beginning, one person carrying a picture of someone, two people carrying a litter with with a wrapped up chicken and a box. Had to ask an English-speaking passerby what was going on.

I thought the onomatopoeia lesson was brilliant and would like a specific lesson on interjections, though I know they are covered bit by bit in other dialogs. Also: accents from different areas of China.

AuntySue: Here's another topic: Naughty, childish behaviour like blowing a raspberry, making faces. What might be the words for doing such things in Chinese? Or belching, picking your nose etc.? (Wasn't there a lesson on farting?)

RJBerki, yes I thought it was good. I always enjoy going to the top of towers though.

You don't have to get a cab after the maglev, you can go straight on the subway, which is what I did.

And for Henning and I, we'll need a lesson on things like putting your thumbs in your ears and wiggling fingers while blowing a raspberry. :-)

Touche, Henning :-)

Bazza,

I have never been inside the tower. Never thrilled me. I would rather have a beer in Jin Mao and look out the window. How about you? Did you find the Pearl tower tickets worth while? The maglev would be more useful if it went all the way into town from the airport. You still have to take a cab but it is an awesoemly quick ride and a "must do" at least once.

-Bob

A lesson on a buying an admission ticket to the Oriental Pearl tower would be useful as well. Pointing and saying 'top' doesn't really show off your Chinese skills. ;)

Buying a maglev train ticket as well.

Auntie,

the same will happen with "knitting" to me.

Translation will be

Chinese --> English --> German--> German Wikipedia

:)

Actually I have already learned lots of vocab here, be it on tranport containers, photography equipments, caligraphy, or various forms of Baijiu.

Hey lunetta, you sneaky devil, that's wonderful!

Henning, the trouble with a few of your topics is that the lessons have to be translated into English for English speaking students, and some of those things cannot be expressed in plain English. :-) I'd love to see them try, though.

About death, yeah, I went to a funeral two days ago, and yesterday I had the opportunity to tell someone about it in Chinese, but had no idea how to name or describe the basic facts of it, let alone its detail, and it occurred to me that if someone else was trying to tell their story to me, I wouldn't have any idea what they were talking about. Some of that kind of language would be handy.

Aunty Sue, when I won the MM last time I required a personal fix on knitting. Once they get around making it, I'll share it with everyone.

A little bit more topical:

9a Research & statistics

Qualitative and quantitative approach, research design, experiment, survey, panel survey, case study, action research, prototype, statistics...

9b. Publishing a paper & Going to a conference

Deadline, peer review, track, acceptance of a paper

Those two have been brought up before:

9c. Producing a CPod lesson - the work flow

9d. Finding your way to CPod

Another one I am still waiting for:

6c. Upgrade & server malfunction

upgrade, update, patch, server error, content management system, broken links, backup-server, mirrored hard drives, fibrechannel port, firewall...

IT/IS topics are always welome, e.g.:

6d. Internet technology

TCP, IP, ICMP, routing, editing HTML, script, encoding, SMTP-server, authentication, CSS

6e. Editing a document - technical view

Copy & Paste, formatting & layout, font size, style sheet, spell check, ...

6f. Systems development

Process model, requirements engineering, software testing, software maintainance, man-year (person-year), coding, lines of code, alpha-version, beta-version, gold release, installation...

Oh, I forgot:

6b. Information Systems

CRM, SCM, ERP, front end, back end, hosting, data warehouse, data mining, OLAP, systems integration, SOA, application server, data center,...

In a more sombre mood: What about death, dying, burial, coffins, processions, remberance?

I am not talking about death by Ninja and such like :-)

AuntySue: Whaling? Do you want to compare your catch and the size and power of your harpoons?

"Castor oil makes excellent perfume?" etc.??

[Frowning face]

Oops, I almost forgot:

Crochet.

Knitting, i.e. two sticks and string.

Distinct concepts (for us) that are not differentiated in Chinese, e.g. knitting/weaving/embroidery, sheep/goat, mouse/rat, and what else? Maybe that's more of a QW topic.

And how to talk about knitting.

Excuse me / ouch , you are standing on / you stepped on my foot.

Is it OK if we share your table/seat? (maybe that's been done?)

My mother used to knit very well, but these days nobody has time any more.

Watch your step.

Sleeping in.

Is it normal/acceptable for Chinese people to do THAT?!

Oh, sorry! This is what we do in my country, I didn't mean to be rude.

Hey! Can anyone here speak English?

Knitting.

In my youth... those were the days... (reminiscences)

If I had my time again...

If I were young and knew what I know now...

I can't stand it any longer, I have to get out of here, now! (noise, smell, whatever)

I'd give my left leg to be able to ... (e.g. meet Jenny)

I'd walk a mile over broken glass to... (get her phone number)

Sinking boat; rescue.

Whaling.

Levels of (same sex) friendship and their obligations.

Are those knitted by hand or by machine?

Singing to oneself in public.

Joachim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera

Actually I like Hard SciFi even better:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction

But that would probably harder to translate into a lesson.

Haven't read much in recent time, though. Not enough time. Maybe CPod will change that.

Henning: A space opera? Baffled switch to my native German: Was soll'n das sein? Eine Raumfahrtoper? [What's that supposed to be? Space flight opera?]

John: IMHO you did a great job with these lessons! It looks like at Chinesepod it's 5196!

John,

I noticed. Time for a refill?

Here is my list:

1. Presentation / Presentation technology

...no projector signal, wrong resolution for the projector, microphone does not work, loudspeaker feedback, power point versions do not match, DHCP server refuses to hand over a valid IP address, projector lamp burns...

2. Inflation

A timely topic! I read somewhere now it even affects Laowais' favourite delivery services... ;)

3. Chinas Space Program

Including the current moon mission.

4. Going to (being delivered to) the hospital

This has been brought up by several other users before. the different departments of a hospital, different rooms, visiting hours, hospital bureaucracy

4. Body parts, organs

The counterpart to #3 Every part that might be injured or you can get sick with is worth knowing in Chinese. 阑尾炎...

5. The Chinese accounting system

double entry book keeping? IAS/IFRS comatibility? Basic metrics?

But who is going to teach us business stuff after the unfortunate demise of Peter the knowing Canadian?

6. Chinas government, party, and regulative system

Boring, indeed, but foundamental for following Chinese news.

7. Astronomy

Planets, moons, comets, galaxies, galaxy clusters, neutron stars, singularities, big bang, dark matter, dark energy, ...you get the idea...

8. Language with sexual innuendo

As discussed someplace else: Raw body part and action vocab is not hard to find on the web. I am interested in more refined, culturally influenced language. To be able to receive interesting messages I might be missing otherwise (messages from my wife or in movies, obviously ;) ).

9. The Dynasties

Classic Chinese content you have been avoiding so far. At best you make this a series in reverse chronological order: Time, relevance, rise and fall, politics, achievements in arts and technology, relevant names,...

10. A space opera

I have been begging for this one since day one. I know it is not among your favourites. But I am patient. There will be the day when you covered every sport from mini golf to base jumping and introduced every city on earth with more then 100,000 inhabitants. There will be the day you will need to come back to this suggestion :))

Oh, and we have also had a lesson about toys (old school toys), and judging from the date, it was also in response to your request: Upper Intermediate - Old School Toys We also did #7: Intermediate - City Stats Describing people is too big of a topic to do all in one lesson, but we have done it, scattered over various lessons. Use this tag: describing_people_and_places

I don't know if you noticed, but we already took your #1 suggestion: Intermediate - Internet Slang

This might be a bit off topic, but if someone has figured out how to send Hanzi SMS over T-Mobile (or Cingular/ATT for that matter) here in the US I'd sure like a lesson on that. (bought my mobile in HK and it does support characters)

谢谢

I'd like to suggest a lesson on the "four great inventions" 四大发明 [sì dà fā míng] compass, gunpowder, paper and printing. I wouldn't mind if these were presented in a way to dispute the validity of attributing it to Chinese culture ;-)

As an addition to AIDS as a topic: There is a Chinese version of http://www.theglobalfund.org/cn/.

The Global Fund is backing the (Product) RED initiative. Wasn't Chinesepod participating in (Product) RED last year??

Aid given to African and other states in itself would also make a nice lesson. Just thinking that Aid is hardly ever given without ulterior motives - and the Chinese government is very aware of that. Or why else would they keep such close taps on INGOs and NGOs in their own country?

I think just the development of how AIDS has been handled and is handled in China would already provide a lot of good material. I mean, it is fairly recent that the government admits that AIDS is a problem here, and still many simply blame it on the gay community...

China has recently been contributing a lot of humanitarian aid to Africa. A lesson on humanitarianism, with a focus on AIDS or other crises in Africa might make a good lesson or two.

Perhaps there could be an Advanced story line that follows a member of the Peace Corp to Africa? I see that touching a lot of good topics.

A lesson on AIDS would be interesting.

kyle, Henning, thanks for your translations of those chat expressions

How about a lesson on AIDS maybe on World Aids Day (December, 1)?

It looks like 去读该死的手册! (qù dú gāi sǐ de shǒucè) is an appropriate albeit slightly more polite way of saying it in RTFM Chinese.

Got another one:

the superlative to LOL: ROFL

"(rolling on the floor, laughing")

Does anybody know if there is a Chinese version of

"&#%"

- not for the intended word (learned that one before), but for the masking characters "&#%"?

Wow, for about 30 seconds there I was panicing. "Why is trevelyan mad at me? What'd I say?"

Then it hit me... I'm just an idiot.

Thanks.

Maybe that'd be "看那本手册, 白痴!" ?

read the ^&#%ing manual, Kyle.

Here's my go:

IMHO = in my humble/honest opinion = 我想...

BTW = by the way = 顺便...

LOL = laugh out loud = 哈哈

I dont know what RTFM is in English.

And a note on the usage of 顺便 (shun4bian4--I think): it's almost always followed by 我想告诉你 or 我想问你一下, and then whatever it is you wanted to tell them.

I would like a translation/explanation of "to chat / computer expressions like IMHO, BTW, LOL, RTFM" in English first.

Being rather computer illiterate and not an English native speaker, I haven't figured them out yet.

There already is a number 4 and 7, perhaps just not in as much detail, or with as much supplementary vocab, as you described.

How about a weather forecast with lows and highs, scattered showers, drizzle and further north the occasional snow and sleet?

I think #5 would be a useful lesson that I don't believe has been done yet. There is a particular way Chinese people describe characters when there is confusion or when talking to a foreigner. The way radicals are referred to is good vocabulary. For example to describe the character 证 a Chinese person might say "言字旁 (name of the radical),正常的正".

What about how to tell someone that you take over his place and he can go to his half-an-hour-brake (inspired by reality)

HAPPY - "When she smiles, she has dimples," I don't know how to say that. :)

Ok, CPod does have one for "Wrong number" but how about: * "Stranger safety", dont talk to strangers, what to do if a stranger talks to you, etc. It would be a conversation between a parent and a child obviously.

I was thinking maybe:

* "You have the wrong number" for when you dial the wrong telephone number (I do that often) :D

* "Prank calls", like receiving a prank call or telling someone about it.

* "I lost my..." for when you are asking if someone has seen you lost _______ .

* "Book genres" telling someone about a book you are reading -- what its about, what genre, ertc.

I will post more as I think of them.