User Comments - ElijahW

Posted on: Are we both winners?

Hi there!

If you're looking for more speaking of Chinese, then you may want to look to the higher levels. This is an Elementary lesson, which (among other things) means that it will be mostly in English.

You can read about Elementary lessons at the top of this page: https://chinesepod.com/library/channels/list/elementary

If the higher levels are too difficult, you could still immerse yourself in Chinese by listening to the dialogue rather than the full lesson. I know of some students who did a great job learning with ChinesePod without ever listening to the full lessons. There are over 700 Elementary lessons, and if the average Elementary dialogue is 20 seconds, and you listen to each one 10 times, that should be close to 40 hours.

When I was at this level, I listened to the "Full Lesson" once, then the Dialogue three times a day for a month.

Posted on: More customers please!

Hi Susanna!

Which dictionary are you looking at? It’s “piányi” in all the ones I’ve checked. 

Posted on: Not ready for bed

可以 often has more to do with permission, whereas 能 is more about ability. So, when asking for permission, you would typically use 可以.

Posted on: More customers please!

washingtondcmandarincooperative,

"If "everybody" pronounces it in the second tone, how could it not be correct?"

This question actually goes very deep down the rabbit hole, because of a huge difference between English and Mandarin:

English is a language that "just happened" - it's an organic phenomenon where people say what they say, then the experts come behind and explain and systematize how the language works. Mandarin is just the opposite - it was created by committee, based on existing organic languages, but very much invented by scholars in Beijing. They are the ones who got together and decided how the language should work, then pushed the language out to the schools across the country, working to get everyone to conform to the rules and pronunciations they created. (You can read about the epic process in David Moser's book "A Billion Voices.") To this day, they continually update Mandarin through dictionaries and curriculum.

When I say "I can't find any indication that the second tone pronunciation is accepted as correct," these Mandarin Creators-and-Controllers are the people I'm referring to. I'm not surprised that a Chrome extension and Pleco would show the alternate pronunciation, since neither of them answer to the Mandarin Creators-and-Controllers. I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before the scholars give up the fight and admit that a character that wasn't a 多音字 (a character with two or more readings) 20 years ago has, outside of their control, actually become a 多音字. But it seems like it hasn't happened yet.

If you do a Baidu search on this question, you'll see that it comes up a lot among Chinese people, and the final answer is always: No, 喂 only has one correct pronunciation. This blog post (in Chinese) speculates about how people started "incorrectly" using the second tone to answer the phone.

This unique feature of Mandarin is hard for English speakers to grasp, just as Chinese people often never realize that English doesn't have this feature. David Moser and Mark Roswell ("Dashan" 大山) had a great discussion about some of these things in this podcast, and Moser points out that Chinese people find it hard to believe that there actually is no such thing as "standard English" - meaning English that's being controlled by an all-powerful standards-setting committee.

But, back to 喂: as a Westerner who in general appreciates keeping-it-real with non-centralized stuff, my personal preference would be to show it as second tone in this context. But I say that knowing that I'm "wrong."

Posted on: More customers please!

ChinesePod has, in the past, shown 喂 as a second tone (treating it as a 多音字 - a character with more than one correct pronunciation), but it was breaking the rules when it did so. I can't find any indication that the second tone pronunciation is accepted as correct.

In reality, correct or not, everyone says it as second tone when they answer the phone. I wish I had the cell phone numbers of the people in Beijing who have chosen not to recognize 喂's second tone pronunciation, and see if they really say wèi when they answer! Saying it with a 4th tone when you answer is actually perceived as being rude.

Posted on: More customers please!

Hey everyone!

I've written my "two cents" on the tone change/pinyin subject on the Forum here.

Posted on: More customers please!

We have some lively discussion going on! It seems we've got three separate questions that need to be clarified:

1. Is 喂 a 多音字? If you can read Chinese, you can search for yourself.（"喂是多音字吗？"）

2. Are tone changes (a completely separate topic from 多音字) supposed to be reflected in Pinyin?

3. What has been ChinesePod's historical policy with regard to showing tone changes in Pinyin?

I've done some looking into all 3 questions, and the results for all 3 questions have surprised me.

A Newbie lesson really isn't a place for this discussion, so when I get a chance to report what I've found on those three questions, I'll post it on the Forum and include a link here in this discussion.

Posted on: Popular Brand Names

I had the same reaction. I feel like if a Newbie encounters one lesson like this out of 15 or 20, it introduces some great variety. But if it gets to be more than that, I think it starts to interfere with the Newbie learning objectives.

Posted on: 中国通

我在台湾的时候很惊讶得发现：可以跟服务员说纯粹的英文！台湾的教英文水平应该算得上比较高。

对我们老外来说，这样很方便，但话说回来，我也发现在那边的老外就没有太大的学中文的压力。

Posted on: Venice flooding 洪水猛兽--威尼斯水灾

I was thinking just the opposite - I don't know any foreign students at the B2 level who can talk anything like this text.