User Comments - GregE
GregE
Posted on: A Tour of the Chinese Underworld (Part One)
March 22, 2012 at 8:59 AMDang, I guess I need to brush up on my mythical beast vocabulary :(
Glad you enjoyed the lesson though :)
Posted on: A Disgusting Man
March 22, 2012 at 1:47 AMYou're right, thank you!
Posted on: Big Numbers
March 21, 2012 at 2:01 AMThe technical linguistic term is actually reduplication:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication
It might seem redundant, but hey, it's the term :)
Posted on: Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn
March 21, 2012 at 1:48 AMBrokensword,
Your distinction between 预定 and 预订 is correct. We've listened to the dialogue and the tones for 房间 are correct.
Posted on: Serving Tea
March 19, 2012 at 8:42 AMSome of the most famous 普洱茶 is from Yunnan province, which is where Kunming is located. The procedure is really cool and involves complicated heating machines that heats the tea water to exact temperatures and stone frogs and animals that change color when tea poured over them is ready to drink. With any luck there'll be random Chinese tea patrons in the same shop who'll be eager to chat you up as well!
Posted on: Chinese Solar Terms
March 19, 2012 at 7:57 AMI've made some changes, sorry about that. Thanks for taking a look!
Posted on: The Kindle
March 19, 2012 at 7:42 AMFrom my understanding, the 是...的 pattern is used exclusively to signify the past tense. If we wanted to indicate that the friend was still abroad and had yet to bring the item back, we'd have to use a different pattern, e.g. 我朋友在美国，我已经托他帮我带一个了 - "My friend is in America. I've told him to bring one back for me." This sentence indicates that the friend has been told by the speaker to pick up the object (which is why the 了 is used) but that the friend is still in America.
Posted on: Serving Tea
March 19, 2012 at 6:28 AMI'd agree that most of the tea you get in normal restaurants is fairly watered-down and weak. I get the impression that you can order nicer tea at some places but I've never done it myself. I did drink plenty of delicious tea in Kunming at various little tea shops; the places I went to there let me sample a bunch of different kinds of teas prepared very gracefully and meticulously. I highly recommend the 普洱茶 (pǔěr chá)!
Posted on: The Kindle
March 19, 2012 at 3:30 AMRob,
The 是...的 pattern is actually used primarily to emphasize something that's already happened so you are correct, thanks for catching it. We'll be fixing it shortly.
As for the font size, the tech team is looking into that now and will hopefully have it fixed up shortly as well :)
Posted on: Restaurant Recommendation
April 5, 2012 at 9:11 AMMatthew,
Your translation is correct. In general, when we translate newbie and elementary lessons we sometimes sacrifice the naturalness of the sentence in order to try to stick to relatively direct translations that won't be as confusing to new learners. This is why we've chosen to translate using words like "article;" while the sentence isn't perfectly natural, it's still readily understood and closer to the Chinese. If this was an intermediate or higher lesson we'd use something closer to yours :)