User Comments - John
John
Posted on: Jewish Holiday
September 17, 2009 at 2:28 AMFor all you non-Jewish poddies out there, be sure you at least know the word 犹太人 (Yóutàirén). You'd be surprised how often the subject comes up (more often than zombies, even), and the Chinese often have very interesting perspectives on the Jewish people, so those are conversations you don't want to miss out on for lack of the basic vocabulary!
Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture
September 16, 2009 at 6:08 AMdunderklumpen,
You could preface your clarification with, 你是说……？ and then repeat what you thought you heard (or the general gist).
Posted on: Tone Change Rule: Yi '一'
September 16, 2009 at 6:07 AMadventurer,
If all your other tones were right, and this is all you messed up on, it wouldn't be a big deal.
But yes, getting this tone rule down will definitely help make your accent more natural.
Posted on: Tone Change Rule: Yi '一'
September 15, 2009 at 8:58 AMeverett,
Definitely possible. We don't always consciously know what our brains our doing, but as stevemisch points out, even linguistically, we're always seeking the path of least resistance.
Posted on: Tone Change Rule: Yi '一'
September 15, 2009 at 4:28 AMxiaophil,
We do have the parenthetical breakdowns for each word in the PDF. It's really important for the learner to understand that the tone changes are not reflected in the pinyin. They must be learned.
So this PDF is consistent with all other lesson PDFs, which follow he proper rules of how to write tone in pinyin.
Posted on: Tone Change Rule: Yi '一'
September 15, 2009 at 1:49 AMmisterjess,
You mean is there an internal logic behind what tones are used for what word? No. That's one of language's inherent properties: its arbitrariness (with a very few exceptions).
Posted on: Tone Change Rule: Yi '一'
September 15, 2009 at 1:28 AMAlso, this series was quite spaced out. This was part three of three. Here are the other two:
Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture
September 14, 2009 at 1:24 AMI've spent quite a few hours assembling Ikea furniture. You could say it's lost its charm for me...
你们呢？谁装过？谁重装过？
Posted on: Farewell, Sweet Pete
September 17, 2009 at 8:37 AMcalkins,
Pete, the man, is irreplaceable, but of course we will need to hire someone (or multiple people) to do the tasks Pete did.
We have some candidates, but no final decisions yet. We'll keep the community updated via the usual channels.