User Comments - John
John
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 19, 2008 at 7:45 AMbbjt, This lesson was less challenging than many other Upper Intermediate lessons, but it's good to have these, to help bridge the gap. In my view, All You Can Eat and Drink was a little too vocab-heavy, but that's excusable occasionally if it doesn't become the default lesson format.
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 7:32 AMI'm always a little nervous whenever I fill in for Ken, afraid that his fanbase will mutiny on me. Glad to see that I have managed to appease them again... (Either that, or all they care about is Jenny) :]
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 6:57 AMmisterjess, You can get pho, but Vietnamese food is ridiculously expensive here. I would eat it a lot more often if it weren't!
Posted on: Introducing the Grammar Guide
February 19, 2008 at 6:54 AMchrissg55, The Grammar Guide was up for a while, but later taken down for a technical revamp. It will be going back up soon!
Posted on: 还是 háishi OR 或者 huòzhě
February 19, 2008 at 3:14 AMI am the mountain of linguistic strength!
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 3:04 AMMmmm... Chunky Soup... Many a meal was made of Chunky Soup in my college days.
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 18, 2008 at 7:17 AMHey, isn't this a lesson about LOVE? How could our innocent poddies have turned it into a discussion on S&M??? :P This was an unusual lesson in that there was not a whole lot to say about it, grammatically or even with regards to vocab. It was less than 10 minutes long! Did you guys appreciate having a shorter Upper Intermediate lesson?
Posted on: I Have Class
February 16, 2008 at 9:42 AMChangye is right. Crazy as it sounds, 现在 (xiànzài) is a noun in Chinese. So are 今天 (jīntiān) and 明年 (míngnián). They are not just any nouns, though; they are "time nouns" or "temporal nouns," and function somewhat differently from most nouns and somewhat similarly to how we English speakers would expect an adverb to function. Don't worry about this, though. It's mostly just a discussion for grammarians that have a need to construct a self-consistent grammatical framework for Mandarin which exists independently of any other language. For us learners it doesn't really make much difference.
Posted on: I Have Class
February 16, 2008 at 3:40 AMChangye, You are right. When I lived in Hangzhou, there was a time when I was both teaching and taking Chinese classes. Every time I talked about my schedule and used the word 上课 (shàngkè), it had to be clarified... (讲课 (jiǎngkè) is not as common... It certainly does feel like the Chinese have a high tolerance for ambiguity at times...)
Posted on: Introducing the Grammar Guide
February 20, 2008 at 4:35 AMRJBerki, I understand completely. I'm feeling very impatient about it myself!