User Comments - John
John
Posted on: In-Laws and Drinking
September 12, 2007 at 2:08 AMTaiPan, When my parents came to visit, the places we saw were Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou. They also went to one of the little "river towns" outside of Shanghai. They were quite satisfied getting the different elements of north/south, bit city/small town, urban/natural. I wouldn't recommend Xi'an unless you have a lot of time, though. I think it's quite overrated, and it's too far away from everything to justify the trip.
Posted on: Election Candidates
September 11, 2007 at 8:36 AMwildyaks, Oops, it would appear that the 才能 examples in the dictionary are all examples of 才 (adv.) + 能 (aux.). This 才能 link might be more helpful.
Posted on: Election Candidates
September 11, 2007 at 8:34 AMwildyaks, As for your other question regarding 快... 了, yes, it means "will... soon." Both 快要 (kuàiyào) and 就要 (jiùyào) mean "be about to" and both are frequently followed by 了. Regarding your sentence (我快要喝咖啡 了), it's a little bit strange in Chinese, because the patterns mentioned above usually apply to things that can be observed objectively, whereas your example is actually the expression of a desire, or a plan. What you really want to say is, "I would like to drink coffee, and I am planning to drink some right now." In Chinese you would express the idea more directly along those lines, with something like, "我正想喝咖啡了" (Wǒ zhèng xiǎng hē kāfēi le). I hope this helps!
Posted on: Election Candidates
September 11, 2007 at 7:20 AMwildyaks said: it says 能力(nengli). but the speaker says "shili". Is that 实力? Can you use 实力 shili, 能力 nengli, 才能caineng, 本事 benshi interchangeably? Or are there certain context in which certain words are more commonly used? Are there differences in meaning? Sorry about the text/voice mismatch. We have fixed it. In this case, the difference between the words is not very big. I'm not sure if you appreciate how much work it would be to compare all four of those words exhaustively. What I can do is offer dictionary links which provide further examples of each word in use: 实力, 能力, 才能, 本事 If, after looking at those, you have specific questions, we'll be happy to help with those.
Posted on: Shaolin Temple
September 11, 2007 at 7:12 AMsekrethi, This use of 则 (zé) is an adverb. I agree that it's quite challenging to get the hang of at first. Wenlin translates it as "then" or "in that case." You might also think of it as "on the other hand." It doesn't consistently translate into any one word or phrase in English; you kind of have to see it enough to get the hang of it. The de-emphasis of grammar that you detect is a part of the top-down approach. To compensate for what some learners perceive as a shortcoming of the system, we have developed a comprehensive Grammar Guide which is still being fleshed out.
Posted on: Olympic Training
September 11, 2007 at 2:10 AMWalter, Sorry, I'm not Jenny or Amber, but I can answer your question anyway. Hope that's OK. :) Few prepositions are completely interchangeable, although some are interchangeable in some cases. In this case, the 为 (wèi) means "for," and none of the other prepositions you mentioned have that meaning, so they would be grammatically incorrect and very strange. One preposition you might possibly use instead of 为 (wèi) in this case is 给 (gěi), which can also mean "for."
Posted on: Olympic Training
September 11, 2007 at 2:04 AMLinguisticpotato, Boba? That might be inappropriate... (Do an image search for 波霸 (bōbà) to see what it means.) 珍珠奶茶 (zhēnzhū nǎichá), however, we could do...
Posted on: Man or Woman?
September 11, 2007 at 2:00 AMnicolas, Yes, it can have that connotation as well... "silly" in sort of a ditzy way.
Posted on: Calisthenics
September 11, 2007 at 1:51 AMBazza, According to my Google results, 10次 (shí cì) is the preferred way of saying it.
Posted on: Death by Ninja
September 12, 2007 at 2:57 AMI think it's safe to say that Peter's noble mission of bringing cheap hammers to the fine people of Canada is over.