User Comments - John
John
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
July 17, 2007 at 1:47 AMLostinAsia, Anyone know anything about the heating/ cooling foods issue? (I suspect it's in the Advanced Podcasts somewhere, but I'm not at that level yet.) I don't know a lot about it myself, but there is an Advanced podcast coming out about it, probably next month. (Sorry if that doesn't help any!)
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
July 17, 2007 at 1:43 AMRash, You asked: "In the lesson it's explained that the sentence "还要什么吗" uses "吗" to make the question more polite and inquisitive. [...] I'm curious now when is it absolutely not ok to use 吗 at the end of my question sentences, since my general thought before was to reserve this for yes or no questions only." Perhaps we didn't make it entirely clear, but in your example, 还要什么吗 (hái yào shénme ma), the function of 吗 (ma) is not merely for politeness (although it is indeed a polite question). In actuality, it works like this: 还要什么？ (hái yào shénme?) What else do you want? 还要什么吗？ (hái yào shénme ma?) Do you want something else? So the key here is the versatility of 什么 (shénme). It can go back and forth between meaning "what" and meaning "something." So, as you can see, it really was a yes/no question after all. Stick to the rule, and just keep plugging away at the rest of Chinese grammar, and you'll do fine.
Posted on: Introducing the Grammar Guide
July 16, 2007 at 8:38 AMBazza, That was one of the "prototype" pages that went up before the popups were working properly. I'll get it fixed ASAP. Also, note that there is a blog post about the Grammar Guide up as well.
Posted on: Introducing the Grammar Guide
July 16, 2007 at 3:50 AMA Praxis Language blog post will be going up shortly which talks about the Grammar Guide.
Posted on: #7
July 11, 2007 at 1:22 AMThis clip is good because so much of the language is really basic Chinese. Unfortunately, it's quite fast, but if you listen to it a few times, you should get it.
Posted on: Watching a DVD
July 10, 2007 at 3:11 AMMatty, It's closest to "harmed. I really couldn't watch it." I'd translate it literally as something more like "harmed me such that I really couldn't watch it."
Posted on: 猜字谜
July 9, 2007 at 2:10 AM哎呀！Maryzhu，你这叫spoiler！ （Connie，spoiler怎么说？）
Posted on: #5
July 6, 2007 at 8:44 AMArt, Hmmm, I guess chhosing the movie for us would make it a bit easier for you to guess... :)
Posted on: Introducing the Grammar Guide
July 17, 2007 at 1:52 AMBazza, Thanks for the bug reports. Unfortunately, a LOT of the javascript rollovers had to be done by hand... by me! Argghhh.... manually coding those things greatly increases the chance for error. Frank, Henning's got it. Don't worry. A lot of the explanations still need to be "dumbed down," but there hasn't been time yet. Hang in there!