User Comments - John
John
Posted on: Chinese Wedding Customs
July 6, 2007 at 5:43 AMLantian, "Dei va" is Shanghainese. Shanghainese residents often throw little tidbits of their dialect into their Mandarin, such as ending questions with "hao vu la" rather than 好吗. It appears even our dear Jenny is not immune.
Posted on: #6
July 5, 2007 at 9:07 AMI loved this movie. I have yet to see the movie it was a remake of, but I keep meaning to...
Posted on: #6
July 5, 2007 at 3:27 AMLantian, With wording like "after 11:17am," you can never be late. You can only be early. So we are neither late nor early. :) Anyway, WE HAVE A WINNER! The winner of the contest is danjo. He was the first one to guess the movie correctly. Congratulations to danjo! Good work. Everybody else: 加油！ You will have more chances. For those of you dying to know the answer, here is its IMDb profile. Now that the answer is out there, we'll be happy to answer any vocab or grammar questions about the Chinese in the audio clip.
Posted on: Condoms
July 5, 2007 at 2:22 AMdusty, I listened, and the pronunciation seems standard to me. Maybe it was just a little fast?
Posted on: Chinese Wedding Customs
July 5, 2007 at 2:12 AMlongfei, Wow, you have a sharp ear! You're right, she says something that sounds like "dei va" rather than "duì ba." Fortunately this is an intermediate lesson, so it shouldn't pose too much of a problem, but I'll have to listen more carefully in the future to make sure she keeps her Shanghainese in check! :)
Posted on: Guess what I'm learning?
July 5, 2007 at 1:27 AManayelena asked:
Can someone explain why we say, "Wo zai daxue xuexi." and do not say "Wo zai xuexi daxue."在 (zài) has different functions depending on what comes after it. If a place comes after it, as in 在大学 (zài dàxué), it means "at..." or, in our example, "at (the) university." If a verb comes after it, as in 在学习 (zài xuéxí), it means "be [doing something]" or, in our example, "be studying." So the order is very important! In Chinese, the place of an action usually comes before the action: 在 (zài) + PLACE + VERB It takes some getting used to, but with repeated exposure and some practice, you'll get the hang of it. P.S. 我在学习大学 (Wǒ zài xuéxí dàxué) means "I am studying universities." It's a possible, grammatical sentence!
Posted on: #6
July 4, 2007 at 4:16 AMClock. Clock is ticking. You know what I meant.
Posted on: #6
July 4, 2007 at 4:14 AMOh yeah, and after the contest is over, we're going to go into the details of the language in the clip. In the meantime, that click is ticking...
Posted on: Experiencing Agricultural Life
July 1, 2007 at 8:37 AMhenning, Thanks for the on-topic question. We'll have the native Chinese teachers answers to it on Monday, when they work.
Posted on: #6
July 6, 2007 at 7:21 AMf1b1, I will definitely at least watch the first one. I hear it gets worse with each sequel (a typical movie trend), so I'm not sure if I'll watch the others, but we'll see.