User Comments - abelle
abelle
Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi
December 11, 2010 at 10:49 AMI actually used 打的 --dǎdī (which I learned from a previous teacher) in a dialogue yesterday. In our Chinese class, our teacher starts the class by asking the students to briefly say what's going on in their lives on that day. All in Chinese, of course. Yesterday I said that my husband was returning from 阿根廷 --Āgēntíng. The teacher asked how he was going to get home from the airport if I was in class. I said, 没问题, he was going to 打的. Miss my Chinese class just to bring my husband home from the airport? No way!!
Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi
December 11, 2010 at 10:38 AMPretzellogic, my husband just returned from a week's business trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. He said that at least half of the taxis he rode in didn't have working seatbelts in the back. (So I remembered your comment about taxis in Chinese.) He said he had the scariest taxi ride in his life last Thursday when he and his colleagues took a taxi to the airport for their flight home. They were late leaving the hotel and told the taxi driver to hurry and get them there as soon as possible. There was a lot of traffic so the guy was weaving in and out of this heavy traffic, with the three Americans hanging on for dear life without seatbelts.
Posted on: Buying a Shirt
December 9, 2010 at 10:52 AMNi hao, I have a question: In this lesson, the vocab for al all cotton shirt is 全棉 quánmián. In school, we just learned 纯棉 chúnmián. What is the difference? Xie xie.
Posted on: Christmas
December 9, 2010 at 10:47 AMThanks for this lesson. As Christmas is quickly approaching, I was looking for related lessons so that I have some vocabulary if our teacher starts discussing this holiday in class and gives us a writing assignment. I have to laugh because my former Chinese teacher (originally from Harbin and educated in Beijing before she immigrated to the US with her family) actually gave ELECTRIC toothbrushes to her family one Christmas. She thought it was a great gift but they didn't seem to appreciate it. Her daughter didn't use hers and her husband only used his when he started having problems with his teeth. So yes, someone does actually give toothbrushes as Christmas presents.
Posted on: Possible, Possibly, Possibility
December 5, 2010 at 9:36 PMThanks for that extra vocab word, declan85!
Posted on: Buying a Shirt
December 5, 2010 at 12:01 PMThank you for this lesson too. It's similar to a writing and speaking exercise I am preparing. I have to pretend that I'm a sales lady trying to sell an all-cotton T-shirt which is 50 percent off. So the vocabulary comes in handy. I especially like 摸摸, as I don't think the other students will have that word in their presentations.
Posted on: Possible, Possibly, Possibility
December 4, 2010 at 6:17 PMThanks for this lesson. Yesterday in class, I was looking for the word "maybe" and thought 可能 meant "to be able to" and it didn't seem to fit. Our classroom is odd: the heat works at the beginning of class but then the air gets cold towards the end of the class. So I wanted to say in Chinese "Maybe the heat only works from 8 am until 9 am". Can I say that in Chinese using 可能? Xie xie.
Posted on: What does she look like?
December 4, 2010 at 6:06 PMThanks for this lesson. I had a writing exercise at school to describe someone. I used my daughter as the subject, and the vocabulary came in very handy!
Posted on: 一...就... (yī...jiù...) pattern
November 29, 2010 at 10:42 AMXie xie, Connie!
Posted on: Can't Get a Taxi
December 12, 2010 at 12:31 PMWell, that's quite an interesting topic! Ours is quite mundane. This weekend, one of our homework assignments is to write a couple of sentences about President Obama's tax cuts, using a vocabulary word we learned: 至于 -- zhìyú. I came up with something and I hope it makes sense!