User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Chinese Characters and the History of Sex in China

Shang oracle bone on tortoise plastron:

Posted on: Chinese Characters and the History of Sex in China

Posted on: Often: Using 常常，经常，通常 (chángcháng, jīngcháng, tōngcháng)

orkelm,

good one :)

elpeggy,

Thanks for that.We've just been discussing tongue twisters on EnglishPod, but I'd call your above example not only a tongue twister,but at the same time a tone twister.Adds another dimension.My chances of being understood saying that seem as remote to me as the Great wall.I can just imagine the perplexed looks of my listener if I try to say that and read their minds [is he mad?] hehe

Posted on: Catch the Train

changye,

I like others on this website have a lot of respect for your wisdom and the great contributions you make [for which I once again thankyou].You make a valid point [btw your English is excellent,and if you weren't stating it as otherwise I would have thought you were a highly educated native speaker ,but that's not important.As you say this is not EnglishPod ].But I don't feel this was the point that Chiogzibide was making.I thought he was responding to the comment:

"Not only that but he actually makes English mistakes in his podcasts!"

I thought he was trying to make the point that "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" .This guy was trying to be highly critical of Ken including his English [with exclamation mark].I mean we all,native speakers included are going to make mistakes with our English from time to time.Big deal.And I'll be the first to confess that everyone's English on this site is way ahead of my Chinese or any other second language.So once again I have great respect for that.

I think Ken's so great that I was flabbergasted when I first read this users last comment and scratched my head.But then I went back through the whole discussion and realised there must be something else going on.I mean to start suggesting drugs etc.Can we really take it seriously ?

Posted on: Catch the Train

This lesson reminds me of that 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow movie "Sliding Doors" which shows two parallel stories;the way her life turns out when she misses the train on this particular day,and the way her life would have turned out if she'd caught the train [better ,but hey ,no pressure next time you're running for the train :) ].A brief clip is here.

Posted on: More Chinese lessons, and now EnglishPod!

kimiik,

Interesting observation.You may well have a point here ,but I must say that I wouldn't have seen it quite in that light or spirit.I thought the bailout was supposedly in everyone's best interest for economic stabilisation etc,and was not quite as altruistic as the "pay it forward" concept seems to me,but I don't profess to understand economics beyond a basic man on the street level.You may be right.I wonder what others think?

Posted on: More Chinese lessons, and now EnglishPod!

Cassie,

Here are some links that discuss it further:

http://www.payitforwardmovement.org/

http://www.payitforwardfoundation.org/index.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223897/

Posted on: More Chinese lessons, and now EnglishPod!

Cassie, you know when someone does you a favour ,you want to pay them back? Well "pay it forward" is different to this usual circumstance.The concept arose in a book called "Pay if forward" which was written by Catherine Ryan Hyde in 2000.It involves doing a favour for someone without any expectation of them paying you back.Instead,when the person wants to return the favour you encourage them to "pay it forward" ,meaning they do a favour for someone else,or preferably 3 people.It doesn't have to be a big favour.But you can see that if you pay forward to 3 people it becomes like a pyramid effect and in this way you can contribute to changing the world.The book led to the "Pay it forward Movement" which created the "Pay it Forward Foundation".Later that year it led to "Pay it Forward" movie which was quite touching,and involved a 12 year old boy who wanted to make the world a better place and used this principle to do it.

Posted on: Argument over Garbage (1)

What a lesson ! I didn't think the lesson title was very inspiring ,but boy was I wrong; a real humdinger,and from the [1] I take it this is only round one.I say bring on round 2 !

I loved the way the old ladies spat out their Chinese.It sounded great.Tones sound so good in an argument.Perhaps that's what I need to improve my tones and more clearly define them.

I was thinking that if these ladies were old that perhaps they may have had trouble with the stairs and it might have been nice n neighbourly to take the garbage down for them,but there was nothing feeble [or old ] sounding about these two.I think they were working on the principle that the best form of defence is attack.A pre-emptive strike.I bet they've read Sun Tzu's Art of War too.Poor guy didn't know what hit him I'm sure.Such a ridiculous argument,and yet you do hear people having such arguments.Even though they sounded guilty to me in that they claimed there was nothing wrong putting the garbage in the corridor,I wonder if D is also a suspect?

Lots of fabulous new vocab too like hualiyouhua.I love the way Chinese constructs these larger concepts.Beautiful.

Posted on: Leaving Luggage with the Hotel

Thanks Pete [and good question RJ].Having seen the list I'm now keen to hear them.I reckon this would make a good [and potentially amusing] Qing Wen.