User Comments - billglover

Posted on: Chinese New Year News

春节快乐。恭喜发财。

Firstly, if you want a great place to share your study resources with other ChinesePod users? Support my idea here: http://tr.im/clsh

Finally, in the spirit of New Year, here is a clip of a parrot wishing you a prosperous new year.

Posted on: Don't push that button

Just a quick question about the tones on 背 (back) in the expansion exercises.

In the expansion exercise this is written with the first tone, bēi. I was wondering whether this should be fourth tone, bèi.

背 bèi learn by heart; the back of the body

背 bēi to be burdened; to carry on the back or shoulder

背 bēi carry on one's back 

Posted on: News and Features - Mid-January News

I like the ChinesePod's User Voice forum - great idea. Surprised to see no official comments yet as this has been up for a while. A lot of the ideas will probably result in clarification questions. Would be good if these were all visible on the forum.

Will this forum be linked from the main ChinesePod.com site?

Posted on: Late December News

Twitter is what you make of it. You generally tend to get out what you put in. And, I suppose, in that sense it does involve a certain time commitment. That said, Twitter is a lot more than a simple way to update your status. It is not another way to check for blog updates (If @ChinesePod was just used to let us know when new lessons were out, I wouldn't bother following. I have iTunes for that). It doesn't work for everyone, and there is no reason it should be forced on people.

Not all of my follows are related to China/Chinese but a number of them are.

I follow a couple of people who Tweet in Chinese. When you don't know a language, 140 characters (the Twitter limit for a single update) is a lot easier to digest than a blog or news site.

Using Twitter I have exchanged language learning techniques, vocab lists, and even tried a few simple exercises in Mandarin. Despite all that, Twitter did not make it into my top 5 tools for learning Chinese.

I would be very interested in hearing any Twitter success (or failure) stories which are related to learning Chinese. Please drop me a message or even get in touch on Twitter: @BillGlover

Posted on: Late December News

@BillGlover on Twitter

Happy to help anyone get up and running with Twitter, please just ask.

Posted on: Chinese Hospitality and Finding Vegetarian Food

Firstly, I'm sorry to hear that Amber has left. I wish her all the best in all that NY has to offer.

Secondly I'd like to offer my apologies for bringing such a rumour (true or not) over to ChinesePod before any official announcement was made. If I had thought about it, I probably should have sent Amber a private message first before posting here. Apologies, I never intended to start further rumours. I posted the question out of a desire to find the truth and not to preempt any official announcement.

Thanks to the ChinesePod team for letting us know. Ken, I think you are right: The personality of the hosts (yourself included) add a great deal to the ChinesePod community. It would be more worrying for ChinesePod if a key person such as Amber were to leave without causing at least a small stir among fans.

Posted on: Chinese Hospitality and Finding Vegetarian Food

Rumours are floating around that the Dear Amber show has come to an end? Have I completely misread something or is there any truth in this?

Would be sorry to see ChinesePod concentrate only on the language and ignore some of the useful insights provided by shows such as the (former) Saturday Show and Dear Amber.

Posted on: The Person Component

Looking forward to this series. I've hit a limit with character memorisation precisely because I'm learning them by trying to memorise their appearance.

This works ok when you only know a few characters, but I've hit the 60ish character mark and I'm confusing characters all over the place.

Downloading now.

Posted on: Stupid Doctor

@sebire - I take it to mean, "ing". I've been told that this is only true sometimes but I'd need to get a dictionary to find out the other meanings.

For me, "ing" is good enough for now.  

Posted on: Stupid Doctor

@sebire, @dunderklumpen - Thanks for the confirmation of 着 meaning 'ing'.

我太太说:

Despite the fact that 有一个 translates literally as "have one," it actually means "there is". She remembers struggling with this when learning English.

So the translation would be: There was a child who was sick. Her mother took him to see a doctor.

@dunderklumpen - Looks like you were right. But note the she (她) instead of he (他).

谢谢你们。