User Comments - bodawei
bodawei
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 19, 2009 at 12:21 PM@panda2
Thanks, I'm indebted to you for that. In particular I am now a lot clearer about the 'grass mud horse' video that's doing the rounds. I had not seen an English version before tonight. I had been enjoying it at a prurient level...and of course the catchy tune, and cute graphics, but there is apparently more to life than all that!
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 19, 2009 at 11:48 AM@chauncy
well it wouldn't work in Oz anyway! I remember the 60s and 70s (dimly) when a very alcoholic apple cider was a popular (and cheap) drink at parties.
Maybe in the US the non-alcolholic version is more common. I haven't seen it here for years - the non-alcoholic stuff is called 'sparking apple juice' in Sydney, not cider.
Posted on: Language Power Struggle
April 19, 2009 at 11:36 AM@miantiao
ha, ha - you're right. Our daughter who also lives in CD spent a long time looking for LPs without success - now she just pays for teachers. Much better. I did too for a while in CD - 45 RMB an hour for a qualified teacher, one on one. Definitely the way to go.
Posted on: Napkins, Facebook, and Ctrip -- What a Combination!
April 19, 2009 at 10:40 AMI was surprised by that comment about booking airline tickets - I was helping friends who just left for SH yesterday, booking internal tickets online. The 70% discounts disappeared a few weeks in advance and by a few days in advance the best was say a 20% discount. By then it is probably best to buy full price and get refundability. My experience has always been the earlier the cheaper.
A few years ago in Oz you could get big discounts on same day of travel - but that 'offering' seems to have disappeared along with metal cutlery.. :-)
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 18, 2009 at 2:31 PMbarbs
I've gotta get up with the technology (just tried but failed to get it) - but take the link you gave me and there are two videos in the right column - Chinese 4 Court Trial and Part 2 of the same thing. It's a senior Chinese class (in California?) doing a mock trial.
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 18, 2009 at 1:47 PMbarbs
there is also the student effort Cheng v. Wang - nice musical touches with 'Duel of the Fates' and 'Anakin's Dark Deeds'. Also a young male student makes a gallant effort playing a former girlfriend of the victim called Miss Tian!
Posted on: The Magic Word 把
April 18, 2009 at 6:34 AM探险队的营地 (basecamp):
探险 tan4xian3 (adventure) 队 dui4 (team) 的 营地 ying2di4 (camp). Any better ways of saying this?
我把我的词典留在探险队的营地。
Posted on: The Magic Word 把
April 18, 2009 at 6:21 AM@all
探险队的营地 = basecamp
Lovely lesson everyone - I look forward to future lessons at higher altitude.
但是我觉得在高空呼吸困难，把高空送给我高空正！
Posted on: Business Card Gone Wrong
April 18, 2009 at 2:26 AM@changye, chauncy
Now we're making progress - yi corresponds to the most number of different characters in the language, AND 一 is also the 2nd most commonly occuring character in the language, 以 is the 26th most common. Is yi the enemy, not shi?
But there is another way of looking at this - because of frequency, if you know just the top 30 characters in terms of frequency, you will be able to recognise more than 20% of the characters you encounter in reading articles in a newspaper say.
That is SO GOOD until you realise that (as noted above) 70% of Chinese words are a combination of two characters.
By the way, I have been quoting 现代汉字 published by Sinolingua Beijing in 1994.
Posted on: Language Power Struggle
April 19, 2009 at 12:59 PM@miantiao
I appreciate the exercises in reading you give me - 可是你的中文水平比我高。 I get 'of course it's true, getting a private teacher is the way to go - but the subtlety of the last two sentences I can only guess at! Do you mean this is what happens when you do the LP thing? Do you mind translating?
Do you come from up Rocky way? Good luck with the building