User Comments - calicartel

Posted on: Military Training

First rate lesson, pitched at just the right level in my opinion. It's good being able to watch a speaker from time to time, as opposed to just hearing them.

Posted on: Karaoke

pearltowerpete,

you wrote "I suspect a lot of [Teresa Teng's] popularity is nostalgia instead of real appreciation for her syrupy singing. She was one of the first artists to make it big after a long period of utter cultural desolation".

Our liking of popular songs is 90% nostalgia at the best of times. Why do some people love to hear Elvis Presley or the Everly Brothers? Because it brings back their youth in a flash. This being said, I would like to know what an opera buff would have to say about Teresa Teng's voice. To me it sounds exceptionally pure and hyperfeminine but I am anything but a voice expert. Which "period of utter cultural desolation" do you mean? Teresa Teng was from Taiwan, as I understand her songs were even banned on the mainland. There's a story about her songs being listened to by night, and of Deng Xiao Ping being secretly writing love letters to her and exhorting her to defect. The Wang Fei (王菲) you mention is Faye Wong isn't she? Why do they reverse the characters (or why do you, come to that)?

By the way, the KTVs I went to in Southern China were, uhm - how should I say? - not exactly legit places for a night out with your family and kids, more like "Executive Clubs" catering to the needs of unaccompanied males. How do you say a "line-up" in Chinese?

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team

Regarding the pronunciation of "Bill", I think Chinese phonemes never end with a consonant, so the latter will automatically mutate to a vocal sound. For people familiar with Portuguese, "Bill" is pronounced here exactly like in Brazil.

Are Chinese grammatical concepts radically different? That would mean the basic rules of human language are not universal, something Noam Chomsky, for one, would disagree with. What is very different is that in Chinese there are no declensions (word endings) to tell you what grammatical category a word belongs to. That makes Chinese sentence analysis all the more challenging.

My lower intermediate vocab for the J&J dialogue (not howler-proof though):

• 企业 qi3 ye4 company / firm / enterprise
• 军队 jun1 dui4 army troops
• 强 qiang2 strong / powerful
• 文雅 wen2 ya3 elegant / refined
• 友好 you3 hao3 friendly (relations)
• 普遍 pu3 bian4 universal / general / widespread / common
• 假使 jia3 shi3 if / in case / suppose / given ...
• 打招呼 da3 zhao1 hu5 to greet sb by word or action
• 固定 gu4 ding4 fixed / set / regular
• 报销 bao4 xiao1 submit an expense account / apply for reimbursement
• 的确 di2 que4 really / indeed
• 顿 dun4 classifier for meals
• 过程 guo4 cheng2 course of events / process
• 看不起 kan4 bu5 qi3 to look down upon / to despise
• 老大 lao3 da4 leader of a group / boss / leader of a criminal gang
• 老大哥 lao3 da4 ge1 big brother
• 表面 biao3 mian4 surface / face / outside / appearance

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 3: A Call for Innovation

My vocab pickings for the J&J dialogue:

•  流行 liu2 xing2 to spread /popular / fashionable / prevalent / (math.) manifold 
• 业务 ye4 wu4 business / profession
•  残 can2 to destroy / cruel / oppressive / savage / brutal
•  社会 she4 hui4 society
• 当中 dang1 zhong1 among / in the middle / in the center
• 国歌 guo2 ge1 national anthem
• 故意 gu4 yi4 deliberately / on purpose
• 代沟 dai4 gou1 generation gap

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 1: A New Manager

I'm only warming up to this series now after having completed the Zhangliang+Lili series.

About English words creeping into Jenny's speech, an important principle of learning might be at stake quite apart from the fact that opportunities may be lost to hear/rehearse some useful Chinese terms. I've read than young children can get raised on two languages, ie mum addressing the child in one language and dad doing so in quite another. However, according to the experts each parent should stick to one and the same language, otherwise the child gets confused. I rather second Dave's suggestion to limit mixing to a minimum. I understand it must be a tough job for J&J (mum&dad) to keep from crossing the line while still having a meaningful and natural-sounding conversation.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 5: Wang Tries to Excel at the Office

Using the Chinese interface on one's cell phone is a good way to enforce learning of quite a handful of terms. I have a Nokia 6300 and I have already constituted a vocab list of about 20 terms. If a lesson full of interface lingo is planned, cell phones would be a good choice because we all use a cell phone with pretty much the same functionalities while the software each of us work with can vary a lot. Paintbrush, Excel and Word  have little in common. Nokia, Samsung and Motorola all do the same things.

Posted on: Buying a Plasma TV

Here a couple of words I looked up from the J&J dialogue, no guarantee:

• 常见    chang2 jian4    commonly seen / common / to see sth frequently
• 流行    liu2 xing2    to spread / popular / fashionable
• 照相机    zhao4 xiang4 ji1    camera
• 状态    zhuang4 tai4    state of affairs / state / mode / situation
• 提到    ti2 dao4    to mention / to raise (a subject) / to refer to

About LCD vs. plasma, I heard plasma TV had to be kept upright all the time so you can't buy one off-the-shelf to take home yourself. And you may have a problem when moving home. This is probably one of the reasons LCD is in the lead although there would be a size-related choice (big vs. very big).

Posted on: Will you Marry Me?

Versions of 月亮代表我的心

The less young among us will probably prefer Teresa Teng's version from having first heard that song through Teresa Teng's crystal voice decades ago. Whenever there is a Teresa Teng version of a Chinese song, that's the one I most like.

Talking of classical songs, why don't we have a lesson on an even more classical, indeed an ancient one:Du Shang Xi Lou (独上西楼)

http://v.backchina.com/watch.php?video=uOp8rRj8stc

 chanelle77,

or did you marry him before expatriation so that eventually in China you can divorce him under Western law and sue the life out of him?

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 6: Up-and-Comer in the Office

bingge  said on December 17, 2008:

"At the beginning, Jenny said "他是销售”。He is sales.  Does this mean "sales-person"?  Does it have any other connotations?"

bingge, I asked myself the same question as I'm rather sensitive to shifts between grammatical categories. This is what the dictionnary tells us:

销售 xiāo shòu    to sell / market / sales

So it can be a noun as well as a verb but unfortunately the nouns (market/sales) are not the one we'r looking for (salesman). Besides, no measure word is present. I'll just remember "销售" as a verb until further notice. You could roughly translate "Selling is what you're doing". Note that it is not the same "xiao" as in "小偷  xiǎo tōu =   thief".

If anyone knows any better let'm correct me!

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 6: Up-and-Comer in the Office

Pearltowerpete,

Regarding my criticism of translations, I was thinking of the offhandedness of some translations in the vocab lists (compared to the otherwise correct translation within the text). Take the Key Vocabulary and Supplementary Vocabulary lists in the lesson "Confiding in a conniving friend".

- 居然 = surprising. This suggests the word is a adjective whereas in the text (and I suspect elsewhere as well) it is more likely to function as an adverb, ie to mean "surprisingly". It is corrected rendered in the text, in context, as "to my surprise".

- 背着 = behind back. When you read this out of context you don't immediately understand that what is meant is "behind *someone's* back", ie without them knowing.

- 欺骗 = cheat. This would suggest a person is meant while - correct me if I'm wrong - it is the verb "to cheat" which is meant here.

I realise hitting the bull's eye in vocab lists is not easy. Many Chinese texts add grammatical categories to isolated vocab (Prep ; N ; V etc.).