User Comments - catherinem
catherinem
Posted on: Chinese Zodiac Birth Year
February 17, 2010 at 1:55 AMMy bad ;)
Posted on: Chinese Zodiac Birth Year
February 16, 2010 at 6:22 AMI guess that's up to you, the listener, to decide :)
Posted on: Chinese Zodiac Birth Year
February 16, 2010 at 6:02 AMBasically what's going on is the guy had a bad year last year. His girlfriend broke up with him/etc. Then this pretty girl that they happened to be talking about came up to them to ask for directions. The guy then comments that it might turn out to be a lucky year.
Posted on: Chinese Zodiac Birth Year
February 16, 2010 at 5:58 AM@jgwilson A lot of people have been decked out in red all week. I love it!
Posted on: Learning the Lei Feng Song
February 16, 2010 at 2:24 AM@stevemisch The word for colleague is 同事 tóngshì. This is different from the word for comrade, 同志 tóngzhì. They do sound similar, but there's that sh vs. zh sound. To say homosexual you can use the word 同性恋的 tóngxìngliànde. You're right to notice that the first character in these three words is 同, or same/common/together.
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 7: A Guy's Advice on Women
February 16, 2010 at 2:18 AMPeople definitely slur their words in Chinese. I'd say it varies from region to region, as well, since local accents are so strong. My advice would be to increase your listening exposure to spoken Chinese (and not the news - I find that on the news the announcers annunciate painfully clearly). Try movies and (of course) upper-intermediate and advanced level CPod lessons!
Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming
February 15, 2010 at 8:41 AM@stevemisch simonpettersson makes a lot of good points. I'd just like to add my own perspective as a Chinese learner. The more I think about tones (and worry about saying the wrong ones) the less comfortable I am talking. I think a good way to train yourself is to listen to and practice phrases and sentences (not just individual words). This allows you to train your brain to recognize patterns and to imitate natural speech, as so often Chinese tones change according to context.
To answer your specific question, I think a lot of foreigners try to imitate their native language's speech patterns in Chinese. For example, when asking questions, they end their phrases in the first tone. When angry or demanding, they use the 4th. Normally I hear a lot of neutral. Again this probably depends on a person's native language.
Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming
February 15, 2010 at 8:36 AMNo, in this case the subject of the sentence is 我们. So it's:
我们 we
别 don't/shouldn't /musn't
出去了to go out
Basically since it's going to be so cold, we shouldn't go out tomorrow (the whole expansion phrase is: 明天零下三度，我们别出去了.)
Posted on: Get in line!
February 15, 2010 at 7:14 AMI wasn't able to recreate the problem you encountered. I have two suggestions:
(1) Try to reload the exercises (sorry - a pain if you've already answered a bunch of questions before the dictation section)
(2) Try switching browsers (are you using something other than firefox, chrome or safari?)
If you continue to have this problem, please let us know!
Posted on: An Invitation to the God of Wealth
February 17, 2010 at 7:12 AMThat's too bad! Hope you like tomorrow's!!