Posted on: Have you eaten?

At the top, Connie says you cant say  饭吃过了吗？ (Fàn chī guò le ma?) Have you eaten? So you can use both in the same sentence if you want. I suspect that the guo makes the precise meaning more explicit. Chinese seems to be a language of minimal information, where the context is more heavily relied upon than English. So one may drop the guo even if it is implied. But then again the guo may be there more of less from force of habit since this lesson is about an idiomatic expression.

Posted on: Have you eaten?

Maybe it is interesting to note that Mike in Jubei's suggestion was seized upon when the Hungry Traveler series was launched. I am surprised it never received a response here.

Posted on: Have you eaten?

Even though most newbies like it like this, I am glad most dialogs are not taken this slow anymore. I doubt any native speaker would say wo ye chi guo le quite like that. Although there can be a pause after wo ye. I believe it should be broken into two phrases: wo ye -- chi guo le. Both parts interestingly ending with a neutral tone. I think rhythm and stress and placement of neutral tones are all related.

Posted on: Wait!

mei guan xi is one of my favorite expressions at chinesepod. Although I thought it was pronounced mei guai shi. Another favorite is chi guo le ma. Most lesson plans don't include expressions like these for newbies. Whereas chinesepod exposes its students to high-frequency language in the target language of Chinese, most other programs first introduce the beginner to translations of common expressions from the home language into the target language. This delays the students understanding of how native speakers really use the target language for many years. More distressing than that, it means the learner must unlearn most of what he learned in the first year in later years if his goal is to become fluent in the language. This makes it seem easier for the beginner at first, but this is only because he is really learning his own language in translation and not the target language his teachers claim they are teaching him. As I said, this is NOT what chinesepod does. Instead we learn some simple phrases that are commonly used by native Chinese speakers even if they are not all necessarily easy to translate back into English. It is nice to think that years from now I will be still using these expressions no matter how advanced I get instead of thinking that I will eventually think of my first year of learning as being a complete waste of time in retrospect. So newbies, if you ever get frustrated that some of these expressions are difficult to define, just keep this in mind. Actually, they are easy to define, they are just not that easy to translate. chinesepod always gives us sufficient context in the dialog to understand how these phrases are used and that is what really matters.

Posted on: Wait!

I like to think of

没关系 mei2 guan1xi4

as being the equvalent of the equally idiomatic expression

'no problem'.

I have not seen a context where it does not work as an acceptable translation. I think this captures the spirit of the phrase as well.

This is another example of using mei as the negative rather than bu. I wish I understood when to use which. The explanation in Qing Wen that mei refers to the past doen't seem to explain every case. I what way does this expression refer to the past? Does it literally mean "Has never had any relationship to it." or "Did not apply."? Or maybe "Does not and has never applied".

Come to think of it, 'Does not apply' makes a nice ideomatic translation of it doe it not? Except it does not carry the same spirit. If someone was appologising to you, you would never say 'Does not apply', but you could say 'no problem'. It is a casual way of saying 'No need to worry about it' or 'No need to concern yourself'. I am suggesting that if it means 'no relationship', then perhaps 'Does not apply' would be a more literal interpretation, even though it will not work in most contexts. This is for the benefit of English learners as much as for Chinese learners. changye mentioned that he cannot speak to the slight differences in nuance, so I am trying to fill that gap.

Posted on: Best Friends

'zai lai gam bei' translates to 'give me another one'

When the measure word is used without the noun following it, the measure word can and should be translated to 'one' in English. Just as in English when the context tells you what is meant by 'one', in Chinese there is no need to use the noun, but the measure word is still needed, when the context will supply the noun. In this case the measure word is translatable to 'cup' as in 'give me another cup', but when a measure word actually means something apart from its use as a measure word in my opinion, as I interpret it, it is just as deceiving as when it can't be tranlated. In other words, treat all measure words the same, even the ones with an alternate meaning when not being used as a measure word. So 'one' is the only correct translation even though it is important to understand that it means 'cup' as in a 'cup of beer'. Using a measure word in this way is discussed in the Elementary lesson "

Do I look good in this?

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Posted on: The Broken Chair

Perhaps the reason why this rule about always using pinyn bothers be is that perhaps it is born of newbies frustration when confronted with things that are over their heads. But the best way to learn is to be patient and not let these things bother you. There are two opposite ways of learning a language. The first is to learn it little by little and step by step without exposing the student to anything the student will not understand right away. As we all know, in practice this is impossible. The second method is called immersion. The only real argument in favor of immersion is the observation that if we were dropped from a plane into a land were no one spoke English, we would learn the new language fairly quickly. But what really concerns me is to not discourage the more advanced learners from communicating with one another. There is no telling what we may or may not pick up from their conversations. Yes I do like it when the advanced learners address newbie concerns and level of understanding, but I am curious what everybodies questions are relating to the same dialog.

Posted on: The Broken Chair

The question of whether it is only appropriate to use pinyin in every post on the newbie level, I say it depends on whether a particuliar post is meant for the newbies of people of an intermediate level. As a newbie, I am encouraged that more advanced learners find the newbie lessons useful to them. Too often language material for beginners is dumbed down and does not reflect real usage. More advanced learners recognize the uselessness of that kind of material and would not be here if that were the case at chinesepod.

I also think that even newbies should begin to learn how to read and write in Chinese. (Learning the rules for how to write characters is necessary in order to recognize their shapes when reading them.) No one can hope to speak fluently unless he learns at least 200 - 500 characters. A native speaker knows the difference between a homonym and a word associated with the same character that tends to be translated into different words when found in different contexts. Without that insight, you will be at a disadvantage as a speaker. Besides that, it would be nice to eventually be able to read the storefront signs in the all-chinese neighborhoods.

I read the characters and try to decipher them, even if all I recognize is that the last character is the same 'le' that ends many phrases, I have not studied in vain. On a newbie level even recognizing that is a very good thing. Also I read the characters in the image and try to match them to the characters in the discussion. Don't underestimate the value in trying, even if you don't understand it all.

By far the most frustrating thing about learning a language is we are learning things that we won't understand or appreciate fully for at least two years. We are told that this is high-frequency language, but the only indication of that is the fact that people who are more advanced than us are still interested in it. So the presence of the more advanced students in the newbie discussions is the single most encouraging thing at chinesepod. So stop griping!

I think I should add that the hosts upbeat attitude and explanations of grammar and pronunciation and the natural rhythm of the dialog (which although it seems fast to us newbies is as slow as possible without distorting that rhythm) are the other necessary components to make chinesepod the encouraging place it is for newbies.

Posted on: Guess what I'm learning?

I have studied Cantonese also and I noticed that this lesson forms a question as they do in Cantonese. Cantonese almost never uses ma and when they do, I suspect it is borrowed from Mandarin. "nan bu nan" reflectects the Cantonese style for forming a question. But lately that sentence construction is never found at chinesepod.

So now I suspect that this sentence construction is borrowed from a southern chinese style of speech patterns and does not reflect Beijing style speech patterns. Is this correct? How often is ma used versus the positive negative verb construction for forming question sentences?

Posted on: One-on-One Basketball

Normally, I have found John much stiffer than Ken, but in the last three Intermediate lessons (Taipei, Regional Accents II, One-on-One Basketball) he gave just the right amount of information and explanation, and seemed very relaxed. These episodes are very humorous too; it was fun listening to them. I am not an Intermediate student yet and cannot absorb all the information, but I do think I am aborbing it at an Elementary level. So perhaps the perfect amount of information for me is more than enough for an Intermediate student, but I do not think it works that way; an Intermediate student would simply get more out of it I think.