User Comments - danjo
danjo
Posted on: Getting Reimbursed
September 28, 2007 at 12:31 PMIn the Exercises, Part 1, I'm confused by questions 2 and 8. I was under the impression that 了 could be put after the verb(s) or just at the end of the sentence, and so both sentences in those questions are correct. Why is just one correct and how can I understand the difference?
Posted on: Don't Leave
September 28, 2007 at 12:08 PMThere are certain words which recur all the time in Chinese pop songs, and 寂寞 jìmò is one of them. Others include 伤害 shānghài (injure)，无所谓 wúsuǒwèi (whatever/I don't care)，and 哭 kū (cry). I've actually been meaning to make a Bingo board out of them. It would fun to play with friends on long-distance bus rides, when they often play music videos with sub-titles. Chinese pop is quite melodramatic.
Posted on: Li Yan's Diary: Love and Italian Food
September 27, 2007 at 3:12 AMAbout the "yan" sound... it's a special case where the "an" is pronounced like "ian" (for reasons I'm not very clear about), so it sounds like "yian" or "yehn" to put it more phonetically. This was very confusing at first.
Posted on: #18
September 27, 2007 at 2:59 AMJoin Netflix, they have a lot.
Posted on: Godzilla in Shanghai
September 24, 2007 at 5:52 AMhttp://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/09/10/big-brother-godzilla Hm, I wonder who wrote this lesson...
Posted on: Cycling
September 22, 2007 at 7:42 AMThis is the first time I've heard the term 脚踏车 jiǎotàchē; I've never heard a bicycle called anything but a 自行车 zìxíngchē.
Posted on: Death by Ninja
September 21, 2007 at 6:27 AMYou never know when knowing the word for "ninja" will come in handy. In fact, it came up this summer while traveling in China, when we watched a (truly awful) movie called "Ninja Kids" on the bus. This was one of my favorite lessons.
Posted on: Personal Questions and Bargaining
September 20, 2007 at 3:25 AMI asked a Chinese friend about responding to personal questions and she told me to say 这是一个秘密 (It's a secret). This works pretty well, they usually smile. The only one I don't like is about my salary, but when I explain that in my country our custom is to not tell other people, they're always fine with that.
Posted on: Drinking Ability
September 19, 2007 at 9:19 AMA student of mine, referring to an ambitious classmate: "Solomon is very good at drinking. He will make a good Party leader." I think it is very difficult to spend any amount of time in China and claim that talking about drinking is irrelevant to the culture or language. It is different from that in the West but China has a HUGE drinking culture. As a teacher at a university in China I also strongly disagree that class and English corner are by nature intellectual; my students' favorite topics are more along the lines of delicious food and boyfriends and this has struck me as the norm.
Posted on: 你好 (Nǐhǎo) is a Many-Splendored Thing
September 29, 2007 at 7:39 AMI started off using Pimsleur to learn Chinese and it taught 你好吗? early on. It also taught that you must say 人民币 rénmínbì when talking about prices, which I have not once heard a Chinese person say. Looking back those lessons were seriously lacking (didn't even have a transcript; had to look everything up in the dictionary if I even wanted to know the pinyin). There is a fairly obnoxious foreign teacher at my school with atrocious Chinese (after 4 years here) who struts into stores and restaurants shouting 你好吗?? and getting no response. I find it very embarrassing to be there.