User Comments - danjo
danjo
Posted on: International Women's Day
June 28, 2007 at 2:21 PMI see comments going back to April about it and the dialogue mp3 has not been fixed...
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 3: The Jealous Friend
June 24, 2007 at 3:02 PMI was able to use 重色轻友 zhong4se4qing1you3 just at the right moment in a conversation today, the first time I've had use for a 成语 cheng2yu3. Got a very good reaction from my friends. ChinesePod lessons are infinitely more interesting and useful than textbooks, thank you.
Posted on: Ice Cream
June 15, 2007 at 4:05 AMI haven't seen Green Tea Ice Cream before but presumably it would be 绿茶冰淇淋 lu4cha2 bing1qi2lin2 (the "lu" having two dots over it, not sure how to type that), lu4cha2 being "green tea." Strawberry (草莓 cao3mei2) and chocolate (巧克力 qiao3ke4li4) are standards as well. Worth trying in China as well (often a "milk tea" flavor but probably ice cream as well) is Hami melon (哈密瓜 Ha1mi4 gua1), a popular sweet melon named after the city in Xinjiang famous for it.
Posted on: Sheep, Wolves, and Fruit: a Riddle
June 14, 2007 at 5:11 AMThis reminds me of an entertaining skit I've seen on YouTube with President Bush and Condoleeza Rice discussing Chinese President Hu Jintao: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=netQl4xnIio
Posted on: Going on a Diet
June 7, 2007 at 9:42 AMChanna, Yes I asked my Chinese teacher about this once and there are two Chinese words for "what a pity" as they love to say in English: 可惜 ke3xi1 and 遗憾 yi2han4 I think they are often preceded by 真 zhen1. Teaching Chinese students English clues you in to common Chinese phrases, as the slightly odd ones they overuse in English tend to be normal in Chinese. Such as "just so-so" (一般般 yi1ban1ban1), "terrible!" (太糟糕了 tai4 zao1gao1 le) or "play" with your friends (玩 wan2 or wanr2). But as my Chinese gets better my English is getting worse...
Posted on: Going to the Gym
June 6, 2007 at 1:49 PMQuite a many of these dialogue mp3s are in high-speed. 越快修了越好．
Posted on: Where Children Come From
June 5, 2007 at 1:53 PMA few questions: In the sentence 爸爸妈妈骗你的 ba4ba ma1ma pian4 ni3de, I don't understand why "de" is at the end of the sentence. I have seen it used after pronouns when it doesn't seem to need to need to be there and I still don't quite grasp it. And vaguely related to the topic, I've been wondering for a while how exactly the term 色狼 se4lang2 (sometimes literally translated as "color wolf" by my Chinese students) is used. At first I thought it was like the slang "player" but I've seen it in dictionaries as "pervert" or more confusingly "satyr" and I'm not sure what context it should be used. At any rate it gets the intended laugh from a Chinese person. What kind of cultural differences are there between Chinese and Westerners talking about sex? No one Chinese I know brings it up and I'm very hesitant to do so myself. And overall I wonder what it's like dating someone in college when you have 6 or 7 people in your dorm room. On campus at night the couples are everywhere trying to find a few feet of privacy.
Posted on: Directory Assistance
May 31, 2007 at 6:01 AMThis was a good lesson, I've been wondering what the "bo1" in 您拨打的电话.... from operator messages was for a long time. Does anyone familiar with phone message vocabulary in China care to share a few words? Apparently 欠费 qian4fei4 ("lacking funds") means you need to add more money.
Posted on: Directory Assistance
May 31, 2007 at 5:32 AMIt is indeed normal practice in China to use Arabic numerals instead of the Chinese characters. Especially for things like phone numbers, addresses, prices, etc. To the great relief of foreign tourists.
Posted on: A Chinese-Style Contradiction
June 30, 2007 at 12:52 PMThere is a very well-known Chinese song which roughly means "Mother is the best in the world" and uses a modified version of 世界上 shi4jie4 shang4: 世上只有妈妈好 shi4 shang4 zhi3 you3 ma1ma hao3. Chinese songs are easily downloaded off of mp3.baidu.com.