User Comments - foleadu
foleadu
Posted on: Addressing People
August 3, 2008 at 2:05 AMVery useful review of all the titles. I was travelling in Yunnan recently and noticed that customers preferred to use 小伙子 xiao3huo3zi to address young male waiters in restaurants (as well as 小姑娘 xiao3gu1niang2 for the young girls). I don't know if you can use that everywhere in China. You're right that 服务员 is still the best all-around title.
Posted on: Jazz and China from a Different Perspective
August 2, 2008 at 4:23 AMGood show! The JZ Club is a great place to check out jazz in Shanghai. They have different styles and often bring in some well-known international acts. Aside from Beijing, it seems likes most other cities I've been to in China have almost no jazz scene. For most Chinese, Kenny G may be the only jazz they know. (If I never have to hear Songbird again in China, I'll be happy for the rest of my life.)
A good blog for finding out about Shanghai jazz:
Posted on: War Zone
August 1, 2008 at 4:00 PMI had never heard of Army Day in China, but I noticed some fireworks were set off here in Suzhou tonight. Chinese friends said it was in fact for this holiday. Any of you living elsewhere in China see fireworks (hard to separate it from the normal daily occurences of firecrackers...)?
Posted on: Internet is Down
July 12, 2008 at 7:28 AMIs anyone else having trouble downloading the full lesson? The dialog is fine for me, but the full lesson is achingly slow.
How fitting, given the topic! :)
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 10, 2008 at 3:00 PMguolanusa, 不好意思，我没有把我的“试验故事“正确的标示出来，有的时候因为全神关注地写中文所以内容可能会有错误。我应该说，观察了老鼠的行为之后，好像注射了一种化学品，再看了它的被化学品影响的行为，最后注射使它死的化学品。它死了以后我们终于开始了手术。如果我们在它还没死的时候开刀，那太可怕了！还有，使它死的那个化学品应该不产生疼，可以放心 :)
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 10, 2008 at 7:45 AMguolanusa，谢谢你的“细胞”的解释！没想到这个词也挺形象的，通过你的说明现在很容易记住。
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 10, 2008 at 7:39 AM读书的时候，我对生物课特别感兴趣，尤其是神经科学。今天学到的跟生物有关的单词又有用又有意思。一开始学习中文，我被中文吸引住的一个原因是因为中文里有很多非常形象的单词，像“飞机”，“电脑”，等等。看来跟科学有关的词也基本上很容易理解，像”血管“，”毛细血管“等。我希望Cpod以后会有更多生物话题。我觉得你们可以用“解剖”来作为它的内容。
在我们的生物课,除了解剖猪以外,我们还解剖了青蛙.另外,我记得我们在实验当中观察了老鼠的行为,然后给它小手术(I don't think my Chinese is correct here...),让我感觉即恶性又有意思.老鼠死后,我们把它的脑子拿出来看手术的效果怎么样.虽然我的手术的效果很差，可是还是觉得很好玩。
In the Expansion exercises, the tones in the pop-up window for 责任 in this sentence: 对于在运输过程中出现的损坏，我们不承担责 seem wrong. Should be ze2ren4, not ze2ren2, right?
Also, I agree with Changye that occasionally you could spend a bit more teaching time on structural elements. That said, you do a great job 解剖ing the vocabulary and making the topic interesting.
Posted on: I Just.... 刚 & 刚才（gāng & gāngcái）
June 25, 2008 at 4:16 AMThanks changye and auntie68. So now I understand an 'isolating language' to be a linguistic term for languages where each character represents an idea, and that character is generally unchangeable. Whereas in English (and most languages) you can modify a word - espcially nouns and verbs - to give it a new meaning or represent some grammatical attribute (e.g. boy -> boys; study -> studied), in Chinese and some other Asian languages characters are separate ('isolated') entities and meaning/grammar is modfied through changing word order or adding 'particles'.
It is fascinating that the concept of what is a 'verb' and what is an 'adverb', etc, could be slightly different across different languages. I need to re-read my copy of Steven Pinker's 'Language Instinct' and see what he has to say...
Posted on: Jazz and China from a Different Perspective
August 3, 2008 at 2:13 AMHi kimgibbier,
I'll check out the scene there next time I'm in Chengdu. Actually, I should've plugged myself and my city. I am in a jazz/funk band here in Suzhou (I play keyboards) and we occasionally play gigs at J&J's cafe. We met through the Suzhou Bookworm at their weekly Wednesday night open mic's. While I've met a lot of musicians, I've met few who are familiar with jazz. If anyone is in Suzhou and plays music (or just likes to listen) , come out to Wednedays at the Bookworm :)