User Comments - go_manly

Posted on: Fog or Smog?

So are you saying that, since an army is a collection of people, we can use 名 to mean just of of those people?

Could you say 一名人群 (yī míng rénqún) to mean 'one person in the crowd' ?

Posted on: Fog or Smog?

I guess I had already kind of reluctantly accepted that. But can we say:

我爷爷以 前是一名学校。(Wǒ yéye yǐqián shì yì míng xuéxiào.)

to mean "My grandfather used to work in a school" ?

If so, does it imply he was a teacher, or any school worker?

If not, under what circumstances can we use this construct?

Posted on: Shanghai Expo: Haibao

And that school wouldn't have been NSBHS by any chance?

Posted on: Invitations to Eat (original)

I'm definitely hearing a first tone.

Posted on: Where are you from?

The recording definitely has Huānyíng. I can perhaps understand the confusion over the first syllable - final n's aren't pronounced as strongly as in English - the sound is more nasal. But I can't hear anything like an 'o' in the second syllable.

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

One thing I liked from this lesson was the use of a male voice that men can use as a model. Could we please have a male native speaker in at least a small fraction of the lower level lessons.

Would I be correct in assuming that there are many more men than women using this site?

Posted on: Where are you going?

This compounding of characters is both common and necessary in the modern Mandarin language. The reason is the large number of homonyms in the Mandarin language. A quick search on the online Yellowbridge dictionary provided me with 16 different characters (each with different meanings) all pronounced xiào. So if you say xiào, it may be unclear that you mean 'school'. However, there is only one word which is pronounced xuéxiào, so there is no confusion. The situation has arisen due to the loss of many sounds in modern Mandarin, which has caused many words, which historically were pronounced differently, to now sound alike.

Another example is 朋友 (péngyou) meaning 'friend'. Each of the components, 朋 and 友, means 'friend' by itself. But Yellowbridge gives 21 different characters pronounced 'péng', and 15 different characters pronounced 'yǒu'. Put them together, and there is only one word with this pronunciation, and it is the standard word meaning 'friend'.

But each character in 朋友 is used to form yet other words, eg.: 朋党 (péngdǎng) meaning 'clique', 亲朋 (qīnpéng) meaning 'friends and relatives', 友谊 (yǒuyì) meaning 'companionship', and 笔友 (bǐyǒu) meaning 'penfriend'.

Further 友 (yǒu) is occasionally used by itself to mean friend when the context is clear and their can be no confusion. I assume that this is also true of 校 (xiào), but I don't believe I have come across an example as yet. But I would guess that in the written language this is much more common due to the lack of confusion between written characters.

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

On the top left of this page, above the downloads, but below the photo, there is a Bookmark button. Click it, and the lesson will be added to your dashboard.

Posted on: Giving up a Seat on the Bus

I'm not being paid money to get things right. Further, my mistake (omission of the apostrophe) was a typo, and not a conscious decision to use poor English. In any case I disagree with you on the use of all that punctuation - why the comma after CPod? (it is not said with any pause)

Posted on: Dashboard Updates and a Visit from a User

Even though 'Transcripts with Tal' has only 68 members, I'm sure it gets used by a lot more people. After all, previously you only needed to join a group in order to post. You don't need to be a member to click the links in the comments.