User Comments - henning

Posted on: 沙漠寻踪三

bodawei,
global brainwave synchronization?

Posted on: 沙漠寻踪三

changye,
龟 is one of the "imaginary auspicious creatures"? We are talking about those slow reptiles with the shell on the back?

Or is there a special Chinese variant that can fly and 功夫?

Posted on: Superman

k,
there are enough Kryptonite-了s around to get you back to the ground.

:-P

BTW: Kryptonite = 氪星石  (kèxīngshí)

Posted on: To do

paulinurus, changye!
Thanks a lot!

changye: My wife just told me that both 做报告 and 作报告 exist - but have different meanings. While 作报告 is "give a report", 做报告 is "write a report"...

Posted on: To do

What I never get / always forget is

做 vs.作 (zuò vs. zuò)?

Not that easy to put into an audio podcast format, I admit.

Posted on: The Final Show

Suggestion: Delete all entries from hape's comment on May 29th downwards. The succeeding discusssion feels a bit like ugly grafitti on a beautiful monument.

Posted on: The Final Show

Calkins, Ken,
we should be careful with judging. Somewhere on "that other site" they said that they had to manually shift back publication dates to convince the system to put it into the expected order.

And it wouldn't make any sense. Why move to NY to start a new job at a Beijing based enterprise?

Personally, I don't think that the concept of "that other site" is convincing, especially considering the cannibalization of the Beijing parent service. But anyway, I go with Changye. ;)

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

Hi Bill, just arrived in Verona for the ECIS... definately more than a meeting. And more than a symposium (now what would that be?). P.S.: Chinese doesn't help you much here... ;)

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

Mike,
actually I have drawn a lot from the lessons and I do see clear language points. Sometimes less pronounced (here), sometimes more (like in "Excuses for Being Late" which was almost a pure 了 lesson). In my eyes this has gotten a lot better since the early days.

However, what I am more sceptical with are the overarching objectives. For example, take the channel description which states for Intermediate:

As an Intermediate learner you can follow a Chinese conversation, but still want to work on broadening vocabulary and picking up more key patterns

I sometimes get the impression that the additional "key patterns" are chosen from a "reset to zero" perspective: "Let's see what somebody might finds valuable who has never heard one of our Intermediate lessons before". However, shouldn't 208 lessons leave enough ground to cover the most relevant fundamental patterns and function words? There are dozens of "您 is the formal variant of 你" or "又。。。又 is for both...and", but you don't find a single 哪怕 or 假如, although those appear in the dialogues and the banter. Besides, such function words are presupposed in higher levels.

I also have some trouble with Advanced which is indeed only going through vocab and chengyus. There would be more than enough Advanced grammar points to go through. There are even Advanced HSK grammar books, focussing on nuances that never get mentioned here.

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

Mike,
I don't have any problems with the lesson format.

What baffles me, however, is that when I look at my language point notes I find that some constructions and function words come up over and over again, while other (fundamental) ones have not been mentioned once yet.

There are dozens of variations for "if", "otherwise", "although" in Chinese that can be found in every Chinese grammar introduction, that are expected in HSK Basic tests, and that are even used in the UI and Advanced dialogues by the CPod hosts themselves that have so far not been introduced in any of the 1176 lessons. Much less been contrasted with each other.