User Comments - jennyzhu
jennyzhu
Posted on: Love Tangle 1: A Suspicious Text Message
July 1, 2009 at 8:55 AM@Holly,
We have a saying 小别胜新婚/xiao3 bie2 sheng4 xin1 hun1, meaning a little time apart adds more passion and renews the marriage. But I guess when you do it too often, it's self-defeating.
Posted on: Love Tangle 1: A Suspicious Text Message
July 1, 2009 at 7:54 AMWe call this kind of man 小鸡肚肠 or 小肚鸡肠, very petty and suspicious.
Posted on: Are You Free?
June 30, 2009 at 10:05 AM@orangina,
I totally agree. BTW, not in to someone is 对X没兴趣/dui4 X mei2 xing4 qu4.
Posted on: Job Interview
June 29, 2009 at 5:28 AM@xiaophil,
Although 下岗 does mean 'to be laid off', it is used mostly to describe the massive wave of lay off during the early 90's when state owned enterprises in China went through reform.
Posted on: Summer at ChinesePod
June 28, 2009 at 9:27 AMInteresting discussion guys. News and Features has its obvious function. But I also hope it has a community function too. Even though it's not realistic for us to put in hours of work into each News and Features, we do hope it captures some interesting and timely information about what's happening in the community, e.g. through user interviews.
Regarding lesson scheduling, Matt will explain the reason better than me. But please be assured that we have a one month buffer. All the lessons are produced and checked well in advance.
Posted on: How Long Has This Been Going On?
June 27, 2009 at 1:53 PM@dadahuhu,
1. Generally, you can say 这有多久了？/zhe4 you3 duo1 jiu3 le?/how long has this been around? It won't be considered rude. But if want to be extremely polite and respectful, you can say 这有多少年历史?/zhe4 you3 duo1 shao3 nian2 li4 shi3? /How many years of history does this have?
2. Regarding houses, asking when it was built works for both new and old houses. We geneally use 房龄 to describe residential buildings that are quite contemporary, say between 50 years to very new.
Posted on: How Long Has This Been Going On?
June 27, 2009 at 1:44 PM@henning,
Actually I feel the word 工龄 carries a certain amount of pride and dignity, because of its historic context. I always associate it with 为人民服务/serve the people, which is what defined every profession back then.
Posted on: Introduction to Pinyin
June 25, 2009 at 4:02 AMJust to add some daily experience to Pete's comment, since Chinese is a language of which the writing doesn't tell you anything about how to read the words, so pinyin is a system that indicates the pronunciation. For school kids, pinyin helps tremendously in the learning of characters by providing a system of sounds which all kids have learned how to pronounce. From reading the pinyin, kids will know what the new characters sound like, then they learn how to write them. Even as an adult, we occasionally run into words that they we don't know, to learn those, we check both pinyin and meaning.
Posted on: Baby Photos
June 25, 2009 at 3:33 AM@bababardwan,
Honor is 荣誉/rong2 yu4. 廉耻/lian2 chi3 is honor and shame. It is often used to mean moral compass.
Posted on: Son or Daughter?
July 2, 2009 at 6:12 AM@cinese,
None of us is pregnant. But since procreation is one of the key themes of human existence, we thought we'd reflect that. Hopefully, there is something worthwhile for learners from each different level.