User Comments - jjinfrance

Posted on: A Tour of the Office

你要在中国待多久/多长时间？The modal word 要 can be used to express your planning for future.

将 （jiāng) can be used too: 你将在中国待多久？/你将要在中国待多久?

I also heard 会 （hui4): 你会在中国待多久？For me, it has the connotation "how long can you stay in China?"

Posted on: A Tour of the Office

For me, both sound right. I personally use 三个月半 more often. What do other Chinese teachers say?

Posted on: Working at the United Nations

你对潘基文的第一句评论让我想到伊丽莎白二世，听说这也是为什么她能在位六十年而仍然受到英国民众的喜爱。

Posted on: Mother's Day

To my knowldge, 辛苦 is usually neutral, sometimes positive. For example, 妈妈每天洗衣做饭很辛苦。 is to show the compassion for mother's hard work.

I haven't heard it being used in a negative way. Do you have any examples that 辛苦 is negative?

Posted on: Mother's Day

To tal,

I think when the bus driver answer answered 不辛苦，没事儿，没事儿, he was just using the "standard" way to respond to a compliment. He's not angry. It's just like when you say to a mother "your son is very intelligent", the standard reply should be "He's not intelligent at all. He's very dull."

To deny the compliment is the traditional way to show our "humbleness". In modern days or in big cities, this may be not true any more, but I think the older generation still prefer to be modest instead of answering "thank you".

Posted on: Getting to Know CPod Teacher Helen (and exciting content news)!

As a native mandarin speaker, I don't understand a word of spoken Cantonese. And most of my Cantonese friends don't understand Mandarin naturally, they have to learn it either at school or with mandarin speaking friends.

Even it is still controversial whether they're two dialects or two languages, I would think they are two different languages--they are more similar than French and Italian, but more different than Danish and Swedish.

Posted on: Asking for a Raise

不用谢 and 不客气 can be used interchangeably. For me, 不谢 sounds a little (very tiny little bit) less polite than 不用谢.

Posted on: Asking for a Raise

I like John's suggestion: rehearsing the dialogue before actually using it. This is not only useful when we apply the learned language in its country. When we are learning a language and there's no native speaker around, this could be a good way to practice the conversation.

Posted on: He's boring

1) There is no difference. I can't find a case that you can't use them interchangeably.

2)No differernce either. The yǒu is just omitted.

Posted on: Aussie Rules

As a native speaker, I use 只and条randomly. That said, if I see a sausage dog, I would definitely use 条.