User Comments - jmay

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jmay

Posted on: Small Talk Like a Native
August 21, 2015 at 7:01 PM

This was very helpful.

Are there any common gender differences in everyday greetings? Between women vs between men. Also differences based on social standing: do the executives in the penthouse suite use the same greeting vocabulary as junior workers?

Posted on: Does It Suit Me?
January 22, 2015 at 7:59 PM

In the exercises, two of the dictations have audio that does not match the text in the expansions. Not a big issue, but perhaps the speaker was working off a different text than was used for the expansion text?

Posted on: Put your Phone Down!
December 3, 2014 at 11:58 PM

English translation is probably "mention" or "@-mention". Funny that Chinese has taken the "at" directly into colloquial speech. Would this @ ever appear in written Chinese (besides online)?

Posted on: Using "avoid": 省得 (shěngdé) vs 以免 (yǐmiǎn)
October 14, 2014 at 7:21 PM

These are my favorite sort of 请问 - explaining differences between words that appear similar. Thanks!

Here's a request for another one of these. Words that mean "to indicate" or "to point out": 标志,表示,指示,指定

Posted on: Dormitory Drama - Part 4
October 13, 2014 at 6:41 PM

What's the origin of the olives phrase? I didn't think that olives were part of any traditional Chinese cuisine.

I actually like the variety of voices & accents in the podcasts - and also with the Chinesepod announcers. Even though sometimes harder to understand than the standard accent (is there a term for this? like how most American TV news announcers tend to be from the Midwest?) it's nice to get an idea of what real speech sounds like.

Posted on: Dormitory Drama - Part 4
October 13, 2014 at 6:36 PM

谢谢!http://chinesepod.com/lessons/省得-vs-以免

Posted on: Dormitory Drama - Part 5
September 26, 2014 at 7:55 PM

Can 宿舍 and 寝室 both be used interchangeably for "dormitory (building)" and "dormitory room"? How to distinguish the building (or maybe building complex, with dining hall, study rooms etc) from individual student rooms or suites?

Posted on: Dormitory Drama - Part 5
September 26, 2014 at 7:53 PM

Can we get some more details on the use of 开房? When you see friends acting "friendly" and someone shouts "hey! get a room!" would that be an appropriate use of 开房? How far along does this expression fall between good humor and scandal?

Posted on: Dormitory Drama - Part 4
September 16, 2014 at 5:41 PM

《省得》和《以免》有什么区别?