User Comments - light487

Posted on: Post-Holiday Preview

So Jenny, how was your trip to the wine valleys of China? :) And what are they called? :)

We Australians have a holiday tomorrow! Yay! :)

Posted on: A Month as a Monk and Chinese Business Meetings

I have heard that a lot of the teaching occurs while you are eating in the traditional sense that you are feeding your spiritual self with the symbolism of eating physical substance.

Posted on: Around the Office

机 - jī is obviously an extremely high frequency character amongst technology. This video made that very obvious.. also I like it when I see transliterations such as 麦克风　màikèfēng. :) They are cute for some reason.. :)

Posted on: A Very Special Day

Awesome awesome awesome.. Congratulations on a monumental effort of getting this far and still being so strong!

Where's JohnB? :) I was hoping to hear from him as well.. just because.. well.. I was hoping.. haha.. :) Might have to wait till I come over and see you all in person. :)

Great lesson with many different meanings of the word "no". I always found it difficult to know which "no" and which "yes" to use. This really helps a lot. Also great use of the different holidays.. it's all so great.. Haven't heard a Elementary lesson with this much great stuff I can sink my teeth into for a while.

I thought 好好儿 meant more "serious".. I can't find the reference where I saw this at the moment but I am fairly sure it was using this chunk to emphasise the need to make "serious" effort.

Posted on: Pearl Tea

Thanks :) I'll check it out when I get home and can read the HanZi.. the topping is the "pearls" or "jelly".

Posted on: Welcome to ChinesePod

@leyka:
Quicktip - To say hi to everyone.. you can say: 大家好 - dàjiā hǎo. The first part, dàjiā, means "everyone".

Posted on: Pearl Tea

As I am unable to locate a lesson on specifically what I want and my Chinese tutor is on holidays for a week, for the National Day Holiday, I thought I'd ask it here instead. Basically what I am trying to say is: "I would like to buy a large chocolate milk tea with no topping."

I know how to say that I want to buy something.. I know how to say chocolate milk tea.. and I can even leave off the "no topping" bit, then wait for them to ask if I want topping and then simply say "bu yao.." but what I am having difficulty understanding is how to indicate what size I want. This also goes for buying a large coffee.. or a small/medium/regular/large "serving" of anything. And of course putting it all together into an understandable sentence is another thing altogether.. :)

请我想要买巧克力的奶茶。。　qǐng xiǎngyāo mǎi qiǎokèlì de nǎichá.. or something like that.. but how, and more importantly how do I use it with other contexts, do I indicate that I want a large cup of it? Do I simply separate the sentence, rather than trying to cram it all into one sentence like I would in English?.. I guess, also I could separate the adjectives too like: chocolate, large, no-topping; or in the case of coffee: large, white, 2 sugars.

In English I would say: I want a large, chocolate, milk tea with no topping; I want a large, white coffee with 2 sugars. I am just unsure how multiple adjectives work with mandarin.. and where the measure word goes if I need to even use one..

Re-reading through what I just wrote I can see how I could easily end up saying that I want a "large chocolate", a "milk tea", and a "no topping".. haha.. but this is my dilema.. and it has been irking me for a number of weeks but finally decided to ask about it.

Posted on: Introducing a Friend

I was going to ask the same as Cornelia.. I was under the impression that the higher ranking person should be introduced to the lower ranking person first. Everything I have read indicates this to be the case.

Also this 一下 yīxià chunk is used in so many situations. Before I learned the chunk, I didn't realise how many situations it was used in. It can be used in a store/shop situation where the shop assistant (or even a waiter in a restaurant) will ask you to wait "a moment".. or perhaps when you are at the bank withdrawing some money and they are counting the money out.

It seems like a simple little chunk but it had me confused for a fair amount of time because I only knew it in this "introducing someone/something" context... and then later started to see it in those other contexts.

I tried to come up with a sentence in a new context using this chunk: 我们让谈一下吧。。wǒmen ràng tán yīxià ba.. (Let's chat for a little while..). Not sure if that is the right way to use it.. but it looks right to me.

Posted on: Using 'Almost'

Just curious why you are teaching the northern accent version?.. is it more commonly used for some words even in the south, such as this word?

Posted on: Riding the Subway

A chinese girl once told me, as a joke I think, that the reason the northern people are taller is that they eat more noodles, and the reason the southern people are smaller is because they eat more rice.. :) haha..

It's interesting that the same kind of cultural jokes and myths, with the same amount of variety, exist in every country.