User Comments - light487

Posted on: Sightseeing at Tiananmen

May I enquire what all the CAPS are about? On the internet, this is considered as shouting. I've never seen you write your posts in CAPS before now, so I am curious why you decided to start now?

Posted on: I Can/Can't Afford it (...得起 & ...不起）

I haven't read Wild Swans, I'll be sure to check it out once I have finished with my current book called A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers: A Novel written by Xiaolu Guo. It is a heart-warming, though often a little sad but with a few moments of genuine comic value, tale of a young 23 year old peasent girl from China going to England to learn English. It is purposefully written in bad English to make it feel more authentic and like a diary. It has a lot of insights into how coming to the West is for someone from that background. I am really enjoying this book a lot, especially the style that the author has decided to use. Each micro-chapter starts with a heading of a word from her Chinese-English Dictionary, hence the name of the book. Once I finish it entirely, I am going to be making it the first review on my new Reviews website.

Oh I should warn you that it does contain a bit of "saucy" stuff. So definitely for the more mature readers, as it does explore her "womanhood" living in England.

Posted on: Sightseeing at Tiananmen

I'm also thinking of a Shanghai-Beijing holiday later this year. Not sure how things will pan out just yet.. will know by the end of this month whether I am going to be able to afford it or not. Just bought my first home and settling next Tuesday the 17th June.. so it won't be till after that when I will know if it is economically viable or not. If it turns out to be October, I'll let you know and may be we could meet up for a day while over there. I'll definitely be imposing myself on anyone I can wrangle into meeting up with me there regardless of the time I go.. hehe.. :)

This is another of the old lessons redone in a much easier to follow format. I remember there being a newbie lesson similar to this, perhaps even mentioning going to Tiananmen Square and using directions on how to get there. I prefer this simpler version, which stays on topic the whole time without veering off course too much. I have a question about time relating to going somewhere:

Going to (somewhere) in Future:
我到天安门今天
wǒ dào tiān ān mén jīntiān
I am going to Tiananmen Square today.

Or should it be:
今天我到天安门
jīntiān wǒ dào tiān ān mén
I am going to Tiananmen Square today.

And.. in the past, where do I add the 了 - le particle?
今天我到了天安门
jīntiān wǒ dào le tiān ān mén
I went to Tiananmen Square today.

Or should it be:
今天我到天安门了
jīntiān wǒ dào tiān ān mén le
I went to Tiananmen Square today.

谢谢
xièxie
Thanks

PS. One last thing. How would you distinguish between "I went to .... today." and "I came to .... today."?

Posted on: I Can/Can't Afford it (...得起 & ...不起）

chiongzibide says 7 hours ago In response to Light487 re PDF's - I like the sentences posted here, since I can copy them into a Word Document, and then add the English underneath.  I find that CPOD's PDF's don't let me extract the text, so I wouldn't be able to add the English easily if that happened.

What you can do is change the .pdf at the end the link to .html and it will show it as copiable text so you can do exactly what you said. Try it on another lesson and you'll see what I mean.

Posted on: I Can/Can't Afford it (...得起 & ...不起）

That's what I said.. I enjoyed it, I rated it 5 out of 5, I found it to be useful.. I just feel that this is a very basic concept compared to some of the trickier Qing Wen episodes we have had in the past and I wonder if there are not more confusing concepts that we could be dealing with in Qing Wen than basic stuff like this, which would be more better suited to a new Extras column along the lines of Grammar Tidbits or something like that.

Posted on: I Can/Can't Afford it (...得起 & ...不起）

This is a great lesson and I rated it accordingly but it doesn't seem to be keeping with the usual Qing Wen ideaology. I can understand why this is not a Newbie/Elementary lesson, as the lessons concentrate on spoken dialogue. I love the fun learning style of Qing Wen but this one is such a simple grammar concept rather than a tricky grammar and concepts that us non-native speakers find difficult to comprehend, which I am used to with the Qing Wen series. May be ChinesePOD needs a new Extras type called Grammar or something for these type of podcasts, and keep Qing Wen for the more tricky and confusing points of the language.

@Clay (aka Coffee Guy):
Why do you need to think of a compliment? :) You should be able to easily compliment or it's not really a compliment is it? :)

@Connie:
Thanks for putting the dialogue on every lesson. One question though, why don't you just make a PDF for these instead of typing them out in the comments sections?

Posted on: Airplane Arrival

Yay! The lesson has finally arrived! :) Or should I say... landed.. haha..

Posted on: I Don't Have the Strength (... 不动）

Be a "měn" about it baillies! :) haha.. I know.. That was a really bad pun.. big stretch there.. :)

Posted on: The First Tone

They are all the same.. :) The only difference is in the context and the written form. Think about it from a conversational point of view.. you don't just walk up to your friend and say "She is nice!" because the next thing he will say is "Who?".. or, using the same example, you can't just say "It is nice!" because he will just say "What is nice?".

The first thing you have to do when discussing an IT or a HE or a SHE in a conversation is define which you are talking about. You might say, "Hey man.. did you see that girl who just went past?" and he goes, "Yeah..?" then you could say, "She is nice!". So automatically your friend would know that the tā you are talking about refers to "she" and not "he" or "it". Whether it is a HE, SHE or IT is implied by the context of the conversation, it doesn't really get used by itself without first setting up (defining) what the thing is that you are talking about.

A written comparison:
他 tā Him/He
她 tā Her/She
它 tā It

Hope that helps.

Oh yes.. and another thing that might help get your head around it is to think of English words that sound the same like HOARSE and HORSE:

"My voice is HOARSE from all this cheering!"
"My HORSE is tired from all this galloping!"

They sound the same but they are, 1. written differently, and 2. defined by the context.

Posted on: I Don't Have the Strength (... 不动）

咖啡人 is shorter.. So that will do.. :)

And just as an aside to that.. In one small context I understand the particle "de".. 咖啡的男人.. because it is joining a 2-syllable (or 2-character) adjective to the object. Every other usage still baffles me.. hopefully I will learn the rest through my learning of mandarin.