User Comments - lordstanley

Posted on: The 80/20 Rule

I was pleased to hear this and a couple of other business-oriented lessons recently. And I liked Goulniky's suggestions. The ChinesePod team may be perfectionists to some extent in that they want to produce content on topics with which they are intimately familiar or they can make entertaining. I can understand that. But don't sell yourselves short; I think the business lessons that have been presented have been  pretty good, content-wise. So don't beat yourselves up if not every lesson leaves us rolling in the aisles with laughter or on the edges of our seats with suspense - even from the lesson awhile ago about a marketing presentation with charts and graphs, which some people commented was boring, I took away quite a few new bits of useful vocab.

Posted on: Olympic Excitement

Article in Tuesday's Wall St. Journal (may be password-protected from non-subscribers) about the Xinhua News Agency's Proper Names Translations Office's responsibility to assign all 10,000 Olympic athletes a Chinese name.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121907335804349809.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone

Some notables:

Michael Phelps. Pinyin: Maikeer Feierpusi (no tones in the article), Meaning: Wheat; to overcome; cultured; universal

Usain Bolt. Pinyin: Yousaien Boerte, Meaning: Block or stop up; kindness; abundant; special

Kobe Bryant. Pinyin: Kebi Bulaiente, Meaning: Cloth; kindness; special

Posted on: Olympic Swimming

The freestyle is the name of the race. The crawl is the name of the stroke that everyone uses in the freestyle because it's the fastest. During the freestyle you could use your breasts to bounce like a butterfly onto your back if you thought that was a faster way of making your way towards the finish line than the crawl.

Posted on: Olympic Swimming

Note for swim fans that Michael Phelps' Website is in English and Chinese. Despite the URL, it seems to have material through the end of 2007 not 2004. Pretty basic, but the Q&A has some vocabulary in it and you can probably pick up some swimming terms as well.

http://www.michaelphelps.com/2004/chinese.html

Bowen, from Phelps' site, I believe IM is translated as 个人混合泳 and relay is translated as 接力

Posted on: 磁悬浮

Jenny's response showed class not weakness. The reason blowhards or loudmouths or bullies often continue their over-the-top methods of communication are because they get results from that too often in today's society - squeaky wheel and all that. Rather than she be an enabler of that, was glad to see Jenny walk away from it.

While I've made a couple of mild yet justified (in my opinion) criticisms of ChinesePod regarding its tech upgrades and was quite frustated about the loss of direction ChinesePod seemed to be ailing from for a short period, at the end of the day people who refer to ChinesePod as draconian need to give their heads a shake. This is a company that: a) has management and staff respond to a majority of message board posts; b) usually replies within a day to email queries; c) allows posts criticizing ChinesePod on its own messageboard; d) allows posts on its own messageboard about competitors or alternatives to ChinesePod; and e) repeatedly invites users to visit its office in Shanghai. I can't think of too many other companies that I deal with that offer anywhere close to that type of interaction.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team

Very good lesson, I love corporate topics.

But I hope Jenny watches the American version of "The Office". It took the good ideas of the meek British version and ran with it. End result was a much more biting and funny satire.

Posted on: A Month in Recovery and Being Civilized

Way to go, JohnB. Just imagine how many Newbie lessons Will will be able to make his way through in that 1st month at home with mom. He'll be devouring Qing Wens by Christmas and be a solid Interemediate by Chinese New Year's.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hong Kong

Could someone please explain why the Pinyin for 凤爪 is feng4 zhao3? As a standalone character, 爪 is listed as zhua3 by MDBG, by the Pera-kun popup, and by a native speaker I asked. And there is a MDBG entry for chicken feet as 凤爪 feng4 zhua3 but not feng4 zhao3, while in contrast Pera-kun translates it as feng4 zhao3 when both characters together.

So are both OK or is either zhao3 or zhua3 a mistake?

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Xinjiang

What I remember about dining in Xinjiang was going to a restaurant in the hills just outside of Urumqi, being seated on a long bench like in a German beer hall, being given rubber gloves to put on, and then all of us reaching into the sheep on the table and pulling out mutton.

Posted on: Detroit

Ahh, my old stomping grounds. Another ex-Chrysler worker here - 30 years by my dad, 3 for me. Not quite my hometown of Sarnia, Ontario 50 miles away (that would have been TOO much "Mandarin on your terms" for me to expect), but close enough. I've got a pair of old seats from Tiger Stadium in my den as I type this. Believe it or not, tons of fond family memories there, from stories from my grandpa of building airplanes in shop class in the basement of Cass Tech in the '30s (future alum would include Diana Ross and Lily Tomlin), to celebrating Hall of Famers and pennant winners and the Bird at Michigan & Trumbull, to attending concerts by locals Seger to Nugent to Iggy to Jack White. Yes, there may now be coyotes roaming E.Gratiot, and the "Renaissance" Center is already over 30 years old with the renaissance yet to come, and current mayor Kwame is living down to the legacy of corrupt mayors of decades past, but Detroit is still a U.S. top 3 sports city and top 3 music city, in my opinion.