User Comments - lostinasia
lostinasia
Posted on: The DVD Vendor
September 2, 2007 at 10:06 AMLaorui, for the apostrophe in "gong'an ju": I'm pretty sure it's just a place holder, mainly to indicate that the "g" belongs to the preceding syllable: i.e. that the word is gong-an, not gon-gan. I think I've only seen apostrophes in cases where the syllable breaks could be ambiguous. (Other forms of pinyin use apostrophes to indicate aspiration - you'll sometimes see Taipei written as T'ai - but I don't think ChinesePod ever uses that system.)
Posted on: The DVD Vendor
August 12, 2007 at 12:41 AMMikeinEwshot, You're not alone re: what 全 sounds like - it still sounds a lot like que2 to me in the Dialogue tab. In the expansion sentences, the first sentence also sounds more like que, but the other two sound more like quan2 to me. I'm not sure how much of this is regional variation, my goofy ears, or my goofy learning.
Posted on: The Olympic Mascots
August 9, 2007 at 1:38 PMChipmunks - 花栗鼠? - have been cleaned out! Thank you!
Posted on: Going to the Gym
August 9, 2007 at 1:43 AMDialogue file is still chipmunked.
Posted on: The Olympic Mascots
August 9, 2007 at 1:42 AMThis dialogue file is still chipmunked - although most of the other chipmunked ones seem to have been sorted out.
Posted on: Ordering Office Supplies
August 9, 2007 at 1:41 AMDialogue file is still chipmunked. (Nobody's commented here in six months? So many dark and unused alleys are developing in the ChinesePod universe...)
Posted on: What meat is this?
August 7, 2007 at 1:31 PMBeing strictly vegetarian in Asia isn't very easy - you'll be home-cooking a lot. Depending on location, many vegetarians find they have to lapse a little bit - lots give up on avoiding meat broths for example. In general, don't even bother trying to get a *purely* vegetarian dish in a normal restaurant. It may or may not work, but you'll drive yourself crazy worrying about it for every meal. There are genuine vegetarian places around - often with a swastika out front, depending on the country - and in those you'll be fine. However, you certainly won't be getting much variety.
Posted on: The DVD Vendor
August 7, 2007 at 8:34 AMI was actually a little surprised at the end when John said it wasn't a realistic dialogue... all along I'd been assuming it was a gangster shake-down. Doesn't "big brother" (大哥) have underworld connotations? Not that I would recommend any of us feign criminal underworld membership for discounts on already pretty darn cheap DVDs. Great lesson, and I'm glad there seemed to be a little more about grammar and sentence patterns in the podcast.
Posted on: Social Networking
August 3, 2007 at 2:14 PMOops - sorry, forgot that I'd left the questions hanging. Thanks Amber and John for the replies. I confess to remaining a touch confused about the grammar tags. I understand the need to avoid clutter, but 也 usage was the least of my problems when reading this one. Or I guess extra tags aren't there yet because the grammar guide hasn't yet got to the other points. (Which is fine! Don't get me wrong - I realize these things must take lots of time.) I've realized that I've spent too much time recently trying to learn vocab, and not enough on sentence patterns. Gotta work on that. I keep producing decent-level words with caveman grammar. On the plus side, when watching a BBC/ Discovery DVD the other day, with Chinese subtitles, I could follow the subtitles fairly well. Some aspects of Chinese are so wonderfully easily - basically all rodents (mouse, rat, squirrel, pika...) use the word 鼠.
Posted on: Man or Woman?
September 3, 2007 at 10:28 AMEmbarrassing moment that I hope none of my students noticed: standing in front of the class, and one of my students gives a great answer to a question. I never was too sure what gender this student was (unlike SNL's Pat, this student could actually have been considered decent-looking either way). And I found myself saying, "Now, did everyone hear what he, uh, what Shawn said?" Inwardly I was wishing English were much more like Chinese. No one's going to cause too much trouble with 他 vs 她.