User Comments - lostinasia
lostinasia
Posted on: 同性恋亚文化
July 30, 2007 at 10:44 AMYes, I think you do need to use Chinese characters, unfortunately. I figured this out the other day with the Coffee Chains lesson and searching on "coffee" didn't pull it up. Fortunately 咖啡 was a lot easier to type in Chinese than homosexuality would be! (On that note, searching for lessons could definitely be improved... sometimes I've found it faster to find lessons through Google than through ChinesePod's own service; other times I've found the lesson's actual name doesn't even work, perhaps because an apostrophe isn't always an apostrophe if it's typed in another language.)
Posted on: What meat is this?
July 30, 2007 at 10:07 AMDog meat restaurants are fairly common in Korea, or at least they were ten years ago. Didn't partake myself, but met some friends at one (western & Korean) when they were finishing up their meal and pub-bound. I haven't ever seen or heard of dog being eaten regularly in Taiwan, although according to rumour it appears at occasional "medicinal" shops. Dog is certainly considered a VERY unusual meat here. When this topic comes up in class, a decent number will usually have had snake, and a few mouse ("mountain mouse") - no one's ever had (or admitted to having?) dog. I ate dog once (well, twice) in Sulawesi, Indonesia: once was served as an appetizer at a hole-in-the-wall shack where they poured our hooch out of a jerry can and into a plastic bag (ah, the local experience). Amazingly enough we didn't get ill. The first time was at a local foods restaurant where we ordered pork satay, dog red curry, and bat green curry (this being a Muslim country, the pork was just as exotic as the other two!). Try to picture how disgusting a bat curry could look, and you're probably about right - those little hooked wings protruded out of the green soup. Any of the above, however, is less nauseating than either chodofu or sea cucumber.
Posted on: Social Networking
July 26, 2007 at 3:14 PMContent question: I'm curious about 相親 - is it the same word for people who have that job? Lots of China-set movies and books have the local matchmaker. Is she (usually a she) a 相親的? (I'd guess not, since usually my first guesses are, well, wrong.) Gripe: I continue to wish that the example sentences in expansion were easier. "It is said that the lifespan of people with extensive social interaction is longer"?! Apart from "longer" and "people", the vocab item - social interaction - is about the only part of that sentence I *do* understand! Vocab practice really should reinforce the word, not lead to tons more dictionary use. Instead of "she is very suited to public relations work", in another example, just use something basic like "she's got lots of friends." Grammar Guide Question: um, I assume tags remain under development. Surely 也 can't be it for this lesson. 與 vs 和, and 之間 are both terms that I'd love to know more about, and I'll be looking for them in the grammar guide soon. Mild gripe #2: I definitely favor the mostly-Chinese in the Upper Intermediate lessons (the banter has helped improve my listening no end), BUT I wish there'd be more, well, grammar. Vocab is easy enough to figure out on our own - sentence patterns and usage are not. As an example, in the sentence... 我有自己的頭腦, 乾嗎什麼火就做什麼？ ... how much can we plug other words in and out? Can I put in 想法 instead of 頭腦, or 好吃 / 吃 for 火 / 做？ 為什麼 instead of 幹嗎？ I guess I sometimes feel that the Intermediate and Upper Intermediate levels don't do enough with sentence patterns. It'd take some careful thinking, but perhaps the expansion sentences could try to use more of the same sentence patterns as the dialogue, as well as the vocab items. Thanks for reading this through!
Posted on: How spicy?
July 24, 2007 at 3:59 AMSearch Wikipedia under "Scoville scale" - habanero's pretty much the hottest regularly used, although recently I heard some science show about an even hotter pepper. This podcast has finally cleared something up for me! I like spicy food, and again and again I've asked for something very spicy, 很辣, 特别辣, whatever, and they've said back to me "好, zhong 辣" - which I always thought was 中辣. Now I realize they must have been saying 重辣. I feel kind of sorry for those 服務員 who I disagreed with when they told me 重辣... so I guess I've had conversations like "Spicy, please." / "Ok, spicy." / "No, I want it spicy." / "Ok, spicy." Sigh. Stupid tones. 台灣的超市常常有三種辣椒：小紅的，長紅的，長綠的. I forget what the Chinese names are- those are just descriptions - but the first are pretty much Thai/ bird's eye chilis.
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 17: It's Over (Again)
July 23, 2007 at 10:39 AMPitching in on look forward to/ 期待: Amber, thanks for pointing out that it's not used as often in Chinese as in English--that's a really useful tip and part of the "getting English out of your head" that you mentioned earlier. My students (in Taiwan) always use "expect" instead of "look forward to". They'll say things like "I expect Friday", and I'll keep trying to explain the difference between "expect" (you think it'll happen, although you're not sure, and the verb is neutral) and "look forward to" (you're pretty sure it's going to happen, and you're happy about it). So in Chinese are "expect" and "look forward to" the same verb, or different? What would be a natural way for a Chinese person to express the thought/ sentiment "I'm really looking forward to reading Harry Potter 7"? Would "excited" words like 興奮 (xīng fèn) or 激動 (jī dòng) be more natural?
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
July 17, 2007 at 2:33 AMThanks changye... those are brilliant! Not exactly material to learn, but great for reference and for scribbling the Chinese on my way to the grocery store or market. John, that's actually very helpful, because I should be trying to make the jump to Advanced but I'm intimidated by the all-Chinese. Any extra incentive is good!
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
July 16, 2007 at 2:00 PMIn Indonesia and Malaysia kecap means sauce... kecap manis is a sweet soy sauce, for example (c = ch sound). Best 水餃 sauce is a little soy sauce and vinegar with lots of spicy bean sauce, 辣豆辦. Ginger's more for 小龍飽. Looking way back up the page, danjo, thanks for the link but that's a little more basic than what I'm looking for. I suspect what I want just plain isn't available, given the different names you see for fruits and vegetables even within the English-speaking world. Finding the Mandarin characters for an Australian transliteration of a Cantonese name of a green leafy vegetable is probably a lot more difficult than just throwing anonymous green leafy things in the stir fry and seeing how it tastes. Anyone know anything about the heating/ cooling foods issue? (I suspect it's in the Advanced Podcasts somewhere, but I'm not at that level yet.) Time for a mango lassi and bed. I love mango season in Taiwan. Only problem is that it means I'm missing berry season in Canada. I won't be adding any of the seasonings mentioned here, although cardamom and nutmeg are ok. Oh, and don't anyone go adding "authentic" ketchup, i.e. fish sauce, to french fries. That would not be good.
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
July 15, 2007 at 5:48 AMCultural question: how do you talk about "hot" and "cool" foods in Chinese? I've heard that many Asian vegetarians don't eat onions and garlic because they're somehow "hot" foods... and that all fruit are cooling, except for durian and perhaps pineapple. What are the terms for this? 熱 and 冰, or 冷? Or is it more complicated than that? Also food-related: does anyone know a good online resource, with various English names of foods, and the Chinese characters, and (not quite so necessary), the pinyin? In cookbooks I keep seeing things like snake beans, Chinese broccoli/ gai lum, choy sum... I assume these are available in that big green leaf section of my local supermarket, but darned if I know what the Chinese names are. People keep trying to help... Them: 你要什麼？ Me: Uh...青菜... - 什麼青菜? - 不知道... 亞洲的... - 都是亞洲的! ... and then they give me a pitying look and walk away. Wikipedia has an article on Chinese cabbage that's just plain confusing and seems to conflate a lot of different vegetables into one.
Posted on: The Drug Dealer
July 12, 2007 at 2:55 PM"He shoots heroine" sounds like an alternate ending to the Zhang Liang/ Lili saga. As for the distinction between "shoot" and "snort"... absolutely no idea, but I suddenly feel like seeing Pulp Fiction again. Should I feel old because I've never even heard of ketamine? Ritalin was a bit of a fad here in Taiwan a few years back... for all I know it still may be. On other drugs, I'm guessing 有魔力的香菇 makes no sense in Chinese at all. (Hey, I'm from the Pacific Northwest!)
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
August 1, 2007 at 11:42 PMjweissgerber: in Taiwan you can ask for no MSG, and they'll understand and usually help, but sometimes it's not possible (i.e. they've made 50 L of whatever broth and used MSG early on while cooking, and they're not going to start from scratch for one bowl). One phrasebook I have gives me "不要放味精"; another one gives me the same, but adds "請" at the beginning. Have a look at another lesson here, "Noodles without Cilantro", for the same kind of structure. Seaching ChinesePod with "MSG" pulls up a few lessons, but I haven't looked at those in detail. luobinzhenmei, thanks for the hot food/ cool food comment. What do you think of "Connections II"? I had a look at that book the other day in a bookstore, and I confess it didn't really grab me.