User Comments - lostinasia
lostinasia
Posted on: Going on a Diet
June 9, 2007 at 9:30 AMRe: fp00n and Nicholas... in the podcast itself, John (I think) says 胖起来 is a complement--i.e. one of these 看起來, 買得到 three-part verbs. That's where the confusion is - it's not compliment as in congratulations, it's complement as in grammar term (and only in my slowest teaching voice would I express the two any differently!). (And yeah, this threw me too when I heard it.) This relates to my question: what happened to the "Vocabulary in the podcast" section, or whatever it was called? Was it Amber or Connie that used to post these? I *don't* mean supplmental vocab - I mean other words that Jenny or John use during the podcast. Some examples for this one would include the 胖起來, as well as 逛街 (for shopping), 失望 (disappointed), and two that confused me: "...事情的 ben shen 是這個樣子..." and "...自己的 ti zhong... " (I'm guessing from an online dictionary that it's 體重, body weight.) Anyway, I used to find that "Vocab in the podcast but not actually in the dialogue" quite useful. I hope it comes back. A couple of usage questions: 1) The supplemental vocab mentions "spare tire". Would this be used in Chinese for the less thin amongst us, or would people just look at you funny? 2) For 沒勁: can I say 今天很勁, or does that make no sense at all? And on 可惜 / it's a shame: I've actually become very careful here in Taiwan about ever saying "It's a shame", because my students or friends often interpret that as "It's shameful." Similar problem with "Too bad, you made a mistake", which they'll often hear as "Very bad, you made a mistake." 可憐 / kě lián, for pitiful, gets mixed into this too.
Posted on: Where Children Come From
June 3, 2007 at 2:57 PMSomewhere along the line I'd love to have a lesson that looks at the different "move something" verbs: 帶, 弄, 撿, 丟, 拿, 放, 提, 戴, 掛... I get really confused about which ones to use and wind up just saying 放 for everything. Or is this going to show up in the grammar section? Or even more likely, has it been discussed somewhere and I missed it?
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 7: A Guy's Advice on Women
June 3, 2007 at 12:40 PMryano, if you just search for lessons using "Zhang Liang", you'll see all the lessons in their ongoing saga.
Posted on: Booking a Plane Ticket
June 1, 2007 at 2:22 AMThis brings up a possibly-stupid question: how can I RE-download a podcast through my iTunes feed? Once I've got one copy, even if I delete it, I can't seem to download another copy of the same one. This is what I'll want to do with this file, plus ones from the past few days with wacky dialogue texts in the Podcast Information field.
Posted on: Booking a Plane Ticket
June 1, 2007 at 1:32 AMBoth the iTunes feed and the episode download are too short: they cut off at 6:46. Or at least that's the way it's working on my system. Oddly, the file size at left SAYS it's 10.73mb, but the downloaded file is 6.3mb. Oh, and the podcast information, which shows the dialogue, still has scrambled code for the pinyin.
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
May 31, 2007 at 3:04 AMWhat I think Bazza's talking about: this is the dialogue text in the "Podcast information" field that you see when clicking through the different displays on your iPod (or by checking file information in the iTunes podcast page). It's in the lesson podcast, NOT the dialogue podcast. (Although I'll be VERY happy if that text also shows up in the dialogue file.) For a couple of days it was just the lesson promo blurb repeated twice, with no dialogue text at all; now, for the past 2-3 days (including May 31st) it's had Chinese characters and English text ok, but just messy code for the pinyin. (I'm NOT talking about the lyrics field - that seems to be working fine, but alas my iPod doesn't display lyrics.) Oh and I'm really missing the traditional html file... I was so happy that I was finally able to easily work with traditional on this site!
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 15: Uncomfortable Encounter in a Bar
May 30, 2007 at 9:01 AMOh! Sorry! I didn't realize the over-apologizing from us Canadians was annoying people. We'll try to stop. Again, deepest apologies. (Ha ha.) I guiltily confess that Canadians have been known to call somebody "American" when we mean that they're 没素质的人. Unfortunately, we are unaware of the irony in the many conversations along these lines: A: Isn't it great how Canadians don't generalize at all? B: Yeah, we're so much better than those d*mn Americans! But I guess every country has its own little neuroses.
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 15: Uncomfortable Encounter in a Bar
May 29, 2007 at 10:52 AMThe traditional PDF is now working, but the html file with the "trad" suffix remains simplified. It's not working for the "I can't buy my size" html file either--you haven't already retired such a wonderful feature, have you?! Two additional concerns: the PDF formatting is now even less friendly to copying: it won't copy and paste AT ALL in the conversation actually. Furthermore and probably more importantly, the new font for the pinyin & English in the conversation is quite blurred on my system (Apple). The text in the vocabulary is fine--totally sharp--but the conversation text is hard on the eyes. Oh, and I'm not a fan of the characters/ English/ pinyin order. Maybe I'm just rejecting the new, but having the English in the middle doesn't seem right. Is there a pedagogical explanation for this change? (I'd think for those working with only pinyin, it'd be especially annoying!) These are all meant constructively! Thanks Chinesepod.
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 15: Uncomfortable Encounter in a Bar
May 28, 2007 at 2:39 PMSeconding (or thirding?) prusik above... no Traditional PDF on this one, whether from iTunes, or when using the Firefox plugin, or using the -trad ending html link. When is Lili's conniving friend going to have a stricken guilty conscience and admit to her wrongdoing? Usually in the soap operas this happens while dying in a hospital bed, or after a person's sacrificed their own life to push someone else out of a truck's way.
Posted on: The Scene of the Accident
June 10, 2007 at 3:25 PMA humble request... having the transcript included in the Podcast Information field is great, but while the pinyin remains a mess... could you please, um, not include the pinyin encoding at all? Especially in a lesson with long "lines" like this, the coding makes the transcript pretty much unusable. I do help it'll all be fixed, and the pinyin will come back, and I'll go and download all these again, but until that happens, I think no pinyin might be better. Thanks!