User Comments - lotsofwordsandnospaces

Posted on: Dreams of the Departed 陇西行

changye, the Japanese translation is thoroughly interesting. 

Even a brief glance allows you to appreciate the variation in Grammar, Word order, Characters and inversely the succinctness of the Chinese. It is a really good exercise for the eyes, and mind.

A lot of that would have been lost if they had not tried hard to adhere to the orignal text so thoroughly.

I lived in the North of Japan and spent too much time snowboarding and teaching to study kanji to any degree - so I am in the funny situation wherein I can understand the Japanese better than the Chinese - though I could only pronounce the hiragana correctly in Japanese.

I wonder what John's take on that is.

Cheers

Posted on: Sending Emails

The "Tom" in this lesson, sounds an awful lot more like a "Jenny".

Posted on: More News!

What helenebouboulis expressed here reminded me a little of one of my experiences with the site, and my story is probably familiar to many.

I heard about Chinesepod via iTunes. I tried a few chinese podcasts, and this one had the easiest to follow family (the Jen as 'Johnny' thing was a bit unusual at first, but everyone involved had depth of character)

I visited the site and signed up and never used the account.

When I finally got round to using the site, I had the trial of all the (then) new features - but this site takes time to get used to, and in the first week I hardly used it. As a result I never got my head around all the features available.

What would have helped me, would have been a clearer understanding of how things worked. If I cuold have activated my week of premium content after I had come to know better what was on offer - I would have no doubt found that far more informative.

Presently your only output to the wider world is Newbie, News and Features, (and I am not sure what else exactly). To the wider world - that is as far as you go. Might I suggest that you hang a banner ad on the right hand side of the page, and host a small gallery of higher lessons to those who are new around the place.

You really gave the Chinesepod a great deal of brand value with the all encompassing free content - and the content is certainly worth the incremental costs, but as you have changed how you present your material to the wider world, you might want to take notice of the helenebouboulis comment. It certainly was trollish, rarely do people get annoyed at free content... but the only people who can testify to the product at present are the users, because the trial only works if you sign up on a week you have sufficient time to utilise it.

Oh, and as I am rambling on - when a new feature is released, could the first lesson accompanying the new feature or a set older lesson showcase the features for all us poor poddies?

I am certain I will upgrade my account in due course, and I hope this comment is of interest.

I read that through, and I now am concerned that I sound a bit trollish :(

Posted on: Requesting a Glass of Water

Hey heypaul,

You might find this Qing Wen interesting 

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/麻烦你-mafan-nǐ-to-say-please/

The word 'máfan' might be what you need -something like 'Can I trouble you...'

Posted on: Dreams of the Departed 陇西行

I was really looking forward to the Cantonese show, but listening to that link makes me wonder if I would have to learn to speak in reverse! That was haunting!

Posted on: Expired!

@CharlesChinese

Just had 4 hours without the Pod in the UK too, makes me wonder if http://status.aws.amazon.com/ is more marketing than factual...

Posted on: Expired!

Is 酸奶 more of a 'Probiotic' drink then? Like yakult?

Posted on: Expired!

Beer cows? Make mine a calf!

Posted on: Expired!

@bababardwan 

:) I used to live quite near a town called Kitakata.

I like to nibble the chocolate off the outside (of most towns I have lived near).

Posted on: I Have Class

Has the audio for this class been mixed up - this lesson is the audio from "Language Power Struggle".