User Comments - lunetta
lunetta
Posted on: What's up?
February 28, 2008 at 2:37 PMPipapod, I know that a list of words like that seems like an attractive idea but I'm not convinced it would work very well and it could end up doing more harm than good. Let me just mention one example. In English you use the word 'please' all the time and it may be translated with 请 (qing3) but not always. If you simply learn that 请 (qing3) means please, you may end up transferring the way it's used in English to Mandarin and this would seem very strange to a native speaker. This is why Ken is always talking about learning patterns and chunks. It's a way to 'forget' about the way your own language is structured and accept that the foreign language does things differently.
Posted on: What's up?
February 27, 2008 at 4:00 PMNo, that's when you begin saying 'patterns' with an Irish accent. ;-)
Posted on: Bank Hours
February 25, 2008 at 12:17 PMIt's really great to see the new exercises, especially the 'listen & type' one. The only thing is that it was a little bit difficult to do it using characters. For some reason the pinyin-input shows up on the left side or top of the screen and you have to make sure to hit enter when you're done typing to make sure it shows in the answer box.
Posted on: Making Comparisons Using 比 bǐ
February 25, 2008 at 11:11 AMNever have I heard anyone more in need of coffee... Poor thing!
Posted on: Long Distance and Cultural Mysteries
February 22, 2008 at 1:50 PMMy bf and I have been using Skype for years. It's really convenient as we're both living far away from our family. We find it usually depends on the speed of your internet connection how good the line is going to be. If you only have a dial-up connection it may not be worth while but on the other hand it's been some time we've had that experience and it may have improved since then. We also use it to call landlines and cell phones and haven't had our own landline in years. The rate differs between landlines and cell phones but it doesn't matter where in the world you're calling which is good when you have family in Italy. For us it's definitely the cheapest solution and we don't have to remember to buy phone cards but can just use the credit card from home if we run out of credit on Skype. I think the rates depends on which country you're in so in China it may be cheaper to just buy the phone cards. You know, if you're feeling cold you should learn how to knit. There's nothing like warm sweater to fight off the cold. :-P
Posted on: #38
February 21, 2008 at 10:44 AMI thought you said you were going to make it harder to guess the movies? ;-) Great stuff about the Smurfs. You should make a lesson on them one day so we can learn all of their names in Chinese.
Posted on: 马丁· 路德 · 金
February 18, 2008 at 6:26 PMIn Italy it's part of family law that you can't name a child directly after a parent. The idea is to avoid any confusion about the identity of a person. However, it's still very common to name the firstborn son after the paternal grandfather.
Posted on: 还是 háishi OR 或者 huòzhě
February 18, 2008 at 3:47 PMYou guys are hilarious. You made me laugh so much my bf started to get a bit jealous he wasn't in on all the fun. Having seen both the infamous picture with the tight-rolled socks and the one with the hat I think it's time for Clay to get a little love. :-)
Posted on: The DVD Ploy
February 18, 2008 at 7:28 AMI went over this lesson in my last meeting with my Chinese friend and she tried to explain some new vocabulary to me. It seems that you can say this about the guy: 他想泡妹妹 (ta1 xiang3 pao4 mei4mei) or 美眉 (mei3 mei2) As I understood her it more or less means he wants to be with a girl but it's been two days and I've never been very good at taking notes so I'll be grateful for any corrections. Also she told me that 妹妹 was pronounced 美眉 because 美眉 (beautiful eyebrows) is referring to a pretty girl. On the internet this becomes MM so if you see this in a Chinese chat you now know what it means. :-)
Posted on: What's up?
February 29, 2008 at 8:18 AMHi Ian, if you have a premium subscription I recommend using the vocabulary to reinforce your learning of the basic vocabulary. When I started out about 8 months ago I quickly discovered that the newbie lessons use a very restricted vocabulary. Once you've saved a word you can go to the vocabulary and click on the little plus next to it. Then you'll get a list of other lessons where you can find the word. I used this to plan which lessons I would be listening to next and quickly built up a basic vocabulary. Just a suggestion I hope you may find useful. :-)