User Comments - luobinzhenmei

Posted on: The Magic Word 把

Great lesson.  Great comments.  Thanks everyone.

Got to go back and practice BA-ing or I would write more.

Posted on: Letting go with 放

Ok, Pretzellogic and lechuan, I am appropriately chastened for too quickly taking suggestions to be complaints.  Seems I was guilty of complaining myself.

I think the polite pee and poop terms might be:

 小便      大便:

xiao3bian4   da4bian4

I don't know if there are even more basic terms.  Anyone?

Posted on: Letting go with 放

pretzellogic,

In my experience 放屁  fang4pi11 is its own sentence.

I use it all the time, in place of its profane English equivalent.  And I suppose that the possible longer sentences are obvious, such as "Everything she says is 放屁。"  “她说的什么都是放屁."  Ok, Maybe that's not a really good sentence(what do I know?), but I bet your Chinese friends would love it.

Here's what I propose to the complainers.  Make up some sentences and post them and ask if they are Ok.  I'm sure the Chinese Pod People will help us and it will be a good exercise for all of us.

And, Pretzellogic, your examples of ways that you cannot use 放 are also very helpful.  Thank you.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 8: Trimming the Fat at the Office

Oh, please, please let Lao Wang go to court.  I don't want him to win, but I like his cluelessness so much (reminds me of my own) and I want him to have a happy ending.  Maybe he could meet an even more clueless Lao Wai and convince him/her that he has important 关系 Guan1Xi and get a job as a consultant.  Or he could go postal, as John suggested, and become a wheeler dealer in prison. 

Posted on: Simple Electrical Stuff

Hi John, if by "other issues" you mean voltage and frequency differences, nearly all laptop computers sold in 120volt/60 Hz markets can handle the different power types available. Other electrical devices are not always so travel-friendly so your followup lesson can include exploding hairdryers.

Posted on: Chinese New Year News

rjberki,

Thank you for liking our first draft poem.  The second line was a mess and we were all set to edit it this morning but perhaps this thread would have escalated into gong fu bad poetry, trading insults in bad Chinese, which is probably not what Pete has in mind.

In a more friendly world we could discuss the merits of teaching only practical-what-you-absolutely-need stuff or being more playful and teaching a lot of other historical and popular culture stuff too.  After the first year I studied Chinese (in a classroom) I thought I would try reading children's books in Chinese and found they were full of words I had never heard of and would hardly every use because they were all about ANIMALS.  I never realized how many silly things kids learn about, and how it really helps them learn.  And thanks to Chinesepod, I now know the names of many of those animals. 

Maybe we have to let Licha know that there are parks and statues all over China (well, all over the places we've been) celebrating Chinese poets and their poetry.  That poetry IS part of the practical everyday life in China. 

I will try to be more Obama-ish in the future and hide my own 黑心 black heart.

Posted on: Pregnancy Series 2: Pregnancy House Ar-rest

This seems unrelated after all the great etymology and terrific pictures, but the actors in the dialogue are really good.  I can sense Xiao Fen gritting her teeth when she asks that the door be closed to keep out the mother-in-law.  The artificial soft-spokenness of the mother-in-law would drive me crazy.  And no one mentioned that the mother-in-law had to have been listening at the door and then bursts in to interrupt because of the threat that the woman carrying her 孙子 might go to the office instead of resting.  I would be ready to threaten a 流产 if I were the daughter in law. Maybe that's why I don't have children.

Great drama. 

Posted on: Chinese New Year News

祝大家新年快乐。  特别谢谢，John, for editing our discussion so cleverly that it makes us sound sensible and less random than we remember being at the time.  We hope to visit you again in the Year of the Ox.  We are also planning on writing limericks in Chinese so we can get on the Poetry with Pete podcasts.

从前有个老人叫王。。。。

that's all we have so far.

Posted on: Guided Plan Gets Better! Plus: Poetry is Pending

Pete,

After that well-deserved zinger to Licha, I'm really looking forward to your humor in the P-with-P lessons.

So many Chinese I know are so enthusiastic about Chinese poetry that I would like to learn about it too.  (I also would like to learn the words of some popular (or classic) Chinese songs which are a kind of popular culture poetry.  Any chance of that?  I know that makes me a low brow.  Is there a Chinese term for "low brow?"

Posted on: Stop in the Name of the 法 (fǎ)

This is a great lesson.  First, I really like the new team.  And I like the explanation, the 说法, of the different 法's and thank you especially Jack in Belgium for the list.  Wow, I have a lot to learn.