User Comments - mudphud

Posted on: Separable Verbs

Thanks for going over these, which have caused some head scratching when I have come across these.

Connie gave some wrong then right examples. I listened to it again and here are the wrong then the correct:

Wrong: 昨天我见面了他。(zuótiān wǒ juòmiàn le tā)

Right: 昨天我跟他见了面。(zuótiān wǒ gēn tā juò le miàn)

Wrong: 小王结婚了小李 (xiǎo wáng jiéhūn le xiǎo lǐ.)

Right: 小王和小李结婚了 (xiǎo wáng hé xiǎo lǐ jiéhūn le.)

Wrong: 妈妈洗澡孩子 (māma xǐzǎo háizi.)

Right: 妈妈给孩子洗澡。(māma gěi háizi xǐzǎo.)

Posted on: Whatever, Wherever, Whoever

I view the lesson mathematically:

The question words, 哪儿 (nǎ'r)，什么 (shén me),..., are like the variable X, the unknown. In the first part of the sentence, one assigns the variable, and in the second part, one uses that assignment, e.g.:

Let X = 5, so 2*X - 3 = 7.

Thus,

你去哪儿 (nǐ qù nǎ'r)，Assigns X (哪) to be "the place that you go"

我就去哪儿 (wǒ jiù qù nǎ'r)。I will go to X.

Yes, I am a nerd. (BTW, I think there are a lot of beginners like myself, that are somewhat intimidated by the level of the comments and so don't post but very much like the level of Qing Wen.)

Posted on: Don't do that!

In the supplemental vocab section, I think that there is a mispronuciation of 吵 chǎo, and 有点吵 yǒudiǎn chǎo. The 吵 chǎo seems to be pronounced chào. The 吵死了 chǎosǐ le seems to be correct. Could someone check out whether this American ear is off?

(BTW, just got back from China and got numerous (very much undeserved) compliments. Told lots of people about C-pod.)

Posted on: In a Moment

I was asking our exchange student how to say, "Are you ready?" Her answer was, "zhǔn bèi hǎo le ma?"

Any thoughts on the longer version versus the simpler 好了吗？(hǎo le ma?)

Posted on: The North Has Central Heating

OK, thanks all. I found this:

As mentioned in Section 15, the umlaut (the two dots over the u) in the Mandarin vowel sound ü are not always written in pinyin. This is true for all pinyin syllables beginning with "yu," and it is also true for all the syllables presented in this section. This does not cause confusion because the consonants j,q, and x never combine with Mandarin's basic u vowel (as introduced in Section 11). In fact, the only vowels that j, q, and x ever combine with are i and ü.

Wow. I did not appreciate that. Kind of embarrassing. That is probably a good point to bring up in the next Newbie lesson discusses qù so that others don't make my mistake.

Posted on: The North Has Central Heating

I found in reviewing this lesson that I was doing something wrong. We had the word 出去 chūqù, which provides a nice juxtaposition of two sounds that I was and am confused about. Other than the different tones, I was pronouncing them the same. The pronunciation chart doesn't list the qu sound. What's the difference, say in mouth position?

Posted on: Anybody home?

OK, don't know whether anyone cares for my mnemonics but I thought of this one to remember pà 怕:

I turned the corner to be confronted with a little (xiǎo 小), pale white (bái 白), dwarf zombie. I was so afraid that all I could do is say "Papa."

Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!

Really great dialog. My wife wanted to know what I was giggling about because I had my headphones on.

Mnemonic (in the manner of Tuttle) for wind, feng1, 风： Several (几 ji3) giants blow at the target, where x marks the spot, to make a great wind, but their humid breath causes a fungal overgrowth.

Posted on: U-Turn

And this mnemonic about the character for 过 guò:

It combines the walking radical 辶 (which sort of looks like someone walking down a path) and the "inch" character 寸 which supposedly comes from the notion that the pulse (the small dash) is an inch away from the wrist as represented by the "T" part of the character.

Think someone is walking and passes the turn off by an inch. You go (sound word like guò) too far!

Posted on: U-Turn

Was exploring MDBG about guò (one apparently needs to be careful and not say gòu, the latter could get you in trouble. See the C-pod discussion of ou here and the uo discussion here. The gist is that there is a slight oo sound after the oh sound in ou and there is a slight w sound before the oh sound in uo. I didn't really appreciate this difference before.)

Found this interesting phrase:

雨过天晴 yǔ (rain) guò (pass) tiān (sky) qíng (clear) which is a very succinct way of saying new opportunities arise after a difficult period. Ken talks about how "compact" the language is. It is kind of scary how efficient it is.