User Comments - podster

Posted on: Can I Have your Phone Number? Please?

I thought "is this seat taken" sounded a little less intrusive than "can I sit next to you." But I agree about mentioning "drinking alone":

FAIL. Epic FAIL.

Maybe he should have asked for her QQ, or if he could follow her on a microblog. Or he could have offered to buy her a phone, but I think John's comment was right, it had to be a fairly obvious lie. On the other hand, maybe Jenny is right and she would have been impressed by his persistence. Or not.

Is it a Chinese thing to tell a whopping lie to give the other person "face" (in this case avoid direct rejection) while the other person pretends to believe the lie to give the other person "face" as well?

How to you say "restraining order" in Chinese? : 0

Posted on: Can I Have your Phone Number? Please?

Yes, I think it sounds strange to use 多少 when asking for a phone number. In English we always ask "what IS your phone number." We don't speak of it as if it were a quantity or an integer. But "你的电话号码是多少" is correct.

"来着" (lái zhe) is explained below by Jiaojie.

Posted on: Can I Have your Phone Number? Please?

旁边有人吗？ ? could he have just said "这儿有人吗？(while pointing to the seat)?  (a bit more subtle maybe?)

一个人来喝酒吗 -1 That just sounds sad: "Are you drinking alone?"  Could he have more simply said 你一个人吗？(or maybe in the imagined "rebound" scenario she would say "yes" and start pouring her heart out about the recent breakup with her ex-boyfriend.)

Why did he specify that he wanted her cell phone number instead of simply her phone number? 能给我你的手机号码吗？ / 能给我拟的电话号码吗？

I was surprised there was no discussion of the counterpart to 美女： "帅哥“  shuàigē.

Posted on: Workout Frequency at the Gym

Thanks again, Jenny. That is such an incredibly useful feature. CPod should not keep it so well hidden ;). Better than relying on lesson tags, I think.

Posted on: Workout Frequency at the Gym

Thanks, Jenny. I thought standard Internet search technology would be fertile ground for corpus linguistics. Apparently someone else thought so too, and is working on making money from it as well. I'm not familiar with where they draw their material from. The English I have seen there all looks correct and natural. Your comment made me wonder if they are crawling the web for examples or using edited material from their own data set. Any issues with the accuracy of the Chinese usage cited? There is so much Chinese Pod material in your archives now, maybe you could do something similar just for your site. I have to admit I don't even know where to go on the Chinese Pod site any more for the glossary or dictionary.

Posted on: Workout Frequency at the Gym

@darkstar94

I was not confident in answering your question, so I went to jukuu.com and entered “他几乎从来不“ and it returned several samples that suggest you are correct.:

He seldom, if ever, reads a book.

他几乎从来不看书。

I'm sure he (Dad) hardly ever uses it.

我相信爸爸几乎从来不用。

Thanks for your question, which if nothing else gives me a chance to check out jukuu.com and introduce it as a good resource for investigating word usage.

Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 4: Lovers' Spat

I think its called "reduplication." (Great word, huh?). You seen it a lot in Chinese. For example: 看看 for "have a look." In fact, that example is common enough that in my input editor just now I simple type "kk" and the appropriate "reduplication" of 看 appeared. There is also a term 比一比, but I'm now sure it would work in this case. It also means to make a comparison, but can have the meaning of competing with someone.

Posted on: Workout Frequency at the Gym

我不去健身房。

Depending on the context could mean I am not going to the gym or I never go to the gym.

You might also say 我从来不去健身房。

wǒ cónglái bù qù jiànshēnfáng

Posted on: Workout Frequency at the Gym

Yes,

我 经常 去 健身房

wǒ jīngcháng qù jiànshēnfáng

is correct for "I often go to the gym."

Posted on: Workout Frequency at the Gym

My convoluted translation of kong_yi's sentence probably didn't help, so let me try again:

Using 因为 (because)

我觉得大多数中国男孩很少去健身房健身,因为他们都不壮.

Wǒ juéde dà duōshù zhōngguó nánhái hěn shǎo qù jiànshēnfáng jiànshēn, yīnwèi tāmen dōu bù zhuàng.

I think most Chinese guys seldom go to the gym, because none of them are buff.

He used "yīnwèi" to explain why he thinks as he does.

Using 所以 (therefore, as a result, so)

中国男孩很少去健身房，所以他们不壮。

zhōngguó nánhái hěnshǎo qù jiànshēnfáng, suǒyǐ tāmen bùzhuàng.

Chinese guys rarely go to the gym, so they aren't buff.

You could also add yin1wei4 as the first word of the second sentence without changing the meaning.

因为中国男孩很少去健身房，所以他们不壮。

I think it sounds natural in Chinese but redundant in English。