User Comments - podster
podster
Posted on: Hard Drive Storage
May 11, 2011 at 3:50 AM闪存盘 (shǎn cún pán) ("flash (memory) drive") is also suggested by my helpful Firefox popup dictionary. I imagine "USB" might be the most common, just as "MP3" (MP 三） is the way most "normal" people would express it, I think. (I don't live in China, so take it with a grain of salt.)
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 9, 2011 at 11:30 PMstephenfox,
You are not the first one to raise this issue. It might be a good idea for Chinese Pod to have two sets of discussions for each lesson, with one focused solely on language (word usage, grammar, etc.) and the other for everything else. That would make for a more useful archive for those going back to learn from old lessons. I think this has been suggested before. However, the risk would be that some of the free flow would be lost. I imagine a lot of posts would be difficult to categorize.
Posted on: Business and Investment in China - Part 2
May 9, 2011 at 1:37 PMI guess the translations for上游 /下游 should be "upstream" and "downstream" in the business context. For example, a manufacturer's components suppliers would be "upstream" for them, and the wholesalers to whom the manufacturer sells would be "downstream" and the retailers still further "downstream."
Re: 双汇 (pinyin shuānghuì; the company's English name is "Shineway")
It seems clenbuterol, was fed to pigs by farmers in the "upstream" of Shineway to make them more lean. Lean meat is 瘦肉。 I guess the last character in 瘦肉精 indicates that it is some kind of formulation or drug. It might not be an exact translation for clenbuterol, as it refers to the function and not the proper name. Clenbuterol is usually sold as a respiratory treatment, not "pig slimmer."
Posted on: Business and Investment in China - Part 2
May 8, 2011 at 9:59 PMMaybe you can give us a choice in the future; post separate audio files for just the interview and the guided / annotated interview, similar to what is done for regular Chinese Pod lessons.
I did not miss the surf music, which was getting a bit old. Thanks for giving it a rest.
I really like the direction the show is taking, and hope you can do more such shows. Still hard for me to follow the first time around, but I think this will be a big confidence builder for those of us trying to make the leap to understanding more spontaneous and natural speech.
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 8, 2011 at 5:00 AMI suppose for the Chinese, "Chinese history" and the history of their civilization are the same. For people in the US the culture traces back through the history of Western Civilization, including Roman and Greek, with contributions from Africa, and other regions. In other words, people in the US and people in China are equally part of a very long history. xiaophil is probably right that teaching about a 5,000 year "history" is probably meant to promote unity and pride. I liked this lesson and the discussion.
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 8, 2011 at 4:38 AMre "昨天我家来了二十多个客人 “ ，thanks, zhenlijiang. Loose translation like "yesterday my house received over 20 guests" seems less odd， although not exactly correct. Sorry for the typo in my first post (是 should have been 十 ）
wande, after reading zhenlijiang's post I decided against trying to analyze the grammar to identify the subject. Theres's a house and some people, and somehow they got together, 呵呵。
没错，我的问题就是根你的一样。
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 6, 2011 at 10:48 AMThe word order looks really strange to me too. My English-oriented brain would have come up with something like 昨天二是个人多来我家
“。 。 。 我家来了。。。 ” surprised me, looks like the house got up and walked somewhere. ;) Since 二十个人多 looks to be the subject of the sentence I also wondered why it was at the end of the sentence.
I guess the pattern here is Time / Location / Verb / Subject. Maybe I am used to seeing location preceded by 在， but 在我家 probably would not make sense, just as in English I would not say "at my house they came over."
Am I on the right track?
Posted on: Business and Investment in China - Part 1
May 2, 2011 at 12:53 AM是不是“ 讨教” ？ （= 请教，请问 ）
Posted on: Taxable Salary
April 22, 2011 at 5:40 AM开支票 write a check
开单子 write out a list
开介绍信 write a letter of introduction
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 11, 2011 at 5:11 AM文明 wénmíng civilization
文化 wénhuà culture
文化大革命 wénhuà dà gémìng Cultural Revolution
野蛮人yěmánrén barbarian
国家主义 guójiāzhǔyì nationalism
井底之蛙 jǐngdǐzhīwā frog at the bottom of a well (someone with a narrow-minded world view)
中华 Zhōng huá The Chinese Nation
中华人民共和国 Zhōng huá rén mín gòng hé guó The People's Republic of China
I hope you are not serious when you say "there is no Chinese learning to be done in these posts." Of course, one way for CPod to avoid these lively discussions is to produce only the most boring, insipid lessons. Then we would not digress into discussions of how Chinese people view themselves and their culture. Some people think that learning about culture is an integral part of learning a language. I am one of those people.