User Comments - rich

Posted on: The Clogged Toilet

我也有一样的问题：

在这个方面下，"过来"和"过去"，中文和英文一样吗？

平时我们对对方说"I'm coming over","I'll come over",etc.但如果我告诉一个不在对方那里的第三个人我们去那里的话，我说 "I'm going over there",etc。

那么中文一样吗？还是在目的地的人说："过来吧！“，去那里的人说："好的，我要过去。”？对我来说听起来有一点奇怪，我觉得我应该说“好的，我要过来。“

Confused whether I'm coming or going,
以明

Posted on: 自然灾害

By the power invested in me (none) I now declare the word 警察(jǐngchá police) forever more simplified as well, which is now 言示(yánshì). So forget you ever heard the word jǐngchá.

And if you don't like it... well, you can call the 言示 to come get me.(and tell them about this change when you do)

Posted on: 自然灾害

My biggest gripe with what they did to simplified characters is the loss of meaningful radicals, even radicals that themselves have been modified! Best example is 开(kāi open) and 关(guān close). Tradition is 開 and 関. As you can see, our two little simplified friends are in the middle of the tradition character for door 門(mén). Isn't "door" what these two characters are mostly all about, especially before there were lights, cell phones and televisions to turn on and off???? Yet they couldn't even put 开 and 关 in the simplified version of door, 门, like 问(wèn ask) 间(jiān room) and 闭(bì shut [for eyes,mouth,etc.]) get to be. Would three more strokes around those 4 and 6 strokes characters really been too complicated? Yet they leave things like 警察 (just explained the radicals for this character on a post I made in my bio) Will the person responsible step forward????!!! (or at least someone who can explain this 有一点笨的事情？)

Posted on: 自然灾害

I have to admit, as much as I've been using this V3 ChinesePod the last few days, I still feel like it is really hard to get a glance at all the recent lessons like before (the main page), who was the last to post what on which blog and when (like on the side of V2 pages), etc. I feel like I'm in a tunnel maze trying to find others and pop out at various lesson blogs. V3 is more modern, but it is missing some of the colors and details of the old V2... anyway to keep this new login/profile/personal blog interface (the only plus I've seen) but tweak it more like the old way? Guess this isn't the best place to be posting this, but like I said, it's not always the easiest to find where to post. Off to Ken's blog pages and see if I can't figure those out better.

Posted on: The Monkey King

Thanks John! Funny how I wasn't even looking for a thing about the Monkey King here, but then this whole conversation popped up.

This will be really helpful, as I currently prefer how you talk mostly in English and Jenny in Chinese, not that I couldn't understand you two if you only spoke Chinese, but really helps me to stay focused and hear the conversation from not only two different culture viewpoints, but also language usage. This is definetly what makes ChinesePod different than any other book/CD i've used. Just hearing how you two interact makes it interesting, even if you were talking about watching grass grow.

But I'm curious to know, did Jenny and Aggie's version get canned? While it doesn't matter to me since I now have both versions, this will be really helpful to hear your and Jenny's version first, and then the advanced level one. It would be nice to have more ties to lessons like that... for a not long off advanced lesson to follow an Intermediate/Upper-Intermediate lesson and be linked together and use the same vocab and introduce more.

Great job guys.

Posted on: I see a thief!

Since this is a lesson has to do with police, just though I'd put a link here to something I wrote about the characters for Police 警察 (jǐngchá) two of the most difficult to write, yet commanly used in text and examples, characters. Have a look-look at the CharacterBreakdown1 post from my bio page: http://chinesepod.com/connections/viewpost/Rich/connect/CharacterBreakdown1 Let me know on that blog if such character break-downs help, since I really love them and have a bunch in the margins of my Chinese notebooks, and also love comparing characters very similar to each other and finding ways to remember their differences. 加油!

Posted on: 自然灾害

When I said you should copy the text, I didn't mean your blog entries... ha ha. Just kidding. that is weird it is happening. Remember not to press the back button when surfing ChinesePod (an unfortunate fate) or things get posted again, and I found Firefox is a lot more friendly with ChinesePod (or vice versa)

Posted on: Emergency Call

Since this is a lesson about police, I thought I'd put a link here to something I wrote about the characters for Police 警察 (jǐngchá) two of the most difficult, yet commanly used in text and examples, characters. Have a look-look at the CharacterBreakdown1 post from my bio page: http://chinesepod.com/connections/viewpost/Rich/connect/CharacterBreakdown1

Posted on: 自然灾害

Oh, forgot to add: How do you check to make sure you have the right meaning? The English version should also make sense! :-) (Since advanced text is longer, it is usually self correcting... remember, we are learning a new language, we aren't learning new concepts, e.g. we understand Natural Disasters in English, so you should know if what they are saying would be the way you translated it or not. Don't mean to make this sound like a big chore... take baby steps... one step at a time.)

Posted on: 自然灾害

Mikeledorta, As an advanced student, while I would also like to check to see if I really understand the meaning of more than just a word or sentence, but a whole block of text, it also accord to me that, for me personally anyway, since I want to do translation work in the future, the best learning exercise I can do is actually copy each sentence of the dialog (try to look at the sentence and then write it if you are also learning to write) but write it douple spaced. After one line in the dialog, in the blank lines write the English translation, using English thought but try to keep it as close to the actual word usage as possible. My Chinese friends love reading my in-between-the-lines English translations. Sure, sometimes I goof big time, but if I had the English translation at hand I'd probably be less likely to get around to doing it. (oh, and when you're done, post it here... ha ha) 加油！ 小明