User Comments - sfrrr
sfrrr
Posted on: Guided Plan Gets Better! Plus: Poetry is Pending
January 19, 2009 at 12:20 AMIn my opinion--decidedly unhumble--Newbie lessons are the mos6t difficult to do well because the first-timers look to the current Newbie lesson as their first intro to Mandarin, but people who having been coming to CPod for a while and consider Newbie to be a learning level...those latter people are not interested in learning wo3, ta1, ni3 over and over and over again. I haven't had time to listen to the News show yet, but what about creating a WELCOME NEWBIE section containing unvarying basic lessons containing the very most basic words and phrases. And then offer, perhaps, elementary and high elementary learning levels for the regularly returning ellie students? (Omigod, that was all one sentence!)
Also, I think it's to CPod's long term advantage to keep changing the side dishes (Video Hotpot, Dear Amber, Movie Madness...) because those changes provide spice to our learning regimens, whatever they are. Change is hard for many of us students, but it's never boring. That said, I'd love to see someone resurrect Chinatomy--they were enormously useful as well as entertaining.
Topic suggestion (although probably too late for this year): how to prepare a real Chinese New Year family dinner--or at least a verbally annotated list of required dishes and customs beyond hong bao. (I liked it when we smeared the lips of the the picture of the kitchen god with honey and then burned it so he'd take a good report of us to heaven. But I don't know anyone who does that today.)
Posted on: No Wonder!
October 5, 2008 at 1:26 AMThis reminded me of more QW requests. (I'm unstoppable.)
There are four or five (probably more I don't know about) Chinese ways to say always. When do you use what? What about now? Time, duration... more difficult concepts than we realize--until we try to learn an entirely different language.
Oh, and what's the word for future? (that's a plain old question, not a QW suggestion.)
Posted on: Around the Office
October 4, 2008 at 12:00 AMBazza--of course I do. Anything for art, right? Or, to be more accurate, commerce. Think of the useful vocabulary: open wide; does it hurt when I do this? wisdom tooth; swirl and rinse; you're going to feel a little sting;...
Posted on: Around the Office
October 3, 2008 at 10:54 PMHow about a video tour of going to the dentist?
For that matter, how about making some sort of visual dictionary? The user looks for a picture of, say, a stove dial, and then reads off the Chinese word for same. I use a couple of hard copy versions and they are enormously helpful.
Posted on: Around the Office
October 3, 2008 at 10:49 PMCalkin--thank you for providing those text files. VERY helpful.
Posted on: Getting a Driver's License
October 3, 2008 at 10:36 PMAlso, two suggestions for Qing Wen programs: (1) yuan yin vs. liyou; (2) study vs. learn in Chinese. In English, study and learn have very different meanings. Is this distinction made in Chinese and, if so, how?
Oh, and while I'm at it...It would be helpful if you told us which syllable to stress in each vocabulary word. When I was reading John P's Sinosplice article on semantic flavors of "my," I linked to an article about how the Chinese tell a fluent Waiguoren from a native Chinese speaker. Someone ventured that an important criterion is where the speaker puts the stress in each word.
Posted on: Getting a Driver's License
October 3, 2008 at 10:34 PMDid anyone read the New Yorker article about a driving school in China (and his experiences--and his wife's--trying to drive a rental car without an accident? It was a year or two ago and explains why Chinese drivers drive the way they do. If you're interested, the article is: "Wheels of Fortune" by Peter Hessler, Nov 26, 2007: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/26/071126fa_fact_hessler. This is just an abstract, though, and lacks the details of how driving is taught in Hessler's part of China.
Posted on: A Very Special Day
October 2, 2008 at 2:58 AMIn Yiddish, the traditional anniversary wish was: Biz a hundert un tsvanstik yor--for a hundred and twenty years. Now, some people say: Biz a tausent yor (a thousand years). For you guys, I guess we'd have to say: Zhu nimen dao yi wan ge podcasts.
Mazeltov.
Posted on: Recovering a Cell Phone Number
September 25, 2008 at 1:15 AMFirst. But then that game should be beneath our dignity here, right?
Whatever.
Posted on: Tech Upgrades and Farming!
March 16, 2009 at 7:47 PMBe still my heart! No wonder you're number one in Net-based language learning. Thanks.