User Comments - suntzu8
suntzu8
Posted on: Diet Coke
May 4, 2008 at 12:43 PMVery interesting. While I was in Shanghai and Beijing, I also had the same problem. I knew the words for Coke and Pepsi, but embarassingly I did not know the word for "can". So, I ended up doing what I always do when I don't know the exact measure word, I just used "ge". (I also used "bei" for Coca Cola although I know thats only for a cup or glass of something. I figured that the person I was speaking to would figure it out). Most times they figured out what I was referring to. One tricky point. While I was in Beijing, the waitress asked me if I wanted a bottle of coke. I knew the measure word is "ping" but as you all probably know, they are quite fond of the "r" sound in Beijing. So, she pronounced the measure word as "pingr" (sort of like yidianr instead of yidian). That threw me off for about 15 seconds until I figured it out from the context and remembered the word "ping".
Posted on: Ending your sentence with 啊 & 呀 (a & ya)
April 30, 2008 at 4:08 AMAmber, thanks for that nice explanation! Coincidentally, I was just learning the same pattern in my textbooks but I like your succinct explanation better. (Never heard it used with ya though...sounds cute anyway).
Posted on: Ending your sentence with 啊 & 呀 (a & ya)
April 29, 2008 at 4:32 AMGeez. I've been occasionally using those modal particles and I'm a male! Now that I think of it, I do mainly hear the "a" and "ya" from females. I mainly use it to say "shi a" and "dui a" if I want to sort of emphasize sort of an agreement with what the speaker has just said. However, I don't use as high or cutesy tone as Amber or Conne did (they do sound so cute though! Really does make it nice to hear.) Somebody please tell me that I haven't been going around "posing as a girl" by using these particles in this way?! Aiya..wo hen buhaoyisi (a?!)!
Posted on: Months
April 27, 2008 at 8:29 PMKesirui, The area regarding counting where I used to (and sometimes still do) have problems is once the numbers exceed 10,000. That's because the Chinese counting system counts in units of 10,000 s. So, for example, one useful thing to remember is that 1 million is bai3 wan4 (one hundred ten thousands). For large numbers, I still have to think carefully about how to "convert", between English and Chinese. If anybody has any useful tips for conversion, it would be much appreciated.
Posted on: Days of the week
April 24, 2008 at 5:19 PMHi Michele, That's an interesting grit of sand that you've thrown in the gears there! =) In order to make sense of 前途 (qián tú), I think one would have to unfortunately abandon the diary analogy. For qián tú, I think one has to look at the actual word itself: qián means front as we have already mentioned and tú here means "road". So literally speaking qián tú means "front road" or the "road ahead" = the future. Admittedly, one has to switch analogies and the thinking isn't consistent between the two analogies. The only thing that makes it work in my mind is to remember the meaning of tú = road, as making this particular word 前途 (qián tú) as being distinct from the previous analogies.
Posted on: Days of the week
April 24, 2008 at 4:41 AMMuch like agentchuck, I learned qian 前 and hou 后 through brute force. However, later on I thought of a different way of thinking about it. Think of time as a book written in chronological order (like a diary). The front of the diary (qian 前) contains the earliest entries (i.e. the things that occurred most in the past, the oldest) and the back of the diary (hou 后) contains the most recent entries and pages for the future. So, if you are looking in the middle of your diary, where is qiántiān 前天? qián means front so it is closer to the front of the diary, and the front contains PAST entries. Similarly, where is houtian 后天? Hou means the back, so it is towards the back of the diary, which contains FUTURE entries. Warning: Like I said, I learned through brute force myself so I'm not sure how helpful this analogy is. If anybody has any comments on whether it works for them, please let me know.
Posted on: Days of the week
April 23, 2008 at 12:46 PMI think the whole 上 and 下distinction is fascinating and it originally gave me some problems too as I visually conceive time in the Western fashion. I sometimes wonder if the Chinese conception of time is related to the traditional system of writing (i.e. from top to bottom, left to right). That is to say, the earlier characters you write are on the top and the later characters are on the bottom as you proceed down the page. On a related note, did anybody ever have problems with qiánnián (前年 -the year before last, two years ago) and qiántiān (前天 - the day before yesterday? Since qiánmian (前面) means "in front" or ahead, I initially instinctively thought it would mean years or days in the future as opposed to the past. Again, thats related to a Western conception of time where the future is "in front". I encountered similar problems with 后天 since 后面 means "at the back or rear". Instinctively, I would have thought this means times in the past rather than in the future. Anyway, I finally got that all straightened out in my head but only after practicing a lot.
Posted on: Ending your sentence with 嘛 （ma)
April 17, 2008 at 5:13 AMHi Danielcyoung, I'm Canada and there are some teashops here where there are lots of Taiwanese. When I am in line for my bubble tea, I sometimes hear them using 嘛. However, I think 那个 seems to be much more frequent in usage. Of course, I'm not fluent so maybe I'm not picking it all up.
Posted on: Ending your sentence with 嘛 （ma)
April 15, 2008 at 5:37 AMClay, thanks for the clarification on nàge. I was recently in Shanghai and Beijing and heard it in both places. Those two cities were a slightly different experience though. In Shanghai, I heard some Shanghainese there and there while in Beijing...there were a lot of "r" sounds everywhere.
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 6, 2008 at 3:41 AMI think there is another lesson floating around Cpod called "Green Eggs and Ham"! Any idea whether Ken, Jenny, Amber, Connie, Clay or John or any of the other CPOD staff are big fans of Dr. Seuss? I heard that the classic the "Cat in the Hat" was to address illiteracy rates among school children. To make it easy to read and learn, the entire book is supposedly constructed using only 220 words. This was then followed up with the "literary tour de force" of "Green Eggs and Ham" which I hear only uses 50 words. I wonder if there are any equivalent well known Chinese children's books , analogous to the Dr. Seuss series.