User Comments - tingyun

Posted on: Podcast Language 2

tudigong - this lesson was just posted.  Give them a little time.

Posted on: Days of the week

I know my tutor from the mainland always uses xing1qi1 in speach...as do many of the CPod dialogues. 

I imagine if you asked me questions about English usage, I'd have all sorts of weird impressions.

Posted on: Welcome to ChinesePod

I don't use them - only because once I've studied a lesson, frequent review of dialogues ensure I don't forgot vocab (and usually, only a small percentage of the "key vocab" they review was truly new anyway) - thus making the vocab review not very useful. The further sentence examples might be good, except that its easy to switch subjects around and reform sentences on your own while listening to the dialogue. Also, I HATE silence in my playlist - and all those spaces for thinking and composing responses really bothers me. Also, after reaching the higher levels, I'm really not thinking of vocab in terms of English tranlsations anymore, and so all the english prompting and definitions might actually be counterproductive. Not to knock english translations when initially learning a word though - but even there, I really only use to to confirm the meaning I would have guessed from the charecters a word is composed of. Plus, my purpose of "review" with the dialogues really isn't review - but rather to hear those "lexical chunks" again, again, and again - so that they move from my passive, receptive understanding, to my productive arsenal. I generally find it takes a few weeks on my playlist before I start spontanously dropping the contents of a lesson into chatting with chinese speakers. But, I can see how it would be useful for some people in some situations.

Posted on: Welcome to ChinesePod

I agree with Lechuan - A playlist of dialogues is great for review. Currently have 206 dialogues in two playlists - listen to it whenever I drive, do housework, play with my dogs... As to how long at each level - of course there's no accuracy to saying "X months" - too many other factors, like hours per day, and innate ability. If we only count a lesson as "studied" when you perfectly understand it, can repeat the lexical chunks, and frequently review it (basically, what Lechuan said) - there might be some accuracy to saying how many lessons must be studied to move up to the next level. Obviously there will still be alot of individual variation... Personaly, it took my 86 Newbies to go to Ele, 199 Eles to go to Int, 205 Int to go to UpperInt (honestly, I still feel like the jump is just a bit abrupt - had there been more available, I would have done 10-20 more Ints). My guess is every level except Newbie you'll need just about everything that has been released - though perhaps other people are capable of advancing faster than me. How many have others needed?

Posted on: Hot and Cool 热, 烫 , 凉 , 冷

Thanks Matt_c - I don't suppose you can confirm that there are no plans to retire any more old lessons?  All the talk of upgrades has me a bit worried.  I really love the feel of the old lessons (the new ones are great too, of course).

Posted on: City: Mumbai

It does show up if you search for either Mumbai or City - I think what Shenyajin is saying, is that a smarter search enginge, where you could find it by searching for related words, rather than the exact words in the title, will come later.

Posted on: Hot and Cool 热, 烫 , 凉 , 冷

mauro - I'm sure everyone here understands, having gone through the same frustrations, and I too was perhaps a bit too harsh in condemning your remarks as a bit too harsh.;)

Pete - thats a great idea.  Currently I'm not doing any Qing Wens, simply because of the difficulty in screening out the inappropriate level ones.  Will it be leveled primarily on difficulty of grammer topic or on the amount of chinese used by the hosts?  Personally I'd think the later is more useful, but I'm sure there are arguments both ways.

By the way, none of the old lessons will be removed because of the renovations right?  If so, please make sure to warn us in advance - I really don't mind the lower sound quality on the older ones, and I'd hate to miss out on them.

Posted on: Hot and Cool 热, 烫 , 凉 , 冷

mauro?  I read effie612's comment above, and I'm quite sure it didn't deserve this kind of condemnation.  He asked for more Chinese spoken in the lesson, and for some more difficult ones added into the mix of example sentences. 

Now, in the end, I agree with those who posted after him to say that the very topic of this lesson means it must be at a more elementary level - great point and a reasoned response.

But taking his request for more difficulty as, in your words, making you "feel like ignorant fools" is way, way oversensitive.  In fact, I've had to look over this thread twice to confirm that indeed he only posted one comment, because I have trouble believing you could be reacting to the post I read.

Posted on: Regional Accents Part II

In www.zhongwen.com under the vocabulary tab, if you click on guoyu/putonghua, you can pull up a pretty comprehensive list of differences between taiwan and mainland standard pronounciation of charecters.  Tone and sound differences, like in lese vs laji, not ng vs n distinctions.  Sadly only in traditional charecters, but the simplified show up if you click on any given charecter.

Posted on: Of Beauty Pageants and Plastic Surgery

Oh interesting, thanks Shenyajin.  I was thinking there might be some such implication...

Pete - thats great - though one thing I've kind of wished for while working through the old lessons, has to do with the translation of the chengyu in the vocab section.  It often picks an english saying or translation that means the same thing, which is very helpful, but I think including both an equivlant english saying, and something along the lines of the literal tranlation, might help with absorbing the vocab.  For example, in "A Dad Gives Advice to a broken hearted son" the vocab section translated zuan1niu2jiao3jian1 as "obsess over small thing" which is great, but what really helped me remember it was John and Jenny's explanation of "drill into a cow's horn tip".  It seems including both tranlations might be helpful with these sort of chengyu, if you don't think it would be too confusing.

Thanks!