User Comments - tingyun

Posted on: Of Beauty Pageants and Plastic Surgery

Question - The transcript tranlated the following sentence as "they're the most basic requisites for a beauty pageant"

参加选美的人都知道。

It appears after a description of various kinds of plastic surgery.  Does it really mean anything other than "all the contestents know this?" or is there some other meaning from the context, like that all the contestents have also had plastic surgery?

Posted on: Going to Church

Sadly, discrimination again atheists and agnostics is also present in the USA - though less pronounced.  Still, you'll commenly hear politicans and pundits say things like "it doesn't matter what religion you are, as long as you have faith in some higher power."  The government embraces religion every chance they get - from our governing bodies holding prayer, to the inevitable contest in all elections over which candidate can prove they are the most religious.  Many private organizations, such as the boyscouts of america, withhold membership to atheists and agnostics, and young atheist and agnostic students often find themselves bullied while in school. 

Posted on: Going to Church

Kid, you’re not challenging beliefs – that would require some sort of reasoned argument.

Your only statement was “Religion:  Sanctuary for the ignorant”

If you want to cast yourself in the role of the hero rescuing generations of sheep from religious dogma – you might try another method than naked insults.

Besides, you have your facts wrong.  “until recent times” religion has gone unchallenged?  The book I referred you to in the other thread, David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” was published in 1779, and honestly I’ve yet to hear any modern argument that wasn’t conceived by Hume and fully discussed by his interlocutors.  You’ll probably find yourself agreeing with Philo, the skeptic, though Cleanthes makes a number of excellent points from the theist perspective.  And Demea makes a good showing for the more dogmatic perspective (though, in my opinion, he gets the worst of the three).

Anyway, that would be a good start for you – both to explore an issue you are interested in, and to learn what a reasoned argument is.  I’d imagine there’s even a Chinese translation out there somewhere.

Posted on: Easter and Chocolate Bunnies

Interesting, I hadn't encounted either of those yet, thanks Antony.  I think 意味 yi4wei4 is the noun "implication."

Posted on: Going to Church

bobt - seriously, 2 different threads at the same time?  Did you run a search for religion related lessons?

I'm sure you can google search up a ton of message boards filled with very bored people who will be happy to trade jabs with you on religion.  This really isn't the place - especially when you phrase your comments in such an offensive manner.

Posted on: Easter and Chocolate Bunnies

Yep, I'm with Antony73, and lechuan, this is isn't even close to the right forum for a constructive discussion on religion.  I'd suggest reading Hume's "dialogues concerning natural religion" if you want a good exploration of the issue...

Now, back to relevant language discussion: lechuan, "inferring" is not the correct word - I think you mean "implying."  "Inferring" would mean you are drawing a conclusion while you read someone else's writing, by "reading between the lines."  If someone includes in their own words an implication, they are "implying" not "inferring."

At any rate, I think you are being too fair to call this guy's express insults an implication - its not like he tried to hide what he was saying.  Its not an implication when someone says it directly.

Posted on: Fast Food

According to the foreign services old text, http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/Courses/Chinese/Standard%20Chinese/Resource%20Module/FSI%20-%20Standard%20Chinese%20-%20Resource%20Module%20-%20Student%20Text.pdf

page 45 of the pdf, You usually hear the initial y sound in ying2 and yin1, and sometimes elsewhere.  My guess is that differs among native speakers - from listening to chinesepod and other language learning products, it definitally seems some people are more likely to sound like there is an initial y.

Incidentally, that text is great to look through for detailed analysis of these sorts of things

Posted on: Opening a Factory

ycleong,

I certainly know the frustration you're speaking of, as I think most people do.  You listen to dialogue this speed, and you think how could I ever understand it, unless at native speaker level?

But the happy truth is, that is a misperception.  I'm personally at the intermediate level, and generally one of two conditions means I percieve a sentence of dialogue as too fast.  1) it contains more than 2 new vocab words or 2) it is very fast, for example, some of the angry sentences of dialogue from the Zhang Liang Lili series, or the long speach from the international woman's day episode.

But, very happily, after studying many other lessons, and advancing a bit, often when you come back to review those same impossible seeming sentences suddenly seem easily managable.  Myabe you in other lessons studied the new vocab, and so got comfortable with it in a variety of contexts, or, most often, you just have become acclimated to the speed, and suddenly they seem to be talking at an ok pace.  Though, you're still always going to come across the situation again - some particular sentence in some lesson just will feel too fast, and won't click...until later.

However, if the whole dialogue seems too fast, and consistently so, then it is probably more a problem of level selection.  I listened to this dialogue, and truthfully they are many Intermediate levels in the archives that are faster than it - and honestly slowing it down anymore would probably shortchange the upper intermediate learners - they need stuff of significant difficult, and this might even be too slow. 

Perhaps it would be best to work your way through the intermediate archives for awhile - there are really some great ones.  Personally, I've done 100 of the Intermediates so far, and I still don't feel ready to advance to upper intermediate - it can be a long road.  And it took me 200 elementaries before I felt ready to advance to Intermediate.  Though, of course, you very well might be faster at it than me - I'm just advising patience, and not to rush yourself.

One further comment - my perception is the really old intermeidate lessons were rather easy, then they got steadily more difficult for awhile, and then havre begun easing up.  So there is some variation in diffuclty even within levels - maning you'll likely encounted some intermeidate that will give you an almost upper intermediate challange - if thats what you are looking for.

Posted on: Touring a Factory

Thanks miantiao, so, to confirm I understand correctly,  我看到三支笔。它很小。Would be a proper sentence, but changing it to 它们 would be inccorect, because they are inatimate objects, not living things?

Posted on: Touring a Factory

A question - near the end, in talking about the benefits stipulated for workers, manager Li refers to them as ta1 - not ta1men, even though the english translation confirms the plural, them.  Is it generally true that for somewhat abstract things like, required benefits, that even if plural, the singular ta1 will be used?