User Comments - washingtondcmandarincooperative

Posted on: Are we both winners?

It certainly seems like an Elementary lesson, but in the video you call it a pre-intermediate lesson, and it is also identified as such on the web page.  

Posted on: Not ready for bed

Becca, yingyue, and yi,

I think it would be helpful for English speakers to understand that leaving out pronouns (" I " , " you " ) is common in spoken Chinese and is not a "mistake" or "less correct."  In English you must include the word "you" in the sentence "You can go to sleep" but if it is omitted in Chinese it is understood by the context and is quite normal.  In English "May read a book" is not a complete sentence, but 可以看书 ke3yi3kan4shu1 is a perfectly "correct" way to say "May * I *  read a book?" when the subject " I " is understood by implication.  It is confusing as a beginning learner sometimes trying to figure out "what is the subject of the sentence?" so it helps to learn about this common Chinese feature of having the subject understood by context

Posted on: Asking Prices in Chinese with 多少

I don't think it is ever specified that this conversation is happening in the People's Republic of China, so 元 could be translated as dollar. Also, 块 IS always the correct measure word for dollars (and other units of currency).  

To clarify, if you were in a Chinese-run grocery in a region that has dollars as their currency (Australia, Hong Kong, USA) and you saw a sign that said "果汁 5 元“  the cashier would most certainly not be expecting you to pay for the fruit juice in renminbi.  And when the cashier tells you the price is ”五块“  or ”五块钱“ the correct translation is "five dollars."  

The name of the US dollar is 美元。 If there were ever some ambiguity about whether you were talking about Rmb or USD you could say， for example "五块美元” --"five American dollars"    澳元 is the Australian dollar and 港元 is the Hong Kong dollar. 

When talking about money, there is a difference between the general term for the currency and the unit of measure.  For example,  in the PRC the currency is the renminbi  （人民币）and the unit is yuan 元。  For example 五元 or five yuan for a price.  More colloquially and most often you would speak it as五块  wǔ kuài.   It would not be correct to say "5 renminbi".  The Hong Kong dollar is 港币, but to say 5 HK Dollars you would also say 五块 and probably write it down as a price as 五元。   

Posted on: Rookie driver’s conversation 无人驾驶 解放菜鸟

"哪天进入无人驾驶的时代了，我就可以解放了。" 。。 。 目前 特斯拉 公司强调自动驾车 跟 司机协助 是不一样。 Autopilot = 驾驶辅助系统。 千万别看报纸或睡觉！

Posted on: Rookie driver’s conversation 无人驾驶 解放菜鸟

牡丹，谢谢你的说明。 其实我想了想，很久以前我开始开车的时候 停车以后要踩 （用脚推下）最左边的另外一个刹车 。 要松开就有手把，要拉起来。 说“辅助制动器” 的话， 我会猜意思是 ABS （anti-lock braking system), 那就是发动的时候用。 （词典有 “防抱死系统” ） 现代的汽车真复杂。 有自动驾驶的，紧急时会自动刹车。也许辅助制动器 也会带来这个意思呢。

Posted on: Rookie driver’s conversation 无人驾驶 解放菜鸟

为什么是 “拉手刹” 而不是 “松开手刹”？ 

Posted on: More customers please!

Elijah,

Thanks for the explanation and the links.  I had forgotten about David Moser's book; I really must get it.  I still can't imagine Mandarin is not a natural language.  At least, it is not an invented language in the way that Esperanto is.  I had long understood that in parts of Northeast China (e.g. Harbin) Mandarin (or something extremely close to whatever "pure" or "standard" Mandarin is ) is spoken.  The process and system you are describing seems a bit reminischent of what they have in France: an Academy to define the "standard" and defend the language from corruption.  Pushing the "refined" Putonghua out to all of China seems more of matter of unifying the country, not promulgating an entirely new language, though maybe it felt that way to speakers whose native language was pretty far removed on the Sinitic language family tree, to say nothing of minorities who are in a different language family altogether (e.g., Ural-Altaic)   But again, I will have to check your sources, and thanks again for sharing them.

Posted on: More customers please!

Good spot, Elijah. 

Actually, in the past ChinesePod has almost NEVER represented 喂 in pinyin as being other than the second tone when the meaning is "hello" in answering a phone call.

https://chinesepod.com/dictionary/english-chinese/%E5%96%82

Posted on: More customers please!

Elijah, re: "I can't find any indication that the second tone pronunciation is accepted as correct" -- Gee, when I mouse over 喂 to get my Zhongwen popup dictionary entry using the Chrome extension the very first entry is "wei2 hello, when answering the phone." This pronunciation (2nd tone) and definition also appear in Pleco, although to be fair it may be citing a Cantonese pronunciation. But to the point of what is "correct", if "everybody" pronounces it in the second tone, how could it not be correct?  Some dictionaries also define the 4th tone version as "hey" , so maybe Chinese people are answering the phone with "hey!" but putting it in the second tone somewhow softens it??  But since the usual use of the character in the fourth tone is to feed someone or some animal this led me to believe that the character is a  多音字.  

Posted on: Emojis 脑洞大开—表情包

Dear 234396114， 

You can find everything the host says for some lessons, with content created by volunteer users.  

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/13480