User Comments - washingtondcmandarincooperative

Posted on: When to get a new car

I agree with Becca that you don't want to overwhelm newbies with too many possible meanings of a word that has a single specific meaning in the dialog.  Actually I fault ChinesePod for giving too many alternate definitions of words in the more recent vocab review sections of lessons.  The vocab review should be limited to the meaning of the word as used in the lesson.  Maybe in the advanced lessons you could include some other meanings in the vocab review and expansion sentences, but under no circumstances should you try to include every possible meaning.  

Posted on: 66 Enjoyable Characters with Joy #7

Becca, re: If you want to express "30% discount", you can say 打三折":

Wouldn't a 30% discount be "打七折"? (buyer pays 70% of original price). 

Posted on: More customers please!

Hi, Becca: Is your new convention for characters with multiple readings / different meanings  to give the pronunciation for the word you think is more common, NOT the one that is correct in the context? It seems that 喂 is a character with multiple readings depending on the meaning (i.e. a “多音字”) but you think that giving wrong information about which word it is will "avoid confusion"? I don't think your analogy with tone changes is a good one, because with tone changes the meaning does not change, whereas wéi and wèi are really different words with different meanings.  I really appreciate that you are so active in postings answers on the lesson comments, but I have to say this just seems like an obvious mistake caught by user yingyue that should be corrected.  

Posted on: Chatting on the Moon

海上生明月 is from a poem, so you should expect poetic language.  I guess your question is based on the translation that the "moon rises" and so you supposed the word sheng1 should be rendered 升.  Maybe if you thought of it as the moon "comes out" (出生）it would make more sense.  By the way, the word for "moonrise" is 月出.

Posted on: 得到、获得、取得的用法

It seems that the vocabulary review audio file can be accessed from the web site but not from the mobile app.

Posted on: 得到、获得、取得的用法

PDF and audio for "还是可以 *得到* 他们的支持" is shown on screen in the video as "还是可以 *获得* 他们的支持“

Is either one grammatically correct?  Does the use of one or the other change the nuance in this sentence?

Posted on: The New Coworker

According to Cpod’s answer to a user on the Forum the reason you can’t access the writing practice any more is because they are working on their own software to replace the “Skritter Lite” part of the lessons.

Posted on: At the Beach

一樣。 都 防曬。曬黑油 不 一樣。

Posted on: Just a Flesh Wound

Re: "And the pinyin really should be xuè since that's the dictionary pronunciation." That depends very much on which dictionary you are using. And also whether the dictionary lists "accepted" or known variants. For example, John DeFrancis's ABC Chinese-English dictionary gives the pinyin for 流血 as liúxiě. At the end of the entry it has "See also liúxuè". I am inclined to agree that the xuě pronunciation is not common, but that is the only one give by the Tuttle Learner's Chinese-English Dictionary for the character血. I'd have to go back and listen to the lesson, but I would say that the pinyin should match whatever the speakers in the lesson are saying, since none of the variants we are discussing seem to be incontrovertibly "wrong." I think you will find that when the character 血 appears in a compound that is scientific in nature it will always be pronounced xuè.

Posted on: Just a Flesh Wound

Re: "I've never heard it said as xuě.": Where in this lesson did you see the pronunciation for blood given as xuě? You cite "the pinyin in the vocab" but under the tab on the web site it is given as liúxiě.  This is also what is on the vocab list at the end of the dialog.   The characters for 流血 can be pronounced either liúxuè or liúxiě.  As you already mentioned, xuè is a variant.