User Comments - wenjong

Posted on: Swearing at a Driver

I find that it is really easy to offend in a 2nd or 3rd language, as exactly, the words don't have the emotional taboo they do in one's first language... so you might pop out a swear word heard or learned, without even a lot of emotion and aggression, as you don't "feel" it, whereas your listeners, whose first language it is, will feel a real impact of the profanity. It can be a real issue... that lack of "feeling" of swear words in other languages.

Posted on: Ice Cream Run

Thanks babardwan... the google images idea is a good one (though was unavailable to me with my paper dictionary in hand looking to take a bus from JinShan mountain in Beijing back to our hotel near Tian'an men square. (gee, does anyone besides me notice I am at Elementary level and never post in pinyin and characters! oops!)... the bus stop we were looking for really was a local city bus, and they were all saying bashi and looked at me quizzically and with zero understanding when I said gong gong qi che (which I like to say by the way! :D)

Anyways, I'll use your google images hint in the future.

Oh, and I do think those buses (gong jiao che image) that look like insects with antennae, go out of the city, but I could be wrong. Anyone else?

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

Never heard of or seen "ganna". What area of the world is that from?

Gonna is a verbal contraction of "going to" as wanna is a verbal contraction of "want to": I'm gonna wanna go soon. Saying "I'm going to want to go soon" sounds quite nice and posh if you properly pronounce all the consonants. :)

I guess someone who uses "She's a gonna" is a variation of "She's a goner" (Ie a person who is or soon will be gone: headed for death). I've never seen it written "gonna" though I guess it is easily pronounced that way by not enunciating the "r".

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

You'd stop subscribing to Chinesepod because someone said "pissed"? Heck, my grandmother says pissed off, my aunties say "pissed" to mean drunk, my mother says "really pissed" to mean really angry. Would you rather "Teed off" was used?

As user16460 said, polite and impolite is relative. Pissed is hardly an obscenity, and rather just a synonym for greatly annoyed... actually I am not sure that "angry" or "annoyed" capture the feeling of "pissed".

But really, one impolite word and you are gone. That is hardly polite. ;)

Posted on: Ice Cream Run

Hmmm, In some ways I can see both sides of this coin. And yes, the bus thing. I tried to ask where the bus stop was in Beijing, first using gongongqiche, which I had learned, and then with each other word for "bus" in my Oxford Chinese / English dictionary, even pointing to the words in the dictionary (in characters) in case it was my bad pronunciation. Nada. Finally someone came up and said oh, "Bah se" or something that sounded darn close to bus, and they all nodded, "Bah se" (I am making up right now since that was one instance in fall 2007) and pointed to a spot that did in fact turn out to be a bus stop. I was just incredulous that these mandarin speakers had no word for "bus" that was in any of my lessons, nor in the dictionary.

Though really, as a Canadian, if someone came up to me and asked where they sell ice lollies, I would just stare at them blankly. Really. And when I was in England, when telling a story, I'd unintentionally having people rolling around on the floor gagging in laughter. Who knew in Canada that a young woman is a chick, in England is a bird, a baby chicken is also chick, in England "put your socks in the boot" means to put them in the trunk of a car, and if you are running around without your pants, it doesn't mean your left your jeans at home, but you're butt-naked as you're running around without your underpants (panties). And yes, they say jumpers to mean sweaters in London UK, and in Canada a jumper is a dress usually for little girls, kind of like overalls, ie has shoulder straps, and you usually wear another top beneath it.

So yeah, I found that having a woman from Beijing come into my house and give me sentences and vocab to be incredibly helpful (vs structured lessons in books, and no, I never need to say orange giraffe, and why do so many learn-chinese flash cards have shapes? When is the last time in English you said a shape unless you are constructing a table?)... for my adopted Chinese child I learned things like "chuan shang ni de tou xie" "mama da kai ni de pingzi de gar" "bie peng" "yiqi wanr" "bie da!"... and have been totally thrilled that when I am out in public, from Saskatoon to Beijing to Montreal to Vancouver, I hear Chinese parents say EXACTLY these same things to their kids.

I find CP to be halfway between these... some of the things I've learned here I say to a Beijing native and they look at me blankly and say "no one says that", and then other things are spot on in a local way of speaking, like the "zhao pengyou" children's song, I was thrilled to learn that my newly adopted 22 mo old chinese child (jiaozuo and zhengzhou, henan province) knew it, and added in all the appropriate hand movements and bopped along to it. And chinese DO call children "xiao pengyou" etc.

People ask me all the time (my son is now nearly 6 and goes to Chinese preschool at the university on Saturday, and is I think only 1 of 2 students whose parents aren't native chinese speakers at home) where I learned to pronounce Chinese so well, and that I can say sentences instead of words, and I always say Chinese Pod.

So yeah, I see both itsanthonyhere's point, as it does happen painfully too often (I am loving the China Sprout in-house 2dvd/textbook set of Children Learn Chinese as the kids actually pronounce like chinese kids do, despite the "teacher" pronouncing like a textbook). And I see that textbooks provide framework, something standardised and not "what is currently cool" (haha, when I started speaking French, I was told I spoke like a book... ainsi soit-il!) and that Chinese Pod really does a great job. There. how is that for long!

Posted on: Living in Nanjing

http://mattschiavenza.com/2008/11/18/snapshots-the-fu-wu-yuan/

Posted on: Living in Nanjing

Yikes, you don't want to go around calling all young women you meet in life or are introduced to as "service people"... that really is only a tiny step up from addressing the new young lady next door as "Wang prostitute"! : "nice to meet you, waitress/bartender/servicelady Wang!" :D

Posted on: Text Messages

Agh. "Ni nu er"

Posted on: Text Messages

In the dialogue, the second time A speaks, it says "Nu nu er bing le" (Your daughter is sick), whereas the english translation says "My daughter is sick"... Having got spam emails that say both things (your friend/child/parent needs $ or I am from Africa, my parent, child, souse is sick and needs $)... I didn't even realize it was supposed to say "Your daughter is sick" til the second person said "I got that too and replied I only have a son"...

Could the english translation be fixed please? thanks!

Great lesson. Very pertinent and lots of good vocabulary.

Posted on: Asking the Time

I'm also a senior newbie, or perhaps an elementary, and am self-taught here at home, usually listening to chinesepod while I work with my eyes and hands (I draw for a living)... so my reading and writing, or esp my writing, are not "up to par" and I too get a bit overwhelmed by all the comments in characters in the elementary and intermediate lessons. And I've been here (on an a frequent but hands and eyes occupied basis) since 2007... so I can understand if newbies or advanced newbie level learners find it hard to fit into the "community".

I'd hate to be a newbie now with little access to new lessons... I totally welcome extra newbie lessons, with their current comments (and thus interaction). thanks.