User Comments - xiaohu
xiaohu
Posted on: #32
January 14, 2008 at 9:14 PMKathy, If you can find a Chinese area you can usually find alot of popular American movies on DVD or VCD (yes the antiquated VCD format is still alive in China). Most times they will have 6-8 movies (ripped directly from the VCD version) on one disk, so the quality isn't super great and you can't toggle the subtitles, but at least you can enjoy a movie you are already familiar with. I have the Back to the Future saga, The Matrix Trilogy and The Lord Of The Rings among many, many others.
Posted on: Extreme Chinese - 不得了 (bùdéliǎo)
January 14, 2008 at 8:56 PMAs far as I know, in Southern China you are perfectly safe with the old reliable term 小姐.
Posted on: Extreme Chinese - 不得了 (bùdéliǎo)
January 14, 2008 at 6:33 PMchris1: Yeah, now alot of Chinese girls are taking offense at the term 小姐, so instead of calling a Waitress 小姐 and running the risk of offending her, and then writing it off as "我是老外，我什么都不懂", instead you can impress them with your vast cultural knowledge and make the simple change from 小姐 to 小妹！
Posted on: Bumming a Smoke
January 14, 2008 at 9:42 AMHoward97 & jackfrombelium: Sorry, when I posted the comment it was more just kind of a joke than anything else and I figured it was really simple (only one line) and that anyone on the Newbie level curious to know what it said could put it in the Google translator. When I returned to this page many hours later I found a few other people had followed my lead and posted comments in Chinese, which wasn't my intention. The comment just says, "I don't like people who smoke, but I really like Chinese people...so what am I to do?" I was just kind of making a joke about how so many people in China smoke, it's the one thing I really don't like about China. But I agree, posts in Chinese on a Newbie forum are pretty pointless.
Posted on: 好莱坞大片
January 14, 2008 at 9:34 AMSoulman2001au: Most of the material in the Advanced lessons you most certainly will not use on a daily basis, but that's the nature of the material you cover when you get to the advanced level. Advanced English, French, Spanish, Thai, Korean, Japanese etc. will be the same way. The advanced lessons give you modern, living language that you will need in your life but the frequency of the occurrences of the material covered here of course will be much less than what's covered in the earlier levels. But all the material is very useful.
Posted on: 好莱坞大片
January 14, 2008 at 9:10 AMsoulman2001au: Very useful! Remember Chinesepod focus's on living language, giving us words and phrases we will use in our daily lives, not stale old patterns that were used in the pre Mao Ze Dong days! You can take heart in knowing that each and every lesson has been carefully crafted by experts in the field of language instruction.
Posted on: Extreme Chinese - 不得了 (bùdéliǎo)
January 14, 2008 at 9:07 AM哎呀。。。现在的时间快晚上一点了我困得不得了！ 我累得我的眼睛已经斗鸡眼得不得了！ 我贴了这么多留言我的手指痛我痛得不得了！ 不过我不得不继续贴留言因为我爱Chinesepod 爱得不得了！
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 12: The Breakup
January 14, 2008 at 8:36 AMfrankencow, I don't think you have to subscribe, I'm pretty sure all you have to do is go into the control panel for your profile and add a picture from your computer.
Posted on: Too Picky
January 14, 2008 at 8:17 AMAmber, Thanks for clearing that up. It's kind of serendipitous because I've always wanted to know how to properly express the meaning of "vicious cycle" since I was trying to explain the humor of the movie "Austin Powers" to my Chinese friend, I was quoting the scene in part 2 where the character "Fat Bastard" says, "I eat because I'm depressed, but I'm depressed because I eat...it's a vicious cycle!" I tried and tried to explain it to him but didn't know how to express the meaning of "Vicious Cycle", and finally we two just agreed 算了，不重要！
Posted on: 好莱坞大片
January 14, 2008 at 10:14 PMsoulman2001au: I absolutely second Auntie68's motion to listen to all lessons regardless of level because there is always room for improvement. When you're learning a language you're trying to soak it all in, and rush to that goal of fluency, so inevitably there are things that fall through the cracks. Little points you might have missed along the way and often it's very helpful to get back to basics and re-explore things from a new perspective and use it as an opportunity to strengthen a weak point (ie: pronunciation, use of particles, grammer...especially pronunciation as usually that's an area that always leaves room for improvement) If nothing else the lower level lessons provide a good refresher course. Because of this I would highly recommend listening to lessons of all levels and soaking up as much knowledge as possible!