User Comments - zaphekiah

Posted on: 以房养老

知道了！

Posted on: 以房养老

谢谢,Vera！我还有一个问题，是David说的听起来 xin tou bing。。这个是新头病(一个新的头病）还是心头病(心头病了）还是完全别的一个词语?

Posted on: 以房养老

13.29 一下子就yi xie qian li, yi xie wang sha de
13.51 zhe deng shi sheng li ma

...?

Posted on: 神话故事之女娲补天

Well it is good to know you will still be posting for the time being at least. I get the impression Chinese Pod is in a period of flux at the moment with staff coming and going. Whenever new staff come along there is always a short period of time while they are learning the ropes when they actually cost you more time than they save you, at least in my field of work and I am sure it can't be that different here. I expect the recent lack of responsiveness from the team members is because they have made a short term tactical decision to divert their available resources to the lower level lessons, presumably because that is where there is more user activity. I am not convinced there is really so much demand at this level, either because people give up on their studies or because they get so proficient that they don't need the classes. I hope that when I finally get to spend a couple of years in China I will get to that level myself. It makes me wonder how many of the users that subscribe to the advanced lessons are living in non Chinese speaking parts of the world like we are. Those 400 pages of IP addresses could mean something or not, my experience of web statistics is that they are kind of crazy and a lot of hits are generated by search engines. Anyway, I hope you find some opportunities to practise your Chinese in Texas as well as your Spanish. I am living in Spain and it's great for me that so many of the local 酒吧's have been taken over by Chinese entrepreneurs. I get to order my chorizo and tortilla de patatas in Chinese and wash it all down with a bottle of 青岛!

Posted on: 神话故事之女娲补天

Hey Flo and Ouxian, I've been doing the lessons in this series for a few months now and I think I should comment that I find both your questions and word lists (and of course the replies!) very helpful indeed. You are both saving me the most precious commodity I have right now which is time. And I vow that when my situation changes, or when you both get so fluent that you don't need to ask any more, I will step up and start posting my own lists!

Posted on: University Nostalgia (Part 2)

It is more than just a question of emphasis because the meaning is actually different. The way it has been translated means that the speaker didn't like to get seats at the back under any circumstances. The way you are reading it, which is how it sounds to me too, suggests that the speaker did like to get seats at the back for classes she wasn't so interested in.

Posted on: English Letters Make Chinese Words

I think Mark is right about the origin of the expression being somewhat derogatory. I think it comes from the expression "Dutch treat", meaning something that isn't a treat at all because you have to pay for it. There are other similar expressions like "Dutch courage" - it is not courage at all, it comes out of a bottle. A "Dutch auction" is one where the bidding starts high and goes down - i.e. it is crazy and back to front. Then of course there is a "Dutch cap" for a condom and when I was a kid I remember playing a game called "Dutch ovens" (this involved passing wind under the bed clothes and trying to trap your kid sisters head under there). Don't know what the Dutch ever did to deserve all this, they seem like nice people to me!

Posted on: 纳米技术

The smallest movie ever made... http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/01/ibm-atomic-movie/

Posted on: Chinese Gets Cooking

谢谢

Posted on: Chinese Gets Cooking

I am curious to know how 煎 jiān or 煎炸 jiān zhá fit into it. I have seen that 煎锅 jiān guō is a frying pan, so would this be the best verb to use for a western style fry-up?