User Comments - zhenlijiang
zhenlijiang
Posted on: Dialing a Nonlocal Phone Number
May 12, 2011 at 9:16 AM稍后 maybe?
Posted on: I wet the bed!
May 10, 2011 at 4:39 PM1) I went to the bathroom in a department store, but found all the stalls either broken in some way or occupied, including one I was particularly intent on using. A pop star I rather had a crush on (in full stage wardrobe--white jumpsuit, sequins, etc.--no not Elvis) was in there. We struggled, he trying to shut the door on me completely.
2) I was standing at a utility sink somewhere dimly lit and unfamiliar, washing a pair of my underwear. I was splashing water all over myself and my feet were getting very wet and cold.
--Immediately after I had these dreams I woke up. Guess which one I had an "incident" in! I didn't cry like the little girl in the lesson, but what a demoralizing way to start off the day. This was when I was a child btw, just realized might be better to make that absolutely clear hahaha
Why does John sound like this has never happened to him??
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 6, 2011 at 5:48 PMOne thing that makes me lose respect--an American in China who plays up to the locals by dropping words like 小日本 and 日本鬼子 in casual conversation, thinking he's gonna win a few cheap social points for that 'tude. Don't know if that matters to you any in terms of your self-esteem, but I think it should.
Posted on: 5000 Years of History
May 6, 2011 at 11:48 AMI see this as something like "Yesterday my place (=we) received 20-plus guests." Yesterday my house came over (were) 20-plus guests, to be more literal as well as incorrect in English. I think 我家 is the subject of the sentence. I think it's in this order because the "20-plus guests" is the information the speaker wants to feature, but hope we get an expert explanation.
Posted on: New Clothes
May 4, 2011 at 3:11 PMjojje--can't believe I got that wrong twice, 2+yrs apart. Sorry jojje.
Posted on: New Clothes
May 4, 2011 at 9:06 AMpretzelllogic137, whoa (relatively) old discussion. Our goals are personal to each learner I'm sure.
John's comment is the one that matters here as to jojie's question. I was further adding what a teacher of mine taught me about the pinyin for the tone change 不. I guess it may have sounded like I was telling jojie we should do it the official way. Even though I do personally think it's simpler and much more helpful for learners to do so, I was simply quoting my teacher. Her opinion is valuable to us learners you do agree?
Anyway some of us are actually interested in taking exams for whatever purpose not necessarily having to do with resumes, even some of us learning here at ChinesePod whose goal is to communicate in Mandarin.
Posted on: What does she look like?
May 2, 2011 at 11:08 AMAh I didn't mean of course that the way you speak is off-putting or rude Xiaophil. I was offering a suggestion as to why watyamacallit may have found "I'm reading a book." strange and not the other examples. I imagine that in reality you wouldn't answer someone with just "I'm reading a book", would add a bit more to that--unless it was someone to whom you had already made clear you had no wish to speak to and their query was unwelcome to begin with.
OK. Back to Chinese now.
Posted on: What does she look like?
May 2, 2011 at 9:30 AMWhat are you doing this evening?
--I'm having dinner with my parents.
--I'm staying in and watching TV.
--I'm working on my presentation for next week.
These all sound fine to me. "I'm reading a book" is grammatically the same in my mind, but it's probably a bit unusual as an answer to the question (sounds off-putting, even rude. you'd expect at least a bit more information about what book). So maybe socially, not grammatically, off.
However I'm not sure I agree with EnglishPage that this is a "near future" as in a tense indicator use, indicating that something will or will not happen. The point of this seems to me more like a declaration of intent than tense. But of course you're necessarily talking about the future in these. And I'm no grammarian.
Posted on: Chinese Seasonings
May 1, 2011 at 9:46 PMHi, in my understanding this "ying" sound happens more in the north, not really in the south, likely because "ng" is less pronounced down south than up north. Sometimes when you listen to southerners speak you can't tell the difference between their "shen" and "sheng" for instance--both sound like "shen"--whereas my northerner teachers all were strict about differentiating between "-n" and "-ng" (according to them and to textbooks the vowel sounds are not supposed to be the same, and the difference is clearest with "en" and "eng").
I know this is technically complete rubbish, but for what it's worth it seems to me like the "yi" + "ng" sound sort of comes together at the back of the throat and pushes out nasally before the "i" has a chance to open up. Anyway your hearing is fine.
Just curious, you and pretzellogic are not the same person are you?
Posted on: Dialing a Nonlocal Phone Number
May 12, 2011 at 5:42 PMHi Chris, that's interesting. When I tried to run a Baidu search on 請稍候再拨 they asked me back "Don't you mean 請稍后再拨?", but you do get a lot of hits because obviously there are many people writing 稍候. I also saw someone asking "So is it supposed to be 稍候 or 稍后?" For what it's worth.