User Comments - zhenlijiang

Posted on: What does she look like?

So what is it doing in 他最近在工作上碰到了一些困难? I understand that 了appears in expressions of events that haven't yet transpired, but I don't know if I understand your first sentence too clearly.

I understand too, I probably shouldn't have referred to "tense".

Posted on: What does she look like?

Another thing I think of is that 最近 doesn't necessarily mean recent past, it can also mean near future (admittedly, I haven't ever actually seen the near future use myself). The tense for a 刚刚 sentence on the other hand is clear, right?

Like you, I wonder if it would be grammatically incorrect to say 我刚刚在路上碰到了我的前女友. I don't think so (and like you, guess that because it's not necessary it will usually get dropped) ... Along with everyone else I hope a teacher can come along and confirm/clarify.

Posted on: Losing and Forgetting

Right, Barratt's study—just looked at it again—is about “changes in US English”, so the age factor applies actually to people like myself, and not you. Catherine linked to the paper itself in the discusssion I pointed out (where this issue was discussed before). Yes this is apparently an American English thing.

Personally I wish they‘d just use “by accident”. There should be enough non-US (and older) English speakers around here …

Posted on: Losing and Forgetting

HAD never seen or heard it until ……

Posted on: Losing and Forgetting

Hi Chris, apparently it's our age? I speak American English but have never seen or heard "on accident" until I saw it here:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/an-unplanned-tan#comment-182823

Posted on: Car Crash

Hi Bodawei, you've preempted much of the comment I was just finishing up, brought up interesting, and welcome I would say, ideas to answer your own question. You mean some hotel staff are given uniforms that could make them look to visitors like police officers?

No data, and my experience of two weeks visiting in SH isn't going to impress anybody, but when I saw fights in the streets there, both times the police came shortly after someone called them, then as you say they sort of became part of the scene and didn't seem to actively intervene or break up the crowd. It looked like they had abundant time to hang around, and actually your story about your wallet gives me the same impression (besides the impression that there are some very helpful officers), that police are not spread thin on the ground. The "fights" I witnessed were screaming matches mostly, certainly nothing involving weapons or anyone getting beaten up. I wonder now if it's custom for the police to be called in situations like this only because otherwise neither party could walk away from the scene without becoming really violent or losing face.

I guess now you agree there's more to how we perceive police ubiquity anywhere than just the number of officers per capita, and that there must be several other possible factors (you've brought up the uniform factor) besides being primed by exposure to western media portrayal of the police as instruments of the state oppressing the people, for some of us to be under the impression that the police in China "are everywhere", seen "all the time". Do you meet that many fellow westerners who are so under the spell of biased western media that they fail to see China even as they are there? Perhaps you do, and I don't mean this sarcastically. It's quite possible, I know media are so often irresponsible especially about foreign countries. I guess I tend to think of people now as being much more aware though, and media literate.

From my limited experience in Shanghai the police were not any more ubiquitous than in Tokyo. I have no idea about any place else in China. I notice police not daily maybe, but quite a bit when I'm at home--patroling residential areas (which often means someone reported suspicious individuals loitering etc.), when the city is on heightened alert during some state visit or a conference with important visitors, traffic patrol officers chalking up parking offenses, the friendly officers who man the local Koban (police box), probably because I live here and it's information that matters to me. I've spent a total of about four weeks in Sydney over two visits and never noticed any police. I did spend most of my time indoors there though, and also I may have seen and simply not recognized. I have no idea what a Sydney police officer's uniform looks like. One place that I do think of as having police officers everywhere is the US. Every time I go to the US (LA) I've seen police. And we're so used to "seeing" cops in the US from so many movies and TV shows too. They are everywhere on Friday nights, on the streets and overhead, chasing criminals from helicopters. When it rains hard I see them even more everywhere because of all the LA drivers whose cars flip over or crash into something. Again, no data. But I have not seen that--what I see as this general culture of very careless driving in LA--any place else. It's a difference I notice. I agree that we can and often do draw conclusions from what we perceive that are off the path of factual accuracy. But I never ignore differences I see and feel whether I'm traveling or at home; they're too vitally informative.

Posted on: Awkward Silence

Hey joschka, one thing I know--bababardwan can speak perfectly well for himself. I'll take the liberty of saying though, he's totally agreeing with tingyun on "there is some flavor preserved of the literal meaning generally" and "its easy to preserve the sense in a natural English translation 再见 "see you later", 早上好 "good morning."". I know this is Baba's view on the value of literal meanings in Chinese words in general. Whether or not you agree with him on that, I assure you there is no cause for you to take his reply to tingyun as some kind of put-down, or personal to you.

But so you do see that rodsrandomnumber was joking? And that this whole "lesson" is a joke? You may not necessarily find the joke funny, but there was no ill intent. Unfortunately there's been some misunderstanding here, and I agree with pretzellogic who has pointed out that it would be harder for CPod newcomers to see the joke, because they would not have certain knowledge, and familiarity with the CPod culture, that older users have. So sure, I guess you could say it's pretty cliquey, and even off-putting to those who do feel excluded. CPod was just having fun with us, they thought we could all share a laugh on April Fool's, so I'm sorry to see that people have also been confused and annoyed.

Posted on: Actually Contrary with 倒

About Lili's sentence--
That restaurant is pretty dirty, but the food is amazing.

Connie gave:
那家店的东西倒是挺好吃的，可是太脏了。
which is translated into:
That restaurant does have pretty good food, but it's just too dirty.

Mmm, not really the same thing.

I can understand that Connie translated it like she did because by that point the lesson had already moved onto the second use. But the way Lili put it, it fits the first use (expressing that something is [usually good] contrary to expectations), not the second (conceding a good point [before criticizing]).

So could we say for instance 那家店相当脏，不过菜肴倒是很好吃。 to express what Lili said?
To me that's better as far as translating a person's meaning goes, and I would have liked to hear you guys take a moment in the podcast to note that, for clarity's sake.

Posted on: Product Localization

Actually that looks like baby octopus (yum!). What a darling idea, to stuff it with quail's egg (yum!).

Posted on: Delegating Tasks

Good point Chris. In my zeal to catch every single syllable is where I lose sight of what's being said. So the benefits of transcribing I mentioned above appear only after I finish a considerable amount of work, not during.

欢迎你来跟我们一起做听写，加油！