Sarah had struggled for years with her company's internship program, which seemed to saddle her each year with marginally less competent and marginally more slack-jawed members of the local student population. Yet while the interns had never been exactly productive, Jared was in a class of his own....
Juangedaan
said on June 12, 2014
Sorry, who is Martin? I don't have anything against new voices but... the special ingredient for popupchinese to be what it is today is just not there... I hope this was some kind of test...
trevelyan
said on June 12, 2014
Martin is a friend of Popup Towers, although we often ask ourselves the same questions: who is he, what is he doing in Beijing, and why is there no record of his existence anywhere on the Internet?More seriously, I agree this show is a bit straightforward, although at least some of that is pedagogical -- it was originally aimed at the intermediate level, but the difficulty seemed more suitable for the elementary level so it was edited down. Anyway, we're still experimenting to see what works and what doesn't -- thanks for the feedback.
丹尼
said on June 12, 2014
I'll be adding 脑残 to my list of vital vocabulary immediately.
mingster
said on June 19, 2014
Could I please ask a quick question about using 比 - for example, if I want to say that I am MUCH taller than my dad, would I say 我比我爸爸很高 or should it be 我比我爸爸高很多 ? Thanks!
stephenrd
said on June 19, 2014
siuming.mok:I think that would be 我比我爸爸高得多。You don't use 很 in this case.
khh_08
said on June 19, 2014
Check out the elementary lesson 'crossing the border'. You could use 我比我爸爸高得多 or 我比我爸爸高多了.
Grace Qi
said on June 19, 2014
@少明, stephenrd, khh_08,Actually it can be: 我比我爸爸高多了；我比我爸爸高很多；我比我爸爸高得多. They are all correct!
maminglei
said on September 22, 2014
Who's the female voice in this episode? I totally love her performance, especially the closing sentence is great
trevelyan
said on September 22, 2014
I like her too. I actually forget her name offhand, but she's originally from Macao and is studying broadcasting at Chuanmei Daxue here in Beijing. Smart and a good actress.
yeroc99
said on October 7, 2014
I really like the acting - excellent! But I am a bit confused about her pronunciation of "进水“ -- it really sounded like zhi1 shui3, not jin4 shui3. Grace's pronunciation was jin, but the actress sounds like she is saying a different word altogether. I even slowed the audio down using the VLC player, and I still hear zhi instead of jin.
trevelyan
said on October 8, 2014
@yeroc99,Grace slows it down and says it a bit more clearly, but it's definitely 进水! :)--dave
yeroc99
said on October 8, 2014
@trevalyan, just so I understand here... you're saying that when you listen to her say this word, you are definitely hearing "jin" and not anything else? If so, I guess I really need a lot more ear training.
trevelyan
said on October 8, 2014
@yeroc99,I hear 进, but a better answer is probably that the sound could only possibly be "jin" because there are no characters pronounced "zhin", which means Chinese speakers have a bit of leeway as to how clearly to enunciate in practice....If this doesn't make sense, look at our dictionary and compare the "zh" and "j" entries (use the "browse by initial" menu on the right). A quick look will show that Chinese has evolved in a way that makes the distinction I think you are talking about irrelevant in practice. So we have "jia" but not "zhia" and "jiu" but no "zhiu", etc.:http://popupchinese.com/dictionaryThe one exception would seem to be the finals that start with the vowel u (i.e. ju and zhu, juan and zhuan, etc. ) but even this isn't phonetic overlap so much as just laziness in the pinyin standard. The "u" which follows "j" is pronounced like the vowel-sound "ü" in lü or 绿 (i.e. with umlaut) whereas the "u" which follows "zh" is pronounced like the vowel sound "u" as in lu or 路 (no umlaut).
yeroc99
said on October 8, 2014
@trevelyan thank you for the detailed explanation. I feel I am familiar with the differences between these two initials j and zh, and my ears are telling me this is a zh sound, and in fact I don't hear any 'n' final at all, which is why I had initially said it sounded like "zhī" to me. In any case, I defer to your better-trained ears :-) Thanks again.
oceanwisdom
said on August 17, 2015
@yeroc99I am just learning Mandarin, but from general linguistic experience, I think it is not possible for the brain to correctly decipher sounds of a language 100% of the time until it has an adequate mastery of what is and is not likely to be said. In this case, it may well be that if we just analyzed the physical sound pattern, a purely physical analysis would say that it was actually closer to "zhi" than to "jing", but a skillful enough Mandarin speaker hears "jing" because that is what makes sense. And native speakers will to some extent cut corners in their pronunciation and take advantage of their listeners' "auto-correct" function. The brain uses its set of patterns for the language to help it decide what it heard. So a native speaker will not hear "zhi" and realize "oh, she must mean "jing". They will actually hear "jing" and will do so even if "zhi" is what is physically said. I suspect that for Mandarin there is a broader range of pronunciations that listeners' brains auto-correct into standard pronunciation than there is for some other languages. Mandarin is still in the process of becoming a standard national language and Chinese had such a long, long time and complex history during which to diversify.
oceanwisdom
said on August 17, 2015
Bottom line: As your Mandarin improves, not just your listening, but even your hearing will improve too.
nico.vertriest
said on September 2, 2015
The acting here is immense fun. Funny lessons are easier to remember. I love to repeat to myself: women jia mao zuo de dou bi ni qiang :)
nico.vertriest
said on September 2, 2015
少不会把这件事搞砸。I am not entirely sure what is the meaning of ba3 (会把) here.
trevelyan
said on September 3, 2015
把 ＋ object + verb that is getting done to the object. The meaning is "at least it (the table) wouldn't screw this up."(不会)把(这件事)搞砸。(would not) to take (this matter) and screw it uphttp://popupchinese.com/lessons/ktv-wednesday/wang-fei-nothing-remains/video
beaudarc
said on September 9, 2015
RE:@ trevelyan said on October 8, 2014While looking into this matter and using the Popupchinese dictionary, I found 转 listed as being pronounced `zhuai3' as well as `zhuan3'(with which I was familiar). At first I thought this was a mistake, as MDBG has no such usage. NCIKU however does, and it seems only in the compound 转文 Zhuai3wen2.Are there any other uses of 转 = zhuai that you know of?
