Category: 中文
Posts about the Chinese language
Another semester
Another semester, another Chinese class. This semester at IUPUI I’m taking EALC-C 301, Third Year Chinese 1. Classes started last week and I can already tell the class is going to be interesting. This is the first Chinese class I’ve had where I feel like I’m in the bottom-half of the class. Granted, it’s a…
Read MoreNoun + adjective + 得 + 不得了
We just started working on Chapter 19 of Integrated Chinese last week, and part of the homework had us practicing the phrase 不得了 (bùdéliǎo), which means extremely or exceedingly. It usually follows this pattern: noun + adjective + 得 + 不得了。 Noun is extremely adjective. 挪威冷得不得了。 Nuówēi lěng de bùdéliǎo. Norway is extremely cold. 李友用功得不得了。…
Read MoreDuration of actions
In Chapter 18 of Integrated Chinese, Dialogue II has a section which describes the duration of an action, and it shows two sentence formulas for it. One of the examples they give is: 她每天听绿音听一个小时。 她每天听一个小时绿音。 She listens to recordings for an hour everyday. Both of the Chinese sentences say they same thing in slightly different…
Read MoreTime expression + 没 + Verb (+ 了)
I have a test in Chinese class later today, so this post and the next are a couple of things the teacher told us will be on the test. Chapter 18 of Integrated Chinese*, page 231 (运动 – Sports), the Dialogue I section describes the following formula: Time expression + 没 + Verb (+ 了)…
Read MoreRude awakenings
今天早上我被火警起床了。今天是星期天,所以我要了睡懒觉。不但我听了人人聊天在走廊外面我的房子,而且我闻到烟气了。我起床了,穿了鞋和冬天上衣,拿了手机,和出去外面了。我看了很多救火队。我的胳臂的房子大门开了。我知道了我不能回家一是,所以我走路了星巴克。 This morning I was awoken by a fire alarm. Today is Sunday, so I wanted to sleep in. However, I heard people talking in the hallway outside my apartment, and I smelled smoke. I got up, put on some shoes and a winter jacket, grabbed my cell phone, and went outside. I saw many…
Read More呆宝静 - It’s OK
One of the things I’ve struggled with in Chinese is finding Chinese songs I find interesting. Most of it is just pop music. It’s OK (no pun intended), but it’s usually not very interesting. There are a lot of ballads (boring), but some dance songs which are at least more energetic. What I’ve been trying…
Read MoreAmerican girl speaking Chinese
The other day I looked on YouTube for a video of Mark Zuckerberg speaking Chinese, since I wanted to find out if he spoke better Chinese than I do (he does). In the related videos section, I saw the video embedded above. The video is quite humbling because she speaks Chinese very well compared to…
Read MoreGetting ready
Next week I start my fourth semester of Chinese classes. One thing I’ve learned from past experience is that it’s very easy to forget it, if you don’t keep studying, at least a little bit. To keep 中文 mostly fresh in my mind, I decided to deleted all my flashcards in Anki and started over.…
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