Intermediate Chinese Mandarin Lesson 01

[Archamity]

that phrase is so slang man... it literally means

'that person released my plane'

...

otherwise... not bad :D

[nehagatari]

Mandarin is fascinating...the expression literal meaning are crazy-- eating vinegar for being jealous it's so funny. I'm having classes and I love. I totally respect chinese people now: what an amazing culture!

[TanyaOh]

can i say, "ta chi chu le!"?

"she's jealous!"

[yoka955]

oh yea, there is also "放我鸽子."

[ankiutanpytte]

Love it, these are frases I'll actually be able to use. Keep them coming! ^^

And I always get comments when I say I like vinegar... ... I'm such a jealous person, not, haha :P

[themightyspringwater]

thanks all your videos kick ass, keep making more please!

[Fishydick]

In mainland China people don't say 放我飞机, they say 放我鸽子 (literally "released my dove"). Just thought I'd share since I found that out recently.

[johnnyguano]

Very nice! I liked this!

[Fishydick]

吃醋一般是女人说的、对不对？

[vengeurglorieux]

放 of course

放我飞机

[vengeurglorieux]

Now 你在吃醋吗 is the present progressive form, since streakfree feels it happens in a contextual situation. However, when he writes it; he feels he is on a different level of time, this form is like the English particle "in", which evolved into "a", the famous "a" in "For the times they are a-changin'...". and the last remark is "ma" for "a" (吗/呵）

[vengeurglorieux]

last but not least the chichu transliteration (pinyin) is not the one we hear, could you write it in a more phonetical way? Thanks

[ankiutanpytte]

@vengeurglorieux

The right pinyin is Chi cu. :) Which is exactly what he's saying ^^

[vengeurglorieux]

Now 你在吃醋吗 uses the present progressive with "zai4", since streakfree feels it happens in a contextual situation but when writing it; he feels he is on a different level of time, This is like english "the times they are a (historically in) changing. Second point is the "ma" being replaced in writing by "a" 呵。

As a linguist and a language teacher, I'm always surprised by our own difficulty to notice these things, when we do them. 谢谢

[vengeurglorieux]

Thank you, I enjoyed it.

Nice enough are (like many teachers do) streakfree's omissions; very Interesting from a linguistic point of view are the ones that he did not describe, but nonetheless said,

那个人, 他方我飞机 with "neige" in one of the sentences he pronounced but transcribed "nage" and wrote without ta1,

this reminds the spoken french "extraposition" ste keum, i m'a posé un lapin

Some feature of the many spoken language; and I almost wrote "il" instead of "i", the real pronounciation...

[j1201]

As far as I know in Taiwan you can only use 吃醋 for relationships, like maybe you're upset your bf or gf is spending too much time with someone else.

[beatboxpeej]

Ni shi beijing ren a! You have a beijing accent. Or maybe its just me.

[huayen]

Good stuff, thanks!

[u2bealot]

Thanks for the lessons. This is exactly the kind of lesson Ive been looking for.

[simonmilward]

This is fantastic!

Thanks mate :)

[u4mizm]

thanks for the post

[nicknc]

'放我飛機'是不是廣東話的說法啊？也可能是中國南方的說法，因­為我的朋友常常會說'放我鴿子。'

[speterkar]

Another thing is that all these lessons are next to useless. After being taught your mother tongue 10 or 15 hours a week over 2 decades, almost nobody knows how to teach it as a foreign language. All of you seem to believe that if you repeat two phrases 2 or 3 times to us over 5 minutes, we'll learn those phrases. But even you Chinese practice it for decades and may miss nearly half your test at the university. It's not this easy is it?

[u4mizm]

Don't discourage him or any other Asian person from posting mandarin lessons!! They're nearly impossible to find. STREAKFREE your doing fine continue!!

[speterkar]

Sorry, I didn't only want to criticize his lessons. His are better than others. I'd like to encourage all of them to post more and more useful ones! As to dialect, most p use a local one at home, study putonghua (the official version) at school, so, naturally, have some accent. For vocab practice, look up the BYKI site, for lessons, search LanguageNow. And yes, streakfree, please continue!

[speterkar]

Another example of how difficult it is to learn this language. You clearly pronounce 在 but forget to put it on the screen. Besides, the pinyin for 醋 is 'cu' with the fourth tone, not 'chu'. Otherwise one would look for the word in a dictionary forever. True, your pronunciation of the consonants in 吃 and 醋 are pretty much the same to me. Pinyin is just another way of transcripting Chinese after all.

[hillarywhore]

where in china is the guy in the video from? i think his pronounciation is funny...like in the first phrase: "那个人..." he pronounced the first character [nuh]. it should have been [nah] and it means "that person". ...which [ge] is that? the measure word for person?

[Beastphilosophy]

一位 (yi wei) if you want to be polite.

[hillarywhore]

i kno. i think i just didn't understand his accent. he's maybe from taiwan or the south... im currently learning a very strict beijing accent..cause my teacher if from beijing.

[anthonycotillo]

hope i never have to use that...

[Goku3500]

ni hao. ni hao ma? wats the difrence from manderian an cantonise?

[CounterStrikeCZ]

Ni chi chu a? is mandarin Nei hap cho ma? is cantonese. Same meaning, same words used. Different ways of pronouncing.

[sthiede]

你好。 我是中文学生， 你知道什么最佳的方式学很词汇量？

[tsubibo200]

nice video, keep it up! these are a lot more useful than other kinds of lessons

[SirEric007]

中国人 是第一 瑰子你吃儊马

[athenaBOBena]

good job!

[kenteatworld]

i could swear i hear ni ZAI chi chu MA? i know its not up there but i think im hearing it. 对吗?

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

Yeah, the "zai" adds the flavor of "at this moment". Also, be aware that he has a non-standard accent (probably Taiwanese/American). The word for vinegar is "cu" without the "h", it isn't "chu". In the other video he pronounces "shouji" as "souji"...very Taiwan/Southern Chinese. Nice video, though!

[samaxnthaa]

wow this actually helped :] thanks!

[lobelia2]

is this a chinese lesson or a japanese one/!??

[txtmate16]

gago! tanga! puto!

[yukikawaiiangel]

OMG!!! UR CHINESE???? i thought u were japanese when i saw ur video singing planetarium!!! =PPP im chinese myself... but i speak cantonese more than mandarin... =]

~Yuki~

[livingdeadlove]

你好。我的名字是嘉琳。我是美國人可是我學中文。我喜歡您(口音­)。

()*is that accent?

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

"kouyin" does mean accent, but it implies accent in the sense of the type of accent people have when they aren't native speakers, like "you have an american accent when you speak chinese!"...what he has is called "qiang1diao3" or a regional accent....or you would say "ni you taiwan qiang" (you have a taiwanese accent"...

[FaWzY86]

OMG!!!

I had no idea Chinese was THAT hard to pronounce!!

[treadhead]

Xie xie ni! Ni shi fei chang hao de laoshi!

[XmasWish]

Isn't it "ma"?

[fingerfoe]

ni de zhong wen shuo de hen hao yi jing, ke hai bi bu shang wo de ...

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

lol! somehow I doubt that! you mean to say "ni zhongwen yi jing shuo de hen hao..." Also, we wouldn't say "bi bu shang" for this. You would just say "dan shi ni de zhongwen mei you wo de hao"

[kurosh9]

Dui, ta de zhongwen feichang hao. :D

[Sunyon]

cool ni de zhong wen hen hao a!!

[x333azn]

lmfao!!! i can't pronouce it!!>:O im chinese but i speak cantonese instead...

[kunoichimarikochan]

Yeah! Meh too! XD

[Raymasaki]

hey great lesson can

you teach me some idioms?

[uminekomiami]

Hello! I tried to say this...chinese are so tough to pronounce..lol...

[LordOfRuin]

Thanks for the lesson, sorry just to clarify is it..

na4 ge ren2 fang4 wo3 fei1ji1

and

ni3 (zai4?) chi1 cu4 ma?

sorry i'm only using pinyin to study so i just want to make sure the tones are right.

Thanks!