Things that melt in this heat include chocolate, small children and your will-to-live. That's why you've collapsed on a sofa at one of the small bars that crowd the waterways behind Jingshan Park. You've just decided you like this neighborhood when your waitress appears wearing an outfit made entirely of plastic. "What would you like," she asks with a genuine smile."Whatever you're selling," is the correct answer, but you don't say that because you're not at the Elementary level yet and haven't mastered the art of casual chit-chat. Thankfully, as a faithful listener of our Absolute Beginner lessons here at Popup Chinese, you know enough Chinese to rummage through your vocabulary in search for the measure word for bottle and the noun for beer. These you string together: one + bottle + beer. Instant Chinese sentence.You actually want about ten bottles of beer. But why rush it. Just keep ordering them one by one. And keep smiling too. You'll be at the Elementary level soon enough, which is when these conversations get a lot more complex and interesting too. So get studying and don't look back.
trevelyan
said on January 21, 2009
hi guys. we're having some issues getting the supplemental audio recordings up for this one (sentence and word recordings for the flash player on the interior page).
This is an uploading issue and we'll have it fixed by later tonight Beijing time. In the meantime, the podcast is fine and we hope you enjoy it.
toneandcolor
said on January 21, 2009
Popup and vocab page lists the pinyin for 扎 as [zā]， but I believe in this context it should be [zhā] as Echo pronounces it. Interestingly enough, when I checked on this 多音字, it seems that it was originally a transliteration from the English "jar" but has since come to mean any large-mouthed container, such as a mug of beer. From my dictionary:扎 [zhā]4. （名） 英语jar音译。指广口瓶或广口杯Our friendly neighborhood Qing Dao vendor entreats us to “来一扎"
trevelyan
said on January 21, 2009
Yes, it should absolutely be zha1. Thanks for the correction.
toneandcolor
said on January 22, 2009
The fix file is half empty.
Absolute Beginners
said on January 22, 2009
@toneandcolor - thanks for the ping. We had some issues with the initial recording, and that file should never have been available online.
We've just re-recorded the audio and re-generated and re-uploaded the necessary files. The problems are fixed. Our apologies this was an issue for so long.
mst
said on June 11, 2012
There are better examples in English for explaining the concept of measure words. "A pack of cards" doesn't really work, because you can count them without any measure words, ie. "two cards". A more consistent example might be "rice", where you cannot say *"two rices", you need to say "two grains of rice", or "pants", which English speakers count "pairs of".
Brendan
said on June 11, 2012
@mst - Good catch! "Pants" and "rice" are nice examples of English words needing something like a measure word. "Scissors" would be too, at least in my native dialect, though I remember being really intensely annoyed by a kindergarten teacher I had who saw nothing wrong with sentences like "Cut the paper with a scissors."
joecosgrove
said on February 25, 2016
How would this conversation go in the south? I live in Fujian and I've never heard 一瓶儿 just 一瓶.
trevelyan
said on March 3, 2016
@joecosgrove,People will understand the 儿化音. You can take it or leave it -- people will understand either way. Saying things in the local way is probably preferable imo. See what reaction you get....
jnilesdehoff
said on January 12, 2017
As a (beginner) Japanese speaker who is just starting Chinese, I'm surprised by the word order here. I was expecting the noun to come before the counter word. Can this word order move around in Chinese?Also, in jJpanese the counters inflect slightly as the number changes. For example, one glass is "ippai" but when you want two glasses you say "nihai" because it "sounds nicer." Does this kind of pronunciation or inflection happen in Chinese too?Thanks!
orbital
said on January 14, 2017
jnilesdehoff,interesting. i didn't know that about Japanese, but it is very different than Chinese in that case. measure words always precede nouns, although the nouns can sometimes be omitted and referred to implicitly just through reference using only the measure word. Not sure what you mean by inflection. There are some changes like where people use 两 instead of 二, but that is because two is often a homonym for the word stupid, so in some cases people try to avoid it.
