Popup Chinese

Elementary: Comrades in Space

The Captain grew reflective as earth loomed out the starboard window. His crew would be pleased with their extended shore leave, but the inner planets were far too crowded for his tastes. Although the first few days off-ship were always refreshing, after that he would miss the constant adventures and brotherly camaraderie that had made his time in space so professionally and personally fulfilling. Years traversing the galaxy would do that to a man, he thought. In time you could come to feel free only in uniform.

Learning Chinese? In addition to a Chinese dialogue infused with space-faring camaraderie, we've also filled this podcast with some of the most underrated adjectives you'll need to know in China. Because while you may be able to express joy and delight by this point, what about frustration, angst, blame and resentment? All these emotions and more are yours for the listening. So take a listen, and we hope you enjoy the show.

maikenjaeschke

said on

January 5, 2012

The link where to download the transcript for this lesson just links back to popupchinese.com/lessons!

benchannevy

said on

January 5, 2012

can't download pdf

trevelyan

said on

January 6, 2012

@benchannevy,

Problems should be fixed. Thanks for the heads up.

--david

crusty_138

said on

January 6, 2012

Just wondering, can 吃惊 be used to describe a a positive surprise as well, as in 我朋友给我个很大礼物。我很吃惊了 or 老板请大家吃打饭，我们都很吃惊了?

Herbert T. Gillis

said on

January 6, 2012

Re: Comrades in Space

dialog first line...我们在太空里经历了太多的冒险。 You've used 太....的。 Why not 太....了？ I have the feeling you've already addressed this in a previous lesson, so could you direct me to that lesson.

Xiao Hu

said on

January 6, 2012

@Crusty_138

For a positive meaning you should use, 惊喜 jing1 xi3. Something like the meaning of a "pleasant surprise" or more accurately a "great surprise".

老板为员工举行了盛宴，这是一个大惊喜。

But for something small like you mentioned in your examples, like being 请ed to 吃一顿饭 then you should say, 意外, something like the meaning of; this thing was unexpected so you felt very surprised.

EG: 老板请我们吃饭，我们都很意外.

Note to @Trevelyan, I think it would be a good idea to cover more "emotive" words since in Chinese one word doesn't fit all. There are so many words that express subtle shades in specific circumstances.

EG: 欢快，狂欢，欢乐，快乐，开心，愉快，等等等等等.

Also, it would be a big help to have more categorization and search-ability within Popup Chinese to be able to come up with a lesson that can help us express exactly what we want to say in Chinese. Otherwise we're relegated to having to manually go through each lesson and just see what we get. It's a bit cumbersome.

For example,

searching keyphrase: "expressing emotions"

yields the following results...

我忘了方向也忘了所有的感觉

I've forgotten my aim and forgotten all my feelings

Related Lessons

5566 - Starting Point

Clicking on the above lesson brings us to KTV Wednesday

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/ktv-wednesday/5566-starting-point

This can't be the ONLY lesson on 泡泡中文 that has to do with expressing emotions.

I think this is a meta tagging issue.

HTML Titles, Meta Tags, and Keywords need to be in proper order for this to work efficiently.

My vision of this search-ability would also include searching individual words in English and Chinese that yields search results including lessons that deal with that word. That along with phrases or subjects would bring it all together.

Searching the Popup dictionary is one thing but coming up with professional guided explanation as to the subtle usage of a word or phrase is something else entirely, and one of the reasons that people subscribe to sites like Popup instead of just studying Chinese from a dictionary. Especially since you have students of all levels jumping in and using the site, trying to take students through a guided sampling of lessons starting from point A to point Z is impractical.

I use Popup Chinese a lot to 补习 things that I missed or was not introduced to at the collegiate level or through prior study of Chinese.

One other small request would be, would it be possible to implement a level index? Right now if I want to find Advanced level I have to find an Advanced lesson from the home page, sometimes scrolling through several pages to find it until I come up with a link to the Advanced section, then click on it to browse Advanced lessons. It's a bit cumbersome.

When I click on the Lessons tab it would be great to have them all categorized.

Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I can't find a simple way to get to the level category page.

Xiao Hu

said on

January 6, 2012

@Herbert T. Gillis,

Hehe, maybe it was your destiny to study Chinese, since your name is strikingly similar to the famous Sinologist and personal hero of mine, Herbert A Giles, co-creator of the Hanyu Pinyin precursor the "Wade-Giles Chinese Romanization" system.

Actually here, 太...的 is not exactly a sentence pattern in that here the two words don't have a definite grammatical relation.

You should use 太...了 in the following way, 太+adj+了.

For example,

1- 那个美国人说中文说得太好了。

2- 他故意的把我的外套弄脏了，那个人太坏了。

You should use the 了 directly after the short adjective. Here in the example you cited, 我们在太空里经历了太多的冒险, you'll notice that 的 is linking 太多 to a noun (or nominal phrase).

Echo

said on

January 6, 2012

@Xiao Hu,

Exactly like you said!! 我太高兴有你了！

@crusty_138,

Besides what Xiao Hu said, be careful of not using 很...了 together if it's not a special situation.

So your sentences should be: 朋友给了我一个很大的礼物，我很吃惊 or 老板请大家吃饭，我们都很吃惊。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

magnar.nedland

said on

January 6, 2012

What kind of special situations should use 很...了?

new_rizzo

said on

January 7, 2012

Since ideas for lesson dialogues were specifically requested at the end of this podcast, I will say that I would love to hear a lesson centered around the making or receipt of prank phone calls.

Nice opportunity to cover phone related vocab, and a rich comdeic vein.

-nr

Echo

said on

January 7, 2012

@magnar.nedland,

When it emphasizes the situation is ALREADY like this, and implies a certain kind of action should not be done , for instance:

你已经很美了，不用化妆了。

他已经很难过了，你就别再说了。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Echo

said on

January 7, 2012

@new_rizzo,

Actually we do have some lessons about making or receipt of phone calls, and some are weird indeed:

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/a-strange-telephone-call

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/looking-for-apple

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/elementary/the-wire

However, your suggestion inspired me with an idea...I'll see if I can make a dialogue out of it. Thanks!

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

minghan

said on

January 31, 2012

Question!

What's the difference between 难过 and 伤心?

Echo

said on

February 1, 2012

@minghan,

伤心 is a bit more sad than 难过. There is a small difference in usage too. You can put any noun after 伤心的, like 这是一个伤心的故事. But you can only put 样子 after 难过的.