As the tropical breeze tugged at her sleeve, Rachel felt torn. She was certain things were moving too quickly between her and Eric, and yet there was a connection between them she couldn't resist. But something held her back yet, a murmured warning in her heart not to fall too far too fast. And so her dilemma hung on her thoughts, reminding her of everything that still remained unsaid between the two of them.

We received an email the other day from someone who wanted more romance in our dialogues. This suggestion was received warmly by the members of our Bradley Cooper fan club and with a confused silence by the rest of the office ("We just did one last month," David remarked). But since we are unable to turn down such hopeful requests, we hit the studio to record this romantic gem. We hope you enjoy it. Or please don't send us hate mail at least.
 said on
August 24, 2010
Is the "brother" Bradley Cooper?
 said on
August 25, 2010
By the way, the first two sentences on the transcript are inverted.
 said on
August 25, 2010
is the character for zhi1 correct? the way i know yizhi is as this "一直“。!!!

strange i write it a different way without the straight line, and bottom line, however it is shown on the web as two characters one inside the the L two lines character.

I also did not get the humor bunch line or twist of the story. is that why you guys do not want to take credit for who wrote the script?
 said on
August 25, 2010
Thanks Makesi, corrected.

Walid -- Let's jump over the dialogue here.... I'm guessing you're dealing with a font variant with 直. There are a few characters which get displayed differently on various platforms. Perhaps this is one of them. I know that the iPhone and iTouch is especially bad at Chinese characters (门 is a case in point, where the bundled fonts seem much more Japanese than Chinese).

 said on
August 25, 2010
@alangarr,

I hadn't thought of that. Please no-one tell Echo....

--david

 said on
August 25, 2010
The iPhone almost had me convinced that I was writing characters like 门,直,and 辶 wrong. Good thing I was familiar with them before I got it. But seriously, two dots over 辶? What's with that?
 said on
August 26, 2010
i thought it was natural banter at the end . i had a good chuckle.

Echo, dabbling at elementary level more and more i'm encountering numerous words with similar meaning or subtle differences in comparison to my everyday french and english. would you say mandarin is more precise in meaning than many languages. case in point this lesson with yizhi/zongshi and have also learn/used 'yixiang' as in 'i have always been very punctual- wo yixiang dou hen zhunshi' i also see in dictionary'xianglai' and 'shizhong' meaning all along / the whole time e.g. a sentence like 'my familly have always(all along) lived in this country'

for every day conversation are all necessary to sound right in order to be understood? i'm guessing it's all individual motivation to learn an expanding vocab. not easy being outside china and not able to use mandarin every day or to be corrected/repeat/ like children learn but heh i'm now having fun using popupchinese

which of the above would i use for :

>i've been thinking about this/that all along =

>everyone make mistakes =

 said on
August 26, 2010
@richard,

I'd use 一直 for most of those (我一直在想....) except for the last sentence, where I think 所有人都会犯错 is more natural). So remember that we're talking about adverbs.

One of the issues with 向来 and 始终 is that they're more formal and so if you use them in speech, you'll find it easy to be misunderstood just because people won't be expecting to hear them in casual conversation.

Also maybe worth mentioning -- we don't script these podcasts, so the banter is usually always fairly improvised. We will do editing after the fact to cut out the parts where Brendan descends into unintelligible muttering, or add in extra repetition to reinforce what's under discussion. Finessed reality may be the best way to describe it.
 said on
August 26, 2010
Hi guys,

Regarding the "beyond the reach of Interpol" comment at the very end of the podcast, I just wanted to point out that China is a full member of Interpol, with "sub-bureaus" in Hong Kong and Macau (but not in Taiwan, just in case you'd need to know...)
 said on
August 26, 2010
Seeing as you asked for our take...I generally pretty much feel Brendan's pain whenever he expresses it. I like strange, weird and funny--it's what gives emotional impact to your dialogues which helps them sink deeper, makes me able to go back to them again and again without dying of boredom, and keeps me looking forward to new ones. But strange, weird and funny is different (or can be) from sick. There are some dialogues that I regret avoiding because I really could learn something, but I just find them too offensive, and I don't go back. (Vampires, for example). That said, I didn't mind the diarrhea one--I STILL remember the word for plunger! I guess the difference is that while it was gross, it wasn't sick. I know it's a hard line to walk, but Brendan's instincts might be a good guide--even though he didn't like the Missing Plunger!
 said on
August 27, 2010
@trevelyan, best i stay away from formal words usage.

@susanjallen, shuo de hao

@david, echo, brendan, keep up the weird, funny and natural banter in the dialogues. it's special when you 3 are involved in the podcast.

any subject about activities, daily sights one's encounters in a big city is potential good learning.

also including new sentence patterns is basic at ele. level.
 said on
September 23, 2010
Just had a listen, agree with above comments about the banter, very funny and you also take care not to overdo it either and keep the lesson moving, great work gang.

as an aside and funny afterthought, perhaps they were boy/girlfriend, then their parents, both of whom were single / divorced, got married before the boyfried/girlfriend could! aha! saved david.
 said on
February 20, 2011
Hi guys,

I found the 一直 vs 以为 distinction a little confusing. It sounded a bit like the difference between the various kinds of past tense in English (e.g. past progressive, past perfect simple, etc.). Unfortunately, I'm too vague about the nine (?!?) English tenses to be able to frame an intelligent question along these lines! Anyway, am I on the right track here? Does 一直 vs 以为 sort of correspond to the different tenses in English? And do you know of any written material online that explains this further? Thanks.

David... are you from one of the remote, mountainous parts of Canada?

Seb
 said on
February 21, 2011
@sebds70,

Hi Seb,

You can translate 一直以为 as (I) had been always believed sth (until...). Does it make it clearer?

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

 said on
February 21, 2011
@sebds70,

The remote, mountainous, snowed-in hamlet of... Toronto. :)

--dave

 said on
February 22, 2011
@Echo,

Oh sorry, I meant 一直 and 总是. I'm a little confused about the difference between the two. I mustn't have been properly concentrating when I wrote that. 真不好意思.
 said on
February 22, 2011
一直 is "continuously" whereas 总是 is "always" with reference to a series of discrete events. So 一直以为 implies you haven't held any other beliefs in the meantime. But with 总是 you're talking about what usually happens over a lot of different cases. So 她总是跟她男朋友出去 doesn't mean she never leaves home without him, just that they're together an awful lot of the time.

 said on
February 23, 2011
@sebds70,

Yes, exactly like orbital said, 一直 is continuously while 总是 is doing sth frequently.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
February 23, 2011
Thanks for that, guys.

Seb
 said on
August 20, 2011
Hi Pop Up peoples,

I cant seem to play the audios in the vocab area for this lesson. (FF or Chrome) The newer lessons work fine, but I'm finding this problem in a number of older lessons,

Cheers
 said on
January 6, 2012
oh come on, you can tell echo wrote this one
 said on
January 6, 2012
@lazer85,

Ahhhhh....

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
January 29, 2013
@orbital

Wow, that was very helpful. Thanks!!
 said on
September 19, 2013
I don't see the disgusting part... If you call someone your '姐姐‘ in China, it doesn't mean that they are actually a blood relation, just that they are a close friend. Right?
 said on
September 23, 2013
@mdubes13,

It depends... If people are close friends, most of the time they would say "family name plus 姐", not really 姐姐.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com