When Jake entered graduate school, part of the thrill had been the feeling of entering a world of covert scholarship, a world of kinship between him and his peers. "Literacy or death," they had solemnly pledged over pints of ale with all the earnest intensity of youth. They had considered themselves guardians of the written word, protectors of language itself. Now fifteen years older, a part of him still believed in that romantic ideal of lexicography, but the truth was his whole life had been sheltered within the soft confines of academia. Until now that was. Staring at the blank leaf of paper before him, Jake's hands tightened in fear. There were far too many entries missing from this dictionary for it to be coincidental. But who had stolen them? And why?
dsibley
said on February 17, 2010
Is there any way to get instant feedback on which was the right answer (it says if I am wrong or not but it would be useful to get immediate feedback on which is right).
Echo
said on February 17, 2010
@dsibley,
You can click on "on-click answers" in the right column before taking a quiz.
--Echo
dsibley
said on February 17, 2010
Hi Echo,
Thanks but it seems to only let me know if I got it right or wrong (green or red) but not what the correct answer is.
- Doug
barrister
said on February 17, 2010
@dsibley,
If you enable "on-click answers" you can click on different answers to find out which one is the correct one. The system locks down your answer so you can't change it, but the green and red flashes let you find out the correct answer through experimentation if you need it. A pretty good approach imo.
opavlikova
said on February 19, 2010
Hello Echo,
why in Q2 is 下來 ａｎｄ ｎｏｔ下去？
Ａｎｄ Ｑ４ ｉｓ 怎麼ａｎｄ ｎｏｔ 這麼？
Thank you for explaining.
Olga
trevelyan
said on February 19, 2010
@opavlikova,
We've been struggling with how best to answer your question, since it deserves a better answer than just saying that 坐下来 is right and that this is just one of those things to remember for the HSK. When we pushed Echo on it the answer we got back was that the difference is largely "about the tone and emotion" and that even though there is nothing technically wrong with 坐下去 people just don't use it often if at all.
When we surveyed them on all the tone/emotion front, our Chinese staff reached the conclusion that 坐下去 it puts an emphasis on the thing which is sat upon rather than the person who does the sitting. It also shows up in the continuous aspect, as with 他一直坐下去. In contrast, 坐下来 does exactly what you'd expect: it focuses on the person, the movement and the action.
So that was a really good question. Interestingly, a Google search confirms the relative frequency of these terms in the wild. 坐下来 seems to be about 10x as popular as 坐下去. Strange.
Echo
said on February 20, 2010
@opavlikova,
If you want to use 这么, you need to compare one thing with another. If there's no comparison in the sentence, we can only use 怎么.
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
