When the doctor entered the room, the boy was sitting motionless on the floor where he had been several minutes before, still staring intently at a crack in the nearby wall, as if there was some secret in the darkness beyond which promised some profound revelation. Yet the doctor's attention was not on his young patient, but rather the father who stood anxiously several feet away. For how could he break the news?

In this intermediate lesson, we cover two relatively advanced ways of making comparisons. First with a structure that is used to compare things which are quite alike, and then with a more tricky pattern that can be used to make percentage comparisons. This is a tricky point, wrapped in a very colloquial lesson, so if you're working towards fluency, give us a listen and see what you think. Feedback and thoughts welcome below as always!
 said on
January 31, 2014
great fun:) !

 said on
January 31, 2014
Great lesson!
 said on
February 1, 2014
Thanks guys, we were actually debating in-house whether this should be an intermediate or elementary level. It is sort of in the space between the two levels -- so we finally decided on putting it here just because the conversation is so fast and natural, we figured it might be too difficult at earlier levels.
 said on
February 1, 2014
好玩儿! 而且有用。
 said on
February 2, 2014
I don't know which is worse, my Chinese or my math, but it seems to me that if the Samsung is 80% of the Apple price then the Apple is 120% of the Samsung price. Maybe it just means I need to stick with elementary . . .
 said on
February 4, 2014
@qmmayer, 80% × 120% = 96% ≠ 100%

80% × 125% = 100%
 said on
February 4, 2014
@qmmayer,

My math is TERRIBLE. What David said was right - happy he corrected me ;)

A有B的百分之八十 means A=B x 80%

so B= A / 80% =A x 125% therefore B 有A 的百分之一百二十五

Anyway, sorry my math isn't great, but I can guarantee the sentence structure is perfectly correct! ;)

Best,

Grace
 said on
February 5, 2014
原来,我的数学比我的中文更差。 
 said on
February 5, 2014
我认为大部分的advanced podcast其实比intermediate容易一点。
 said on
March 12, 2014
Great lesson!

But the last line in the transcript should be 您家里还有其他人吗?
 said on
March 15, 2014
@mhabranke,

Already fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
 said on
May 4, 2014
Hi, hope it's not too late to ask questions... If I want to say "My room is half as big as her's" is it “我的房间有她的的半那么大”?

Thanks!
 said on
May 5, 2014
@wjnaish,

"half" is 一半. So the sentence should be "我的房间有她的的一半那么大" or usually people actually just use one 的 in spoken Chinese. So"我的房间有她的一半那么大" is what you often hear.:)
 said on
October 8, 2014
In the pattern A you3 B de bai3fen1zhi1 Y na4me Z, do you need the na4me or can you leave it out? thanks, funny lesson!