More than a social lubricant, the apology is a survival skill, because even when you're right, you often risk getting beaten by your significant other. Join us in today's listening test as we eavesdrop on a not-atypical conversation. As with our other listening tests, we recommend listening once, and then testing your comprehension in our quiz section. Use the mouseover version in the text section to check your comprehension after the fact.

Despite witnessing a few savage public beatings, our crew here has never heard of anyone actually hospitalized after a handbag assault. That is still no reason to throw caution to the wind. As murky as they are out West, the rules of the apology are even less clear in China. A good rule of thumb is to follow local custom: apologize early and often.
 said on
November 5, 2008
对不住与对不起有什么区别吗?

我不太理解第九题那句话的意思。

“我不是 ____ 戒严嘛,要不早到了。”

Does it mean something like "I'm not on a curfew"?
 said on
November 5, 2008
Not sure about the answer to question 9 myself. I think 对不起 and 对不住 are relative interchangeable, although 对不住 feels a bit more serious. It's definitely less common here in Shenzhen.

Just to firm up, the correct answer to 10 is D because... 道歉 can't take an object, right?

 said on
November 5, 2008
@weijin&orbital,

对,“对不住”比“对不起”程度稍微重一点,也没有后者那么常用,一般年轻人说得比较少。

“抱歉”后边不能加宾语,而“道歉”是名词,也不可以。

“戒严”的意思不完全是curfew,它一般指政府规定的,在一定时间内,一定区域不能自由进出,这个时间不一定是晚上。老百姓说的“戒严”一般指“交通管制”。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
November 6, 2008
I felt pretty good about this, but still ended up with only 7/10. The question about the time was tricky, I could remember hearing someone say 6pm, and so chose that without thinking it through.

Not bad for intermediate though, so I'm happy.
 said on
November 6, 2008
Great recording. Very realistic dialogue to my ears.
 said on
July 8, 2011
Might there be a problem with the quiz here or am I completely misunderstanding things?

Q1: I am pretty sure the answer is 女孩 , not 男孩 as the system says.

Q5: the first option I think is the correct one, not the last one

我说得对吗还是我完全糊涂了。。。
 said on
July 8, 2011
@huyilin,

The right answer to Q1 is #1 -- the system is reporting it correctly for me, so I'm not sure what the problem is. The right answer to Q4 is indeed #4 -- the question asks which of the following is NOT a reason the girl is angry. Without that 不 answers 1-3 would be fine.

Best,

--david

 said on
July 8, 2011
Q 1 真的是男孩迟到了吗? #1 在对话里面我还以为是女孩 #2

Q 5 是啊,谢谢, 明白了!
 said on
July 8, 2011
huyilin,

You're right that the girl was absolutely late. When I check in the system, it tells me that #2 is the correct answer, and #1 is the incorrect answer. So I'm not sure what the problem is.... :(

--dave
 said on
July 8, 2011
Unless I'm overtired, I could have sworn that the system kept telling me today that the 男孩 was late, now it seems to have corrected itself to the 女孩. What the heck... am glad they are still friends. :-)
 said on
September 25, 2014
I relise that I have come to these comments quite late but when my late mother was in charge of all of the local old peoples homes in my home county in the UK, one lady who was over 80 years of age killed another, about ten years her junior, by hitting her over the head with her hand-bag during an argument.

It was perhaps a little unfortunate perhaps that the "killer" handily kept her ready-use money in the handbag in the form of coins which weighed-in at about 2kg..... F=MxA (Newtons Second Law??)can equal Death by Handbag!
 said on
March 25, 2017
Regarding the clause "...那你应该把手机开着啊", I'm curious about the difference in meaning between “开着” and "打开". Does "开着" mean "leave on" and "打开" mean "turn on"?
 said on
March 30, 2017
@jaq.james

The 着 indicates that the preceding verb is continuously in a certain state. So it's not just turning the phone on but leaving it in the state of being on. The guy is saying "you should leave your phone on" more than "you should turn on your phone." Both would work.
 said on
March 30, 2017
Great! Thanks!
 said on
November 8, 2017
I feel that for the quizzes, some popup feedback regarding the grammar-related questions would be really helpful upon clicking the answer.

For example, in the dialogue they use 遇上 and in the quiz question that's not the correct term, but we don't find out why.