As far as Chinese learning podcasts go, our lesson for today is special even by our admittedly awesome standards for insanely creative and non-boring content. Just be warned that if you ever used China Telecom's PHS service, listening to this might be enough to induce traumatic flashbacks. What's that you say? You don't remember that striking advance in mobile technology? Count yourself lucky.
imron
 said on
April 14, 2009
远看法轮功，近看小灵通:-)
trevelyan
 said on
April 14, 2009
One good thing to say about 小灵通, it put such competitive pressure on the other mobile carriers that mobile phone access got cheaper much faster than it would have with only China Unicom and China Mobile in the market, especially with SMS services for students.

And serious bonus points for anyone who can come up with a half-decent translation for the product. "Little Friendlies" is possibly the dorkiest product name in the history of Chinese-English translation.

Gail天堂的声音
 said on
April 14, 2009
I had one 小灵通, unfortunately it died in half a year.
imron
 said on
April 14, 2009
Little Smart, was I believe the official English name for the service, which is an equally stupid name. PHS is probably the best gloss for it, even though the expanded acronym - personal handyphone system - is also pretty lame. It's all going the way of the Dodo now though, as the MIIT has decided to allocate the same spectrum block that PHS runs on to China Mobile for 3G TD-SCDMA services, and has mandated that operators need to migrate users off PHS networks by 2011.
Brendan
 said on
April 14, 2009
Not sure whether or not it'd be appropriate for me to point out that the unofficial nickname for 小灵通 phones was 喂喂肏 owing to the abysmal reception. Oh, wait, I just did.
imron
 said on
April 14, 2009
haha, that's a great nickname.
toneandcolor
 said on
April 14, 2009
@Brendan

I just added the infamously mnemonically composed (入 + 肉） 肏 to the popup dictionary, as it didn't seem to be there. Not sure if that was appropriate either.
toneandcolor
 said on
April 14, 2009
补充例句 Supplementary sentences from this lesson:

using infix 不 to describe inability

我听不懂。[wǒ tīngbùdǒng.] I don't understand.

我听不请（楚）。[wǒ tīng bù qǐng (chu)] I can't hear clearly (neutral tone 楚 is optional)

你的话我听不懂。［nǐ dehuà wǒ tīngbùdǒng.］ I don't understand what you're saying.

请说英语，我听不懂。[qǐng shuō yīngyǔ, wǒ tīngbùdǒng.] Please speak English, I don't understand.

补充生词 Supplementary Vocabulary

小灵通 [xiǎolíngtōng] Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) type cell phones

灵通 is an adjective that ironically means 'well-informed'

trevelyan
 said on
April 14, 2009
>> Not sure if that was appropriate either.

Is totally and absolutely appropriate (there's quite a lot of... *ahem*... niche vocab in the dictionary.... I just added 草泥马 myself). That character was presumably missing because it isn't actually in the GB2312 character set.

A good reminder that we need to spin up another review of all these submissions. Thanks Nathan!

Gail天堂的声音
 said on
April 14, 2009
@Brendan,

this is the 1st time i hear of that nickname!

wawawawawa
jim.veseley
 said on
April 15, 2009
some tricky compound verbs for a beginner lesson here. especially 听不清楚, but useful stuff. Wonder how someone totally new to the language will handle it though.
maybrown
 said on
April 22, 2009
If totally new to the language can mean 'three months',I seem to be handling this lesson fine, comprehension wise. I find the presenters to be very clear and thorough. although I did get a bit mixed up in 'ting' and 'qing (chu)', trying to differentiate the sounds through listening without the text.

maybrown
Echo
 said on
April 22, 2009
@maybrown,

The more I teach the easier I feel Chinese language actually is. It always takes a while at the beginning, like one Chinese saying: "万事开头难". I have been frustrated by French for more than half a year, and I am still newbie (菜鸟) now !

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Echo
 said on
April 22, 2009
Actually seeing this topic and this photo together, I feel very hard to stop myself from thinking about the famous Japanese movie "ring"...

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Andrews_seat
 said on
July 31, 2010
The Dialog-Only download still does not work.
Absolute Beginners
 said on
August 1, 2010
@bob_trenwith,

Thanks for the pointers. I've just re-uploaded the dialogue files to our CDN where they appear to have been missing. Rather than clutter up the comments section, I've also deleted your comments where not relevant. Here are the links to the pages you were having problems with:

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/ordering-the-bill

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/how-about-korean-food

There are still a number of intermediate lessons we haven't got around to uploading the dialogue recordings for. I'm hoping to take care of those quite soon.

Best,

--david