We've all been in this sordid situation. Your date was a wild success and you've come back home for a nightcap. But just as you step to the door you reach into your pocket and find something wrong: it has been picked clean. But by whom? Was it your surly waiter? The child selling roses who snaked after you down the street, pulling at your arm? The shifty group of ragged layabouts who operated that makeshift coat-check outside the restaurant?

Whoever the culprit, it seems you will now be spending the rest of your evening walking around looking for an open locksmith. So fire up your iPod and tune in to this podcast for all the language you'll need to get things fixed. Or at least all the language you'll need to complain about your lost keys to anyone who will listen, locksmith included.
 said on
June 9, 2009
补充生词 Supplementary vocabulary for this lesson:

nouns for practice

[shǒujī] cell phone (lit. "hand machine")

电话号 [diànhuàhàomǎ]phone number

[qìchē]car

[zìxíngchē]bicycle

adjectives for practice

[xīn]new

[jiù]old (*Note: is generally used for inanimate objects, as in not new. Use [lǎo] when describing people and animals as old.)

[èrshǒu]second-hand

补充例句 Supplementary sentences for this lesson:

坏了。[shǒujī huài le]

钥匙丢了。 [yàoshi diū le]

他有吗?[tā yǒu shǒujī ma?]

你有电话号 吗?[nǐ yǒu diànhuàhàomǎ ma?]

她有吗?[tā yǒu zìxíngchē ma?]

[jiù qìchē]

[xīnshǒujī]

[èrshǒu zìxíngchē]

哦,天啊!我的坏了! [o ,tiān ā! wǒ de qìchē huài le!]

 said on
June 10, 2009
太好了,这些生词都太有用了!!!!
 said on
June 10, 2009
Another spinoff of 二手 is 二手烟 or "second hand smoke".

I find myself using this word almost daily. Comes in really handy when you need to pitch your anti-smoking campaign to the guy puffin' one down at the dinner table next to you.

I ordered a "Zima" not an "emphysema"

 said on
June 10, 2009
extra supplementary vocabulary for this lesson

大哥大 [taikotai] mobile phone

脚车 [jiaoche] bicycle

锁匙 [suoshi] key

倾斜眼 [qingxieyan] cute, i like

 said on
June 10, 2009
@borneoherbs - pretty sure I've heard 脚车 before in reference to bicycle-rickshaws. Are the rest Taiwanese usage, or from somewhere down south? 锁匙 is a neat phrasing.
 said on
June 11, 2009
I'm finding it easier to follow the conversations these days. This one seems a lot easier than the others at this level. Good vocab too - keep it up.
 said on
June 12, 2009
@trevelyan, @borneoherbs,

i think it should be 脚踏车。
 said on
June 4, 2015
Did you really mean to begin the "popup fix" at <a href="http://popupchinese.com/data/433/absolute-beginners-missing-keys-fix.mp3">http://popupchinese.com/data/433/absolute-beginners-missing-keys-fix.mp3</a> with 门 or did the initial English word get cut off? The error recurs at 1:40 and led me to confuse "door" with "to lock up" but no worries, similar concepts and the more audio, the better. I wonder why your pages never load the first time, I must always cancel and reload, an iPad quirk perhaps but no other site has this trouble.

ToneAndColor? Brilliant! Alas, my Red-Green-Gray-all-look-identical friend who introduced me to PopUpChinese.com will miss the First/Third/Neutral colors.