Popup Chinese

Intermediate: I Wasn't Kidding

Please do not make any assumptions about my attire. I was not invited to China because of my sense of humor. Nor has my general gravitas in any way hindered my selection as model worker by the Furong district government. While it is true that I will tell the odd joke on occasion, such as that ringer about the penguin and the lame anthropod I recounted at the national textile exhibition last year, in general I am not considered a funny man. So it would be best if you take my remarks more seriously next time.

Xiao Hu

said on

October 18, 2010

@Brendan,

I'm interested in joining the gěi club. Let's see how secretly gěi we can all be together!

Waitaminute...something about that doesn't sound right...hhhmmm...

咦! 怎么可以把以上的留言给删掉了呢? 或者是把 "给" 的那部分给弄掉了? 我不太会弄电脑! 唉!

toneandcolor

said on

October 18, 2010

周末这两节课很好玩儿！我今天早上在地铁上笑个不停。

davidwilljack

said on

October 19, 2010

I don't know who the male actor is here, but his performance and phrasing are truly world-class. Where did you find this guy? You're lucky to have him. Brilliant job! My two cents on ju1ran2: 'You've gone and killed him' is IMHO a better rendering than 'actually'. Thank you very much. I learned a lot.

toneandcolor

said on

October 19, 2010

I also am eager to hear podcasts that reveal all of gěi secrets of Popup Chinese.

Xiao Hu

said on

October 20, 2010

davidwilljack,

Forgive me, however I don't whole-heartedly agree with the interpretation of 居然 as "you've gone and killed him".

I think that "actually" does fit here, especially because 居然 is so difficult to translate, and virtually impossible to translate into one word. Intermediate level students often demand an EXACT equivalent to one word and get thrown into convultions and random hissey-fits with interpretations with no precise one-word translation from one language into the other.

Basically 居然 conveys that something is completely surprising, unexpected or happened out of the blue, yet when you try to verbalize those words in the context of 你居然把他给杀了! then it becomes a bit of a problem to verbalize it into one single word.

That's why I agree with "actually".

To say, "you've gone and killed him" does equate somewhat to another meaning of 居然 which is, "to go so far as to", yet I don't think that it carries the same feel or fuel as "actually", although I could be wrong.

Like I said, 居然 is a bit of a conundrum.

trevelyan

said on

October 20, 2010

居然 is a tough one to translate, which may be why so few native English speakers use it in conversation. I personally suspect this is one of these cases where the most native way to translate the sentence is to change what it actually said and adopt more idiomatic English that reflects the astonished surprise. The emotions in the scene here hopefully help make it intuitively clearer what the word means, even if the translation can be rough.

@davidwilljack - Qin is the male voice actor here. He's done recording work with us for probably two years now, although he does mostly television work. We're definitely lucky to have him and will see if we can get some shots of him from CCTV if you're interested in what he looks like.

Xiao Hu

said on

October 20, 2010

@Travelyan,

Yes, Qin is an extremely talented actor. Like you mentioned in the home-page promo video, Popupchinese employs real actors who give the language the correct tonality and emotional coloring in a wide variety of circumstances, which is an amazing asset to have and it's why we keep coming back for more.

One of the most difficult things for myself as a student of Chinese is, to learn how to phrase the language properly. Language isn't just communication, but it's a method to express ourselves and our emotions, which is something you can never learn from any book. Other series of recorded dialogues just don't have the emotinal undertoning in the dialogues to make it clear how to speak in anything other than a basic conversational tone, once again, this is what makes Popupchinese so awesome!

Regarding 居然, I've been learning this language for quite some time now and I can't think of the last time I used 居然, one of the most difficult and elusive aspects of language learning is translating a feeling, not a word. To learn by feel which expressions are appropriate under which circumstances, as opposed to this word directly translates to this word. Lately I've been making a push to move from translation to interpretation. I'm hoping this will help make my Chinese more fluent and natural.

Echo

said on

October 22, 2010

Don't know if people know that Qin was also the actor who did the fabulous chicken sound in this famous chicken lesson http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/what-sign-are-you :)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

chadyanpitre

said on

October 23, 2010

David,

It would be fun to see credits in each lesson, as well as maybe some brief bio (similar to the ones on david, echo, brendan) on another area of the site of the other on/off team members and actors.