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Absolute Beginners: Love Triangle

Love is a complex emotion, especially when there are three people involved each of which have a different agenda. In this Absolute Beginner lesson, pulled right out of a soap opera, we teach about the fundamental difference between liking and loving things, so that you don't do anything embarassing the next time you're called on to make an impromptu speech, or ask you a simple question like "do you love me?" Listen in any you'll be ready to answer them either way.

isantoso81

said on

October 1, 2008

Very nice

leanne

said on

October 1, 2008

What? Triangle or gay love?

Echo

said on

October 1, 2008

@leanne,

二者兼有之:)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

huaningyan

said on

October 9, 2008

Funny 8-)

I'm confused about the translation of the skit. In the translation of the skit, "ta" can also mean THEY in addition to she, he and it?

Echo

said on

October 9, 2008

This is already a lesson with confusing relationship between 你、我 and 他/她/它. Hopefully the English translation is not that confusing for you.

"ta" means he,she or it. I'm not a native English speaker, but it was said from native speakers that "they" refers to "he, she or it" sometimes. Maybe English speakers on the site can give us a better answer for this.

Also, I've been thinking about your user name. It's a Chinese one, isn't it? Would you like to share it with us if you don't mind? Because I can tell that it must be a beautiful and unusual name from the pinyin. 非常好奇：）

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

weijin

said on

October 10, 2008

'they' in english can be used to refer to a single person when you don't know if they are male or female. i.e. someone who has a gender-ambiguous name who you've not seen before.

Echo

said on

October 10, 2008

@wenjin,

非常感谢：）

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

mnglfiddle

said on

November 24, 2008

I am enjoying the lessons but find it really frustrating that I cannot get the flashcards to work for me. Every time I "click to start" it says "no vocabulary selected for testing" and it says this on a lesson that I have done the flash cards on before. Can you help with this? I am an "absolute beginner" so I really need the flash cards, if possible. Thanks!

Carrie

trevelyan

said on

November 24, 2008

@Carrie,

The problem should be fixed now. It was introduced in a site upgrade late yesterday. Thanks for reporting it, and sorry for the frustration. :(

加油

--dave

mnglfiddle

said on

November 29, 2008

Thank you, Dave, for the flashcards! They are working great now. I love this site, by the way, so keep up the good work!

Carrie

trevelyan

said on

November 29, 2008

glad its fixed for you, Carrie. be sure to let us know if you run into any other problems, and feel free to write if you have any questions as well.

mattjelly

said on

June 6, 2009

Hey, this is about the 'they' thing that was mentioned a long time ago, so I'm sure no one cares any more... but...

I'm fairly sure that refering to a single person as 'they' is grammatically incorrect in English. People sometimes use it - in an essay for example - when they don't know the sex of a person, instead of using 'he/she, him/her'etc. However, it's still bad English to do so.

'They' is correctly used to refer to more than one person, irrelevant of their gender.

This also makes it a little confusing in the audio when you say 'they love you' because it implies that more than one person loves the character. Or is that what you mean?

Of course it's just made even more confusing with that damn personal pronoun 'ta'!

Having said all of that there is probably some blaringly obvious example that I've forgotten about but hey, I tried =）

Echo

said on

June 7, 2009

@matt,

Hey, thank you for giving my question a really good answer :)

In the podcast, when Brendan says "they love you", he means "he/she loves you".

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Brendan

said on

June 8, 2009

@mattjelly -- Sorry about the ambiguity there; 'ta' is generally pretty indeterminate as to gender unless it's written down, and even then the distinction between 她/他 is a relatively recent one -- 她 originally was a variant form of 姐, and much later got borrowed to mean 'she/her.' (In 繁体字 you can also occasionally see the forms 牠 and 祂, for animals and God respectively.)

Speaking of God and singular 'they:' There's a rule on the books about not using 'they' as an epicene or generic third-person singular pronoun, but in actual practice it's got a long and glorious history. Even the King James version of the Bible uses it, as do Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and Mark Twain. And if it's good enough for God and Shakespeare, then it's probably good enough for us.

Gail天堂的声音

said on

June 8, 2009

@brendan,

brendan, you are huge!

jimi20716

said on

August 12, 2009

The use of "They" (or "Them") in English to refer to a single person:

'mattjelly' is correct, but he must be a prescriptive grammarian. ;-)

Technically, this is not gramatically correct, but it is a part of the common speech, and since languages change, this usage will be correct soon.

Descriptive grammarians would say it is correct now, because it is used so frequently.

mat

said on

August 12, 2009

I'd say it's correct now. Having spent a decade as an editor I can tell you that I wouldn't be subbing anyone's 'they' in this context.

It's not a lazy morphism, it's actually a development of the language which is useful.

zaloniii

said on

June 10, 2014

I had written in one of my Chinese exam

wo3 ai4 wo3 de gou3

My teacher told me I write Xi3 huan1 instead. But I do LOVE m dog, so would it still be wrong saying that??

Another question is, Is it right to say wo3 hen3 ai4 ni3 because as from the lesson we just got to know ai4 is a very strong word so does it go along with hen3 or fei1 chang2 often?

wo3 fei1 chang2 xi3 huan1 wo3 de gou3, is it equivalent to the english, i love my dog??

and the last question is, I didn't understand tao3 yan4 in the lesson, how do the girl use it when they talk about this guy they like? :-D It means to dislike right? A lil' confused.

zaloniii

said on

June 10, 2014

Reading the comments above, I learnt something new, the usage of these characters : 牠 and 祂. Thanks for the extra information. I would like to ask, are these ta1 used often in contemporary writings or were used in old times because there are many such characters in Chinese which aren't used anymore. Can I use 牠 when referring to my dog? What can be done when you want to also tell the sex of the dog?

I want to say thank you people for these lessons. They are so interesting and so funny. And that's what makes the learning process so fun. :-)

zaloniii

said on

June 10, 2014

And I'm sorry for yet another question, :-/

What does this mean? 二者兼有之 , My pleco didn't come up with some specific meaning! :-/

Grace Qi

said on

June 11, 2014

@zaloniii,

1.Of course you can say"wo3 ai4 wo3 de gou3"!

2."ai4" does go along with"hen" or "feichang" to show how much you love someone or something.

3. Yes. "tao3yan4" means "dislike", but in the context of saying that to someone you like, it feels shy and flirty:) More like in when some girl says"You are bad:)"

4.牠 and 祂 are not used in contemporary writings. In Chinese, people often use"它 ta1" to refer to animals or lifeless objects. But for pets or when you want to distinguish the sex of the pets, "他ta1" is for male and "她ta1" is for female.