Popup Chinese

Intermediate: Flow My Tears

Save for his passing look of furtive intelligence, the police would hardly had given the beggar a second glance, for even if loitering on public property was technically a crime, it hardly served anyone's interests to harass those without even the limited means of paying the necessary fines to secure due process. And so the truly poor and desperate were permitted to exist on the margins of society, secure in their poverty from unreasonable search and seizure.

pefferie

said on

December 27, 2013

mp3呢?

trevelyan

said on

December 27, 2013

Weird. Sorry everyone. Will re-upload once home. Not sure how I missed this!

xiaokaka

said on

December 28, 2013

Actually, the dialogue file did contain the lesson, so now there are two lesson files and no dialogue.

Intermediate

said on

December 28, 2013

@xiaokaka, fixed!

bretter23

said on

December 28, 2013

This nameless beggar should be the hero in a series of podcasts!

davidwilljack

said on

January 9, 2014

Haven't listened for a while (unforgivable I know), so imagine my gobsmacked delight to hear the impeccable and mellifluous Grace for the very first time. Think I've died and entered aural excellence heaven. What a voice. I have a question though about that idiom: 江山易改本性难移/A leopard can't change its spots. Are the two parts interchangeable? What I mean is, can you say either the one or the other? I know Grace was responding to your first use of the word 本性, but in daily usage would Chinese speakers usually use both elements or either one equally，similar to the tacit understanding of the second element of a 歇后语 such as 狗拿耗子？ Thanks.

Grace Qi

said on

January 12, 2014

@davidwilljack，

Thank you for the compliment - it made my day;)

Responding to your question:江山易改，本性难移 is a set phrase which is originally from 明·冯梦龙 - "醒世恒言"“常言道得好，‘江山易改，秉bing3性难移。'” Technically, it's not a 歇后语 and these two parts are not interchangeable, however, 本性难移 is more commonly used.

Hope it helps~

davidwilljack

said on

January 12, 2014

@Grace I'm not big into praise I have to say. I think it's overplayed, especially in PC-thinking influenced Western education (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304213904579095303368899132?ico=home^editors_choice)plus I confess to being somewhat picky and hard-to-please. So I'm not trying to flatter you in the least; IMHO you simply have a perfect mix of a good voice and well-delivered erudition to make me want to listen more. Others, not so much: they either miss learning points or sound like fishmongers, or interrupt, or make inane comments. 烦死人了。

Thanks for your clarification. I learnt something. But after my site hiatus, I'm left wondering where are all the new lessons? Unless there's some kind of glitch, October 14th was the last intermediate lesson. Just solid Sinica from then till now. What's that all about?

huyilin

said on

January 14, 2014

I agree with davidwilljack that Grace has a very pleasant voice, really enjoyed the lesson! Even though there have been so few new lessons published recently, I am not giving up on PopUp, mostly due to the excellent voice actors and the outstanding lessons. One of a kind!

Nevertheless, I would have appreciated a response to my question regarding double negatives...

Thanks!

davidwilljack

said on

January 14, 2014

On the subject of doubling up: I recently read this sentence - 总之似乎好像从上初中开始到现在/zongzhi sihu haoxiang cong shang chu zhong kaishi dao xianzai. I asked a Chinese friend about the doubling of 'it seems' 似乎好像 and they said the writer's Chinese was poor. But is it？ Or is it in fact perfectly good usage?

Grace Qi

said on

January 16, 2014

@davidwilljack，

The sentence with 似乎好像 is perfectly correct. 似乎and 好像 both could mean"to seem; as if" they can be used separately and as well as together to emphasize the tone. It's more like "It seeeems like…" in English;)