Not too far from where you're melting in the summer heat, you can see a bus wrapped snugly like a fat Buddha in a nest of minivans and three-wheeled rickshaws. Further ahead, taxi drivers have clambered onto the sidewalk in the frustrated hope of escape. You secretly wonder if your own driver will show such initiative should the opportunity arise.Why is traffic so terrible? Is there an accident ahead, or is this just another day in China? Find out for yourself in this week's Advanced listening test. To take the test, just listen to our short podcast, and then head over to the quiz section to test your comprehension. A fully annotated transcript with our classic Chinese popups is available for you to check your answers against afterwards. Questions are also welcome in the discussion section below.
orbital
said on October 17, 2008
Nice dialogue - very natural. I missed the bit about the traffic cop, and the details on the car crash. 刮蹭 was a new word for me. Can we use it with people as in English ("He sideswiped me on the way to the copier") or is this just for auto collisions?
marco64
said on October 18, 2008
Nice lesson.
gnotella100
said on January 21, 2009
I was wondering if the 刮 in 刮蹭 is pronounced guǎ here for emphasis.
Echo
said on January 21, 2009
@gnotella100,
刮蹭 is a new word coming out in latest years and usually used in colloquial speech. Most people say guǎ, althought the right pronunciation is first tone.It sounds a little bit weird if someone says "guā蹭" in the daily life. 新闻 maybe would though.
Have already changed the popup though, thank you !
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
Advanced
said on January 21, 2009
This is a tough call. My own preference is to keep it third tone, since that's how the word is usually spoken. In cases like this I think the best approach is to include a note in the popup calling attention to the issue. This is what we're doing with Dream of the Red Chamber and I think the same sort of approach works here.I've just reverted Echo's change, but what do you guys think? I'm biased towards having colloquial ("real world") usage trump formalism, in the same way that annotating 谁 as shui3 would be doing people a disservice, even though it may be more technically correct than shei2. Maybe this is wrong. Thoughts?--dave
orbital
said on January 22, 2009
I like the current approach. Annotate dialogues as they are spoken and include reminders of things to watch out for in the popups.
gnotella100
said on January 23, 2009
同意二楼意见
bonita.delmonte
said on January 23, 2009
i agree as well. it's much more important to me what people actually say than what they're supposed to say.
