Comments for Sinosplice

Comment on A New Resource for Chinese Grammar by John Pasden

John Pasden — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:26:51 +0000

Thank you for the publicity! We really appreciate it.

Comment on A New Resource for Chinese Grammar by John Pasden

John Pasden — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:25:29 +0000

Thanks, display issue fixed!

吗 isn’t always strictly necessary in a yes/no question; in this type of usage it’s quite natural not to use it.

Comment on Living in China is like an RPG by Xigua Online − Learning Mandarin and World of Warcraft

Xigua Online − Learning Mandarin and World of Warcraft — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:20:47 +0000

[...] to come out. I might have subconsciously been inspired by John’s great analogy between living in China and Roleplaying on [...]

Comment on Three Simple Uses of the Other “Ma” on a Bag by Todd

Todd — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:56:13 +0000

I don’t know where this laconic turn of phrase originally comes from, but I’ve certainly heard similar before, e.g. ＂酒嘛，喝嘛！＂

Comment on A New Resource for Chinese Grammar by JohnGuo

JohnGuo — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:21:09 +0000

Hi, There seems to be some mistake in this page:

http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/ASGIRILI

你还不去吃饭？(implyingthelistenershouldgotoeat) no spaces in english explanation, maybe its just my browser, not sure.

Also maybe you could explain one aspect here, why when using 还 dont need any 吗 thing at the end of the sentence to form a question. Or is it just a mistake?

Comment on 2012, Year of the Dragon by Reid

Reid — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:26:06 +0000

I read some interesting stuff on the New York Times about how stressful this time of year can be for young Chinese-Americans who want to go to back to China, but have to deal with long and complicated travel plans. What kind of Chinese New Year festivals happened here in the US?

Comment on Remember that calendar we always use? by mihao

mihao — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:39:00 +0000

The dialogues are funny, but it all makes sense when you think of it. The lunar calendar is not really used like a calendar here, it’s just a way of referring to days of moveable feasts. Perhaps Easter is equally annoying for the Chinese who live among Christians:

Chinese: Let’s do it on April 2nd.

Person: I’m not free on Easter Monday.

Chinese: OK, so is April 2nd OK then?

Person: Is that the Easter Monday or the day after?

Chinese: I don’t know. It’s April 2nd. April. Second.

Comment on Do I need a VPN for China? by loie

loie — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:52:05 +0000

plan to travel to yunnan for some months from april 2012…does hotmail work???

Comment on Three Simple Uses of the Other “Ma” on a Bag by Ricardo

Ricardo — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:40:59 +0000

here’s something similiar though on a quite different order:

http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/2389599_460s.jpg

i know you like how the chinese manipulate characters artistically and creatively, and i thought this makes for a good example of the same concept applied to our alphabet – which is a quite infrequent sight…

Comment on Personal Experience with the Other Particle “ma” by rlmy

rlmy — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:08:58 +0000

If you take the view that SRS is not a way to learn words but a way to stop forgetting them, then I think these concerns evaporate. Dumping word lists into SRS and learning them that way might word at a beginner level, because the words you’ll be learning via SRS are also words you’ll be seeing every day, so you’re getting the real-life context assistance that way. But word lists for words that are less frequent seems silly. If you’re reading enough you should come across enough new words that way. Once you’re learned them, add them to the SRS (I often include a couple of example sentences in the answer-field, ideally these include the sentence where I first came across the word), and then trust to the SRS algorithm to stop you forgetting the word in the future.