You know those stories about people lining up for hours at the Mac Store in Palo Alto? Or camping out overnight to get tickets to a movie premiere? Turns out that it doesn't tend to happen in China for a fairly simple reason: waiting in line is still something of a foreign concept in most of the country. We don't know if it's because Chinese people are on average too polite to call out people who cut in line, but as far as many people are concerned, why join the end when you can just gravitate to somewhere down front and eventually push your way in?Learning Chinese? Our Chinese podcast for today is designed for absolute beginners to the Chinese language. Our podcast centers on a dialogue that is fast but fairly short. Following a quick walk-through, Echo and David go on to talk about how to make forceful suggestions in Chinese, the sort of thing you might find useful the next time someone tries to cut into line ahead of you....
Absolute Beginners
said on November 17, 2011
@jhavens140,The exported .csv file is encoded using UTF-8. Try saving the file to disc and opening it manually. Excel should give you the option of specifying the encoding when you open it that way.Best,--david
richard
said on November 17, 2011
@Echo, so, colloquially 'ba' often replaces 'rang' let's..as in : let's take a look then = na women kan yixia ba 2nd ? keyi shuo :'women xiuxiu qu ba" meaning = we'll get it fixed (tomorrow) or let us fixed it (tomorrow)
Echo
said on November 17, 2011
@richard,Not really. There are nothing to do with these two words. You can actually use both of them in one sentence. Like: Rang4 wo3men5 kan4yi5xia4 ba5.--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
Xiao Hu
said on November 17, 2011
@Richard,You should be aware that 让 rang4 has the meaning of the English "let" (as in to allow) and the English "make" (as in to compel), for example,"shei2 rang4 ni3 lai2 de zhe4 me wan3? Bie2 ren2 dou1 yi3 jing4 zou3 le"谁让你来得这么晚？ 别人都已经走了Who made you come so late? Everyone's already left.Contrast this with:"rang4 wo3 men yi4 qi3 qu4 kan4 dian4 ying3 ba."让我们一起去看电影吧。Let's go to a movie together.But don't worry too much, context will make everything clear.
richard
said on November 18, 2011
@Echo,Xiao Hui too quickly associated the stronger suggestion 'qu ba' with 'rang' thank you both for explaining not to substitute one for the other.i also understand 'rang' meanings better with the examples.
