Talk:Chinese (Mandarin)/Lesson 2

“今天她们没有一节课” really sounds unnatural
I would say "今天她们一节课都没有” Does the character “都” in “今天,他們一節課"都"沒有. ” mean "any"? I don't think so .I think "even" would better.There can be a feeling of envy.Like "They don't 'even' have one class today".--Shinylight talk

"今天她们没有一节课" is just wrong. When negating posession, you don't give a quantity: 他們沒有課. (To get the idea of how wrong it feels, think of someone who has no money trying to express it in English by saying "I don't have three dollars and fifty four cents" - it is true, but it is so specific that it misses the general meaning that he wants. He should say "I have no money".) If you want the emphasis of "does not have even one class" you could use 都 (dou1) or 也 (ye3), but the word order is a little different from English: 他們一節課都沒有 or 他們一節課也沒有. Literally, 都 (dou1) by itself means "all" and 也 (ye3) means "also", but this is just one of those patterns that does not map neatly onto English word-by-word. I'm sure you could work 連 (lian2) "any" in there, but it would be icing on the cake; you already have that meaning by using either of those constructions with 都 or 也. --Yakowenko (talk) 06:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, it looks like some discussion is creeping into the lesson itself ("Actually,We seldom say..."). That's got to go. :-) --Yakowenko (talk) 07:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I have cleaned up the area by creating separate examples for "今天他们没有课" and "今天他们一门课都没有", with some explanation of the latter. Since I am a new editor, it would be awesome if someone could check it for formatting and quality. :) --Electricwhisper (discuss • contribs) 02:56, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Something about the "Guo4"(過)?
--Yacht (talk)Q 02:53, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Might be useful to have word-by-word translation of examples?

I'm going to change 你早 to 早安 as I, the native speaker I asked, and the Apple Simplified Chinese Input Method have never heard of the former, but have commonly heard the latter.

Someone had put in Roman spaces between Chinese punctuation marks and the first character of the next sentence. This is superfluous since the Chinese punctuation already has space built in. It also makes things look bad, as it keeps the characters from aligning vertically. So I removed the spaces.


 * I found this text a little bit "English", seems like a word-to-word translation from English to Chinese. We seldom hear "你好吗", "我很好，谢谢. 你呢？", "我也很好. " in Chinese. And the sentence "一节？！太少了！" a little bit unnature for me. they are all grammatically correct, just not sound native for me. --Yacht 18:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * As for "你好吗" and so on, that seems to be the starting place for most Chinese texts, even if it's not actually used every day. After all, you have to start somewhere really simple and can't just immediately jump in to exactly how a native speaker would say something.  For "一节？！太少了！", how would you say it?


 * Maybe 只一节？ (zhi3 yi1 jie2?)  But then, this lesson doesn't exactly need more vocabulary, does it? --Yakowenko (talk) 07:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * So what's the deal with having different word choices in the simplified and traditional versions of the first sentence? ("早上好" vs. "早安")   Even if the most common usage differs between the mainland and Taiwan, the beginning lessons should present something that is acceptable in either locale.  If we want to show both greetings, maybe 東尼 could say "早上好" and 艾美 could reply with "早安"? --Yakowenko (talk) 07:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Most (if not all) of the pronunciation for the vocabulary in this lesson is now uploaded at Commons. Since I'm not going to work on the actual content of this book, I thought it be best if someone else implemented the audio links here.
 * Enjoy.
 * Peter Isotalo 07:23, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Peter. I'll link to them now.
 * Everlong 21:35, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I think putting 今天 at the beginning of the sentence sounds weird when spoken. I think it should be 你今天忙不忙. -deranged_physicist

By Lie-Hap-Po
Good morning : 你早/早安 Both exist in Chinese so you can use both.

uhh no... the first is not used in standard Mandarin.

It is worth pointing out that the word ‘早’ literally means 'early' in chinese, and it can only 'literally' mean morning if it is ‘早上’. The first one - referring to 你早/早安 - could be used in dialects like Cantonese (but I'm not so sure about that), but I've never heard a person saying '你早' 'in Mandarin. - chinzh


 * yeah 你早 is kinda informal, thou im sure you do get to hear this in somewhere of china, it would be a bit misleading for beginners.

and unlike in English where different kind of saying may mean completely another word, even you dont give learners this word, when later as their knowlege about chinese lang grows they'll easily understand what 你早 means whenever they meet/hear it. KonW (talk) 15:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

By Lie-Hap-Po
Chinese uses different words and different topics when they are talking to foreigners than when they are talking to other Chinese. Example How are you? CtC : 你吃了吗？CtF ：你好吗？ Example2 Your Chinese is very good. CtC:你普通话说得很好. CtF:你中文说得很好.

Suggest reducing vocabulary and adding a writing lesson
I think that, compared to most mainstream textbooks, this introduces vocabulary slightly too quickly for people who are new to characters. Someone who is new to characters would struggle with memorizing this many words at once. For example, the DeFrancis book has ten characters per lesson at the beginning.86.137.109.142 11:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Need simplified characters in vocab list
The characters in the vocab list are all traditional. Only the ones in parentheses should be traditional. I'll see if I can cut and paste; if not, someone else can do it since I don't have a chinese character typing tool on my computer. Emmaskis (talk) 17:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I just changed them a couple of minutes ago. Emmaskis (talk) 18:04, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Zaoshang
Using this to learn mandarin for the first time, notice zaoshang isn't the vocabulary, just zao. It doesn't really change the meaning, but it was confusing for me as I thought there was an extra word that i didn't understand.

Jie2
There is no definition for Jie2 in either this lesson or in lesson one
 * both "mén" and "Jie2" are measure word for school courses. --KaurJmeb (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * 门 refers to one course as a whole, whereas 节 refers to a single class period. It sounds a bit unnatural to me to say "今天我有四门课," where I would be more likely to say "这个学期我有四门课." I would rather say "今天我有四节课." I think 节 should be incorporated into the examples to reflect this. --Electricwhisper (discuss • contribs) 03:02, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Disapearing Pīnyīn
Pīnyīn disappears half-way through the dialogues and also half way through the grammar. This is not consistent, and also makes that part of the lesson useless for anyone who cannot read Chinese characters.

Missing vocabularies for 2nd dialogue
The second dialogue contains words that are not introduced in the vocabulary section