Learn how to ask where you can buy something
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| INTRODUCTION |
| David: Welcome to ChineseClass101. I'm David. |
| Echo: Hi, I’m Echo. |
| David: And we are here with Absolute Beginner, Season 1, Lesson 23. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: Finding a phone card in China. You'll notice, I'm not Echo, Echo is not Victor. We're filling in for them today. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: But we've got a great lesson for you that's going to teach you how to ask where you can buy something like a phone card. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: In case you've lost your mobile phone, you need to use it. So, we've a conversation that takes place on the street. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. And the conversation is between two strangers. |
| David: Right, but they are still speaking casual Mandarin. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: This is the stuff that you're going to be using every day. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: So, we're going to take you to the dialogue in a sec. Before we do, we want to remind you if you have any questions... |
| Echo: Come to the site and leave us a comment. |
| David: Right. We're going to answer your questions. Other uses will, too. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: With that though, let's get to the dialogue. |
| DIALOGUES |
| David: 我在哪儿可以买电话卡？(Wǒ zài nǎr kěyǐ mǎi diànhuà kǎ?) |
| Echo: 在便利店。(Zài biànlì diàn.) |
| David: 对不起，我听不董。(Duìbùqǐ, wǒ tīng bù dǒng.) |
| Echo: 小商店。在那边。(Xiǎo shāngdiàn. Zài nàbiān.) |
| David: One more time, a bit slower. |
| David: 我在哪儿可以买电话卡？(Wǒ zài nǎr kěyǐ mǎi diànhuà kǎ?) |
| Echo: 在便利店。(Zài biànlì diàn.) |
| David: 对不起，我听不董。(Duìbùqǐ, wǒ tīng bù dǒng.) |
| Echo: 小商店。在那边。(Xiǎo shāngdiàn. Zài nàbiān.) |
| David: And now, with the English translation. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以买电话卡？(Wǒ zài nǎr kěyǐ mǎi diànhuà kǎ?) |
| David: Where can I buy a telephone card? |
| Echo: 在便利店。(Zài biànlì diàn.) |
| David: At a convenience store. |
| Echo: 对不起，我听不董。(Duìbùqǐ, wǒ tīng bù dǒng.) |
| David: I'm sorry. I don’t understand. |
| Echo: 小商店。在那边。(Xiǎo shāngdiàn. Zài nàbiān.) |
| David: A small shop, over there. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| David: So this is the ever important convenience store. If you can find one of these, you're going to survive. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: You may not live as well as if you can find the supermarket but they've got the basics there. |
| Echo: Yeah, they always have, like, the very, very important things there. |
| David: Yeah. They've got drinks, they've got instant noodles. You can survive. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: And we've got a lot of vocab here, which is going to help you deal with them. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: So, let's get to that now. |
| Echo: Okay. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| David: And now, the vocab section. |
| Echo: 買(mǎi) |
| David: To buy. |
| Echo: 便利店(biànlìdiàn) |
| David: Convenience store. |
| Echo: 聽不懂(tīng bù dǒng) |
| David: Not to understand. |
| Echo: 商店(shāngdiàn) |
| David: Shop. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| David: So there are couple of really useful words here. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: The first is, of course, convenience store. |
| Echo: 便利店(biànlìdiàn) |
| David: Let's hear that again. |
| Echo: 便利店(biànlìdiàn) |
| David: Right. Now, if you say this, you're going to be talking about 7-Eleven or one of these more expensive stores. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: If you come up to Northern China though, a lot of the convenience stores are just kind of holes in the wall where they serve drinks, noodles and stuff. And there's a different word people will use for that. |
| Echo: 小卖部(Xiǎomàibù) |
| David: So if you want the big 7-Eleven, you're going to say... |
| Echo: 便利店(Biànlì diàn) |
| David: And if you want the hole in the wall, you say... |
| Echo: 小卖部(Xiǎomàibù) |
| David: Right. Now, there's a word in that word for a convenience store that means shop. |
| Echo: 店(Diàn) |
| David: Right. It's that last character and it comes from another word we learn today, which is... |
| Echo: 商店(Shāngdiàn) |
| David: Or shop. |
| Echo: 商店(Shāngdiàn) |
| David: Right. And a convenience store is not just any shop. It's a small shop. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: So, how do we say small in Chinese? |
| Echo: 小(Xiǎo) |
| David: And while we're at it, we can learn how to say big as well. |
| Echo: 大(Dà) |
| David: So already today we've learned convenience store. |
| Echo: 便利店。(Biànlì diàn.) |
| David: Little convenience store. |
| Echo: 小卖部(Xiǎomàibù) |
| David: Right. We've learned the word for shop. |
| Echo: 商店(Shāngdiàn) |
| David: And the word small. |
| Echo: 小(Xiǎo) |
| David: And large. |
| Echo: 大(Dà) |
| David: Now, to describe something small or large, all we do is put these characters in front of our noun. |
| Echo: Yeah, like, 小商店(Xiǎo shāngdiàn). |
| David: A little store. |
| Echo: 大商店(Dà shāngdiàn). |
| David: Now, in the dialogue, our friend goes into the store and he wants to buy a phone card. How do we say phone? |
| Echo: 电话(Diànhuà). |
| David: This is the word for telephone. |
| Echo: 电话(Diànhuà) |
| David: Both fourth tone. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: Now, the word for card is... |
| Echo: 卡(Kǎ). |
| David: Believe it or not, this is a foreign loanword. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: This is what Chinese people think the English where card sounds like when you put it into Chinese. |
| Echo: 卡(Kǎ) |
| David: Right, it's third tone. So we just tuck that on the end. Telephone card. |
| Echo: 电话卡(Diànhuàkǎ). |
| David: Right. And if you're really creative, you could say tiny telephone card. |
| Echo: 小电话卡(Xiǎo diànhuàkǎ). |
| David: Or I want, I want the big one. |
| Echo: You find me one then. I've never seen it. |
| David: No big telephone cards. But that's how it works. The next word is a bit of a review. We learned this earlier, it's the word to buy. |
| Echo: 买(Mǎi) |
| David: And we hear it in the phrase to buy a phone card. |
| Echo: 买电话卡(Mǎi diànhuàkǎ) |
| David: Now, in our dialogue, a friend runs into a bit of a hitch. He hears the answer, but he doesn't understand. So he gives us a phrase, we learned back in Lesson 6. |
| Echo: 听不懂(Tīng bù dǒng). |
| David: I don’t understand. |
| Echo: 听不懂(Tīng bù dǒng). |
| David: Right. And so, the person repeats it and they tell him where the store is. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: And literally what they say is, "Over there." |
| Echo: 在那邊(Zài nà biān) |
| David: And that's at that side. |
| Echo: 在那邊(Zài nà biān) |
| David: So a lot of vocab, some new, some review. We've got a great point for you in the grammar section, so let's get to that now. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| David: Echo, what's our grammar point about today? |
| Echo: It's about a long sentence. |
| David: It's about a really long sentence. But we want to talk a bit about sentence word order, okay? |
| Echo: Yeah, okay. |
| David: So that's we're focusing on. Don’t worry too much if it's a bit different setting. |
| Echo: Yeah, don’t worry about it. |
| David: Okay. Echo, what is the sentence. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以买电话卡？(Wǒ zài nǎ'er kěyǐ mǎi diànhuàkǎ?) |
| David: That's the first sentence in our dialogue. Let's hear it again. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以买电话卡？(Wǒ zài nǎ'er kěyǐ mǎi diànhuàkǎ?) |
| David: The last four characters we already know, to buy a telephone card. |
| Echo: 买电话卡(Mǎi diànhuàkǎ) |
| David: What we want to focus on is the start of that sentence. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以(Wǒ zài nǎ'er kěyǐ).. |
| David: And that's literally I. |
| Echo: 我(Wǒ) |
| David: At. |
| Echo: 在(Zài) |
| David: Where. |
| Echo: 哪儿(Nǎ'er) |
| David: Can. |
| Echo: 可以(Kěyǐ).. |
| David: In earlier lessons, we've taught you the subject goes before the verb. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: So we could simplify this to say I can buy. |
| Echo: 我可以买(Wǒ kěyǐ mǎi).. |
| David: I can buy a telephone card. |
| Echo: 我可以买电话卡。(Wǒ kěyǐ mǎi diànhuàkǎ.) |
| David: The tricky thing about this sentence is where we have that location. |
| Echo: 在哪儿(Zài nǎ'er) |
| David: Right, which is a question. I at where. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿(Wǒ zài nǎ'er) |
| David: I at where can buy. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以买(Wǒ zài nǎ'er kěyǐ mǎi) |
| David: And then what you want to buy. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: The key thing to notice is we're sticking this after our subject, but before our verb. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: Right. That's because technically, it's a prepositional phrase. And prepositional phrases in Chinese go in front of verbs. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: For now though, you can just remember this word order. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: Subject. |
| Echo: 我(Wǒ) |
| David: At where. |
| Echo: 在哪儿(Zài nǎ'er) |
| David: Can buy. |
| Echo: 可以买(Kěyǐ mǎi) |
| David: A telephone card. |
| Echo: 電話卡。(Diànhuàkǎ.) Okay, let's hear another example, okay? |
| David: Okay. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以喝咖啡？(Wǒ zài nǎ'er kěyǐ hē kāfēi?) |
| David: This is for the coffee deprived among you. Let's hear that again. |
| Echo: 我在哪儿可以喝咖啡？(Wǒ zài nǎ'er kěyǐ hē kāfēi?) |
| David: Where can I drink coffee? One more time. |
| Echo: 我在那儿可以喝咖啡？(Wǒ zài nà'er kěyǐ hē kāfēi?) |
| David: Right. Here's another one. Where can I buy English books? |
| Echo:我在那儿可以买英文书？(Wǒ zài nà'er kěyǐ mǎi yīngwén shū?) |
| David: One more time. |
| Echo: 我在那儿可以买英文书？(Wǒ zài nà'er kěyǐ mǎi yīngwén shū?) |
| David: Right. Where can I buy English books. So remember, the tricky thing here is the word order. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. |
| David: Right? Subject, location and then the rest of our sentence. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: Now, if you have any questions, remember, write us at, contact us at ChineseClass101.com. |
| Echo: Uh-hmm. And we will answer your questions. |
| David: Right. And there's another really good reason to write us as well. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: We've got free trial lessons for people who are interested in our elite program. So, if you're interested in getting one-on-one support from a teacher here in Beijing, send us an email and we'll going to set you up with a free trial. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: Details are on the site. With that though from Beijing, I'm David. |
| Echo: I’m Echo. |
| David: Thanks a lot for listening and we'll see you on the website. |
Outro |
|---|
| Echo:再见!(Zàijiàn!) |
| Victor:Zaijian!(Zàijiàn!) |
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