Learn how to tell a cab driver where you want to go
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| David: Welcome to ChineseClass101. I’m David. |
| Echo: Hi. Da jia hao! 我是(Wǒ shì) Echo. |
| David: We’re here with Lesson 50! |
| Echo: 第五十课！(Dì wǔshí kè!) |
| David: Fifty! Five zero! |
| Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.) |
| David: First Beginner series, Lesson 50. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: This is the last one of this season. |
| Echo: 最后一课。(Zuìhòu yī kè.) |
| David: Right. So next week, we are off for a break and then we are coming back to you with Season 2. This dialogue, if you listen to it, if you go back and review the entire series, you will know how far we have come. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: We’ve come from… |
| Echo: We learned so many things. |
| David: Yes. We’ve gone from really, really simple sentences with adjectives to really complex sentences with a lot going on. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: And spoken at pretty significant speeds too. So in this lesson, we’re going to do some review and we’ll then introduce one final grammar point which is about how to sound a lot more native when you speak. |
| Echo: 没错儿。(Méi cuò ér.) |
| David: Right. Now, our dialogue here takes place again between a woman and a cab driver, but it’s a different cab driver than we had before. We’re going to take you to the dialogue. Before we do that, we did want to point out, you have not have the chance to check out our PDFs, make sure you come to ChineseClass101.com and get those. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: We’ve now got 50 lessons, each of which has a grammar point which is sequential and progressive and really gives you the foundations for understanding anything in the Chinese language. |
| Echo: 对。(Duì.) |
| David: Okay? Now, without much further a-do, let’s head to the dialogue. |
| 甲: 您好，去哪儿？(JIǍ: Nínhǎo, qù nǎr?) |
| 乙: 去天安门广场。(YǏ: Qù Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng.) |
| 甲: 您想走哪条路？大路，还是小路？(JIǍ: Nín xiǎng zǒu nǎ tiáo lù? Dàlù, hái shì xiǎolù?) |
| 乙: 走最快的那条。(YǏ: Zǒu zuì kuài de nà tiáo.) |
| 甲: 没问题。(JIǍ: Méi wèntí.) |
| David: One more time, a bit slower. |
| 甲: 您好，去哪儿？(JIǍ: Nínhǎo, qù nǎr?) |
| 乙: 去天安门广场。(YǏ: Qù Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng.) |
| 甲: 您想走哪条路？大路，还是小路？(JIǍ: Nín xiǎng zǒu nǎ tiáo lù? Dàlù, hái shì xiǎolù?) |
| 乙: 走最快的那条。(YǏ: Zǒu zuì kuài de nà tiáo.) |
| 甲: 没问题。(JIǍ: Méi wèntí.) |
| 甲: 您好，去哪儿？(JIǍ: Nínhǎo, qù nǎr?) |
| David: Hello. Where are we going? |
| 乙: 去天安门广场。(YǏ: Qù Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng.) |
| David: Go to Tian'anmen Square |
| 甲: 您想走哪条路？大路，还是小路？(JIǍ: Nín xiǎng zǒu nǎ tiáo lù? Dàlù, hái shì xiǎolù?) |
| David: Which road do you want to take, the big road or the small road? |
| 乙: 走最快的那条。(YǏ: Zǒu zuì kuài de nà tiáo.) |
| David: Take the fastest road. |
| 甲: 没问题。(JIǍ: Méi wèntí.) |
| David: No problem. |
| David: So the dialogue was moving pretty quickly. It was moving really quickly. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: In fact, that’s because our dialogue actors are speaking faster and faster. |
| Echo: Yeah. Also, before the girl knows where to go. |
| David: Right. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: Also, because we’re giving me more and more really native speed recordings. In fact, we’ve got one recording of this where our voice actors, they just raced ahead. They went at lightning speeds. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: Our lesson for today, anyway, is going to focus on reviewing a lot of really high frequency destinations so that wherever you want to go in China, you know how to say that. |
| Echo: 没错儿。(Méi cuò ér) |
| David: So let’s dive into the vocab section now. |
| Male: Now, the vocab section. |
| Echo: 廣場(guǎngchǎng) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Square. |
| Echo: 廣場(guǎngchǎng) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 廣場(guǎngchǎng) [natural native speed]. |
| Echo: 商場(shāngchǎng) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Shopping center. |
| Echo: 商場(shāngchǎng) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 商場(shāngchǎng) [natural native speed]. |
| Echo: 飯館(fànguǎnr) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Restaurant. |
| Echo: 飯館(fànguǎnr) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 飯館(fànguǎnr) [natural native speed]. |
| Echo: 飯店(fàndiàn) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Hotel. |
| Echo: 飯店(fàndiàn) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 飯店(fàndiàn) [natural native speed]. |
| Echo: 咖啡廳(kāfēitīng) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Coffee shop. |
| Echo: 咖啡廳(kāfēitīng) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 咖啡廳(kāfēitīng) [natural native speed]. |
| Echo: 酒吧(jiǔbā) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Bar. |
| Echo: 酒吧(jiǔbā) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 酒吧(jiǔbā) [natural native speed]. |
| Echo: 网吧(Wǎngbā) |
| David: Internet café. |
| Echo: 网吧(Wǎngbā) |
| Echo: 公園(gōngyuán) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Park. |
| Echo: 公園(gōngyuán) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 公園(gōngyuán) [natural native speed]. |
| David: Perfect. So those are the most common destinations, the most common places you’re going to want to go. |
| Echo: 没错儿。(Méi cuò ér.) |
| David: As we tell you in this series, the way to go is to tell the cab driver, “I want to go.” |
| Echo: 我想去。(Wǒ xiǎng qù.) |
| David: So you can say, “I want to go to the shopping concourse.” |
| Echo: 我想去商场。(Wǒ xiǎng qù shāngchǎng.) |
| David: Normally, you’re going to need to give them some kind of name, so you can say, “I want to go to the 西单(Xīdān) shopping concourse.” |
| Echo: 我想去西单商场。(Wǒ xiǎng qù xīdān shāngchǎng.) |
| David: Right. We’ve got a couple of words for hotel and restaurant tucked away. That’s review. You guys should already know that. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: You might want to ask to go to the Beijing hotel. |
| Echo: 我想去北京饭店。(Wǒ xiǎng qù běijīng fàndiàn.) |
| David: Which is right to Tiananmen Square. You may want to ask them to go to an internet café. |
| Echo: 我想去网吧。(Wǒ xiǎng qù wǎngbā.) |
| David: Right. Any cab driver should be able to help you find one of these, okay? Even late at night because they’re open 24 hours. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: Of course, we’ve got other words like “park”. |
| Echo: 公园。(Gōngyuán.) |
| David: And bar. |
| Echo: 酒吧(Jiǔbā) |
| David: Which you may or may not use depending on how you like to spend your time. |
| Echo: There are so many very good 酒吧(Jiǔbā) and 公园(Gōngyuán) in Beijing too! |
| David: Yeah. Throughout China, there are lots of great bars and clubs in Shanghai as well. Great parks, too. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: So there’s all of those destinations. Use them whenever you want to go there, obviously. Okay. We’ve also got these two other words tucked in, really lovely ones – big road… |
| Echo: 大路。(dàlù.) |
| David: And little road. |
| Echo: 小路。(xiǎolù.) |
| David: They mean exactly what they mean. |
| Echo: Right. Actually, you know what, after like living in Beijing for so many years, I’ve got used to Beijing’s 大路(dàlù) so much. |
| David: Yeah. They’re huge. There are eight lanes of traffic, and that’s even a little bit big road. |
| Echo: Right. Yeah. So right now wherever I go, I feel like, “Oh, you only have 小路 in your cities.” |
| David: Useful vocab anyway – big road, small road. |
| Echo: 大路，小路。(dàlù,xiǎolù.) |
| David: Of course, we heard the colloquial expression “no problem.” |
| Echo: 没问题。(méiwèntí.) |
| David: Which is one of the most useful things you can say. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: That’s our vocab section anway. |
| Male: It’s grammar time. |
| David: We’re not going to teach you grammar point per se, but we’re going to teach you a much more advanced technique for sounding like a native. One of the things we’ve only touched on very briefly has been tone sandhi. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: Now, these are changes to the tones of words that the native Chinese speakers make automatically. |
| Echo: 对。(Duì.) |
| David: The reason they do this is because it makes the language easier to actually say. |
| Echo: Right, right. |
| David: We haven’t gone in to this in too much depth before because if you’ve been practicing with us, you probably been picking it up. |
| Echo: 对。(Duì.) |
| David: But we want to spend a bit of time and explain one of the trickier ones because you hear it everywhere and we’re going to explain it and we’re going to practice it. This bit of tone sandhi is what happens when you get two third tones launched together. |
| Echo: 没错儿。(Méi cuò ér.) |
| David: We’ve got a lot of really common words we’re going to use to practice this. |
| Echo: Right. Some are actually in the dialogue. |
| David: Right. The first one is, of course, hello. |
| Echo: 你好。(nǐhǎo.) |
| David: Practice that with Echo. |
| Echo: 你好。(nǐhǎo.) |
| David: Notice how we say these other words exactly the same way. |
| Echo: 想走。(xiǎng zǒu.) |
| David: To want, to go. |
| Echo: 想走。(xiǎng zǒu.) |
| David: Do you want take the big road? |
| Echo: 你想走大路吗？(Nǐ xiǎng zǒu dàlù ma?) |
| David: Do you want to take the big road.Here, we actually have something even trickier. We’ve got three third tones in a row, so even the first one changes. They all in the second tone, except for the very last tone. Let’s hear that again. |
| Echo: 你想走大路吗？(Nǐ xiǎng zǒu dàlù ma?) |
| David: Back to something easier. We have the word “can”. |
| Echo: 可以。(Kěyǐ.) |
| David: Technically, both of these are third tones. However, as a word, we pronounced them… |
| Echo: 可以。(Kěyǐ.) |
| David: So this should provide an explanation as well for maybe a couple of things. Next, we’ve got the word “very good”. |
| Echo: 很好。(Hěn hǎo.) |
| David: Listen to that again, “very good”. |
| Echo: 很好。(Hěn hǎo.) |
| David: As in the sentence: “I’m very good.” |
| Echo: 我很好。(Wǒ hěn hǎo.) |
| David: Okay. So we’re not hearing the fall through tones. So that’s our lesson for today. Pay attention to tone sandhi. When you run into these combinations, don’t worry if you’re not hearing the fall through tones. What you’re running into is the way people actually pronounce them. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: It can be tricky at times but we know you’re working to get the hang of it. So, 50 lessons. Then you should pat yourself on the back. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: We are off for a week next week. You can take a break and you can decide if you want to move up to the elementary level where things are going to get more and more tricky or if you want to build vocab with Season 2. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: Season 2, we’re going to focus on dialogues that give you lots of the most common words in the most common situations. So make your decision and we will see you in the first week of January. |
| Echo: Right, in the new year! |
| David: Right. Before we leave, of course, we want to teach you one final thing: how do you say, “Merry Christmas”? |
| Echo: 圣诞快乐。(Shèngdàn kuàilè.) |
| David: One more time. |
| Echo: 圣诞快乐。(Shèngdàn kuàilè.) |
| David: And happy new year. |
| Echo: 新年快乐。(Xīnnián kuàilè.) |
| David: One more time. |
| Echo: 新年快乐。(Xīnnián kuàilè.) |
| David: From all of us to all of you, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! |
| Echo: 圣诞快乐，新年快乐。(Shèngdàn kuàilè, Xīnnián kuàilè.) |
| David: From Beijing, I’m David. |
| Echo: 我是(Wǒ shì)Echo。 |
| David: Take care. And we’ll see you in 2010. |
| Echo: Bye-bye! |
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