Learn all about the past continuous tense
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| INTRODUCTION |
| David: Welcome to chineseclass101. I am David. |
| Echo: 大家好，我是Echo.(Dàjiā hǎo, wǒ shì Echo.) |
| David: And we are here with lesson #40 in our first elementary series. |
| Echo: 没错。第四十课。 (Méi cuò. Dì sìshí kè.) |
| David: Which is a continuation of the spy saga we showed you earlier. |
| Echo: 没错。我们今天回到使馆。(Méi cuò. Wǒmen jīntiān huí dào shǐguǎn.) |
| David: Yes we are going back to the embassy and we are going to see what happens when the ambassador returns. |
| Echo: Yeah. Poor guy. |
| David: Poor guy. We’ve got a dialogue for you. Before we go there, we want to remind you that dialogues are getting longer, they are getting more difficult because this is a progressive lesson series. |
| Echo: 没错。我们已经到了四十课。(Méi cuò. Wǒmen yǐjīng dàole sìshí kè.) |
| David: Yeah. If you are having trouble following by audio only, get your hands on those PDFs and you can read along with us. Okay… |
| Echo: 非常有用。(Fēicháng yǒuyòng.) |
| David: Right. Let’s go to the dialogue. |
| DIALOGUE |
| A:你离开使馆的时候窗户开着吗？(Nǐ líkāi shǐguǎn de shíhòu chuānghù kāi zhe ma?) |
| B:没开着，我当时急着走，关了就走了。(Méi kāi zhe, wǒ dāngshí jí zhe zǒu, guān le jiù zǒu le.) |
| A:你回来的时候门还锁着吗？(Nǐ huílai de shíhou mén hái suǒ zhe ma?) |
| B:没有，门完全敞开着，保险柜也开着。(Méiyǒu, mén wánquán chǎngkāi zhe, bǎoxiǎnguì yě kāi zhe.) |
| A:那些文件呢？(Nàxiē wénjiàn ne?) |
| B:都丢了。(Dōu diū le.) |
| One more time, a bit slower. |
| A:你离开使馆的时候窗户开着吗？(Nǐ líkāi shǐguǎn de shíhòu chuānghù kāi zhe ma?) |
| B:没开着，我当时急着走，关了就走了。(Méi kāi zhe, wǒ dāngshí jí zhe zǒu, guān le jiù zǒu le.) |
| A:你回来的时候门还锁着吗？(Nǐ huílai de shíhou mén hái suǒ zhe ma?) |
| B:没有，门完全敞开着，保险柜也开着。(Méiyǒu, mén wánquán chǎngkāi zhe, bǎoxiǎnguì yě kāi zhe.) |
| A:那些文件呢？(Nàxiē wénjiàn ne?) |
| B:都丢了。(Dōu diū le.) |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Echo: 你离开使馆的时候窗户开着吗？(Nǐ líkāi shǐguǎn de shíhòu chuānghù kāi zhe ma?) |
| David: When you left the embassy, was the window open? |
| Echo: 没开着，我当时急着走，关了就走了。(Méi kāi zhe, wǒ dāngshí jí zhe zǒu, guān le jiù zǒu le.) |
| David: It wasn’t open. I was in a hurry to leave then and I closed it and left. |
| Echo: 你回来的时候门还锁着吗？(Nǐ huílai de shíhou mén hái suǒ zhe ma?) |
| David: Was the door locked when you returned? |
| Echo: 没有，门完全敞开着，保险柜也开着。(Méiyǒu, mén wánquán chǎngkāi zhe, bǎoxiǎnguì yě kāi zhe.) |
| David: No it wasn’t. The door was completely open and the safe was also open. |
| Echo: 那些文件呢？(Nàxiē wénjiàn ne?) |
| David: And those documents? |
| Echo: 都丢了。(Dōu diū le.) |
| David: They were all gone. I think this dialogue is not as exciting as the earlier ones in the spy series. |
| Echo: 对呀。丢东西总是不好的。(Duì ya. Diū dōngxī zǒng shì bù hǎo de.) |
| David: Yes it’s the interview with the cop after the fact. |
| Echo: 但是我们今天的 (Dànshì wǒmen jīntiān de) gramer 是非常 (Shì fēicháng) exciting. |
| David: Yeah we’ve got a great grammar point for you guys today. Before we get to that though, let’s go through the vocab for this lesson. Echo? And now the vocab section. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Echo: 离开 (líkāi) |
| David: To leave. |
| Echo: 使馆 (Shǐguǎn) |
| David: Embassy. |
| Echo: 时候 (Shíhòu) |
| David: Time. |
| Echo: 窗户 (chuānghù) |
| David: Window. |
| Echo: 当时 (dāngshí) |
| David: At that time. |
| Echo: 锁 (suǒ) |
| David: To lock. |
| Echo: 敞开(chǎngkāi) |
| David: To be wide open. |
| Echo: 保险柜 (bǎoxiǎnguì) |
| David: Safe. |
| Echo: 文件 (wénjiàn) |
| David: File. |
| Echo: 丢 (diū) |
| David: To lose. |
| Echo: 丢 (diū) |
| David: We’ve seen some of this vocab before. It’s coming back. |
| Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.) |
| David: Things are getting used again and again. Right? So we are going to play a little game. Echo, I want you to lead with the Chinese. And you guys, see if you can remember what that word means. After we define it then, we are going to give you a sample sentence to help reinforce the vocab. Echo? |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Echo: 使馆。 (shǐguǎn) |
| David: That’s embassy. As in the sentence |
| Echo: 使馆的文件丢了。(Shǐguǎn de wénjiàn diūle.) |
| David: The embassy documents are missing. It’s going to get a bit harder. |
| Echo: 大使。(Dàshǐ.) |
| David: Ambassador. |
| Echo: 大使来的时候，他们已经走了。(Dàshǐ lái de shíhòu, tāmen yǐjīng zǒule.) |
| David: By the time the ambassador got there, they’d already left. |
| Echo: 间谍。 (Jiàndié.) |
| David: This is spy. |
| Echo: 间谍偷走了所有的档案。(Jiàndié tōu zǒule suǒyǒu de dǎng'àn.) |
| David: The spy stole all of the case files. |
| Echo: 护照。 (Hùzhào.) |
| David: That’s passport. |
| Echo: 你的护照过期了。(Nǐ de hùzhào guòqíle.) |
| David: Your passport is expired. How do you guys do? Hopefully pretty well. |
| It’s grammar time. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| David: We’ve got a great grammar point for you. Echo, what is it? |
| Echo: It’s a past continuous tense. |
| David: Right. If you remember in our last lesson, we taught you the present continuous which was introduced in the continuous tense or a continuous aspect. In this lesson, we are going to show you how to take that and move it into the past. Let’s start by reviewing what we learned in our last lesson. How do we make something present continuous? |
| Echo: Add 着 (Zhe) after the verb. |
| David: In our dialogue for last week, we had the following sentences. |
| Echo: 她穿着白衣服。 (Tā chuānzhuó bái yīfú.) |
| David: She is wearing white clothing. |
| Echo: 她呜呜的哭着。 (Tā wū wū de kūzhe.) |
| David: She is crying woo….So we basically take 着 (Zhe) and we put it after the verb the same way we treat 了 (Le) and the same way we treat 过 (Guò). This raises the question of how do we put things into the past tense and in this dialogue, we finally find out. Let’s take a look at that first sentence. |
| Echo: 你离开使馆的时候窗户开着吗？ (Nǐ líkāi shǐguǎn de shíhòu chuānghù kāizhe ma?) |
| David: Was the window open when you left the embassy? A couple of things to note. There is no 了 (Le) and there is no 过 (Guò) in the sentence. So what is it that puts this in the past tense. |
| Echo: 你离开使馆的。(Nǐ líkāi shǐguǎn de.) |
| David: Right. We are explicitly saying when it happened. |
| Echo: Right 你离开使馆的时候窗户开着吗？(Nǐ líkāi shǐguǎn de shíhòu chuānghù kāizhe ma?) |
| David: And this is one of the things in Chinese that makes time and tense really contextual. What happens if we lose that condition? |
| Echo: 窗户开着吗？(Chuānghù kāizhe ma?) |
| David: Is this past tense? |
| Echo: No it means, is the window open? |
| David: Right. You’ve got to swap out. |
| Echo: 着。(Zhe.) |
| David: And replace it with |
| Echo: 了。(Le) |
| David: As in |
| Echo: 窗户开了吗？(Chuānghù kāile ma?) |
| David: Was the window open? |
| Echo: Uhoo… |
| David: Okay. Let’s take a look at another sentence from our dialogue for this week. |
| Echo: 你回来的时候门还锁着吗？(Nǐ huílái de shíhòu mén hái suǒzhe ma?) |
| David: When you got back, was the door still locked. So we can see here too, we’ve got a condition. |
| Echo: 你回来的时候门还锁着吗？ (Nǐ huílái de shíhòu mén hái suǒzhe ma?) |
| David: If we got rid of the condition, we couldn’t use the past continuous. We’d have to say |
| Echo: 门锁了吗？(Mén suǒle ma?) |
| David: One more thing to point out. When we take verbs and put them into the negative, we can put them in the past tense by just adding |
| Echo: 没。没开着。(Méi. Méi kāizhe.) |
| David: It was not open. |
| Echo: 没锁着。(Méi suǒzhe.) |
| David: It was not locked. To sum up, if you’ve got a sentence and you want to put it in the past continuous, there are a couple of ways to do it. If it’s a positive sentence, we need to add a condition of time that makes it clear that sentence is in the past. |
| Echo: Exactly. |
| David: Because we can’t use 了 (Le) and we can’t use 过(Guò)。 |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: This condition can be stated or it can be implied but your listener has to understand that. If it’s a negative sentence Echo, what do we do? |
| Echo: We put 没 (Méi) in front of the verb. |
| David: Right past tense. |
Outro |
| David:And with that, we are at the end of our podcast for today. As always, before we go, we want to remind you of one thing. Echo, what is that? |
| Echo: 别忘了给我们留言。(Bié wàngle gěi wǒmen liúyán.) |
| David: Right. |
| Echo: That’s my favorite 时候.(Shíhòu.) |
| David: You are going to make Echo really happy if you come to the site and ask your question or leave a comment. From Beijing, I am David. |
| Echo: 我是 (Wǒ shì)Echo. |
| David: And we will see you next week. |
| Echo: 下次见吧。(Xià cì jiàn ba.) |
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