Learn the difference between a photo camera and a video camera
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| INTRODUCTION |
| David: Welcome to chineseclass101. I am David. |
| Echo: 嗨，大家好，我是Echo.(Hāi, dàjiā hǎo, wǒ shì Echo.) |
| David: And we’ve got our 45th elementary lesson here in the first series. |
| Echo: 没错。第四十五课。(Méi cuò. Dì sìshíwǔ kè.) |
| David: And Echo what’s the dialogue about today? |
| Echo: It’s about taking pictures. |
| David: Yes or about not taking pictures because you are distracted by how awesome the camera is which has happened but not to me. Anyway, we’ve got the dialogue for you. We are going to go into that in a sec as usual. Before we do, we want to remind you. At the elementary level, you guys should be picking up the basics and grammar but one thing to keep paying attention to is your tones. |
| Echo: Right pronunciation. |
| David: Absolutely. And one of the best ways of doing that is coming to the premium center we’ve got and checking out the voice recording tool. This will let you actually hear your voice right beside the native Chinese speaker.. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: And so you can figure out exactly what you are doing wrong if you are doing something wrong. Okay with that let’s go to the dialogue. |
| DIALOGUE |
| A:能帮我照张相吗？(Néng bāng wǒ zhào zhāng xiàng ma?) |
| B:哎，你的相机不错，是数码的吗？(Ai, nǐ de xiàngjī bùcuò, shì shùmǎ de ma?) |
| A:对，我刚买的。(Duì, wǒ gāng mǎi de.) |
| B:很轻，质量不错。(Hěn qīng, zhìliàng bùcuò.) |
| A:呃，咱们能照了吗？(E, zánmen néng zhào le ma?) |
| B:好，准备......对了，多少钱买的？(Hǎo, zhǔnbèi ......Duìle, duōshǎo qián mǎi de?) |
| David: One more time, a bit slower. |
| A:能帮我照张相吗？(Néng bāng wǒ zhào zhāng xiàng ma?) |
| B:哎，你的相机不错，是数码的吗？(Ai, nǐ de xiàngjī bùcuò, shì shùmǎ de ma?) |
| A:对，我刚买的。(Duì, wǒ gāng mǎi de.) |
| B:很轻，质量不错。(Hěn qīng, zhìliàng bùcuò.) |
| A:呃，咱们能照了吗？(E, zánmen néng zhào le ma?) |
| B:好，准备......对了，多少钱买的？(Hǎo, zhǔnbèi ......Duìle, duōshǎo qián mǎi de?) |
| Echo: 能帮我照张相吗？(Néng bāng wǒ zhào zhāng xiàng ma?) |
| David: Can you help me take a photo? |
| Echo: 哎，你的相机不错，是数码的吗？(Ai, nǐ de xiàngjī bùcuò, shì shùmǎ de ma?) |
| David: Hey your camera is not bad. Is it digital? |
| Echo: 对，我刚买的。(Duì, wǒ gāng mǎi de.) |
| David: Yes I just bought it. |
| Echo: 很轻，质量不错。(Hěn qīng, zhìliàng bùcuò.) |
| David: It’s really light and the quality is not bad. |
| Echo: 呃，咱们能照了吗？(E, zánmen néng zhào le ma?) |
| David: Can we take the photo? |
| Echo: 好，准备......对了，多少钱买的？(Hǎo, zhǔnbèi ......Duìle, duōshǎo qián mǎi de?) |
| David: Okay. Get ready. Right how much did this cost anyway? |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Echo: I don’t like people like that. |
| David: Good camera, likes the camera. |
| Echo: Actually in Chinese, we have saying 浪费我的感情。(Làngfèi wǒ de gǎnqíng.) |
| David: To waste my emotions. |
| Echo: Yeah or feelings like that. I was standing there and smiling and waiting for you to taking picture of me.. |
| David: Yeah. On the other hand, they are asking you to do a favor. And actually this happens pretty often in China I have noticed. |
| Echo: Yes. |
| David: If you go to Tiananmen Square or you go to the tourist attractions, there will be tons of people who want their photo taken together. So you can easily get roped into it for hours. |
| Echo: Oh no that’s not good. |
| David: Anyway, we’ve got some vocab for you. So let’s go into the vocab section now. And now the vocab section. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Echo: 照相 (zhàoxiàng) |
| David: To take a photo. |
| Echo: 相机 (xiàngjī) |
| David: Camera. |
| Echo: 摄像机 (Shèxiàngjī) |
| David: Video camera. |
| Echo: 数码 (shùmǎ) |
| David: Digital. |
| Echo: 质量 (zhìliang) |
| David: Quality. |
| Echo: 轻 (qīng) |
| David: Light. |
| Echo: 重 (zhòng) |
| David: Heavy. |
| Echo: 咱们 (zánmen) |
| David: Us. |
| Echo: 准备 (zhǔnbèi) |
| David: To prepare. |
| Echo: 准备(zhǔnbèi) |
| David: Useful vocab for taking photos. |
| Echo: 当然了。(Dāngránle.) |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| David: So we’ve got a lot of useful vocab here for taking photos. First of course is the word camera. |
| Echo: 相机 (xiàngjī) or we can say 照相机。(Zhàoxiàngjī.) |
| David: Right and we also have the word for video camera in there. |
| Echo: 摄像机。(Shèxiàngjī.) |
| David: Which is almost the same. Let’s hear those again. Camera? |
| Echo: 照相机。(Zhàoxiàngjī.) |
| David: And video camera. |
| Echo: 摄像机。 (Shèxiàngjī.) |
| David: And there is a key verb we don’t actually have in the dialogue which is to shoot a photo or to take the photo. |
| Echo: Yeah 拍。(pāi.) |
| David: That’s first tone. |
| Echo: Right 拍照片。拍照片。(Pāi zhàopiàn. Pāi zhàopiàn.) |
| David: Right so that’s to take a photo and we use the exact same word with movies. So to shoot a film would be |
| Echo: 拍电影。(Pāi diànyǐng.) |
| David: For example, the director is shooting the movie. |
| Echo: 导演在拍电影(Dǎoyǎn zài pāi diànyǐng.)。 And also we can say 照相 (Zhàoxiàng) instead of 拍照片。(Pāi zhàopiàn.) |
| David: So we’ve got two ways of asking someone to take a photo. The first is |
| Echo: 能帮我拍照片吗？(Néng bāng wǒ pāi zhàopiàn ma?) |
| David: And the second is |
| Echo: 能帮我照张相吗？ (Néng bāng wǒ zhào zhāng xiāng ma?) |
| David: And that last one I think is pretty tricky. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: A lot of sounds that don’t exist in English. Extra reason to go to the learning center and use the voice recording tool right? We’ve got a couple of other vocab words we should highlight. I think one of the most important is |
| Echo: 数码。(Shùmǎ.) |
| David: Right which means digital. |
| Echo: So we got words like 数码相机。(Shùmǎ xiàngjī.) |
| David: Digital camera. |
| Echo: Or 数码摄像机。(Shùmǎ shèxiàngjī.) |
| David: Digital video camera. |
| Echo: Yeah I guess they are all 数码 (Shùmǎ) right? |
| David: Yeah. Well they didn’t used to be. We use the additional stuff now for our videos on YouTube. Really convenient, amazing how small they are.. |
| Echo: Yeah. |
| David: And not only are they small but they are also very light. |
| Echo: 很轻。(Hěn qīng.) |
| David: Yeah. |
| Echo: 而且质量很好。(Érqiě zhìliàng hěn hǎo.) |
| David: Yeah the quality is really good, increasingly so. Really amazing actually. These really small devices and they produce just really detailed videos now. |
| Echo: You know what? |
| David: What? |
| Echo: I think you got that potential. |
| David: Uh what potential? |
| Echo: Like if someone asks you to 照张相 (Zhào zhāng xiāng) for them, maybe you are going to be the one who is distracted by the camera. |
| David: Yeah if it’s the good camera of course. One more really interesting word I think we should point out which is this word for us or we. |
| Echo: 咱们。(Zánmen.) |
| David: Right. This is slang or it’s close to slang. It’s probably not going to be covered in any textbooks you guys are going to run into. And the important thing to remember, it’s the inclusive we. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: So we’d include you and the person you are speaking to. |
| Echo: 咱们。(Zánmen.) |
| David: Right. So here we had the sentence |
| Echo: 咱们能照了吗？(Zánmen néng zhàole ma?) |
| David: It’s a bit more polite than hey, can you hurry up. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: Because it includes may. Okay that’s our vocab section for today. Let’s go on to the grammar section. It’s grammar time. Okay our grammar section for today is all about omission. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Echo: It’s very useful especially when you speak to someone. |
| David: Yeah. This is a very casual and very colloquial way of talking and what we see in the dialogue is sentences like this. |
| Echo: 是数码的吗？(Shì shùmǎ de ma?) |
| David: And |
| Echo: 我刚买的。(Wǒ gāng mǎi de.) |
| David: And what we have happening here is that the subject is actually being omitted. |
| Echo: Actually the sentence should be 是数码的相机吗？(Shì shùmǎ de xiàngjī ma?) |
| David: Is that a digital camera? |
| Echo: Or 我刚买的相机。(Wǒ gāng mǎi de xiàngjī.) |
| David: It’s the camera I just purchased. We’ve got some other examples as well. What we’d like you to do is listen to the sentence and see if you can figure out what is being omitted. |
| Echo: 他怎么去的？(Tā zěnme qù de?) |
| David: That would be how did he go and what’s being omitted is a place. |
| Echo: Right like… |
| David: And maybe it’s a company. |
| Echo: 他怎么去的公司？(Tā zěnme qù de gōngsī?) |
| David: Right or maybe it’s |
| Echo: A school 他怎么去的学校？(Tā zěnme qù de xuéxiào?) |
| David: Great. Next example. |
| Echo: 我在饭馆吃的。(Wǒ zài fànguǎn chī de.) |
| David: What I ate in the restaurant. So this would be |
| Echo: 我在饭馆吃的午饭。(Wǒ zài fànguǎn chī de wǔfàn.) |
| David: Yeah what I had in the restaurant for lunch or we could even put the name of a dish in there. |
| Echo: Right我在饭馆吃的中国菜。(Wǒ zài fànguǎn chī de zhōngguó cài.) |
| David: Yeah. The Chinese food I had in the restaurant. Last but not least. |
| Echo: 这是妈妈做的。(Zhè shì māmā zuò de.) |
| David: This is what mother made. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: And it’s probably going to be |
| Echo: 这是妈妈做的菜。(Zhè shì māmā zuò de cài.) |
| David: This is the food that mother made. It could easily be a car. It could easily be something else. Omission, you are going to run into this all the time. You can think of this as more complex version of the treatment we gave of 的 (De) in our beginner series. |
| Echo: Exactly. |
| David: Okay. So here it’s just you know, it’s subordinating the entire sentence. |
| Echo: Right. If the situation is pretty obvious and people obviously know that what you are talking about. |
| David: Yeah. |
| Echo: And you don’t actually need that object there. |
Outro |
| David: And in this case, if you are holding the camera, it’s pretty clear okay. So that’s our podcast for today. Before we leave you, we want to remind you. If you have not yet checked out the PDFs, be sure to come to the site and check them out. |
| Echo: Right because our dialogues are actually getting longer. |
| David: Yeah they are getting longer, they are getting more difficult. |
| Echo: Right. |
| David: And they are kind of harder to hold in your mind and actually one of the most effective study techniques there is is the day after you listen to a podcast, go back and check the transcript because spending one minute or two minutes reading it or reviewing it is going to help it stick in your mind. Okay. |
| Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.) |
| David: From Beijing, I am David. |
| Echo: 我是Echo.(Wǒ shì Echo.) |
| David: Thanks for listening and we will see you next week. |
| Echo: 下周见。(Xià zhōu jiàn.) |
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