16 Making a phone call
公式に中国語タイトルがありませんが、たぶん「打电话」です。
Hello everyone, 欢迎收看成长汉语. Welcome to today’s episode of Growing up with Chinese.
Now I have a question to ask all of you before we get into today’s material.
In your native language, what is the first thing you typically say when you answer the phone? In English, we might say “hello?” Or we might say “Charlotte speaking?” or “this is Charlotte,” depending on the circumstance. But most of the time “hello” is the first thing we say.
Now Chinese uses the word specific to answer in the phone and that is “喂?” People might say 喂 or 喂你好 but at the very least 喂 is always used. And sometimes the person making the phone call will respond with 喂 something something something. Cool no?
Now I bring this up because the topic of today’s show is making a phone call. So let’s head over to 小明’s apartment and see who is calling who and just exactly what’s going on. Shall we?
続きを読む15 Buying fruits 买水果
大家好, 欢迎收看成长汉语. Hi everyone, it’s time for another episode of Growing up with Chinese.
Now I was seven when I started learning Chinese so there was a lot about the process that I don’t remember very well. But one thing I do remember is setting up a little food shop at home for Chinese class one day, at the vocabulary for buying things. My sister and I took turns running the shop buying and selling bananas and apples all kinds of fruits. It was a lot of fun. And all this buying and selling vocabulary and phrases are very useful to know. After all, China is a shopper’s paradise.
Now I bring this up now because today we are following Mike and 小明 to the neighborhood fruit vendor. Now if you all remember, 小明’s mom last time told 小明 to buy some fruits while he was out. So, let’s take a look and see how buying and selling is done in Chinese.
続きを読む14 Directions 方位
今回はかなり大変だった覚えがあります。
大家好, 欢迎收看成长汉语. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Growing up with Chinese.
Are you all ready to get down*1 to work today? We are going to let our discussion of tenses in Chinese rest for a little while. They will be coming up in our dialogues as we go along, so extra practice won’t be an issue.
Today our focus is going to be directions. Now it can be quite interesting to look at how different cultures use directional vocabulary. In America, we use left and right a lot. In China, north, south, east and west are used equally as much. 北京’s layout is quite square. So it’s never hard to get your directional bearings*2 here. And same goes for many other Chinese cities.
Now let’s dive into today’s clip. And continue our discussion of directional vocabulary in just a minute. Let’s go.
続きを読む13 Breakfast 早餐
大家好. It’s great to see you all again here on Growing up with Chinese 成长汉语. 欢迎收看. Thanks for tuning in.
Last time we covered present tense in Chinese. And I hope that you didn’t feel like it was too hard. Between 在, 正在 and 正 we pretty much covered all the present tense basis.
Today our topic is past tense. And trust me, it’s essentially as easy as present tense. And nowhere near*1 as difficult as English past tense. We’ll be learning past tense with the help of 小明’s mom and Mike who finally decided to wake up. Now today’s vocabulary will be focusing on morning activities like breakfast and getting ready to go out. So let’s check out what’s going on.
*1:nowhere near 〜とは段違いだ
12 Playing American football 打橄榄球
（前回の続き）家を出て、独りアメフトの練習をする小明のところに兰兰が通りかかります。
大家好, thanks for tuning into today’s Growing up with Chinese. 欢迎收看今天的成长汉语.
Today is the twelfth show of our series. And I have to say, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground in such a short time. Do you all feel your Chinese getting better? Our vocabulary database is certainly growing that’s for sure.
Now today we have some fun vocabulary lined up for you all. But more importantly, we’re going to be discussing how to speak in present tense in Chinese. Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the word “tense” in relation to language, my whole body gets tense*1. But, I’ve got some good news for everyone else out there whose feeling tense along with me. Tenses in Chinese are really quite straightforward and relatively uncomplicated. If English and Chinese were running a tenses race, Chinese would outrun English by about ten laps. Now, are you all convinced yet? Don’t worry if you are still a little bit skeptical. Let’s take a look at today’s dialogue and you’ll see what I mean.
*1:tense（時制）とtense（緊張）のシャレなわけですね
11 Getting out of bed 起床
今回から新出単語に拼音がついています。ありがたいことです。
大家好, 欢迎收看今天的成长汉语. Welcome to today’s episode of Growing up with Chinese.
今天星期几? Yes, I just asked to you what day of the week it is. Although I bet your answers are all different because depending on where you live in the world, it could be yesterday, today or tomorrow. So, a better question would be 现在几点? What time is it? And of course, it’s time for us to begin.
Now today’s content is quite relaxing because it follows under the topic of leisure time. And it’s so nice when you have time to do things that you might not normally get to do. Like read a book, play video games, sleeping or whatever else might relax you. Now today 小明 and Mike are looking at a nice chunk of leisure time. But what will they do with it? Let’s check it out.
続きを読む10 Dates 日期
冒頭でCharlotte MacInnisが言っていることはepisode 18 “Apologizing”と同じです。何かの手違いがあったように思われます。
Hello everyone. 欢迎收看成长汉语. Thanks for tuning into today’s Growing up with Chinese. We’ve got a great show lined up for you today.
First though I have a question. Take a minute to think of all the ways we apologize in English. There is a lot isn’t there. I’m sorry, my fault, I apologize, excuse me, forgive me, my bad, the list goes on and on which implies that we apologize a lot in English don’t we. Well in China there are a couple ways to communicate an apology. However, there are nearly as many forms of I’m sorry as there are in English, interesting isn’t it. It’s not that*1 Chinese speakers don’t feel remorse*2 as much as English speakers, after all, we all are human beings.
Now I’ll leave it is food for thought*3 for now because we need to get into today’s dialogue clip. Now unfortunately, 小明 has a lot of apologizing to do the day. Let’s check out just exactly what’s going on.
続きを読む9 Family 家庭
大家好, welcome back to 成长汉语 Growing up with Chinese. Our series go with to help all of you learn some very useful and basic Chinese.
Now today we’ll be going over the second part of the clip we saw last time. So it will be part of review, part of new phrases. Now do you all remember your dining vocabulary. Did you practice your chopsticks ability? 你们会用筷子吗? Can you all use chopsticks now? I certainly hope so. Anyway, chopsticks ability isn’t that necessary for speaking Chinese. So don’t worry about it. Let’s check out today’s clip.
続きを読む8 Having dinner 用餐
Hi everybody, 大家好, 你们知道现在几点吗? Do you all know what time it is? That’s right, it’s time for another episode of Growing up with Chinese 成长汉语.
你们吃饭了吗? Have you all eaten? I hope so. Because everyone’s brains will work better when they’ve all had nourishment and that includes Mike and 小明.
Now today we are going to be focusing on some dining phrases again very useful Chinese vocabulary to have, especially if you don’t come from a country where chopsticks are the main eating utensil*1.
Now, just for all of you have fair warning, today’s clip has a lot of new phrases in it, seven, to be precise. We’ll be covering half of them today, and the other half next time. But you will be seeing the clip in its entirety. Don’t let it fluster*2 you though, because we’ll go over half of them today, and half of them next time. So let’s check it out.
続きを読む7 Time 时间
今回の英語はなぜかやけに聴き取りにくいです。
Hello everyone, 大家好, thanks for joining us for another episode of Growing up with Chinese 成长汉语.
Have you all been practicing how to say what nationality you are? 我是美国人, I’m American. 你是哪国人? Which country are you from? OK, that’s what we covered last time.
Today we’ve got a fabulous line up ready for all of you. we’re going to be covering time. It’s always a good thing to know how to ask someone for the time, or just to know how to talk about time in general. And because we’re going to be talking about time, we’re also recovering numbers again. And guess what. By the end of today’s show, you are all going to be able to count to ten thousand. I’m very serious.
But before we do that as always, we need to check in with Mike and 小明 first. And I hate to say to everyone, but I think the two of them are up to no good*1 today. But, I’ll let you be the judge of that. For now, let’s see what’s going on.
*1:up to no good よからぬことをたくらんで
6 Nationality 国籍
今回から部首（radical）についての解説が入ります。日本人にはちょっと退屈です。
大家好, welcome back to another episode of Growing up with Chinese 成长汉语. Thanks for joining us today. 你们好吗? How are you all? I hope your answer to that question is 很好 very good. 我很好. I’m very good.
So last show we learn some basic question and answer formats with the help of Mike and 小明, and the photo album. Today’s clip has a good review of what we talked about last time so I won’t repeat anything right now. But I will give a slight introduction into today’s topic, nationality 国籍.
Now this is the topic that will surely come up wherever you might travel in the world. Especially in China. So today we have Mike, 小明 and 兰兰 to show us how it’s done in Chinese. Let’s take a look.
続きを読む5 Simple enquiries 简单询问
大家好, welcome back to another episode of Growing up with Chinese 成长汉语.
We are all early up to our fifth episode of the show. Do you feel your Chinese vocabulary is growing? I hope so. Now before we get into our topic for today, I want to congratulate all of you on the wonderful job you are doing. I know learning any foreign language can be hard. But hopefully you are all having fun in the process of learning Chinese with us here on the show.
Now so far we managed to cover the basics greetings, thank yous, introductions, and asking someone’s age. That’s quite a lot. So keep up all good work everyone.
Today’s content should be fun. At least, I think it’s fun. We will be covering some basic questions and answer phrases in Chinese. Now as always we are joined by Mike and 小明, today Mike’s full of a lot of questions and 小明 has a lot of answers. Let’s go check out what the two of them are up to.
続きを読む4 Age 年龄
大家好, hi everyone welcome back to another episode of Growing up with Chinese 成长汉语.
We’ve got a good lineup of useful phrases to learn today and also you’ll all be learning how to count to ten. Actually, numbers in Chinese are relatively not complicated. So as long as you know how to count to ten, you can really count to ninety-nine. Pretty cool, huh?
All right, so last show we covered the basic ways to do introductions in Chinese. And today we’ll be continuing introductions by learning how to ask how old someone is. Now our clip from last time ended with Mike saying hello to 小明’s parents. But this scene wasn’t finished yet. How will it end? OK, let’s go back to 小明’s apartment and see just what kind of age discussion is taking place.
続きを読む