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。

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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?

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.

14 Directions 方位

今回はかなり大変だった覚えがあります。

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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.

*1:get down 始める、本気で取りかかる

*2: (directional) bearing 方向感覚

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。

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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