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Learn Chinese with ChineseClass101.com. Your new friend in China has just introduced her cat to you, and as you call the cat over, you can’t wait to touch her cute, fluffy fur. You love petting cute, cuddly cats! As the cat gets near you, you stick your hand out to touch her, and she tries to bite you! Astonished at the ferocity of such a cute little cat, you say in Chinese, “You should have named your cat something else…like maybe Jaws!” Your friend, forgetting to mention that her cat is crabby, begins to laugh. Looks can be deceiving…! Learning Chinese with ChineseClass101.com is the most fun and effective way to learn Chinese. In this Chinese Beginner lesson, we will teach you how to introduce yourself or someone else in Chinese. Wouldn’t you like to know people’s names while traveling in China? It might be helpful! Use this Chinese lesson to your advantage and then come back to ChineseClass101.com for more fantastic lessons. Leave us a message while you’re there!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 2 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 Responses to “Beginner Lesson S2 #18 - The Cute Chinese Cat”

ChineseClass101.com says:

Hi ChineseClass101.com Listeners! Have you ever known a cat to come when called?

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Dusty says:

I was watching the Chinese tv series, Moment in Peking. They had a dog, and whenever anyone referred to it, they said “it” rather than he or she (in the English subtitles). Does Chinese typically distinguish the gender of animals? I realize this would only be applicable in writing since “ta” sounds the same.
Thanks!

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Jan says:

@Dusty,

We always use “它” to refer to an animal. But sometimes we use he or she when we want to emphasis the gender of animals.

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david says:

As Jan said, 他 is the character for he, 她 is the character for she, and 它 is the character for it. 她 is a relatively modern invention I think — they used to use 他 for both genders up into the early 20th century. So you’ll still run into it used for women on occasion.

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Dusty says:

Thanks. That’s intriguing. Similar to the fairly recent English rebranding of “man” to just mean males rather than person, I suppose.

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Patrick says:

我都有可愛的貓。 她的名字叫Speckles.
但是我叫Speckles 的時候,她不會過來。
我覺得因為貓比狗有更多自己的想法,
所以想過來就過來, 想不過來就不過來。

ChineseClass101 的朋友。 你像貓多或者像狗多?

Can I ask a question about how I use 像 in the above sentence? Am I using it correctly in the vocabulary and grammatical sense? I want to use it to mean ‘’similar to’. Can you give me some models of correct sentences, or maybe point me to a lesson number/dialogue that uses this construction? Thank you very much.

-Patrick

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Jane says:

Hi Patrick,
Can I suggest first that in your Chinese article the first sentence should be “我也有可爱的猫”. “都” means all such as “我们都有猫”.
Now back to your question. If you want to ask whether someone behaves more like a cat or a dog, you could say “他的性格是更像猫还是更像狗”. It is a bit complicated cos the sentence also involved using the making preference pattern “是…还是…” . some other sample sentences are
他长得像他妈妈(一样)。He looks like his mom.
天上的白云像一朵朵的棉花。The cloud in the sky look like (clusters of) cotton.
他画的马像真的一样。The horse he painted is so real.
So the pattern “像…一样” is used when you describe
“一样” cam be omited without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Hope that’s not a too complicated answer for your rather simple question. Enjoy your Chinese study.

Jane

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Patrick says:

Hello Jane,

Thank you so much for your detailed response. I actually value your ‘’complicated’ response, as you provide many models and sample sentences in which I can learn from. And thank you for correcting my first sentence.

Hopefully I can periodically do some more postings in various lessons throughout this site, as I find attempting to use newly learned vocabulary in my own context can help me remember better. Hope to come across more of your responses and teaching in the future!

Take care,
Patrick

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phoenix_darshan says:

hi there. I noticed that the tone of wang wang is 4th tone in the pdf but i think it should be 1st tone (thats wht my dictionary says). I am sry about being very finnicky, but I am a beginner and so it requires me to study podcast along with pdfs. I also noticed that bu is always 4th tone on your pdfs even though its followed by another 4th tone.

thanks

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Jane says:

Hi phoenix_darshan,
You are not being finnicky at all. Thanks for your feedback. Here are my answers to your question.

First, the pinyin or tone for the character 汪汪 should indeed be first tone. So after I reply to your question, I will go ahead fix the mistake in the lesson note.

Secondly, you are absolutely right about the rule of changing tone of 不 from 4th to 2nd if it followed by another 4th tone word. However, the pinyin you see on the lesson note were added from another separate software. It requires manual alteration from our staff. And unfortunately sometimes we overlook things like that and caused confusion to our learners. I apologize for that and I’ll try to fix it where I can.

Thanks again for helping us to improve our service. Enjoy your lesson.

Best,
Jane :smile:

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