Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Frank: Hey, everyone.
Echo: Da jia hao!
Frank: Welcome back to ChineseClass101.com, Season 1, Lesson 13 in our Beginner series.
Echo: Yeah.
Frank: I’m your host, Frank Fradella, and I’m joined in the studio by my beautiful and talented co-host, Echo.
Echo: 谢谢(Xièxiè). 我是(Wǒ shì)Echo
Frank: This dialogue takes place between a waitress and a customer.
Echo: Ma Li
Frank: That’s right, our old friend.
Echo: Our old friend.
Frank: The person is ordering food from a picture menu.
Echo: Yes. Exactly. It’s a casual speech.
Frank: Exactly. Let’s go ahead and listen to the dialogue now and we’ll be back in a second to take you through.
Echo: But before we do, as usual…
Frank: That’s right. Before we do, we want to remind you to head up to ChineseClass101.com because tones can be tricky when you’re just hearing them.
Echo: Yeah.
Frank: So download the PDF transcripts and you can actually see them written out. That’s a really great tool.
Echo: Right.
Frank: Let’s get on to the dialogue.

Lesson conversation

马丽:小姐,我要这个。(MǍ LÌ: Xiǎojiě, wǒ yào zhège.)
服务员:好的。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo de.)
马丽:还要一个这个。(MǍ LÌ: Hái yào yī ge zhège.)
服务员:好的。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo de.)
马丽:两个那个。(MǍ LÌ: Liǎng ge nàge.)
服务员:好。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo.)
马丽:快点儿。好吗?(MǍ LÌ: Kuài diǎnr. Hǎo ma?)
Frank: One more time, a little slower.
马丽:小姐,我要这个。(MǍ LÌ: Xiǎojiě, wǒ yào zhège.)
服务员:好的。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo de.)
马丽:还要一个这个。(MǍ LÌ: Hái yào yī ge zhège.)
服务员:好的。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo de.)
马丽:两个那个。(MǍ LÌ: Liǎng ge nàge.)
服务员:好。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo.)
马丽:快点儿。好吗?(MǍ LÌ: Kuài diǎnr. Hǎo ma?)
Echo: Okay. Here, we’re back.
Frank: We are back. I got to tell you, living in China, one of the things that surprise me the most was the menus.
Echo: Yeah. Because we have thousands of dishes.
Frank: Thousands. She’s not exaggerating. Thousands of dishes. They bring over these things in like in the size of…
Echo: Yeah. It’s now a menu.
Frank: …a phonebook.
Echo: Yeah. It’s a book.
Frank: Then the waiters will just stay in there and wait for you to decide. It’s so much pressure.
Echo: Yeah.
Frank: It’s crazy. Let’s go ahead and take this dialogue line-by-line and translate it for you.
马丽:小姐,我要这个。(MǍ LÌ: Xiǎojiě, wǒ yào zhège.)
Frank: Miss, I’d like of these.
服务员:好的。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo de.)
Frank: Okay.
马丽:还要一个这个。(MǍ LÌ: Hái yào yī ge zhège.)
Frank: I also want one of these.
服务员:好的。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo de.)
Frank: Okay.
马丽:两个那个。(MǍ LÌ: Liǎng ge nàge.)
Frank: Two of those.
服务员:好。(FÚWÙYUÁN: Hǎo.)
Frank: All right.
马丽:快点儿。好吗?(MǍ LÌ: Kuài diǎnr. Hǎo ma?)
Frank: A little faster, okay?
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Frank: Okay. Most of the words in this dialogue should be pretty familiar to you by this point.
Echo: Yeah, as you may notice.
Frank: Exactly. So we’re going to have a kind of a review lesson for you. A little bit new, a little bit of the old stuff. We’ll take you right through it.
Echo: Right.
Frank: Let’s go ahead. The first word today is the word for “Miss” or a young girl.
VOCAB LIST
Male: Now, the vocab section.
Echo: 小姐(xiǎojiě) [natural native speed].
Frank: Miss or young girl.
Echo: 小姐(xiǎojiě) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 小姐(xiǎojiě) [natural native speed].
Echo: 两(liǎng) [natural native speed].
Frank: Two.
Echo: 两(liǎng) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 两(liǎng) [natural native speed].
Echo: 快点儿(kuài diǎnr) [natural native speed].
Frank: A bit faster.
Echo: 快点儿(kuài diǎnr) [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 快点儿(kuài diǎnr) [natural native speed].
KEY VOCABULARY AND PHRASES
Frank: Okay. Because this is a review lesson, there’s not a lot of new vocab. Let’s go ahead and go through with that one. The first word is “miss” or “young girl”.
Echo: 小姐.(xiǎojiě.)
Frank: Now there is a potential for this word to be misunderstood.
Echo: Yeah. Right. It depends on the situation, right?
Frank: Right. If you’re talking to somebody in the service industry, it’s okay to call them a “miss”.
Echo: 小姐。(xiǎojiě.)
Frank: For instance, in a restaurant, it’s perfectly acceptable to call your waitress “miss”.
Echo: 小姐.(xiǎojiě.) Yeah.
Frank: Right. The problem here is that recently, this has become a slang word for a prostitute.
Echo: Yes.
Frank: Out on the street, probably a word you want to shy away from.
Echo: Yeah. Right. But sometimes, if you can add a family name before it, before 小姐(xiǎojiě), it’s going to be fine. Like 王小姐(Wáng xiǎojiě), 马小姐(Mǎ xiǎojiě), it’s going to be fine.
Frank: Exactly. Move on to the next word. Our second word is…
Echo: 两。(Liǎng.)
Frank: Before, we learn the word for number two as…
Echo: 二。(Èr.)
Frank: We use this new word for counting things and telling time. Let’s have some examples. “It’s 2:00 o’clock”.
Echo: 两点。(Liǎng diǎn.)
Frank: How much are these two?
Echo: 这两个多少钱?(Zhè liǎng gè duōshǎo qián?)
Frank: I want to buy two.
Echo: 我想买两个。(Wǒ xiǎng mǎi liǎng gè.)
Frank: Okay?
Echo: Okay!
Frank: All right.
Echo: Yeah. Okay.
Frank: No. I mean, I’m giving you the next word in our vocabulary.
Echo: Oh, you mean 好吗?(Hǎo ma?)
Frank: Exactly. It’s I asked if everything is okay.
Echo: Yeah. 好吗?(Hǎo ma?) If you want to answer, it’s pretty simple too. 好的.(Hǎo de.)
Frank: Exactly. I think we should head on to grammar, okay?
Echo: Yeah. It’s grammar time!
Frank: Let’s do it.
Echo: 好的。(Hǎo de.)

Lesson focus

Male: It’s grammar time!
Frank: Today’s grammar point is also to want something.
Echo: 还要(Hái yào). 还(Hái) means “still” and “also”.
Frank: Exactly. Let’s hear some sample sentences of that. “I also want four of those”.
Echo: 我还要四个那个。(Wǒ hái yào sì gè nàgè.)
Frank: He still wants to go to China.
Echo: 他还要去中国。(Tā hái yào qù zhōngguó.)
Frank: You’ll hear a waitress say this a lot, “What else do you want?”
Echo: 你还要什么?您还要什么?(Nǐ hái yào shénme? Nín hái yào shénme?)
Frank: Great. Our next grammar point is something we would never do in an American restaurant.
Echo: Yeah?
Frank: Not ever.
Echo: Really?
Frank: You would never ask a waitress to hurry up the second you’d order your food.
Echo: 快点儿。(Kuài diǎn er.)
Frank: But it’s okay here.
Echo: Yeah, it’s okay in China. It’s totally fine.
Frank: It’s not rude at all?
Echo: No, it’s not.
Frank: Okay.
Echo: That’s why we have so many people here. So you got to tell them 快点儿.(Kuài diǎn er.)
Frank: Tell me a little lit bit more about this phrase.
Echo: Yeah. Actually, as we learned before, 快(Kuài) is an adjective. But here, we use 快点儿(Kuài diǎn er) and we turned it into a verb phrase, 快点儿(Kuài diǎn er), to make them hurry up.
Frank: So we can use this with other adjectives.
Echo: Yes. Exactly. Such as 慢点儿.(Màn diǎn er.)
Frank: “Slow down, please”.
Echo: Or if you are buying something and you want something cheaper, you will say 便宜点儿.(Piányí diǎn er.)
Frank: We ran into this in a very simple sentence, “Please speak more slowly”.
Echo: 请说慢点儿。(Qǐng shuō màn diǎn er.)
Frank: But right now, we want you to hurry up and go to ChineseClass101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account.
Echo: Right. Hurry up! 快点儿快点儿.(Kuài diǎn er kuài diǎn er.)
Frank: And we’ll see you there. But for now, from Beijing, I’m your host, Frank Fradella…
Echo: 我是(Wǒ shì) Echo.
Frank: … and we’ll see you next time. 再见(Zàijiàn)
Echo: 再见。(Zàijiàn.)

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