Dialogue

Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
David: Welcome to chineseclass101. I am David.
Echo:大家好,我是Echo.(Dàjiā hǎo, wǒ shì Echo.)
David: And Echo, we are here with lesson #38 in our first elementary series.
Echo: 第三十八课。(Dì sānshíbā kè.)
David: The dialogue in our last lesson was a bit easy. This one, we take it up a notch. It’s a bit more difficult but you guys can handle it. Our dialogue is going to take place in a car.
Echo: 在车里。(Zài chē lǐ.)
David: It’s about what happens when you are with a friend driving at high speed. Yes and so if you listen carefully, you can hear the wind going by at high speeds. We are going to take you to the dialogue in a sec. Before we do that though, we do want to remind you, if you haven’t had the chance yet, visit chineseclass101.com and sign up for that free life time account. How long does it take Echo?
Echo: 七秒钟。(Qī miǎo zhōng.)
David: Seven seconds. With that, let’s listen to the dialogue.
DIALOGUE
A:这是你的新车?一辆法拉利?(Zhè shì nǐ de xīnchē? Yī liàng Fǎlālì?)
B:哦,对,用的油少,而且还跑得很快。(ò, duì, yòng de yóu shǎo, érqiě hái pǎo de hěn kuài.)
A:可是你怎么买得起啊?(Kěshì nǐ zěnme mǎi de qǐ a?)
B:不是买的。是借的,我爸爸的。(Bù shì mǎi de. Shì jiè de, wǒ bàba de.)
A:那他知道吗?(Nà tā zhīdào ma?)
B:他现在还不需要知道。(Tā xiànzài hái bù xūyào zhīdào.)
Once more slowly.
A:这是你的新车?一辆法拉利?(Zhè shì nǐ de xīnchē? Yī liàng Fǎlālì?)
B:哦,对,用的油少,而且还跑得很快。(ò, duì, yòng de yóu shǎo, érqiě hái pǎo de hěn kuài.)
A:可是你怎么买得起啊?(Kěshì nǐ zěnme mǎi de qǐ a?)
B:不是买的。是借的,我爸爸的。(Bù shì mǎi de. Shì jiè de, wǒ bàba de.)
A:那他知道吗?(Nà tā zhīdào ma?)
B:他现在还不需要知道。(Tā xiànzài hái bù xūyào zhīdào.)
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Echo: 这是你的新车?(Zhè shì nǐ de xīnchē?)
David: Is this your new car?
Echo: 一辆法拉利? (Yī liàng Fǎlālì?)
David: A Ferrari!
Echo: 哦,对,用的油少,而且还跑得很快。(ò, duì, yòng de yóu shǎo, érqiě hái pǎo de hěn kuài.)
David: Right. It doesn’t use much gas and it drives very quickly.
Echo: 可是你怎么买得起啊?(Kěshì nǐ zěnme mǎi de qǐ a?)
David: But how can you afford it?
Echo: 不是买的。是借的,我爸爸的。(Bù shì mǎi de. Shì jiè de, wǒ bàba de.)
David: Oh I didn’t buy it, I borrowed it. It’s my dad’s.
Echo: 那他知道吗?(Nà tā zhīdào ma?)
David: Then, he knows about it?
Echo: 他现在还不需要知道。(Tā xiànzài hái bù xūyào zhīdào.)
David: He doesn’t need to know about it.
Echo: Now.
David: Now right. Car vocab. We haven’t had a lesson about cars yet. Maybe because none of us here in Beijing actually drive and that’s probably a good thing.
Echo: 对,北京的交通不好。(Duì, běijīng de jiāotōng bù hǎo.)
David: You got three lanes of traffic and you got five rows of cars. This is driving in China. We avoid it but maybe you are not going to be as lucky. So we’ve got a lot of car vocab for you. Why don’t we start off, Echo?
VOCAB LIST
Echo: 汽车 (qìchē)
David: Vehicle.
Echo: 跑车 (pǎochē)
David: Sports car.
Echo: 卡车 (kǎchē)
David: Truck.
Echo: 开车 (kāichē)
David: To drive a car.
Echo: 辆 (liàng)
David: Measure word for cars.
Echo: 红绿灯 (hónglǜdēng)
David: Traffic light.
Echo: 汽油 (qìyóu)
David: Gas.
Echo: 加油 (jiāyóu)
David: To refuel.
Echo: 速度 (sùdù)
David: Speed.
Echo: 修 (xiū)
David: To repair.
Echo: 借 (jiè)
David: To borrow.
Echo: 借 (jiè)
VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE
David: We didn’t have the word Ferrari in our new vocab.
Echo: 我想有一辆。 (Wǒ xiǎng yǒuyī liàng.)
David: Yeah.
Echo: 其实北京的有钱人很多。 (Qíshí běijīng de yǒu qián rén hěnduō.)
David: Yeah, yeah. Our vocab, I guess the main point here.
Echo: 当然是汽车。(Dāngrán shì qìchē.)
David: Right it’s automobiles and we’ve got first of all, the main word which is car.
Echo: 汽车。(Qìchē.)
David: Or automobile.
Echo: 汽车。(Qìchē.)
David: Yeah and this is just any kind of car. A race car is a type of automobile.
Echo: 跑车是一种汽车。(Pǎochē shì yī zhǒng qìchē.)
David: A truck is a kind of automobile.
Echo: 卡车是一种汽车。(Kǎchē shì yī zhǒng qìchē.)
David: What exactly is a 卡车 (Kǎchē), are we talking about these huge freight trucks, are we talking about smaller moving vans or?
Echo: 都可以。(Dōu kěyǐ.)
David: 都可以 (Dōu kěyǐ) Okay. They’ve also got one kind of car which is kind of neat. It’s called Bread truck.
Echo: 面包车。(Miànbāochē.)
David: And that’s not for delivering bread.
Echo: 它的样子像一个面包。(Tā de yàngzi xiàng yīgè miànbāo.)
David: Yeah it’s kind of like a van of some kind, a moving van, a small van.
Echo: 面包车。(Miànbāochē.)
David: We’ve got the measure word for cars.
Echo: 辆。(Liàng.)
David: So that would be one race car.
Echo: 一辆跑车。(Yī liàng pǎochē.)
David: Two trucks.
Echo: 两辆卡车。(Liǎng liàng kǎchē.)
David: Three automobiles.
Echo: 三辆汽车。(Sān liàng qìchē.)
David: Four bread-shaped vans.
Echo: 四辆面包车。(Sì liàng miànbāochē.)
David: Our next word is traffic light.
Echo: 红绿灯。(Hónglǜdēng.)
David: And this is useful if you find yourself on the streets of Beijing and especially if you are in a taxi cab.
Echo: 在出租车里。(Zài chūzū chē lǐ.)
David: You might find yourself needing to say stop!
Echo: 停车。(Tíngchē.)
David: Pay attention to the traffic lights.
Echo: 看红绿灯。我不想死。(Kàn hónglǜdēng. Wǒ bùxiǎng sǐ.)
David: Yeah. I think everyone has that feeling every now and then driving in cabs. People just don’t pay any attention. It’s insane.
Echo: Actually it’s okay in Beijing. I don’t know for other cities but in Beijing, it’s nice.
David: I think it’s the further you get away from the downtown core, the more [*] everything is.
Echo: 我说的北京是 (Wǒ shuō de běijīng shì)
David: You are talking of secondary road. Okay the next word here that we’ve got for you is technically to refuel.
Echo: 加油。(Jiāyóu.)
David: And as you guys probably know, this has a second meaning. Echo, what is it?
Echo: 加油 (Jiāyóu) go.
David: Yeah it’s go, go go! It’s a cheer.
Echo: 加油。(Jiāyóu.)
David: Pay attention to those tones. First tone, second tone.
Echo: 加油。(Jiāyóu.)
David: If you do have a car, you will also have gas stations.
Echo: 加油站。(Jiāyóu zhàn.)
David: Where is the gas station?
Echo: 加油站在哪儿?(Jiāyóu zhàn zài nǎ'er?)
David: The word for to speed up is
Echo: 加速。(Jiāsù.)
David: Which literally is to add speed.
Echo: Like 加油 (Jiāyóu) the same structure.
David: Yeah and if you are going too fast, then you are
Echo: 超速。(Chāosù.)
David: Which is excessive speed.
Echo: 没错。 (Méi cuò.)
David: Right.
Echo: 小心。(Xiǎoxīn.)
David: Okay. And that’s our vocab section for today. Let’s move on to the grammar section. It’s grammar time. Our grammar point for today is awesome.

Lesson focus

Echo: 非常有用。(Fēicháng yǒuyòng.)
David: What’s it about?
Echo: 得。 (De.)
David: Right. Now normally we have a spiel at the end where we tell you to buy the PDF. We are going to bump this up and tell you now, if you don’t know what character we are talking about, the PDFs are going to come in handy.
Echo: Yeah.
David: There are a bunch of characters that had the exact same sound. This is one of them. This is the
Echo: 的。(De.)
David: That you are going to see after a lot of verbs. And we are going to talk about what it actually means.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)
David: In the dialogue, we had this sentence 跑得很快。(Pǎo de hěn kuài.)
Echo: 跑得很快。(Pǎo de hěn kuài.)
David: To drive really fast and then in the next sentence, we also had the phrase, to be able to afford something.
Echo: 买得起。(Mǎi de qǐ.)
David: That’s the 得 (De) that we are talking about. We are not talking about the subordinating 的 (De) we run into in mind.
Echo: 我的。(Wǒ de.)
David: Or yours
Echo: 你的。(Wǒ de.)
David: Right. This is the one that comes after verbs okay.
Echo: 是另外一个“的”。(Shì lìngwài yīgè “de”.)
David: Yes. There are two main ways we run into this after verbs.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)
David: The first is between a verb
Echo: 动词。(Dòngcí.)
David: And what’s known as a verb complement.
Echo: 补语。(Bǔyǔ.)
David: Right. For instance
Echo: 买得起。(Mǎi de qǐ.)
David: To be able to afford.
Echo: 修得了。(Xiūdeliǎo.)
David: That’s also to be able to, to be able to repair.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)
David: Right.
Echo: 还有,用得完。(Hái yǒu, yòng de wán.)
David: To be able to use up. When we want to put these in the negative, we take out the
Echo: 得。(De.)
David: And we stick in a
Echo: 不。(Bù.)
David: For example
Echo: 买不起。(Mǎi bù qǐ.)
David: To be unable to afford.
Echo: 修不了。(Xiū bùliǎo.)
David: To be unable to repair.
Echo: 用不完。(Yòng bù wán.)
David: To be unable to use up. Echo, you’ve got some sample sentences for us. Let’s go through them.
Echo: 你买得起跑车吗?(Nǐ mǎi de qǐ pǎochē ma?)
David: Can you afford a sports car?
Echo: 很贵的。这辆车修得了吗?(Hěn guì de. Zhè liàng chē xiūdeliǎo ma?)
David: Can this car be repaired?
Echo: 这么多油我用不完。(Zhème duō yóu wǒ yòng bù wán.)
David: So much gas, I can’t use it all. I’ve never heard someone say that.
Echo: 他们都会说:这么少的油。(Tāmen dūhuì shuō: Zhème shǎo de yóu.)
David: Yeah. So that’s point one. We are going to get the verb
Echo: 动词。(Dòngcí.)
David: And then
Echo: 得。(De.)
David: Or
Echo: 不。(Bù.)
David: And then finally, we are going to get the verb complement following it. Okay and all of those complements express possibility. In our lesson today, we have something that is even more awesome though.
Echo: And more complicated.
David: It’s more complicated, it’s more interesting and it’s more flexible too. Let’s take a look at the second line in the dialogue.
Echo: 跑得很快。(Pǎo de hěn kuài.)
David: Right. So we’ve got the verb
Echo: 跑。(Pǎo.)
David: And then we’ve got
Echo: 得。(De.)
David: And then we’ve got this adjective phrase.
Echo: Here we use verb plus 得 (De) and plus an adjective.
David: We can use this with any adjective that is talking about the degree or extent of something.
Echo: 对。(Duì.)
David: To drive quickly.
Echo: 开得快。(Kāi de kuài.)
David: To drive slowly.
Echo: 开得慢。(Kāi de màn.)
David: To eat a lot.
Echo: 吃得多。(Chī de duō.)
David: Not to eat very much.
Echo: 吃得少。(Chī de shǎo.)
David: To sell for a lot of money.
Echo: 卖得贵。(Mài de guì.)
David: To sell at a very cheap price.
Echo: 卖得便宜。(Mài de piányí.)
David: The important thing is that the adjectives we use have to communicate the extent or degree of something.
Echo: 他开得快,我开得慢。(Tā kāi de kuài, wǒ kāi dé màn.)
David: He drives quickly, I drive slowly.
Echo: 法拉利卖得贵,自行车卖得便宜。(Fǎlālì mài de guì, zìxíngchē mài dé piányí.)
David: Ferraris are expensive, bicycles are cheap. Okay…
Echo: 而且环保。(Érqiě huánbǎo.)
David: Yes. Before we close this, one point. One other thing we want to mention. In the first example where we were talking about verb complements like 了 (Le) or 完(Wán), we made it negative by changing the 的 (De) into a 不(Bù). In this case, we don’t do that.
Echo: We can change the adjective.
David: Right. We either change the adjective so it communicates the opposite meaning or we stick a
Echo: 不 (Bù) after 的(De)。
David: And in front of the adjective.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)
David: So if you wanted to say, to drive slowly, you’d either say
Echo: 开得慢。 (Kāi de màn.)
David: Or
Echo: 开得不快。(Kāi de bùkuài.)
David: Right. One last thing we got to mention and this is especially awesome. Let’s listen to that line in our dialogue again. 跑得很快。(Pǎo de hěn kuài.)
Echo: 跑得很快。(Pǎo de hěn kuài.)
David: Noticed something there?
Echo: 很。(Hěn.)
David: Right. We’ve got an extra adverb tucked in there. This is really, really natural, really colloquial Chinese and we can do this for any adverbs that are also adverbs of degree. For example
Echo: 很。(Hěn.)
David: Or
Echo: 非常。(Fēicháng.)
David: Or
Echo: 太。(Tài.)
David: Yeah.
Echo: 都可以。(Dōu kěyǐ.)
David: So you could say, he drives really quickly.
Echo: 他开的很快。(Tā kāi de hěn kuài.)
David: He drives too quickly.
Echo: 他开的太快了。(Tā kāi de tài kuàile.)
David: I ate too much.
Echo: 我吃的太多了。(Wǒ chī de tài duōle.)
David: You ate too much.
Echo: 我吃的太多了。(Wǒ chī de tài duōle.)
David: Fatty.
Echo: 胖子。(Pàngzi.)
David: So that’s our grammar section for today.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)
David: To recap, after a verb, we are going to see this character
Echo: 的。(De.)
David: In two cases. The first is where it’s followed by a verb complement like
Echo: 起。(Qǐ.)
David: Or
Echo: 了。(Le.)
David: Or
Echo: 完。(Wán.)
David: Where these verb complements express possibility.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)
David: The second is where it’s followed by an adjective like
Echo: 快。(Kuài.)
David: Or
Echo: 慢。(Màn.)
David: Or any other adjective that communicates the extent of something. We negate them differently and in the case of adjectives, it’s really, really common for people to stick extra adverbs in there.
Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.)

Outro

David: Okay. Perfect. Any closing thoughts Echo?
Echo: 当然了,我们要让大家加油。(Dāngránle, wǒmen yào ràng dàjiā jiāyóu.)
David: Right.
Echo: We learn more and more.
David: Yes and your Chinese should be getting better and better too. From Beijing, I am David.
Echo: 我是 (Wǒ shì)Echo。
David: Thanks a lot for listening and we look forward to seeing you on the site. Take care guys.
Echo: 网上见吧。(Wǎngshàng jiàn ba.)
David: Bye.

Grammar

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