Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Are you brave enough to eat Century eggs, stinky tofu and pork br.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Do you know the difference between and?
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Please share with me your time.
Oh no.
Super practical, super useful.
Directional compliments.
The setting of the dialogue is.
They are going to visit their co worker in the hospital.
Today we're learning something extremely useful. In spoken Chinese, directional complements words like and they tell us where an action moves and more importantly, towards the speaker or away from the speaker. First means to come.
So the action moves towards the speaker.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Yes. In the dialogue we heard.
I'll take the newspaper over there. So the is go over away from the. From where the speaker is. So the action moves away from the speaker.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Now let's break it down. The basic pattern is verb, lie or.
Here are some examples.
I'll bring it here, I'll take it there.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: In Chinese, the object can appear in different positions. So the structure could be verb, lie or true plus object or verb plus object plus lie or both are correct. So let's see some examples.
Older brother brings food here, right?
Or you can also say older brothers bring the food here.
Let's see more examples.
I bring over a book. So it's less common in daily speech, but grammatically is possible.
Or you can also say I bring the book over here. In natural conversation, this is more common. The structure, verb, object, like and.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Yes. And let's move to the next part. We have the structure verb plus a place or here are some examples.
I walk to the door, he flies to Beijing.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: If movement is towards the speaker, we can use.
He run to me. He ran to me. But if we can see more examples.
They came to the park by walking.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: How so? Here are some very common combinations.
Come over, go over or come here, Go there.
Come in, Go in, Come out.
Go out.
Come back, go back.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Let's see the examples.
Please walk over here.
The child ran away towards us.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: So in English, we say bring versus take.
In Chinese, we say towards the speaker, away from the speaker. So always ask yourself, is the movement coming towards me or moving away?
That's how you choose. Lie or Or. There's an easy way you can remember this.
Come to me. Chu should go. Go away from me.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Very good. So now let's practice a little bit. How would you say in Chinese, Please bring the documents over here.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Take your time. We'll share one possible answer later.
Okay, now let's review our dialogue. And please pay attention to the and.
Did you hear? Manager Wang suddenly felt unwell yesterday and was sent to the hospital.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Really?
Should we bring something over to visit Him?
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Sure. I'll bring some newspapers over. He might be bored.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: My dear.
Then I'll go downstairs to buy some fruits and bring it here.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Okay, let's walk over together later.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: By the way, his uncle even ran to the hospital to see him yesterday.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Hope he gets better soon.
Okay, everyone, are you enjoying this episode? Thanks for being here. With our classes, you can make even more progress.
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Okay, We gonna talk about a very interesting topic.
Chinese food.
It will shock a lot of foreigners when they first see those food.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Like, do you really eat this? Or can you really eat this?
This foods are really common in daily life.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: The first type is century eggs or preserved eggs.
So many foreigners think the color of century eggs looks a bit.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: It really has a very different color from a normal egg.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yes, it is. So.
A century egg isn't actually a hundred year old egg. It's just made using a special preservation method.
The flavor is quite strong, but many Chinese people really enjoy it. It's a very unique kind of food.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: It's very normal to eat eat the pidan, the century with the tofu together. Or they even put it in the porridge.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Which is very famous. So the second type is stinky tofu.
You can tell from the name that it smells a little bit strong.
It smells bad, but tastes delicious.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: The outside is very crispy, but the inside is really soft. So a lot of young people really, really like it.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: I have a really strong taste.
Let's move to the third type.
Duck blood.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: I mean, if you hear the word blood, you will be like, oh really? Like, are you drinking or eating blood?
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Are Chinese people vampires?
Please don't worry.
Actually, duck blood is made into solid cubes similar to tofu. It's often added to hot pot or soups.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Shisho Tando way.
So the flavor actually is not that strong. It actually sip all the flavor from the soup.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Oh yes, it is.
Okay, next one. Okay, so the picture is not really the pig brand because it's too shocking. Okay, so the first, the fourth type is pork brain.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Yes, Some people are really shocked about hearing that. Oh, Chinese people really eat pork brain.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Pig brain is often cooked in hot pot and it has a very soft texture.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: So some Chinese people believe that if your lack of something, you eat something. In this case the pork brain.
Like they believe that it really helps your health.
Your health. And also they believe that it's good for your brain.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yes, it is I need to eat more chicken wings.
Okay, so the last. The last type is.
What is that?
Bird's nest.
This is very expensive. You might be wondering can you really eat this?
The health her people skin. How.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: The bird nest is really, really expensive.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Yes, it is. What a luxury thing.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: You can actually try it.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: The taste might be.
Might be much better than what you think.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: If you have ever tried, try one of those controversial food, Chinese food. You can actually leave the comments about experience or what do you think about the. The food.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Good idea. Worship the fan of stinky tofu.
One man's meat is another one's one's poison.
How.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: All right, let's check your answer. So we asked before, how would you say in Chinese, please bring the documents over here
[00:20:07] Speaker A: In Chinese, a very natural answer would be, Okay, now it's your turn to practice using directional complements like etc. Making one sentence using.
For example, bring the coffee here, take the book over there, write your sentence
[00:20:42] Speaker B: in the comments and we'll check it. Try to include if you can, to challenge yourself.
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Yes.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Welcome everybody. So today we learned how to use directional complements like and how they change the meaning of a verb.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: And next time we'll study the structure something something. So this structure helps you to say things like I listen to music while working, I drink coffee while reading.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Oh, so don't miss the next episode.
See you next time.
Sam.
