Popup Chinese

Even deep in his pockets, Adam's fingers were shaking uncontrollably. His anxiety had already reached the point where others were noticing his chattering teeth, and was only increasing with each minute that brought them closer to the drop zone. Above the steady drone of the plane engines, Adam could hear the whispered remarks of his peers, and feel their sidewards glances. Would he lose control when the time came? Would he endanger the mission?

As an aside, many of you have written us asking how we come up with such unique dialogues. In this lesson we finally spill the beans about our creative secret. If you've ever wondered who the creative genius is behind our approach to language learning, listen in and get the inside scoop. Enjoy!

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By the time Betty arrived home, her normally sedate neighborhood was abuzz with excitement. The police cruisers camped on the street were only the most visible sign of the investigative unit that had arrived hours earlier to cordon off the block and interview the neighbors. As she headed inside, Betty caught a far-off glimpse of two junior detectives taking soil samples from her back garden.

Bursting into her home, she caught sight of the lead detective in the living room and charged over to demand an explanation. "Rumors have it you're not the only one who lives here," he replied. A casual glance around the room was enough to confirm this as fact. Jonathan had once again left his clothes strewn all over the sofa. As she simply nodded, the detective reached for his handcuffs. "I think it's time you spoke to a lawyer."

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With apologies to our friends in Jilin, the northeastern accent is totally ridiculous at times. Ever heard it? If you haven't you're in for a treat in this special listening test for advanced speakers. Take a listen to our situational dialogue and see how much you can pick up. If you're fluent in mandarin we think you'll be able to understand more than you think, and learn some northeastern slang in the process. And if you're not fluent yet, just check out our word by word annotated transcript. It'll bring you up to speed.

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We don't like to play favorites when it comes to our dialogues, but there's something charming about the performance Andy turns in today as a compulsive liar with an almost desperate need to be liked. He gives his character such enthusiastic and infectious likability we think it's easy to ignore the fact that nothing he says is even remotely close to being plausible. So we find this one charming anyway, and hope you like it too.

As far as our subject matter goes, this podcast is inspired by the Pop Cap game of the same name, and is intended for anyone with a fair bit of mandarin under their belt who has ever been tasked with translating a John Carpenter film into Chinese. It is tragic that more textbooks don't teach vocabulary for describing the undead. While you may not use this at the office, it will surely be high frequency vocabulary on that fateful day the dead rise from their graves and shotgun prices go vertical. Best to prepare in advance.

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We haven't come out with a lesson for absolute beginners in a while, partially because whenever we start teaching something simple Brendan segues into a rambling discourse on character etymology and before we know it we've produced another graduate seminar about regional dialects in the Song dynasty. So today we slowed him down with an intentionally simple and very straightforward dialogue. This one teaches how to ask basic questions and tell others a bit about yourself.

In fact, those of you without a graduate degree in linguistics will be pleased to hear that we even managed to restrain Brendan from using the word "copula" in this podcast. This was accomplished somewhat by the dialogue itself, but mostly by Echo, who threatened the use of physical force unless Brendan used "actual English real people understand." So if you're totally new to mandarin and afraid of our other lessons, fire up your iPod and check out this one, which makes the basics about as easy as they can get.

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As Napoleon once commented, "China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will truly rock." We may be paraphrasing slightly, but it's impossible to under-emphasize the passion with which Chinese youth have embraced the concept of the Western boy band. Truly the Middle Kingdom is a place where everything old is new again. Join us in this podcast and see for yourself.

On a side note, we should mention that our dialogue this lesson is at the upper-end of our difficulty spectrum for the Elementary level. We were almost tempted to put it at the Intermediate level, but the vocabulary is still pretty basic and our sentences are still relatively simple. So don't worry if you find it more challenging than usual. Just add oil.

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There are some words which are so powerful in mandarin, simply using them properly will cause any native speaker in hearing distance to cough up blood in shock and awe. So understand why we refer to this as the most dangerous lesson we've ever produced. It contains not one but three fatal phrases you won't find in any other textbook: 爱理不理, 爱去不去 and 爱谁谁.

If you've been tricked into thinking Chinese is a tremendously logical language, you may be surprised to learn that none of these expressions have anything to do with love. Join us in this podcast and we'll make it clear what they mean though. Just remember that with great power comes great responsibility and we completely disavow responsibility for the consequences if you detonate this stuff on live national television.

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From a sickly childhood, Steven passed into a sickly adolescence. Phantom aches and pains constantly wracked the poor boy, much to the bafflement of the family doctor, who pronounced "nothing at all wrong with him physically." In fact, it wasn't until his first year away at university that his constitution seemed to pick up and his body threw off its shackles of ill-health.
New to Popup Chinese? Our lessons at the Elementary level are designed for anyone who already knows the basics but is still working towards full comprehension of shorter sentences spoken at real speed. Our dialogues here are limited in length and our vocabulary is very high frequency. Exactly the stuff you need to build the bridge to greater fluency. So give us a listen. Feedback is always welcome at [email protected]. Oh yeah, and skip the rice gruel too.

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The motive wouldn't be hard to establish: they all had it. But given the sheer number of beatings, shootings and stabbings the deceased had suffered in the course of a few minutes (including at least one attempted hanging), it was going to be thorny to prove who exactly laid the telling blow, and where, and with what.

Our Chinese lesson for today is all about what happened the time we introduced our crew to a classic American board game of murder, mayhem and sleuthing. Fun and hijinks it was not. The rules took at least 10 minutes to explain to our baffled guests, and even then we don't think we properly handled many of their more philosophical objections, such as 9527's repeated insistence that we just "jail them all and forget about it."

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It happens to the best of us. Even if your home or office is strategically located in the heart of Sichuan street, surrounded by a hundred different Chinese restaurants with upwards of a hundred different dishes each, there will come a point when your stomach rebels and your heart starts pining for simpler fare. Or maybe you'd kill for Chinese food but the only restaurant that delivers is the Korean one down the street.
Almost miraculously, this lesson is useful in either situation. If you're totally new to mandarin, join us as we introduce the four tones, cover some basic words and phrases you can start using right away, and learn how to steer your fellow diners towards the kind of food you want to eat.

Navigate the reincarnated Popup Chinese archives, including the original customized word-to-word transcripts for this and every other lesson as PDF files:

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