F2F Class Notes October 26th (Ben)

倒装 to invert

Ancient Chinese uses a lot of inverted sentences. Many words are inverted.

a verse

A poem has many verses

a foreigner WHO can recite an a poem

I had never seen a foreigner who can recite an ancient poem

I have never seen = so far, until now

I just saw your earrings. I hadn’t seen them before.

• Do you know where the boss is?
• No, I haven’t heard about him (until now)
• He is in the hospital now
• Oh, I hadn’t heard about that (until 5 seconds ago)

You often use “hadn’t” with ‘”heard, seen, noticed, realized” when you realize something.

• I hadn’t noticed you had earrings
• I had never seen your new bag
• I had never heard you were from Beijing

subtle = “suddle” = not obvious

The difference between 了 and 过 is very subtle

Chinese language has a lot of subtleties

subtle = 微妙的；机智的

Asking a woman if she is pregnant is not very subtle.

If you really want to know, it is more subtle to ask her if she has children.

Someone subtle can see subtle differences.

It’s raining cats and dogs = It’s pouring.

词组 expression

滂沱大雨 is a very literary expression.

When it rains, it pours = 祸不单行

literal 字面意义的

“It’s raining cats and dogs” is an image, it has no literal meaning. Don’t take it literally.

There are some expressions that you can’t understand just by looking at their literal meaning.

声东击西 = to threaten the East and strike the West = to create a diversion

The robbers lit up a fire to create a diversion while they were robbing the bank.

指桑骂槐  = to point at the mulberry tree and accuse the locust tree = to accuse subtly

Office politics is full of people accusing each other subtly.

博大精深 broad and deep

Chinese culture is broad and deep, and wise people have broad and deep knowledge of it.