Pimsleur Mandarin Vocabulary

[meanbean]

Hi, I'm listening to the Pimsleur's Mandarin Chinese audio program, and overall I think it's very good. But there are some words that I simply cannot get the pinyin down correctly in order to look up their characters on a Chinese online dictionary. Here they are: (I"ll bold the parts that I can't decipher)

Qing3 Gen1 Zhe(?) Shuo1 - "Please repeat after me"

请　跟　Ｘ　说

Guo Yi Huar - "Later"

过　Ｘ　Ｘ

Now this one really trips me up. It might just be the speakers pronunciation, I dunno.

Nua4 - "Here you go" (as in a waitress giving change to a customer)

I know the usage of 那 to mean "then" or "in that case" but Na has a distinctive pronunciation. GBut the people on tape say this character like Nwah , not Nah

Thanks in advance.

[roddy]

That last one has come up before.

[lokki]

Qing3 Gen1 Zhe Shuo1 - "Please repeat after me"

请 跟 着　说

跟着 [gēn zhe] /follow after/

Guo Yi Huar - "Later"

过 一 会 儿

一会儿 [yī huìr] /a while/

[meanbean]

谢谢你。

That's very helpful

[Sp0cK]

I'm doing the pimsleur myself as well as we speak. Whenever I want to look up the pinyin I use the ZDT program and simply type in "husband" in the dictionary. This will give you 20 different type of "husband" translations, now just find the one in the list which sounds similar to the pimsleur one.

Worked every time for me and it makes you remember stuff more easily...

[abcdefg]

You might want to search out one of the transcripts of the Pimsleur vocabulary. One such set can be found here: http://www.ramms.myby.co.uk/mandarin-1.htm

[Sp0cK]

inter and advanced pimsleur transcripts;

http://www.ramms.myby.co.uk/mandarin-2.htm

http://www.ramms.myby.co.uk/mandarin-3.htm

[RobAnt]

FYI, due to a request from Simon & Schuster those pages have been removed.

They have not, however, indicated whether or not they will be publishing the transcripts themselves. My guess is no.

[XiaoXi]

I think the idea with Pimsleur is that you don't analyse the audio at all by writing it down with pinyin or characters, you just learn the audio in a relatively natural way. Upon completing the course you can then begin another course which involves reading and writing.

[abcdefg]

I think the idea with Pimsleur is that you don't analyse the audio at all by writing it down with pinyin or characters, you just learn the audio in a relatively natural way. Upon completing the course you can then begin another course which involves reading and writing.

You are right of course: That is the intent of the course authors. Some students still find it useful to “relearn” the material in written form after they have mastered the aural material.

[ocrtech]

The vocabulary list for Pimsleur is still available on the internet. I picked up a copy at http://www.flashcardexchange.com/tag/pimsleur and then massaged it to fit Anki. This isn’t a transcript but rather just the individual words covered in the Pimsleur lessons. Since some words used in early lessons aren’t used frequently or at all in later sessions, using Anki helps ensure I can retain them. I wish I had done the same thing when I was using Rosetta Stone. I am convinced I would be much farther along at this point if I had.

[XiaoXi]

You are right of course: That is the intent of the course authors. Some students still find it useful to “relearn” the material in written form after they have mastered the aural material.

Yes it just sounds like the original poster is not at that stage yet.

[Chinadoog]

Nothing in Pimsleur suggests that you should write down the words or even look them up in a dictionary, but you definitely should. Having a mental picture of the words in Pinyin or characters will help you remember them.

Doing Pimsleur as a complete beginner, and looking up the words in the dictionary whenever a new one arose, I ended up knowing Pinyin really well by the end of Pimsleur III.

I found it best to listen to each lesson once without writing anything down, and maybe just looking up a word in pinyin if you weren't sure about the pronunciation (eg - I originally thought the word dongxi was domxi with an M sound), and then going through a second time and writing down all the new words and important phrases.