pai dui for house party/gathering?

[eion_padraig]

I'm doing a listening and I think the speaker says "pai4dui4" (though I could be wrong about the tones) and in the context, it seems to mean a house party or an invitation to a social gathering at an apartment. I can't seem to find the characters for it either in my paper dictionary or the online dictionary I use.

谢谢您

[skylee]

派對 = Party

Edit - link to MDBG -> http://www.mdbg.net/...%B4%BE%E5%B0%8D

[imluffy]

派对 is the sound translation of "party".

[imron]

OT: Just for future reference, sound translation = transliteration

[msittig]

Also, a tip that might be helpful. When you know the pinyin but want to know the characters, my preferred methods of lookup in order:

1. Type the pinyin in Google's pinyin input and look at the choice words.

2. Search for the pinyin on Google.cn and look at the suggested characters before the search results.

In this case the first method wouldn't be 100% useful because 派对 doesn't give any clues as to its meaning if you only see the characters. A Google search gives you some context clues, so it would work.

[renzhe]

Or just type the pinyin into nciku.com and you'll get the words + translations + example of use, all in one page. You can use tones too.

[dannie]

If you speak it out, "Pai Dui" sounds very similar to that of "Party" because it actually originated from English. More examples are:

1) Sha Fa (Sofa)

2) Ka Fei (Coffee)

And so on