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Essay: Catching Frogs

Though this post is beginner-level, it’s also very condensed. I’d say you’ll have to stop and remind yourself what something means every few words or so.

A few notes:

– There’s a proper noun in here you probably won’t find in the dictionary: 江东 is a place, jiāng dōng, it’s a district of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province (south China). So 江东公园 is “JiangDong Park”.

– 小朋友 xiǎo péng you5, literally “Little Friend”, actually just means “small children”, often used when one child is referring to a other children he or she doesn’t know.

Source: http://www.zuowen.com/e/20120522/4fbb17e8c23c9.shtml

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捉青蛙

  前几天,我做了一件不光彩的事。说出来真难为情。晚上,我去江东公园玩,看到有几位小朋友在捉青蛙,我也赶忙捉青蛙,捉了青蛙就把它们带回家。在家里养了几天,青蛙渐渐瘦了下来,它们好像在对我说:“把我们放回大自然吧,我们一定会多捉害虫。”我听了感到真不好意思,晚上,就悄悄把它们放回了大自然。

Show English translation »
In the last few days, I did a not-so-illustrious thing, and I’m ashamed to say it. In the evening, I went to JiangDong Park to play, and I saw that there were a few other children catching frogs, so I also hurriedly started catching frogs, and after I caught them I brought them back to my house. At my house I took care of them for a few days, but the frogs gradually became thinner and thinner, it’s like they were saying to me: “Put us back in nature, and we can catch more insects.” I listened to this and was truly embarrassed0 so that night, I secretly put them back outside.

52 replies on “Essay: Catching Frogs”

I think 就 here indicates the action of carrying the frog home happened right after the narrator captured it (捉了)。把 here is used for one version the “把 structure” (把 + Noun + Verb + Location ). So ( 把它们带回家)means after the narrator carried (带) the frogs (它们) back home (回家)。

zhua qing wa

That is the han yu pin yin.

zhua: Catch (or in this case, catching)
qing wa: Frog (or in this case, frogs)

zhua: first tone, the straight line
qing: first tone
wa: either no tone or first tone

Hope this helped.

For those of us who struggle to remember Chinese vocab, this blog is feichang hao, better and more entertaining than textbooks certainly. Thanks and don’t quit for the sake of all of fans!

She knows it for sure. You show her every day in the way you involve yoelsurf in their lives. Even if she doesn’t seem to understand right now, when she gets older she will admire you for it. Nice job Mom.

These short stories make me feel that I’m actually making progress. Thanks.

I’ve collected a deck that covers the vocabulary for this story. It’s available for free at the website address I left with this comment. I’m not sure where the link will show up.

Thank you so much. Learning Chinese without a teacher can be a slog. This little story both entertains and encourages me to think that I really can learn Chinese

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It was quite refreshing to read a chinese story, nearly eight months after suspending my chinese studies at the age of 64. Pinyin and english meanings overlaying over every chinese character was of great assistance in assessing how many chinese characters I could still recollect and meanings of how many chinese words I would still remember.

Thank you for this article and this website. This was very helpful. I am in university and after a year of Chinese… I don’t want to forget all the new words and sentence structures over summer.

谢谢!我非常喜欢这个网站。 我现在知道一点中文,所以这个故事帮我很多。
Thanks! I really like this site. right now, I know a bit of Chinese, so this website helps me a lot. (Haha, I hope this what it translates to, so feel free to correct me).

All the same, I’m really thankful that this site exists! It’s so helpful!

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