The Electrical Outlet

About

Trips to Hong Kong, Singapore and across the mainland are a mainstay of life for most foreign professionals in Asia. Couple that with the fact that many of the best jobs for mandarin-speaking expats are with

smaller and mid-sized firms, and you've got a recipe for the need to work on the go. Say goodbye to life

in a cubicle and hello to rushing to find a power outlet in rural Guangxi in order to make your conference

call on Skype.

If you do business in Asia but are just learning to speak Chinese, join us in this lesson as we teach you

how to ask for an electrical outlet for your laptop or phone. In addition to our regular Chinese podcast,

we've also enabled our Speaking Practice hotline for today's lesson. If you're a premium subscriber, grab

your personal ID number on our text page along with our telephone hotline number. Give us a call and

practice reading the dialogue and vocabulary to us (add your own commentary, of course) and we'll get

back to you in a day with personal feedback on how you sound.

Sentences

插座儿在哪儿?

chāzuòr zài nǎr ?

Where is the power outlet?

你说什么?

nǐ shuō shénme ?

What do you mean?

我想用笔记本儿。

wǒ xiǎng yòng bǐjìběnr 。

I want to use a laptop.

哦,在这儿。

ò , zài zhèr 。

Oh, it's here.

Vocabulary

插座儿

chāzuòr

power socket

noun

笔记本儿

bǐjìběnr

notebook

noun

哪儿

nǎr

where

question

这儿

zhèr

here

noun

插板儿

chābǎnr

power bar

noun

转换器

zhuǎnhuànqì

power converternoun 你 nǐ you

pronoun

我

wǒ

I

pronoun

说

shuō

to say

verb

什么

shénme

what

question