The Shenzhen company's pricing strategy was simple but effective. Five minutes after any customer arrived, they would be guided to the executive sundeck and given several glasses of cool spring water while they waited for the executive team. Once the customer was sufficiently hydrated, their counterparts would arrive with apologies and a gift of the region's finest green tea. After several toasts, the pricing negotiations were never quite as protracted as some customers may have wished.

Learning Chinese? Our elementary lessons at Popup Chinese stretch beyond the baics into dialogues which feature more complex constructions. While these feature common sentence patterns and can help you push your way to fluency, they also highlight the same sort of conversational and colloquial speech you'll find spoken every day in mainland China. So if you're learning Chinese, give us a listen and hear for yourself how much different real spoken Chinese is from the dry, unnatural texts you may be accustomed to from other textbooks.
 said on
April 12, 2014

How do you use 根本 in other sentences? Does it always have to be ’根本就没有‘什么什么？ Could you say, for example:


 said on
April 14, 2014

When you want to express " all" or "never" it can be "根本（就）+不／没". So 就 sometimes is for emphasis.

This sentence can be:


B:我根本没说话。or 我根本什么都没说。
 said on
April 14, 2014
Got it, thanks! :D
 said on
April 14, 2014

Is there a difference in tone between using 根本 and 确实?


 said on
April 15, 2014

1.我根本没说话. I didn't speak at all.

2.我确实没说话. I really didn't speak/say anything.

So you use 根本 to make a strong statement when asked 你说什么了 and such.

Same situation, when asked 你说什么了? There will be another person saying"他什么也没说" or "他根本没说话" Then to reconfirm or reassure the statement, you will use"我确实没说话".