A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
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维基百科写奥尔特曼死了，谷歌看见了就信了
Google Falsely Reports Sam Altman Dead
About this story
Google Falsely Reports Sam Altman Dead. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 Chinese listening episode that runs about 2 minutes. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 13 key vocabulary words such as 知道、写、看见 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
There is a very well-known man called Altman.
He makes computer things, and a lot of people know him.
On the twelfth of August, you looked on Google: who is Altman?
Google said: he is dead.
But he was not dead.
He was perfectly fine.
That day he was at his company, he was working.
What happened here?
Let us start from the beginning.
There is a website where anyone can write things on it.
You can write, I can write, all of us can write.
On this website there are things about a great many people.
At that time, someone wrote on it: Altman is dead.
He also wrote: where he died.
None of it was true.
Not one word of it was true.
What was that person thinking?
We do not know.
Forty-one minutes, and then someone else saw it and took it away.
Forty-one minutes.
A day has more than one thousand four hundred minutes.
This was only forty-one minutes.
But within those forty-one minutes, Google saw it.
Google saw it, and Google believed it.
Google did not look at any other website.
Google did not look at what anyone else said.
Google simply said: he is dead.
A lot of people on Google saw that line.
Afterwards everyone said: no!
He is not dead!
So Google took that line away.
Google also said: it was not one of our people who wrote it.
That is true — it was not a Google person who wrote it.
But no Google person looked at it either.
One person wrote one line on a website.
Forty-one minutes.
And Google believed it.
Think about it: when something is said, do you just believe it?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇很多人都知道他 = a lot of people know him.
大家都可以在上面写东西 = anyone can write things on it.
谷歌看见了，就信了 = Google saw it and believed it.
他在他的公司 = he was at his company.
他做电脑的东西 = he makes computer things.
一个字，也不是真的 = not one word of it was true.
谷歌说：他死了 = Google said he was dead.
有一个网站 = there is a website.
这些，都不是真的 = none of it was true.
四十一分钟 = forty-one minutes.
谷歌看见了，就信了 = Google saw it and believed it.
就拿走了 = and took it away.
谷歌，没有看别的网站 = Google did not look at any other website.
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法就 + verb
"and then straight away". 就 is what makes the whole story feel too fast.
谷歌看见了，就信了。
就拿走了。
一个……也不……
"not even one X". The strongest way to say none of it was true.
一个字，也不是真的。
大家都可以……
"anyone at all can…". States the property of the website the story turns on.
大家都可以在上面写东西。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
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