If you're talking about some actor/singer who used to be very popular but not anymore, you can say: He/She is a goner/has-been. He/She is over the hill. If you're talking about fashion, you can say, It's out (of date/fashion). It's not in/trendy anymore. 我看了一下問題的標籤，發現有「所用語言：中文(普通話)」，那我就用中文提一下。 講人過氣的話可以說： He/She is a goner/has-been. (goner 和 has-been 都是指已經風光過了的人) He/She is over the hill. (over the hill 是「越過了山丘」，就是走下坡的意思) 講東西過氣 (不再流行) 的話，可以說： It's out (of date/fashion). It's not in/trendy anymore. out 就是出去了，沒有清楚的上下文時可以再補充是從哪兒出去 (of date/fashion)。 in 是 out 的相反，所以自然就有「時興；流行」的意思。Trendy 是符合潮流。 加上 「不再；not...anymore」就也是「過氣」了。

Totally! And I wrote something similar for my fellow people too: http://www.italki.com/answers/question/41221.htm

怎麼說「厲害」、「棒」、「好樣的」嗎？ 太多了！我想得到的有： You're great/awesome/incredible! You're good! Really good! You rock! You're the man! You saved the day! You're (such) a genius! 相信還有人知道別的說法的。

4 decks/packs of (playing) cards 撲克牌是 playing cards，亦即這牌是拿來玩的。 如果受了撲克這個詞的影響而說成 poker cards 就好像是在說這牌只能拿來玩 poker 而已。 Poker 就是梭哈，賭片裡常在玩的那種。 參考鏈結： 撲克牌：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_of_cards 撲克：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_(game) ==================================================== The following part is for native English speakers to see if my answer is appropriate. The measure word for playing cards is "deck" or "pack". So the translation for your question would be "4 decks/packs of (playing) cards". And please don't say "poker cards" even though that's how it's said in Mandarin. By "poker cards", it's like saying the cards can only be used to play poker only. Poker is only one of the card games.

哇！汉伦真不简单！ 这是我的版本： 我们对家长们问了一些开放式的问题，以他们的回答来研究这些家长在孩子的家庭丶学校丶社会教育之间有何管理差异，看这些差异对他们孩子当下的课业成就或问题是否起到了作用。

Hi, Beth, Stop beating yourself up. Tones are actually tricky. They're of course important...but at the same time, you know what, they are also not that important. I mean, take Mandarin music for example, the tones of the lyrics will be gone because the singers need to follow the musical notes, but we still understand the words most of the time if they are not slurred. We can still understand them because we hear right pronunciations and most important of all, common phrases or collocations. Get your pronunciation right (u, an, ang are crucial), use common phrases and collocations (and common word order), and you'll get your ideas conveyed most of the time. I'm not saying you can stop paying attention to tones, cuz there are still times when tones are the key to understanding. My point is, keep working on tones but at the same time, don't be too conscious of them when you speak. Seriously, the importance of tones is kind of overrated, if I may. Pronunciations, common phrases and collocations are more crucial. Hope this helps.

Hi, DanO, Thanks for pointing out the issue about "might/may have learned". My previous answer you were looking at had actually been edited. I had typed "might learn" in the first place, but then I remembered the word "might" alone could also be used to describe the present and the future, and almost at the same time I vaguely recalled that I read about how you should use "might have + past participle" when you want to talk about the past. To avoid any ambiguity, I then changed "might learn" to "might/may have learned". It turned out I thought too much, haha. Thanks again! ^_^ PS It also amazed me to see how you guys focused more on the logic/reasoning than on the grammar. It's definitely the other way around for us EFL learners. We're forced to pay more attention to grammar, or we won't ace an English test.

Hi, michelle English is more of a get-right-to-the-point language. That means in a sentence, the parts seen as more important will come first and the parts seen as less important will go to the end. However, it is not the case when the sentence is somewhat a long one. When a sentence is long, new messages will bump out the old ones in our short-term memory, which kind of makes the latest info both the important piece and the focus of our attention since we can't quite recall what exactly went before it. Writing stylists will then take advantage of this defect of ours and reverse the word order a bit when they want the audiences' attention falls naturally on the end of a sentence. In the sentence "Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects", the writer reversed the how (in killing insects) and the when (for at least half the year) because he/she wanted us to pay more attention to the how. In the sentence "The puma left behind it a trail of paw prints", the writer wanted us to pay more attention to the what (a trail of paw prints) instead of the where (behind it). Or rather, you can say this is actually a suspense-causing technique, where the secret will not be revealed until the end. Another example of this suspense-causing technique can be heard at a ceremony, where you will more often hear the emcee say "I'm proud to present to you (name of someone)", not the other way around (to present (name of someone) to you), because it is the next person on stage that is more important, not the audiences (you). Hope this helps and 新年快樂.