for example a bus 公交车 (http://www.memrise.com/course/1096999/ying-yu-3/1/)
look at the old HSK/Whately/etc courses and many other (beginner) courses and tell me in which of them the learner gets to see 公交车 for “bus”… or 小镇 for town
“公交车” in China mean Bus, but “公交车” is not used on Taiwan/HongKong.
In general, 公交车 for “bus” and 小镇 for “town” are correct.
LeoCheung is absolutely right.
Although I do speak Chinese, it’s only recently that I become reacquainted and become comfortable with how it’s spoken in China. For instance, taxi in China is called 出租车. Surprise? Wait till you hear their dialects and slangs… The main thing is, as long as you understand that they mean the same thing, that’s good enough. Although they choose one form over the other, they understand both forms as well, because TV shows in Taiwan and Hong Kong are shown in China as well, and vice versa.
thanks…
I did not mean “correct” or “incorrent”… I meant exactly what i’ve said: in the Chinese courses for English speakers, including those made by the CEO of memrise, we, users, have been presented with quite different words… some of these differences have their origin in Hanban, some in Pleco etc
for me, as person who learned different words “bus” and other basic items 2-3 years ago with memrise, it is somehow difficult to learn them anew, and to find out that initial effort and time, spent on learning items without muchvalue, was in vain…
(btw, 出租车 happens to be the word most memrise courses for English speakers use for taxi, but the English for Chinese speakers uses some other one I think. For “bus”, memrise-HSK courses beat the 公共汽车 sattle, but the originator here is Hanban itself)
English 2 for Chinese to pay = 付出
Mandarin 2 for English to pay = gěi qián (to give money to… ;try fiding that in a dictionary)
As one who has been living in China for awhile now, I most often hear a combination of the two: 付钱。I’ve also heard 给钱，but I can’t recall having heard 付出。
I’ll just say what I know.
付出 means the things you have to “pay out” (aka sacrifice) in order to get something else back usually.
eg:
付出努力 - hard work that is put in (that you have to sacrifice)
付出心血 - devotion and energy that is put in (that you have to sacrifice)
付钱，付账 - means to pay money.
给钱 - depends on context, depends on what you’re giving your money for… If you’re giving your money for a service, that’s the equivalent of “paying”. If you’re giving money away for free, that is the equivalent of “giving”.
well, check the memrise official course (Englisk UK for Mandarin speakers)… and I found 付出 for to pay, but I did not find the other one (给钱)
@manybuddies, thanks for your explantions. What bothers me is this difference between the courses (let aside the mistakes I make because I take both variants - Chinese for English and English for Chinese 
)
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There is in /formal spoken and written but Japanese Kanji I know hanji I can see is use 付tsuけke a bill ,charge 出daすsu put out ,together is different 付出 心 heart 血 blood, to pay is bleed your heart
You may be much further along than I in Chinese, but I feel like this topic is something I’ve dealt with in a big way for Chinese. There’s so many vocabulary items focused on that seem useless or with very specific usages. I’ve come to the realization recently that Chinese, after the initial beginner/low intermediate stage, just requires a massive time investment in vocabulary. There are tons of root ideas and some words are formed from roots that Japanese often took from, and some take from alternate roots that mean the same thing.
In a lot of languages you hear that you can go live somewhere and pick it up in a year of immersion. I feel like for Chinese that becomes accurate after getting through all of the HSK 1-6 vocab. There’s just too many versions of saying the same thing. I will often be able to keep up with a business discussion going on around me, only to have absolutely no idea in the slightest what the delivery man is saying to me on the phone, or what a child asks his mother. Right now, i’m just amassing this collection of vocabulary in my head. I feel it’s a numbers game and that became much more apparent as I’ve gotten deeper into HSK 5. There’s just this huge collection of roots and the more you know the more conversations have less “holes” and the more connections are made to the point of where these alternate meanings feel like less of a waste and more of what a random word would be in your native language.
Maybe this is common sense but sometimes breakthroughs happen for me with Chinese not only with my comprehension/expression level, but also in how I frame the value of my Chinese level in relation to learning it since the size can make itself a big motivational push or wall depending on how I happen to be looking at it.
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my “complaint” is, to make clear once again: the Memrise official courses 1-3 are for absolute beginners. The absolute beginners English courses for Chinese present for many basic English words different (basic) Chinese words.
Otherwise: I have the same problem: I don’t “hear” Chinese… I seldom realise in “Realzeit” what is the exact topic of the sentence… to many homophones for my not that young European years.
But I disagree with the “immersion” thing… look at the huge numbers of immigrants in various countries who do not speak the local languages… Think only about the “por favores” in Spain (British and Amis usually; somehow the Swedes - only on Costa Brava there are more than 50.000 Swedes - somehow do speak Spanish)
I’ve not looked at the courses themselves, but from what you are saying, I have to agree that there should be consistency in the 2 courses in terms of the vocabularly used… or at the very least (if it’s not already done) have the alternatives accepted…
It’s actually interesting now that this topic brings up the different terms for the same thing depending on the country.
I grew up and live in Singapore, learning Chinese as a second language from young, and the words that I use for certain things are very different from my colleagues, many of whom come from China and prefer to speak in Mandarin at work…
For me, taxi = 德士, bus = 巴士 and to pay = 给钱 or 付钱 (the second one sounds more “posh” in my mind)
I was talking to them that day on the way home. The conversation was cut short as I had to get off the train, but what I learned was the different way we refer also to our grandmothers.
I referred to my maternal grandmother as 婆婆 but for them that is the paternal grandmother, only 外婆 is used for the maternal grandmother. For me 外婆 is also the maternal grandmother, but 奶奶 is used for the paternal. Or maybe it’s just my family, I don’t know.
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lol.
if I may ask, what is your so-called “first” language(s)?
So your colleagues prefer putonghua… they seem indeed a younger generation (coming from mainland China so to say) … interesting to know. The Chinese-speaking people from that area I met until know spoke rather/better Cantonese or Hakka, but they were more… traditional??? or how to put it
I think it’s rather interesting that 付钱 seems “posh” to you, @sherrin
Is Mandarin widely spoken in Singapore? I seem to remember hearing that it is/was.
For me, living in southern China and speaking somewhat-standard Mandarin:
taxi = 出租车
bus within the city = 交车 (or 轿车； I’m not sure which)
bus that goes between cities = 大巴
I think lots of people here would call a maternal grandmother 外婆 but a paternal grandmother 奶奶。I hear people say 婆婆, too, but I can’t remember what the exact usage is.
Chinese really is a lot of fun I have a friend here with a dog named 乖乖, I guess because whoever named it thought that he was well behaved, and it strikes me as a very cute name. Other dog names like 小黑 or 小白 also seem cute to me and don’t seem to work very well in English.
@Hydroptere It would be English (Standard Singapore English, which is based on British English), and if it counts, Singlish (Colloquial Singapore English - I speak this with my parents more often than not). In school, the lessons were in English, with one lesson for “mother tongue” (Chinese in my case, the second language).
I guess to be perfectly honest, Mandarin Chinese could be also considered a first language for me. I have difficulties identifying myself as a native speaker though, because my English is way better.
Haha, yeah, it is pretty interesting. I think most of them came over here to study, and so have been here for a few years. Maybe I could ask them about what they would speak with their parents.
I think there’s a similar situation here, that the younger generation is educated in Mandarin, and so don’t speak as much dialect as the previous generation.
@neoncube Mandarin Chinese is quite widely spoken here. The majority of the population is ethnically Chinese, as I am. It’s one of our official languages. But now that I consider it, it is kind of a go-between language.
Personally, I think that the Chinese dialects (Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, etc.) are more common among the older generation if they were speaking to each other, whilst the younger generation generally prefers to speak English. Like when ordering food at a local hawker centre, the stall holders usually would speak dialect to one another (and my parents would order in dialect if the stall holder was of the same dialect group), but I would just order in Mandarin, because my dialect is almost non-existent.
It also depends on where you go though, and it varies based on socio-economic background too. In the high-end shopping malls you would have more people speaking English (but most are bilingual), but in the heartlands then it’s more common to hear other languages. I don’t want to over-generalise.
Oh yeah, the thing with the cute names that sound weird when translated. I remember the days when I had to come up with names for characters in my school essays and it’d almost always be something that was prefixed with 小. 
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