User Comments - John

Posted on: A Member of the 'Moonlight Clan'

And to add to Jiaojie's comment, 正常 (zhèngcháng) means "normal" in the sense of "not abnormal."

So if you're asking for a 正常的自行车 (zhèngcháng de zìxíngchē), you're giving the impression that the bicycles you've bought before turned out to be abnormal.

Posted on: Hanukkah

Ha, it's funny you should mention that, because we had a big discussion about this when we were writing the dialog. From Wikipedia:

"According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day."

And more on the Seleucid Empire:

"The Seleucid Empire (from Greek: Σελεύκεια, Seleύkeia) (pronounced /sɨˈluːsɪd/; 312 – 63 BC) was created out of the eastern conquests of the former Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian kingdom was centred in the Near East and regions of the Asian part of the earlier Achaemenid Persian Empire. At the height of its power it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan. It was a major centre of Hellenistic culture which maintained the preeminence of Greek customs and where a Macedonian political elite dominated, mostly in the urban areas."

So even if they represented Hellenistic culture, it would be misleading to call them just "Greeks." We weren't going to use the Chinese word for "Seleucid Empire" though, so "Syrians" seemed to be the most appropriate option.

Posted on: A Member of the 'Moonlight Clan'

Yes... The issue that it's a character that represents a sound which is arguably not even a "real word" (like the sound of a sigh). All Chinese words must have tones, but if it's just a sound, it's not usually going to have a fixed tone. But since the characters do exist and are in use, dictionaries have to deal with the issue. They usually do it in one of two ways: (1) offer very few tonal options, adhering to the "official" readings for those characters and not worrying about covering the variation that occurs in the wild, or (2) trying to cover everything out there, which can look a little silly, when you start offering every possible tone for some characters.

Posted on: Lesson

The good news is that there is nothing wrong with your ears! You are right that there is a discrepancy between the current transcript and the lesson audio. We apologize for this, and will be fixing the problem right away.

Posted on: What does she look like?

Yes, you can use 看起来像 or even just 像.

Posted on: Lesson

Think of them this way:

Zhōngwén: "Chinese" (very broad; can include various dialects, and written forms)

Hànyǔ: Mandarin Chinese (as distinct from dialects)

pǔtōnghuà: Standard Mandarin (as officially sanctioned by the PRC)

Posted on: Lesson

No, that's fine. Water is always the default "less 麻烦" choice.

Posted on: Sign Language in China

I think this is one of those readings that's on the way out. Maybe the "correct" reading for 似的 is "shìde," but if enough people read it as "sìde" than the accepted reading changes. In my own experience, many Chinese people say "sìde."

Posted on: Sign Language in China

That looks like Chinese pinyin fingerspelling, which has quite a few signs in common with ASL fingerspelling, but also quite a few differences.

Posted on: Sign Language in China

挺好学的！而且，有的中国手语跟汉字有关，所以很有意思的。