User Comments - Kyle
Kyle
Posted on: Finding the Teacher
October 7, 2007 at 9:02 AMSomething closer to "What's up?" may be "怎么样?". I've noticed, though, that many Chinese don't really use salutations--not like I would back home. They more or less great each other by starting a conversation or with grunts, at least close friends / colleagues. A more formal salutation may be "你吃饭了吗?" though I don't hear that one a lot either.
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: Food and Girls
October 6, 2007 at 9:50 AMOh, yeah. Hunter S. Thompson kept a diary, and he was quite manly. That slipped my mind when writing my earlier comment.
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: Food and Girls
October 6, 2007 at 9:49 AM@ marcosbento I generally interpret 一直 as "the whole time" or as conveying that an action occured throughout a definied duration of time. For example, 上课的时候他一直都看我. (He was looking at me the whole time we were in class.) I agree that "I'm always looking at her" is a bit awkward. I'd probably be more inclined to say, 我总是看她 (I always look at her) or the above. As far as writing style, most mainland China newspapers and contemporary books / novels are the standard left to right format you'd find in the West. Taiwan and HK may be different. Also reading older novels (printed before 1919--those that weren't burned) may be right to left, up and down.
Posted on: Superman
October 5, 2007 at 12:08 PMHi Rich, When you use two or more adjectives in a sentence in Chinese, you generally follow one of a few sentence patterns / structures. These are the ones I most often come across: 他又胖又高. (He's fat and tall.) This is the 又....又... structure. 他既很胖又很高. (He's not only tall, but fat.) This is the 既...又... structure 他不但很胖而且很高. (Not only is he fat, he's also very tall.) This is the 不但....而且.... structure As you can see, they all get the same general point across. As for the lack of speedy responses, most of us here in China are enjoying one of only 3 holiday vacations. It seems the CPod team is doing just that, so most of you are subjected to those of us who have nothing better to do that study and answer questions all day. =)
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: Food and Girls
October 5, 2007 at 8:58 AMJohn totally wrote this.
Posted on: Cooking
October 5, 2007 at 8:24 AM对
Posted on: Treating and Foreigners on TV
October 5, 2007 at 6:11 AMI think Amber is right on with the comment regarding why the Chinese like to watch foreigners speak Chinese. It's generally just to laugh at us butchering their language. If only the French had such a sense of humor.... (Just kidding to any French reading!)
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: Food and Girls
October 5, 2007 at 3:18 AMPffft, boys don't write diaries. Especially Chinese boys. They're too busy playing World of Warcraft and arguing with their friends about whether or not the tank in that one computer game could ACTUALLY hit that pedestrian from 300 yards away, applying recently studied laws of physics and mathematical equations to support their statements. Well, at least thats what my 初三 students do.
Posted on: Of Beauty Pageants and Plastic Surgery
October 5, 2007 at 12:54 AMHi Ashtangi, I described the purpose of the company to my fiance (a native Chinese) and she came up with 文化公司 (culture company), which doesn't sound quite right for some reason. Seeing how this company seems to be multi-functional, a quite literal translation might be 安排____活动的公司 (an organizes _____ event / activities company). You can also replace 活动 with 项目.
Posted on: Finding the Teacher
October 7, 2007 at 10:47 AMAi, sorry. I guess I should have considered that this was the newbie section. Sorry, guys. Basically, what I had said was that 怎么样 (zen2meyang4) is a "common" salutation, generally used in place of "ni3 hao3 ma"? (If you have been listening to the 'Dear Ambers' you'll already know that no one in China actually uses "ni3 hao3 ma?" except foreigners). For those who plan on taking their Chinese studies to a fluent level, I highly recommend learning your characters from the get-go. Later on you'll find it very difficult to find textbooks that use pinyin. Many of them start using a character-only system at the pre-intermediate level.