User Comments - Mingmao

Posted on: A Qing Wen to Our Listeners

I would like a Qingwen lesson (or several) on how to verbally describe all the different radicals, to use when you're asking people how to write a certain character, and there is no pen and paper handy (or it's over the phone), including the shape, pinyin, and meaning of each of the radicals. Such as: 

亻= dānrénpáng = man

Posted on: Popular Slang from 2011

Pretty sure "boho-chic" is a hipster.

Posted on: A Qing Wen to Our Listeners

I have taken notes on a few other tricky characters that I have come across. Below is my full list up to now. Qing Wen lessons on the structural uses of these words (that is, when they act alone, not as part of another word, for example, not “之前" or “以后"), would be greatly appreciated.

则、至、之、以、将、且、并、即、令、所、而、既

Posted on: Addressing Women

Okay, I look over 25, I guess that's all right.

Posted on: Words with 可(ke)

I've been confused about the distinction between 可怕 and 恐怖 for a long time. 

Actually, I felt like this lesson did not go into 可怕 as much as I would have liked.

In English, "scary" is used for things that literally make one feel frightened, such as the ghost examples given in this lesson, but also things that are just upsetting, such as a person who is unkept and very socially inappropriate, but not actually frightening. It just means you really don't want to be around them, that you don't understand how they can be the way they are, and that you don't want to entertain the thought of them in your mind.

I have never been able to figure out if 可怕 includes this meaning of "really unpleasant" in addition to literally frightening. This lesson's example of North Korea is a perfect example: Is calling it "可怕" saying you're afraid that they might inflict some kind of harm on you, that they are actually a possible threat? Or is it more like the other meaning of thinking that their country is so strange and upsetting that you just don't even want to think about it too much?

Could you please explain, is 可怕 strictly "scary" in the sense of being afraid, or does it also have the secondary meaning of finding something really unpleasant and rather bewildering? 

Also, how does the "scary" of 可怕 differ from the scary of 恐怖?

Posted on: Addressing Women

Thank you so much for delineating the differences between these terms. I have been wondering about this for a long time, and these subtleties are not included in the dictionary.

Also, at what age should I expect mothers start asking their kids to talk to the foreign "阿姨"? Does this mean I look old?

Posted on: Romance of the Three Kingdoms

"三国里面，最后谁赢了？"

("Who won in the end between the three of them?")

This sentence presents an interesting grammar construction that wasn't covered in the discussion.

Is this a common and easily transferrable structure for asking about a comparison between several of something similar? 

For example, could you say, 这三种药里面，哪个最有用?

Posted on: Romance of the Three Kingdoms

I would like to second the request for a series on this work. (:

Posted on: Eating in Korea

I have heard of 法式料理; was this wrong?

Posted on: Money Laundering Operation

John's last sentence: "you zhong." Could someone give me the characters for this? I get the idea, but I'd like to know how to write it. 

In the dialogue, why is the last line "说得是，说的是。" with two different "de"s? Could someone explain this? 

Also, I vote "yes" on the new PDFs: I can copy-paste directly into other programs, which, with the old PDFs, resulted in gibberish.