User Comments - SF_Rachel

Posted on: The Little Tadpoles in Search of Their Mother

The bite of the modifying adverbial adjunct is quite venomous, so identifying it correctly when you're in the wild could save your life.

Posted on: The Little Tadpoles in Search of Their Mother

I was wondering about that but can't remember encountering 小心 where it seemed like an adjective -- it usually feels like an adverb or a verb to me. I'm guessing a lot of machine translation programs tend assume it's an adverb, or else we wouldn't see so many incorrectly translated warning signs saying things like "carefully slip and fall"!

Posted on: The Little Tadpoles in Search of Their Mother

I noticed that

它们高兴地喊

它们小心地问

but

它们赶紧喊

Why 赶紧 doesn't require a 地? Does it have something to do with the fact that sometimes it's a verb?

Posted on: I wet the bed!

We called them "sleepy seeds" where I grew up. Also in Urban Dictionary, with 44 reviews (compared with 6 for "sleepy bugs" -- the idea of which gives me shivers, I have to say).

I like the Chinese term though. Eye poop it is!

Posted on: Farewell Dinner

I'll take a crack at this as a learner myself, to see if this can help firm up my own understanding.

I think 尤其 is used when you make a general statement, and then give a more specific follow up statement.

我喜欢吃水果，尤其苹果。I like eating fruit, especially apples.

这条路面很滑，尤其雪下以后。This road is slippery, especially after it snows.

特别 is used almost more as a synonym for "exceptionally" or "compared to implied other {people, places, times, instances, etc.}"

我特别爱吃苹果。I especially love eating apples.

今天，路面特别滑。Today, the road is especially slippery.

Posted on: Getting Picked up by a Driver

I have a question about the expansion sentence that begins 我问过老师了 Wǒ wèn guo lǎoshī le

Can someone explain about the presence of both the 过 guo and the 了 le? The aspect is unclear to me here. Is the speaker referring to a specific conversation they had with the teacher, or is it more general that I asked the teacher one time or before? I guess it feels like the 过 guo seems to suggest that the question is settled through experience, and the 了 le is simply that the act of asking was completed?

As usual, I suspect I'm overthinking it.

Posted on: Chinatown Diary

bodawei -- I agree with you, even as a learner I greatly prefer "real Chinese" to transliterations. I also want to be clear that I'm not suggesting that the legal disclosure -- translated to Chinese -- is by any means necessarily authentic Chinese. In fact my intent was to suggest that the "legalese" approach was less authentic, at least for people who know the City or have connections here.

I have, in the past, asked my Taiwanese friends here about Jiù Jīn Shān versus Sān Fān Shì. They tend to say they prefer Jiù Jīn Shān and shrug their shoulders about the transliteration, saying "It's okay." But then *that* being said, here in the Bay Area we're all kind of fond of our Gold Rush history.

Posted on: Chinatown Diary

For what it's worth, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Larger employers here in California in many cases are required to offer certain employment disclosures in a variety of languages -- Spanish and Chinese are usually at the top of the list.

In my office lunchroom we have posted for us, for example, required disclosures about San Francisco minimum wage requirements in Spanish, Chinese (traditional), and Tagalog. In these disclosures I had previously noticed that San Francisco was always written as 三藩市 Sān Fān Shì.

However, our marketing style guide for advertising in Chinese suggests using 旧金山 Jiù Jīn Shān.

Not to say this is the real reason, but in my mind I had figured Jiù Jīn Shān is a customary usage seen in "real life" and with legitimate historical roots. But Sān Fān Shì feels a bit more "legal" as a fairly accurate transliteration of the "official" local name of the city. (Though I also kind of wonder how the characters for the transliteration 三藩市 would be pronounced in Cantonese.)

Posted on: Dad behind the Video Camera

明白了。你总是太有帮助，谢谢。

Posted on: Dad behind the Video Camera

I have a feeling the answer to this question is going to go over my head, but I'll try anyway.

得 versus 地

So in the dialogue it's 突然地放大 but 调得太快. Is it 地 when the adverb precedes the verb and 得 when the adverb comes after the verb (as also in 手抖得很厉害). Or is there something deeper going on here?