User Comments - aert
aert
Posted on: Thanksgiving
November 23, 2007 at 7:55 PMHi everybody Various kinds of hu2tu2fan4 are popular in Holland, and the name of one kind, "hutspot" =shake-pot, has spread to French (hochepot) and English (hotchpotch/ hodgepodge). For German I know only "Eintopfgericht" = one-pot-dish. In Holland they are all based on mashed potatoes. I like them all, but I don't like peeling potatoes. In my youth I read Pearl Buck's books about life in China. I remember in "The Good Earth" there is a moment where people put some earth in their mouth to have at least something. I wonder if the greeting ni3 chi1 le ma goes back to a time when you were lucky if you had??
Posted on: Thanksgiving
November 23, 2007 at 2:38 PMHi Changye Please scratch Patty behind the ear from me. I have no problem believing her full name is Patricia:I remember a big fat man who owned a tiny pooch called Prometheus.
Posted on: Thanksgiving
November 23, 2007 at 11:04 AMHi Chinesepod computer technicians and Changye There has been a change for the worse in the way I receive the lessons (though I can live with it). My laptop talks Dutch, but I trust that the term "mail IN" will be clear to you. I used to find the name of the new lesson on my mail IN, click on that and get it once more on the lower half of the screen, click on that, get the Discussion page, check the Vocabulary and go on to the PDF. The last lesson that appeared on my mail IN was Newbie - That's enough tea. I have been able to access the later seven lessons in a roundabout way. Changye is a faithful contributor to the Comments in the Discussion section, and by clicking on the little dog's nose (that dog now has a friend in Holland!) I get Changye's latest conversations, and the new lesson will be on top. By clicking on that I get the Discussion page and can proceed as usual. For a while it was also difficult to get back from the PDF to the Discussion page, as I got list of Newbie lessons instead, and had to go through the roundabout procedure once more to get to the Expansion, but this seems to have been fixed. I would appreciate it if I could find the new lessons on my mail IN again. BTW, I finally heard the ex-chipmunk audio. Though I only want to learn to read, since I started listening to the audio's I can pick up more and more words and phrases in what initially was total gibberish to me. Well, thanks in advance for anything you can do, and special thanks to you, Changye! (BTW, what is your dog's name?).
Posted on: NBA在中国
November 21, 2007 at 11:36 AMHaving stopped expressing my appreciation of every lesson (too repetitive!), I still want to convey my admiration of the technical knowhow of the staff. Visiting older lessons I see you have already weathered many storms, and apparently the season is upon us again! It doesn't bother me at all (except I still have to try the chipmunk audio again). What really impresses me is the identification of today's lesson on top of the screen, viz.nba%E5%9C%A8%E4%B8%AD...Wow! My hat off to you all!
Posted on: 白酒和黄酒
November 18, 2007 at 6:28 PMI am relieved to see no further corrections are necessary. (only the final n of "wroten" must go). And, Mark, as W.C. Fields said: "It's easy to stop, I've done it thousands of times!"
Posted on: 白酒和黄酒
November 18, 2007 at 6:14 PMHi Jenny and Zanyhermit I hadn't seen Henning's comment when I wrote to you nor had I seen Zanyhermit's when I wroten to Henning. The Dutch-Chinese dictionary does list the word "kater" guo4 du4 yin3 jiu3 hou4 de shen1 ti3 bu2 shi4. This discussion goes as fast as today's audio!
Posted on: 白酒和黄酒
November 18, 2007 at 5:45 PMHi, Henning The word "kater" is also used in Dutch. I hadn't thought of it. It was borrowed from German, The word comes from Leipzig student slang (ca. 1850) and soon spread to students abroad. In my student days I knew no other word. It just goes to show how much we are anglicised. It comes from a medical term Catharr which goes back to a Greek word meaning. "cleanse" ("catharsis" is listed in the American College Dictionary).
Posted on: 白酒和黄酒
November 18, 2007 at 4:52 PMHi, Jenny Thanks for trying. In Dutch we don't have our own word either, and borrowed "hangover" from English. My Dutch-Chinese dictionary often includes these loans, but this one isn't in it. I'll listen to you on Monday.
Posted on: 白酒和黄酒
November 18, 2007 at 3:45 PMClearly today's sound track results from too much jia1 you2, and this in turn from too much bai2 jiu3 at Jenny's birthday party. BTW what's the Chinese word for "hangover"?
Posted on: Sailing
November 26, 2007 at 7:27 PMHi Changye You sure opened a can of worms with your question about juban (AB), juxing (AC) and jinxing (DC). The interesting comments make DC clearly stand out as emphasising the activity itself rather than its preparation. For "to sponsor" we now have AB (Amber, VenusJin) and a quite different zan4zhu4, the only word given by my Dutch-Chinese dictionary. I am reminded of discussions in our Leiden Linguistic Circle, attended by colleagues from other universities.Sometimes questions like the one you raised came up, and it was amazing how some would regard a certain phrase as quite normal while others totally rejected it. And we were all native speakers of "Standard Dutch"! Patty is still guiding me to the new lessons. II'll wait a week or so before I ask somebody to do something about it. So please keep commenting!