User Comments - aert
aert
Posted on: Editing a Document
October 12, 2007 at 10:30 AMThanks a milion for another wonderfuly instructive lesson. How do you folks keep it up? By the way,I wanted to rate another lesson "five", but when I had clicked on the first star the rest disappeared. I now know how todo it. Sorry!.
Posted on: 中美法律体系的差异
October 10, 2007 at 7:12 PMHello BILLDAILY, maybe we both have been listening too much to the man with the peptalk who says there is no best, only better. But there is also a saying that the better is the enemy of the good. I could imagine that Jenny and her colleagues are overworked as it is, and I hope to live long enough to keep renewing my subscription to Chinesepod for years (I'm 87 now, and in good health, thank you). And hello THANHHANG, you wonder why users of the advanced lessons still write in English. It is quite possible to be better at reading a language than at speaking or writing it. I live in retirement in the Dutch countryside, no speakers of Chinese here, and there is little chance of my ever getting to China. I only wanted to be able to READ the language, and started ca. 5 years ago with the classical language, later switched to putonghua and the simplified script. And now, seduced by Chinapod, I am trying to get used to the spoken language, too...Anyway, I would rather write fairly correct English than po4 sui4 de han4 yu3.
Posted on: 中美法律体系的差异
October 8, 2007 at 5:31 PMGiven the marvellous material the more elementary lessons provide, it may seem immodest to ask for more,but I do agree with billdaily that the advanced texts (and their expansions) would gain much by having translations, for two reasons. The first is that checking dictionaries is time-consuming, the second -- more important --is that one is not always sure one interprets the text correctly. For example, the last sentence of the text (which is otherwise clear) I translated tentatively "Forgive me for this rough sketch, and for having given you only a bird's-eye view today", but this presupposes two idioms I cannot confirm with the dictionaries I have. And the 5th sentence of the expansion has the word chan1 ru4;the first character I found only in Oshanin's 1952 Chinese-Russian dictionary with the pronunciations shan1 (dial. xian1) "1.to hold, 2. tender, thin/fine" and can1 "be interwoven, mixed up with". The only compound given is can1zhi4 "seize hold of, hold on to". On the recording I hear ch, not sh, c or x. Billdaily, I recommend the book "Talking about China" by Lisa Carducci (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing 2002, ISBN 7-119-02960-6. It is meant for Chinese wishing to improve their English, but it was fine for me, too, and might be for you (if you don't already know it).
Posted on: 八卦周刊：梁朝伟另结新欢
October 14, 2007 at 10:49 AMAWFLASHER, Bagua "trigram" is found in the larger dictionaries. My fellow countrymen and also the Flemish can find an explanation of the system, based on Yang and Yin, in Du Naizheng's Chinese-Dutch dictionary (ISBN 9090166165) p.1731. On a first reading I find this text not easy, but I will take your advice and jia1 you2.