User Comments - anzhiru
anzhiru
Posted on: Toilet Types
April 12, 2009 at 10:34 AMHi missworldtraveller
Did you try pulling the pipe? This is how some Belgian loos work. There is no chain or handle, just the down pipe from the cistern above the toilet, which on pulling releases the water for flushing.
Posted on: Language Power Struggle
August 26, 2008 at 1:32 PMI had exactly the same problem in Germany 30 years ago. Everyone wanted to practice their English on me. A simple "Ich kann kein Englisch" was enough to put a stop to that. When in China I would just speak Swedish, or some other minority language! I doubt there is much interest in such quaint languages in China.
Posted on: 日本人的起源
August 18, 2008 at 7:46 AMUnfortunately my level is not quite up to understanding this lesson quickly, but I think this is excellent! especially the opening and closing lines.
This lesson touches on some very sensitive topics such as nationalism and blood. The historical fact of Japan's origins are very interesting and do have relevance to today, but as world citizens our role has to be to transcend nationalism and family. We need to direct our thoughts to openness, tolerance and respect for others. The sins of our fathers are not ours, though they may become so if we do not control our own destiny.
It is also interesting that size and quality are not the same thing. Take little Australia's performance in the Olympics! Population is only 20 million, but so many medals!
Now I will really go away and understand this lesson!
Posted on: Fortunate Cookies
June 13, 2008 at 1:59 PMRachida
There are lots of fonts out there which do the tone marks as accents. You can try
http://www.namkung.com/zev/TimesPinyin.html
This link also has links to other useful places.
Posted on: Chicago
May 7, 2008 at 8:53 AMWhat a script! You've certainly got it down pat when it comes to making lessons interesting. The young woman's voice on the dialogue, sorry don't know who that is, really hits the button; and then her friend trying to adjust, just not being able to keep up with her flighty thoughts. Really funny! As for Chicago, don't get stuck in the airport. The weather is so bad there it can close down in seconds!! 真的
Posted on: Diet Coke
May 5, 2008 at 11:14 AMHi light487 There are quite a few. Mostly the difference is tone, but some also have pronunciation differences eg. 银行 and 行吗！ I guess you will need another dictionary! Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary is not bad.
Posted on: Common Measure Words
May 4, 2008 at 4:56 PMinland One answer to this question is that using measure words actually represents a simplification and unification of the concepts in Chinese. The use of measure words in Chinese is actually easier than in English, see my post on Coca-cola. The only thing is learning all those pesky measure words. There again in English we have just as many, if not more, we're just not so strict in using them. Ancient Chinese tends not to use them, I believe, so this is a more recent development. A measure word marks the end of the number and the start of the noun. As either of these can be complex phrases that helps a lot in understanding. And finally, of course you could demand that the default measure word 个 be used, but that takes away a whole load of precision. Many nouns can take more than one measure word, depending on the form of their container. For example a can 罐 of Coke or a bottle 瓶 of Coke - 一罐可口可乐，或者，一瓶可口可乐.
Posted on: Diet Coke
May 4, 2008 at 2:02 PMMeasure words in English are everywhere and they are used not just for uncountables, aka (also known as) mass nouns, such as milk. It's just that they are not essential for count nouns whereas they are essential to quantify mass nouns. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_word for some examples of this. Rather than worrying about the difficulty of measure words in Chinese, you could argue that measure words in English are much more difficult. When it comes to measure words we cannot even decide which of the many systems we should use. Should it be miles, feet and inches or kilometres and metres; British Thermal Units or Joules; Centigrade or Fahrenheit and thousands more examples in the same vein. To make matters much worse we have decided to invent a whole panoply of measure words for nouns both count and mass. For example a herd of elephants, a box of pencils, a pad of paper. So far so good but what about a company of players, a culture of bacteria, a pod of whales, a zeal of zebras and the list goes on and on. See http://www.rinkworks.com/words/collective.shtml or http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/collnoun.htm for some really interesting examples. People have even written books of collections of measure words, aka collective nouns. I was thinking about what the measure word for measure words is... well I think I already used one, a panoply of measure words, but I think you are free to make it up as you go along as long as you do not go head to head with tradition. So my advice is stick to Chinese, it's much easier!
Posted on: Toilet Types
April 12, 2009 at 10:37 AMMy vote for the worst toilet in the world, Algiers airport circa 1983.