User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Hiking
June 19, 2008 at 2:19 PM@davidshanghai: Julio has given you good advice. Here is a small tip for getting into the rhythm of ITABC: Do try to use the "predictive" functionality as much as you can. You'll save yourself so much time. Getting the hang of this takes only a bit of practice; it is a matter of getting a "feel" for how Chinese characters are broken down by that function.
Eg. try typing just the first letters of the words in a group: eg. xjp (=Singapore). rsrh (="rivers and mountains of human beings", ie, a crowd). wm (= "we". xh (=to like). And so on.
This predictive function is quite forgiving; just try zhongguo, zg, and zguo etc.... and see how far you can push it.
One thing which tripped me up in the early days was confusing the "space bar" (to call up options) with the "Return" key (to confirm your selection). With only a very little bit of practice, this should become instinctive, something that you won't be thinking about on a conscious level. Sort of like the "shift" key function in English...
All the best for your Chinese input! For what it's worth, I felt like I had grown a pair of wings when this input system "clicked" for me after a few days of frustration. Take care.
Posted on: Bangkok
June 19, 2008 at 1:35 AMI love Thai food too. Here is a link to some nice blog entries on Thai "street food" by Richard Barrow, one of my favourite writers on all things Thai -- with photos! --:
http://www.thai-blogs.com/index.php/c46/?blog=5
Posted on: Regional Accents Part II
June 19, 2008 at 12:49 AMHello. Many thanks to uncle changye, sushan, and tvan for the supplementary material. I figure that any accounts relating to the Council's deliberations are probably apocryphal, anyway.
Here is a naughty thought (sorry!): Even if the Sichuan vernacular had won, any "standard" language based on it could easily have been called "Mandarin".
After all, the Sichuan vernacular is so close to the Beijing vernacular that some linguists consider both to be dialects of Mandarin. Aie caramba.
Posted on: Missing Luggage
June 18, 2008 at 6:33 AMHi evasiege. I'm not a native speaker (only a "heritage speaker"), but I believe you could. There is a slight difference in meaning, though:
我急死了 = I'm really stressed out and worried!
急死我了＝ It's (or: something's) really stressing me out!
Another thing worth being aware of is that the dividing line between a verb and an adjective isn't always exactly the same in English as it is in Chinese. Eg. 我急死了 works because in Chinese, 急 also functions as an adjective. It's not always the case, so my best (humble) advice is to stick with formulas you've heard before. HTH.
Posted on: Missing Luggage
June 17, 2008 at 8:18 AMHi sarahjs, do you know 烦死我了 (fan2 si3 wo3le; "I'm so very vexed or so very bored")? Heh heh...
Posted on: Regional Accents Part II
June 17, 2008 at 6:36 AMHello changye, pulosm, tvan:
I wasn't aware of this "language struggle" before. So thank you!
At that point in China's history -- ie the ROC years, before 1949 --, many of the key (or else, rising) political figures were Hakkas. Eg. Deng Xiaoping, Sun Yatsen, the Soongs, Zhou Enlai, etc. Hakka is a southern vernacular which has much in common with Cantonese. In fact, at one point in time there was even a shadow government in Nanjing, in the South.
This "political aptitude" of the Hakkas is partially explained by the fact that the Hakkas don't have a traditional homeland in China. They are China's internal "diaspora people". Mostly hardscrabble-poor, hence tough and outward-looking, hence... ideal recruits for revolution.
So maybe the idea of a Southern vernacular being given such serious consideration isn't all that outlandish, after all. Thanks again, guys, for giving me this "mind candy" to chew on!
Posted on: Regional Accents Part II
June 16, 2008 at 3:45 PMpulosm, I agreed with everything you wrote. Thanks. To be honest, I am dismayed by the "substratum of ignorance" which leads so many people to assume that Chinese dialects are dialects of... Mandarin. I suppose that "the history of Mandarin" would make a very useful CPOD lesson!
All Chinese dialects -- including Mandarin, which is something of a constructed language -- are actually different vernacular forms of something older, which some would call "Middle Chinese".
And the highly prized "Beijing accent" is actually a very strong regional accent, which sounds as distinctive to my ears as a "Boston" accent, or a Quebecois accent (yes, I do watch "Catherine" on TV5!) or a Welsh accent.
If I'm not wrong, even the best-known TV newscasters in China are expected to keep their Beijing accents within certain limits. Eg. I don't think that the way CCTV4's 鲁健 (sp.?) normally speaks, when he is on air, is quite the same as the way he would speak when he is speaking with friends and family and can afford to let his natural accent out.
One of CPOD's greatest strengths is its admirably neutral-sounding Mandarin, which is clear and correct and "natural"-sounding, but... neutral (without ever being "bland"). Thanks CPOD!
Of course, there are very real regional "accents" which distort how Mandarin (as opposed to any other vernacular) is supposed to sound, in its standard version. But this has nothing to do with how "pure" that regional vernacular is.
To be fair, the "Chinese-educated" ethnic Chinese whom I meet tend to accept such distinctions. Eg. to them, the language of Chaozhou (潮州）opera is not merely "impure Mandarin", it is a vernacular which gives us a valuable glimpse into Middle Chinese. I hope this doesn't offend anybody out there, but most non-Chinese I have met don't even have the most basic knowledge concerning the history of "modern Mandarin".
Posted on: 对症下药
June 14, 2008 at 1:03 PMCPOD, that last post was obscene, wasn't it? Well, "joder" = "fuck" the last time I studied Spanish... Even if the poster meant it in the common sense of "fuck me!", it's still uncomfortable. Okay, one post I made here was OT, but all I can say is: Tough "sheet". I'm managing to learn Chinese here, from fellow learners, even if we do slip into "off-topic" zones occasionally.
Posted on: Sightseeing at Tiananmen
June 13, 2008 at 12:24 AM@rcamposgmail and @LostInAsia:
To supplement LostInAsia's explanation, which sounded correct to me, I'd like to add that 样子 is a actually compound word -- a noun -- which means "appearance or type or kind".
The sense of shuaibo's question was, "What's Tiananmen like?" Literally, Tiananmen is what kind? But it's good Chinese.
Here are the examples from my little dictionary (apologies for the lack of pinyin-ization, but I honestly only have enough time to get these down for you and do a rough English translation):
小姑娘的样子好像她妈妈。The young lady resembles her mother.
他生气的样子很吓人。The way he is/ looks when he is angry is very frightening.
你姐姐长什么样子？What does your elder sister look like?
看他的样子好像不太高兴似的。Looking at him he doesn't look too happy.
这种样子的大衣很便宜。This kind of winter coat is very cheap.
他穿衣服从来不注意样子。He has always dressed without caring about how he looked.
我也有这种样子的书架。 I also have this kind of bookshelf.
他们家的沙发样子很大方。The sofa in their home looks very tasteful.
The Chinese used in the examples is, in all honesty, too difficult for newbies. But I hope it will be able to help somebody on some level.
Posted on: Regional Accents Part II
June 19, 2008 at 2:49 PMtvan, okay, I'm well and truly out of my depth here!
I can only confirm that the Malay word "menteri" does mean "minister". And also that this word probably does have Sanskrit roots; the modern-day Hindi word for "minister" sounds very much like "mantri"/"mandhri" to me (but that's based only on nothing more than watching too many Bollywood flicks, eg. "Asoka").
What I'm less sure about is how what the Portuguese heard as "Mandarim" might have become "Mandarins" in English, in the context of China affairs.
It doesn't help that Portuguese and the British were slugging it out with each other for dominance of the "East Indies" during those years, even before the Dutch arrived on the scene (outside of Indochina, the French always steered well clear... especially after geopolitical influence in the region was "rearranged" by the outcome of the Napoleonic wars).
Having said that, there are many, very clear, relics of Portuguese in the Malay language. Eg. the Malay word for butter is "mentega", and Malay-speaking people understand each other when they talk about putting things away in the "Almarin".
tvan, I'm genuinely sorry (and embarrassed) to do another multi-page post, but I just can't help it! What makes the linguistic history of this period even less predictable, is the fact that Portugal was not so far removed from the days of the Caliphate at that time. So a lot of so-called "Portuguese" words introduced during that period were actually Arabic in origin, whilst at the same time Islam was slowly gaining ground in the region, bringing in Arabic words directly at the same time.
Do you think that John Pasden is going to close us down now?