User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan
May 9, 2008 at 12:23 PMOkay, I finally hear you, lunetta. Yes, you're right, the man's "zhe" is not very thick.. it is a bit "halfway". But he sounded so startled that there wasn't really a lot of time for him to form the sound. His tongue was melting! ;-)
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan
May 9, 2008 at 12:02 PMHi penben, lunetta -- I've just listened to the dialogue, and the man says "这么“ (zhe4me), like Clay said, not 怎么 (zen3me). I think what threw you for a loop was the effect of the man's intonation -- ie. exaggerated by his suprise -- on the tones. Just like in English, intonation does change how things sound in Mandarin. Eg: "So?" "So...." "So I told her not to come back to work..." "So! It was you all along!" etc etc.
Posted on: 《奋斗》之父子争执片段
May 9, 2008 at 11:11 AMYou will, Luke, you will...
Posted on: Overseas Chinese
May 9, 2008 at 5:22 AMHmm... I know that Jenny Zhu kindly clarified above that 华侨 (hua2qiao2) only refers to overseas Chinese who were actually born in China (and not their foreign-born descendants --, but: Given that three of us overseas Chinese (ewong, chinehao, me) somehow grew up thinking that it means something slightly different -- ie, "The Chinese Diaspora" --, is there any wriggle room to dig a bit deeper to see if there isn't anything meaningful behind our confusion? I'm quite sure that the Southeast Asian Chinese who welcomed Dr Sun Yat-sen and raised money for him considered themselves to be 华侨, even though many of them were already second- or third-generation overseas Chinese. After all, the more established immigrants had accumulated more wealth than the "fresher" immigrants. Just being mischievous here...
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan
May 9, 2008 at 2:54 AMHello. One effective way of putting out fires in the mouth is to swallow a small amount of milk. It seems that the casein in the milk binds with the capsaicin in the chilli, putting out the burn. Well, this works for me. Drinking water merely spreads the capsaicin around. One problem is that milk doesn't go well with Chinese food...
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 8, 2008 at 3:11 PMHeh heh...
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 8, 2008 at 2:53 PMAre you very sure, calkins? What if your gorgeous chickbabe girlfriend had to "go Godiva" to feel comfortable?
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan
May 8, 2008 at 1:59 PMClay, thanks for those yummy food pictures. Thanks to them, I had my lunch (plain rice with a very garlicky chicken and shiitake mushroom stew) one hour early...
Posted on: Singapore
May 8, 2008 at 1:30 PMOuch, hitokiri, I wish I could tell you the answer, but I couldn't do that without rushing out to Kinokuniya to buy a good Cantonese dictionary, which I can't afford this month! For what it's worth, I think the Hokkien word "kia-" seems to be equivalent to the Cantonese word "geeng" (1st tone, in jyutping?). Thanks for sharing the answer with me if you get it, in traditional/Cantonese characters if need be. Take care, hitokiri, and be good!
Posted on: Chicago
May 10, 2008 at 1:30 AMscheu, misterjess, sometimes I feel a bit guilty and wonder whether my bad habit of rushing in with a homemade answer might be to blame in any way... it's like they don't bother any more if it looks like the question has been answered, no matter who answered it...