User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Yang Jie's Diary: He's Not Stupid
March 27, 2008 at 12:12 AMHi calkins. For once, I don't know how to answer your question! This is really one for rich -- I think you've somehow become grammatically aware of the "inceptive 了" (as opposed to the "perfective 了" ). I believe the 了 there has nothing to do with the rules for using 刚刚. It is not the "roughly equivalent to past tense"-kind of 了, it is the OTHER kind of 了 which is a modal particle in phrases such as: 你怎么了？ What's wrong/up with you? 我知道了。I know. 警察来了！The police are here! (警察 jing3cha2) 我有了。 I'm pregnant (Literally: I have already). This other 了, the "inceptive 了", is emphatic, introducing a new fact or some change of state. For the benefit of the native Chinese speakers, my dictionary's definition: (助）用在句子或者分句的末尾，表示变化或者出现新的情况。 It doesn't necessarily emphasize the completion of some action or state of affairs like the "perfective 了" does, which is defined in the following terms: ( 助）用在动词或形容词后边，表示动作或状态已经完成了或实现。 Good luck, you need it! There is a good chance that I am giving you the wrong answer, so I hope that a native speaker will step up to the plate now.
Posted on: Baseball
March 26, 2008 at 1:28 AMUncle changye! Thank you so much for giving us, the CPOD petrolheads, this info. One of the sites I go to for news -- it's a reputable one -- seems to have a Chinese version too, but my Chinese isn't good enough to be able to know anything about the quality of the writing: http://cn.f1-live.com/f1/cn/index.shtml Japanese companies are very major players in F1, selling customer engines and/or even racing under their own colours. Eg. Honda, Toyota, Super Aguri. And all the tires are made by Bridgestone. I don't envy John Pasden if he has to host a lesson on F1, because Americans are not known for being interested in F1. There is a famous anecdote going around about how a certain American GP sold fewer tickets than an ostrich race being held in the next town. When they interviewed the ostrich race organizer, he said, "Oh, I think it's because we invested a lot more money this year on promotion. Yup, this year we spent USD$150." Once again, thank you!
Posted on: Baseball
March 25, 2008 at 3:29 PMbillgloveruk, yesss!!! I'd love a podcast on Formula One. If my memory serves me correctly, if you look at Jenny Zhu's c.v. on the CPOD site, it mentions that she has done PR/translation work for the Shanghai GP. And as a Singaporean petrolhead, I'd love (LOVE!!) to have a lesson on persuading a Chinese boss to shell out for nice F1 tickets for clients (the kind of ticket that includes pit passes, and VIP lounge access). And maybe even another lesson on taking those clients to the race and making small-talk about: ear-plugs (the importance thereof), leggy under-dressed pit babes, dramatic shunts, pit-lane drama (eg. car bursts into flames, driver drives off prematurely knocking over mechanics etc etc), safety car periods, how the order gets shuffled during pitstops, and the various penalties. There's even plenty of room to introduce vocab about sponsorship (how much was that little Deutsche Vermoegensomething strip on the front of Michael Schumacher's cap worth, again?). If CPOD are really brave, I'd like to know how to say "aerodynamic downforce" in Mandarin, in the context of explaining that the race is exciting because the teams can't change their aero package mid-race, so they have to decide whether to set up the car for sheer power on the straights, or for maximum speed through the slower corners without flying off... Stop Auntie, Stop! Sorry, I am such a F1 maniac...!
Posted on: The Pickup Artist
March 25, 2008 at 8:29 AMHello Uncle changye! I guess we do not appreciate orchids sufficiently here in tropical Singapore, where orchid farms form an important part of the economy. The climate does help; in the messy garden of my family home, wild orchids grow on trees. It was wicked of me to induce that pickup-artists to eat orchids, just to amuse myself, without knowing anything about their toxicity. Given the number of long words on the phytosanitary certificate (which permitted me to hand-carry 96 stalks of orchids easily into the EU), that oily man probably ingested a lot of fungicides and preservatives which were not meant for human consumption. Don't forget, even bees aren't interested in orchids... maybe they know something that we don't...
Posted on: The Pickup Artist
March 24, 2008 at 1:47 PMI mean, I've lived in Asia nearly all my life, and I have seen rose petals and even marigold petals used as an edible decoration before, but never -- not even once -- have I seen orchids being eaten by human beings before. Oh dear.
Posted on: The Pickup Artist
March 24, 2008 at 1:39 PMThis Auntie has only just managed to reach this lesson after clearing a considerable "lesson backlog". If this man's lines aren't "toe-curling"/ 肉麻 rou4ma2, I don't know what is! Thanks CPOD. If you don't mind a bit of a rambling story, the "dragueur" in this podcast reminds me (guiltily) of a suave gentleman whom I nearly killed sometime after the year 2000. That winter, I had rented the "Granny Flat" of an Italian family friend's B&B in Venice for about six weeks, to "improve my Italian" (improve? pui !!!). These gracious Venetians encouraged me to join them, and their B&B guests, for breakfast and any dinners etc which they cooked for their guests. Well, one of the B&B guests was an charming Argentine, in his 30s, who -- drunk on the romantic atmosphere of all those gondolas -- hit on every female in the sestiere using every line immortalized in the podcast script, but concentrating especially on the females living at that address. At the same time, he also used to hand me his mug -- with the teabag and tag still wrapped around the handle, YUCKKK!!! -- and ask -- with a wink -- "thank you, cara mia...". Yes, so that I would wash it! Bleugkh!!! Most of his sentences began with the words, "we Latin men like women, especially women who..." After a few days, this Auntie decided that the situation was untenable. My hosts organized an informal candlelit dinner, and invited me. Well. My face is burning now with guilt as I recall what I did, but I willingly gave over to my hosts the eight dozen stalks of "phytosanitary" orchids which I had hand-carried with me from Singapore for that soiree. So there were orchids everywhere, floating in bowls of water, strewn prettily on the tablecloth, filling vases and even jam jars. Very pretty and romantic! During the soiree, I bent my lips close to this man's ear, and whispered, "Don't tell anybody, and please be careful how you do it (wink, wink), but for "Oriental people", orchids are a very strong romantic symbol, very sexy; in fact, eating an orchid flower is one of the most powerfully sexual gestures in our culture... so be careful, please!" Oh gawd! During dinner, this smooth smokey-eyed Argentine swain ate one orchid after another, whispering this "sexy oriental pearl of erotic wisdom" into the ears of one girl after another. At one point he even winked at me, as if thanking me for the tip. But at a certain point, my Italian friend T (who was in on it, she was just as pissed off) and I started exchanging guilty looks and asking ourselves whether orchids were toxic. I remember taking a few orchid stalks out of his hands, with a warning to go "piano, piano!", and quietly praying that we wouldn't have to call the water ambulance (this was Venice) to get his stomach pumped. Fortunately, for my conscience, the guy didn't die or even get sick. Yeah, he lived to tell the story, and is probably eating orchids for chickbabes somewhere in the world as I type this... But seriously, it was not funny at all when I was watching him chew Dendrobia and fielding panic-stricken questions in my head about the toxicity of orchids... and how to say, "pump his stomach" in Italian. Life is rich...
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: The Importance of Brains
March 24, 2008 at 1:53 AMAiya, calkins, it's nothing. The questions you ask are always really good ones. I benefit from them because they prod me to think about why I say things in certain ways in Chinese. This time, all the answers came from my little dictionary. Okay, time to get ready to pick up the Stunt Toddler from his pre-school. He loves Mandarin! In just three months (with ZERO home exposure, hah hah), he's learned nearly all the colours and is already playing "teacher" to my mother, who doesn't know them. And sometimes he will break into Chinese "action songs". He loves the cheesy Chinese actions, and so do I, although I don't always understand the lyrics because he is only imitating sounds, and doesn't understand them yet. All credit goes to his Chinese teacher, whom he loves so much that SHE was the one he went to for assistance when he had a "No.2 accident" in his nappy. Ciao -- Auntie
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: The Importance of Brains
March 24, 2008 at 1:39 AMP/s: I think that in the example you gave, 很 (the original) is probably a marginally better choice than 真 because the two phrases -- (1) 她很漂亮; and (2) 但是没有什么头脑 are actually "in apposition", ie. the latter phrase contradicts the preceding phrase rather than supporting it. So 很, being more factual/ neutral, may be (marginally) more effective in the grammatical structure. Cf. 她真漂亮，办公室里的男人都爱上了她。 But that's only what my gut tells me... I could be wrong.
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: The Importance of Brains
March 24, 2008 at 1:00 AMAiya, just found a typo in my hypy. 长篇小说 chang2pian1 xiao3shuo1 Grrr...
Posted on: Yang Jie's Diary: He's Not Stupid
March 27, 2008 at 12:17 AMP/s: So another way of translating 你刚刚去哪儿了？is maybe, "And you'd be [back] from where [now]?". The construction is a question but it also emphasizes the fact that the person is back.