User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Hiring a Courier
March 6, 2008 at 2:05 AMThank you so much lujiaojie! I'm glad that the "很 vs 多 distinction in the usage of 虽然 and 无论/ 不管 was not wrong... once again, thank you.
Posted on: Buying a Newspaper
March 6, 2008 at 1:47 AMOops, my typing is awful, here is one para again, with the correct hanyu pinyin: [QUOTE] If you replace the "lai2" (来; come) with "qu4“ (去; go), you get 回去 hui2qu4, which literally means "to return-go". Eg. wo3 yao4 hui2qu4 mei3guo2le -- 我要回去美国了 -- which means, "I am going back to the United States". [/QUOTE] Sorry!
Posted on: Buying a Newspaper
March 6, 2008 at 1:45 AMeastcoastyankee2703, the question you asked is probably good for a whole episode of Amber's "Qing Wen" podcasts on exactly this kind of thing (see "Lessons", and within that, go to "Qing Wen". But until they do a lesson (may be sooner than you think): First, try to think of the difference between the expressions, "Come back" and "Go back" in English. In Mandarin, the "lai2" more or less corresponds to the "come" in "come back". Literally, hui2lai2 (回来) means: "To return-come". Eg. wo3 cong2 mei3guo2 hui2lai2le -- 我从美国回来了 -- means, "I came back from the United States". For what it's worth, one European language which does a lot of this is German. If you replace the "lai2" (来; come) with "qu4“ (去; go), you get 回去 hui2qu4, which literally means "to return-go". Eg. wo3 yao3 hui2qu4 mei3guo2le -- 我要回去美国了 -- which means, "I am going back to the United States". The Chinese language just LOVES tacking these directional verbs (particles?) on to verbs. You don't have to merely bring something, you can "bring it come back". You'll get a feel for this very soon, at which point the only problem is trying to keep these speech patterns out of your English! It's catching... Good luck with your Chinese studies!
Posted on: Chinese Green Eggs and Ham
March 5, 2008 at 5:40 AMEg. Just try "wu" or "tong", for a start. Everything in your dictionary under "wu", regardless of tone.
Posted on: Chinese Green Eggs and Ham
March 5, 2008 at 5:29 AMHi thetrystero. You know what, you're probably doing fine. The skills that enable you to use the radical=meaning, phonetic=sound formula are the same skills that will enable you to develop a better "feel" for the more opaque/quirky characters. One tip: The division is not so clear-cut. Eg. Many of the "sound" characters also convey meaning too. Just keep your mind open and relaxed, and this "feel" will come. If you are terribly keen to help this process along, here is something you can try: Whenever you learn a new character that you feel really comfortable, why not try flipping through your dictionary and glancing at all the entries for characters with the same sound? Don't slog away at it; just let your eyes pause at any same-sounding characters where something looks familiar and/or simply seems interesting, and compare the English definition of THAT word with the one you already know. More often than not, you will find a few characters for the "sound" side of that sound. To be honest, many native Chinese speakers know a lot of characters which they can guess the meaning of, but which they may not know how to pronounce with any degree of certitude! Just let it happen... Good luck!
Posted on: Chinese Green Eggs and Ham
March 5, 2008 at 2:02 AMHi nishizhutou. Are you sure you didn't mis-hear CPOD on 好主意? Try saying hao3zhu3yi correctly -- the 意 here is not 4th tone, it is supposed to be a neutral tone --; I'd bet that it's closer to what you think you heard. If I seem to be so dogged about looking closely at your beefs with CPOD's pronunciation, it's nothing to do with any desire to compete over dick length, or any weird need for "perfection". But this is a newbie level lesson, and any real newbie here probably doesn't have the language skills (yet) to tell whether they should be worrying about picking up strange pronunciation (or worse still, wrong pronunciation) from CPOD based on your theories.
Posted on: Hiring a Courier
March 5, 2008 at 12:24 AMrash, you're welcome. Seems okay to me. But I'm not a native speaker! So let's see what Clay (or Amber or John) have to say.
Posted on: Hiring a Courier
March 4, 2008 at 1:55 PMP/s: Regarding your question about 虽然 vs 无论, the 虽然 condition doesn't convey magnitude, in itself. Whereas 无论 does; I think your 无论 sentence would be correct if you re-phrased the first part as "无论多贵" (no matter how expensive...". Another difference is that 虽然 goes with 但是. Whereas the particle which completes 无论 has to be 都 or 还是 or 也. That's because 虽然 's meaning is not "regardless of", it is "even if/ even though". Buona fortuna, rash...
Posted on: Hiring a Courier
March 4, 2008 at 1:41 PMHi rash. I think I know what you're getting at. May I try? 不管 and 无论 both convey the same sense of "no matter; regardless", BUT: 不管 seems to convey the notion that "the result will be the same irrespective of whether the conditions are A or B (or something else)". Eg. 不管下雨不下雨, 我们都要去 (Whether it rains or does not rain, we are still going). Whereas 无论 doesn't contrast different conditions. Eg. 无论他说什么， 我都不相信 ("No matter what he says, I won't believe him."). Or: 她无论多忙，每天都要学一小时华语“ ("No matter how busy she is, she'll study Chinese for one hour every day.") I hope I don't sound like a crazy bag lady! It is a subtle difference, but one which seems to matter in Chinese. One thing to be careful of is word order; can be tricky. You know, rash, if you are at Upper-Intermediate, I really can't recommend highly enough this new dictionary I started using a few weeks ago: The Times-Commercial Press Chinese Learner's Dictionary. It's the only "Chinese character-only" dictionary that I've been able to use. It's the "international' version of the Commercial Press' Chinese Learner's Dictionary, published by EPB Pan-Pacific (2008). They cut down the number of entries but beefed up the examples (wow!), re-wrote definitions to make them easier for foreign learners to understand, and -- al-hamdulillah! -- added really useful "usage notes'" to address EXACTLY the kind of questions that we are asking on every CPOD comments thread. Best of all (for me), it notes differences in usage between Northern and Southern speakers. The Commercial Press original version has an impeccable pedigree, I believe it is a product of the minds behind the Beijing Language and Culture University. So many Chinese dictionaries out there are sloppy or plain dodgy, this one has BLCU stamped all over it, from the rational format to the lack of any typos of any sort in the English-language versions of the front matter etc. My paperback copy cost me only SGD $27.71, at an exchange rate of USD$1 to about SGD$1.40. It's substantial (900+ pages), but all-round only about the same size as a "pocket" Oxford English Dictionary. Font is a nice size for reading. Catch is, of course, that I don't know if it's available yet in many countries. Publication date is 2008. But it's already a hit here in Singapore. Guess you can look out for it! The ISBN is978-981-271-770-2. The publisher's website is www.panpaceducation.com . Good luck!
Posted on: Hiring a Courier
March 6, 2008 at 2:19 AMrash, there is a "grammar point" at work here governing the word order. But probably this is more suitable for a Qing Wen lesson. Briefly, my dictionary says that if the subject in both clauses is the same, then the subject goes BEFORE the 无论 (or the 不管, as the case may be), so that the link between the subject in the first clause and the subject in the second clause is made absolutely clear. In which case, the second subject is dropped, because it is already implied by that construction. Eg (English-only, sorry!). "She, no matter how much soju she drank, was too shy to sing karaoke in front of her friends." (Subject1 = Subject2) "No matter how much soju she drank, her friends kept refilling her glass." (Subject 1 ("she") and Subject 2 ("her friends") are not the same). Hope this makes at least a bit of sense! Thanks rash for your patience.