User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: I Have Class
February 21, 2008 at 2:44 AMor: 昨日が私は。。。This kind of thing is really difficult to explain in English!
Posted on: I Have Class
February 21, 2008 at 2:36 AM昨日は私が９時に。。。 私は昨日９時に。。。 nicolas, if you can understand Japanese, it's this kind of distinction... "wa" vs "ga". Only Mandarin doesn't have specific particles, it is all done using word order. I know I'm going to regret posting this... sorry changye if I've mangled your language!
Posted on: I Have Class
February 21, 2008 at 2:10 AMAnd I haven't even whipped out the dreaded "predicate" word...
Posted on: I Have Class
February 21, 2008 at 2:09 AMThis Auntie is not 100% sure, but she suspects that word position is conditioned by whether the 昨天 functions as a noun (Eg. 昨天是我的生日), or as a verb, in the sentence. Over to the real experts, now...
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 20, 2008 at 9:38 AMMe too, Henning! Hope you know that i was only teasing you back there... your posts are always fantastic.
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 20, 2008 at 8:59 AMbtw, henning, what is this about "girls" not liking sci-fi? Bad! BAD!! This Auntie was a girl once, too many years ago, and during that time, she loved reading the latest Frank Herbert or Isaac Asimov or Philip K Dick, often in the first editions because she is so old. Bad! Bad!
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 20, 2008 at 8:58 AMDear RJ, I too am waiting for changye's response to your question. I suspect that it may be a legal issue. When I placed my order for these DVDs on amazon.co.jp, half of the DVDs in my shopping basket were "not available for export from Japan, we are very sorry". The only items that made it through the "checkout" process were these three "Anniversary/ Art House" (yeah...) editions, and -- regrettably -- a double audio CD of the Les Miserables (Tokyo cast) official recording, which must -- surely!! -- establish once and for all my credentials as a respectable, staid, "pure vanilla" Singaporean Auntie whose only care is for a Stunt Toddler, aged two and a bit...
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 20, 2008 at 2:00 AMdaixiong, whenever the mixing of politics and language/culture threatens to weigh too heavily on me, I remind myself of an encounter I had with an Angry Young Catalan in London, when I was still in Bar Stool -- oops, Bar School. During the few months that he was at my hostel, he made it a point to speak only English to the many Spaniards in my building because, "djou ("you"), djou know, Catalan ees so berry diferente from the Espanish that eet ees actually clo-ser to the Heng-gleesh. Therefore, I prefer es-speak Heng-gleesh". In the thickest Spanish accent I have ever heard so far in my life. To me, it was like those scenes in vintage movies where everybody in the scene is a German soldier but they are all speaking English... Hope this didn't offend any Catalans out there! I visit the Gerona region every year and have good Catalan friends who seem pretty relaxed about speaking Spanish once in a while, probably because they are fluent in Catalan, English, French, and Spanish.
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 20, 2008 at 1:42 AMDear daixiong, I enjoyed reading your 3.00am thoughts on this prickly issue. Thanks! It gave me a (to me, balanced-sounding) perspective of how feelings run on the ground in Taiwan, a place about which I know so little. Most thought-provoking of all -- for me -- was the idea that if the attitude in the PRC and Singapore can be said to be 写简识繁, in Taiwan the attitude may possible go so far beyond 写繁识简 as to resemble "写繁嫌简“ or "写繁恨简" instead. Sorry folks, for my clumsy Mandarin; those are my own words, and it's probably bad Chinese. Still, I can understand how emotive the issue can be. Judging by the emotions expressed in the "I have class" lesson over "Standard English" (what's that?), I think that even a simple spelling difference like "harbour vs harbor", "grey vs gray" could involve a lot of emotion.
Posted on: Behind the Scenes at the Beauty Pageant
February 21, 2008 at 11:14 AMHi bababoo. The distinction between different forms of "we" -- 我们 (non-inclusive) and 咱们 (inclusive) -- is an important one to the people who speak that language. aert's example is a really good one for helping the memory. And as aert says, this distinction is made in several languages. In Malay, you have "kami" vs "kita", as well as "kami" vs "tayo" in quite a few Filipino dialects. It's rarer in Chinese, but in languages that make this distinction, using the wrong "we"/"us" can lead to serious misunderstandings... Good luck! We (inclusive) can do it!