User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 19, 2008 at 4:49 AMThank you, changye. Phew, that's how I understood it too. Nice writing.
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 4:46 AMThanks, casie! Yes, I was careless, sorry: 吃药 chi1 yao4 is a general expression, equivalent to "taking medicine". But where the medicine is specifically liquid or solid, then you 喝 or 吃 it accordingly, of course. I remember this one because a friend of mine excused himself for a few minutes in order to 吃药, and I was surprised to find him drinking a few spoonfuls of warm herbal medicine (brown-coloured) rather than swallowing pills!
Posted on: Hot Soup
February 19, 2008 at 4:07 AMJust to chime in -- If I'm not mistaken, Chinese people "eat" medicine -- 吃药 chi1 yao4. Not only tablets and capsules, but even the liquid kind -- Eg. cough syrup -- is "eaten".
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 18, 2008 at 11:57 PMMorning, klgardensong. There already is a word for that: "vanilla". Rather sweet, isn't it?
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 18, 2008 at 8:28 PMHello aert. When I wrote that governments should simply let their people "vote with the words they wrote", I was only trying -- clumsily, as usual! -- to make the point that I think people should be allowed to use whatever writing system they prefer. Rather than having new characters imposed upon them by the government of the day, for no obvious reason other than a desire to tinker with something that isn't... broken. I know you agree with me! Most of the time, this BB is a good example of how the users of two very different systems can mix it up without any serious confusion. Jenny 老师, I totally agree with you about the hidden difficulties of writing simplified characters nicely! The Stunt Toddler and I each have Chinese names which are combinations of the characters 王， 义，仁， and 玉. Really easy to learn, but not easy to learn to write nicely! Still, it is easy to pick our own names out on lists, any time... user31534 -- ouch, it's difficult to use 什么鬼 in a way that DOESN'T sound abrupt, even rude. Even if you write it in traditional characters. Bet you were actually aiming for a much friendlier tone.
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 18, 2008 at 1:14 PMOkay, now it's my turn to be "all het up". Sorry. What will such "character unification" mean to written Cantonese, I wonder? I am a Cantonese speaker from infancy, only recently (with my growing interest in Mandarin) I have begun to fall in love with written colloquial Cantonese (nearly, but not quite, an oxymoron!), which includes many "uniquely Cantonese" traditional hanzi 汉字, as well as a number of suprisingly simple-/modern- looking characters which represent Middle Chinese language components which are alive and well in 21st century Cantonese, even if they are extinct in Mandarin and most "northern" dialects. I really wish Governments would let their own people vote with the words that they write, and -- equally -- that the people will be aware and passionate about what matters to them.
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 18, 2008 at 12:57 PMno, changye, not too long. As I mentioned in my first post on this thread, it's an emotive issue. For me, I don't think that any one system is "better" than the other as long as I am free to 写简识繁, an approach which rejects ideology and politics. But like you, I think I would feel very strongly opposed to any kind of knee-jerk, "pc" rush to create hybrid characters just for the sake of pleasing everybody, if the end-product is not firmly based on purely linguistic principles. This Auntie would much rather "let Nature take its course", where the evolution of Chinese characters is concerned. In this I believe that the PRC has rich experience, which can only be beneficial to other hanzi/kanji/hanja users; not enough is made of the Beijing's courage and integrity in repealing over-simplified characters at a time when it can't have been politically expedient to do so... I believe that was even before the PRC had its seat in the UN...
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 18, 2008 at 11:22 AMthanks for the clarification, artkho! For what it's worth, this Auntie is a Doting Tita (shhh!!!) of the Stunt Toddler (aged 2+), who is a true Pinoy-Tsinoy-Tisoy. Today he was eating "pan de sal" like there was no tomorrow! It's his favourite food of the moment! If I'm not wrong (given my family's inability to read genealogical records in Chinese), I think that our ancestors were from the same huge part of China. My family is said to be "fukien/Hokkien" Chinese, my family name -- "Ong" -- is the fukien version of 王。 I have a cousin who married into Filipino Chinese family. Best wishes, Auntie
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 18, 2008 at 10:18 AMP/s: user3919, I believe that you can/should follow your own instincts. Some Chinese teachers feel strongly that the "writing practice" should be done on the traditional kind of exercise notepaper that has evenly-sized squares. For me personally, I've never been able to write natural-looking characters on such "graph paper". Not even when it was an exam composition where the marks were all-important. The only kind of paper I can write "decent" Chinese characters on is plain paper with no lines or squares; not a problem if I am only practising new characters or CPOD sentences that sound cool. Good luck!
Posted on: To Love or Be Loved
February 19, 2008 at 1:29 PMlydia1981 -- heh heh! I can see how a lesson on BDSM vocabulary would be "a little less corny". And even useful, given the surprising extent (that is, surprising to "vanilla" people) to which "tops" and "bottoms" customarily "negotiate" every possibly boundary, in very great detail, before they can begin to "play". Let's say it's not a field of activity where you want to be misunderstood... Eg. "safe word". uncle changye, how is your command of nawashibari （縄縛り sp.?) vocab? You could be a consultant to the Academic Director himself - very exciting -- on all the different names for the knots and "ties". I'm not qualified because I've merely watched a few DVDs of films by Nikkatsu Corp (true 団鬼六 classics, with Naomi Tani), and there wasn't a great deal of dialogue. Sorry folks. This Auntie was only teasing. In real life, I'm pure vanilla.