User Comments - auntie68

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auntie68

Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 7:17 PM

Dear Jenny 老师, thank you for answering my question. That's quite a mouthful -- 第一(/二)次世界大战 !!!

Posted on: The Neutral Tone
February 14, 2008 at 7:07 PM

Dear finally30 and nobailesconmigo, ooh, be careful what you ask for! ;-) The technical processes behind these tone changes are so hellishly complicated that linguistics experts can't even describe them without using a sanskrit word ("sandhi")... Btw, nobailesconmigo, I am a "heritage speaker" of Cantonese. And I can tell you that when Cantonese-speakers "code-switch" whilst speaking that dialect, the English words which slip into their speech.... have tone contours! I have no idea whether it's merely a question of inflection/intonation, or whether it's a "tone thing". Just that it's automatic, and not random. This never happens when I am speaking Mandarin, which is a "learned" language for me. Nor do I detect it in Jenny's speech during the "banter" section which involves a lot of code-switching. Sometimes I wonder whether that particular twist in the codeswitching happens in Cantonese because that dialect (unlike Mandarin) makes an important distinction between long and short vowels. Hence something about the "contours" of English sounds gives it enough of a grip to kick in. Thai is another language that has a "long vs short" vowel distinction, and I hear my Thai friends adding tone contours to English words that creep into their speech too, when they are speaking Thai. I do that too when I speak Thai, even though it is a language learned only in adulthood. Hmm...

Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 9:13 AM

Hello changye. I like your suggestion. Very subtle. The correct intonation would be (an ironic), "he is -- ahem -- careful with his money," of course...

Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 8:42 AM

Jenny 老师, just out of curiosity, how do people usually refer to "WWI" and "WWII" in China? I'm only asking because I suspect that China's memories of the "Pacific War" may be quite different from the images and ideas that would spring to mind in Europe, America or Australia. In Singapore, people -- especially the older folk -- tend to refer to "the (Japanese) Occupation", because that was most immediate for them. In England, where I studied, everybody in my class -- except me -- knew that the "Great War" which we mark on Remembrance Day is actually... WWI. Thanks!

Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 8:26 AM

P/s: I took my 2-year-old nephew's Pocky from him and ate it. Please don't tell his parents.

Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 8:24 AM

Oh my, changye. When I was in primary school (in the 1970s), "Glico" pocky was THE ultimate school snack. Thing is, it was sold in whole boxes, not a few sticks at a time. So buying pocky was a "big ticket" purchase (for an eight-year-old). And today, 30+ years on, the Stunt Toddler munches on as much pocky as he can persuade his parents/ Nanny/ Auntie to allow him. We should buy shares in that company...

Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 6:15 AM

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! Is nobody going to jump in and answer casie's sweet question about how to say 小气鬼／ 小气 in English? She's done so much for us! I'd go for "mean" (the OTHER meaning of "mean", casie) or "tight-fisted", myself. "Stingy" always seems a bit too strong to me, because it's so explicit. One useful expression is "cheap", not in the good objective sense (= 便宜), but in the sense that the person goes for 小便宜. Examples: "Why don't you just give $50 and be done with it? After all, it's for a good cause, and you don't want to appear cheap." "He is so cheap that he was willing to sleep on the floor of his friend's living room for six weeks, just to avoid renting a room/ so cheap that he comes to my house every day just to read the newspapers. Imagine!" "Michael Schumachers's generous personal gift of USD$10million towards recovery efforts after the Tsunami made the official contributions of certain nations appear mean by comparison." "Cousin B was so cheap that his standard tip -- in Europe! -- was a one-dollar USD$ note. Even for a very nice meal costing several hundred Euros. I'll never travel with him again." [*true story!!!!!] casie, I think that "cheap" is always bad. "Mean" is a bit more neutral and can sometimes be softened, but is still negative. And yet I think I've heard "tight-fisted" being used with a tone of pride before by at least one parent, eg., "My daughter is only five years old, but she is already so tight-fisted (subtext = "careful"/ "prudent") with her own money that she insisted on buying a locally-made XXX instead of the imported XXX that all her friends were showing off in school." But here I think the parent was using a negative term so that she could boast about her child! I hope that some native English speakers will weigh in soon! Good luck, casie!

Posted on: Study Abroad
February 14, 2008 at 1:29 AM

I'd like very much to second Bazza on his "casie suggestion". Since casie appeared on the scene, I've often caught myself thinking thoughts along the lines of, "I hope they're smart enough to hire her". Usually when I've just read a post by casie that was to-the-point and helpful, and also friendly. Thanks casie!

Posted on: Study Abroad
February 13, 2008 at 1:00 PM

I'd just like to add my (habitual) warning that in Chinese, whether an adjective is "predicative" or "attributive" in any given context can't always be readily understood via applying rules of European grammar. I believe that these grammar concepts do indeed exist in Chinese, but not necessarily always in a way that can be translated directly into -- say -- the language of English grammar. Eg. in the expression 安全第一 ("Safety First"), I'd say that the "第一" is a predicate just like in the English version, which actually means, "Safety [is] First". But that is a function of feel and experience. Learning a language like Chinese, I've often been struck by how something which is habitually expressed as a simple adjective in English may actually be a verb in Chinese. Or vice versa. And the way verbs and adjectives are "nominalized" in Chinese can be very different from how it is done in English; this is something which can make the correct usage of particles like "的" so difficult to grasp. Another example: "说话不标准", which actually carries the meaning of "not-speaking-accurately" in Chinese, which would probably be conveyed in English via an adverb ("accurately"). My intention is not to scare anybody, just to encourage fellow learners to listen to Chinese, and let the meanings sink in naturally without trying to hard to apply rigid grammar rules which are based on totally different languages.

Posted on: Study Abroad
February 13, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Hm. channa's explanation makes so much more sense than my bloated one. Sorry, please erase from your memory what I wrote, and go by what channa wrote.