User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Study Abroad
February 13, 2008 at 12:14 PMDear fudapeng, since you have been so great with advice on grits, please let me try to weigh in (ooh! but 1. *without responsibility*): Take these two phrases: 1. 新的衣服 2. 新衣服 Translated into English, the first phrase means "clothes which are new". Whereas 新衣服 means "new clothes". In hard-core grammarspeak, the adjective "new" is slightly different in each sentence. In #1 ("clothes which are new"), the adjective could be said to be "predicative". To a layman like me, this means that it qualifies the verb "to be" -- "I am psyched", "He is stoked", "She is snippy" etc. My understanding is that the Chinese "no 的 with adjectives of more than one syllable"-"rule" may not apply when the adjective is a predicate. Having said that, I first learned these terms via studying hellish German grammar (sorry Henning!), so chances are that I didn't get it right. On the other hand, #2 ("new clothes") is "attributive", in the sense that the adjective qualifies not the verb (ie "to be"), but rather, it directly qualifies the noun itself. Eg. "Rich, runny grits"; "Crispy bacon"; "Hot milk"; "Well-chilled champagne" etc. Hope this helps... If I am wrong, I hope that somebody who really does know something about linguistics (unlike me) -- eg. John Pasden, or aert, or changye -- will come and rescue me from my own ignorance and stop it from infecting everybody else on this BB.
Posted on: Study Abroad
February 13, 2008 at 11:09 AMBut I don't think it sounds like something that would go well with grilled kippers... or blood sausage. That goes better with toast or black bread, and maybe some scrambled eggs.... Somebody save me, please!
Posted on: Study Abroad
February 13, 2008 at 11:06 AMhello fudapeng. Grits sound so delicious. Now I've got to try some. I understand it's a breakfast food; it's got to be awesome with fat grilled sausages and bacon. Are you allowed to put some butter on hot grits to semi-melt, or is that too sinful? Comfort food.... ahhh!
Posted on: Iron Your Clothes
February 13, 2008 at 12:59 AMHi malaoshi. I understand that 碟 is the Chinese word that has emerged as the simplest word for "disc". As in CD, DVD, VCD etc etc. In Singapore, the full form would be 唯读光碟 wei1 du2 guang1 die2; the word for playing a disc would be 启动 qi3 dong4. If it's different in China, I hope that somebody like casie will step in!
Posted on: The Neutral Tone
February 13, 2008 at 12:52 AMuser12840 (not -24601! or -90210! ), your post made a lot of sense to me. Thanks. For any newbie, wrestling with tones is one thing, trying to muscle "tones + intonation" is another thing altogether. Although, from a learning/teaching point of view, I suspect that one of CPOD's strengths is the quality of the extraordinarily gifted voice actors in its podcasts; intonation becomes a valuable tool for getting a grip on tones, rather than an added obstacle....
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 13, 2008 at 12:29 AMP/s: Although this is an Elementary lesson, I haven't put in the hanyu pinyin because all the compounds -- and the pinyin -- would all be there anyway within the same few inches of text for each dictionary entry. ;-)
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 13, 2008 at 12:23 AMRight, now I hope that nobody is offended by the following unsolicited advice, which is well-meant: One way of resolving this kind of question is to look up both words in the dictionary -- especially their compounds -- in order to get a sense for them. Eg., In my rather compact dictionary, I see that 拐 and 转 seem to interchangeable in a pretty well-known set expression, ie. 转弯抹角 = 拐弯抹角. (-wan1 mo4 jiao3). So the likelihood is that they are interchangeable to a fairly high degree... Looking further at the compounds, I am struck by how 转seems to connote an additional meaning, that of transformation or change: Hence, 转车 commonly means changing trains (--> une correspondance, in nicolas' language), rather than turning a car. This from compounds such as: 转变， 转化 etc, which you don't get with 拐. Not directly relevant to nicolas' specific question, but still useful to help keep these "synonyms" slightly apart in your head. Looking at the compounds really does help with one particular thing, which is combining characters together in a way that sounds natural to Chinese people. Eg, "marching orders" use "转", as in "右转弯走！". And to describe making an 180 degree turn: 来一个一百八十度的大转弯. Looking at the compounds with 拐, I got the impression that it's the character that would spring to mind if you are talking about negotiating a kink of some kind, not only a turn. Why not take a look and decide for yourselves! Cheers, Auntie
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 12, 2008 at 11:51 PMnicolas, I was hoping that somebody would step up with the answer for you, just to stop your snippy, if not uncouth, expressions of impatience, but nobody did. So -- if you did a 5-minute search of CPOD, like I did, you would know that Amber already answered this question the lesson comments to "Newbie - Sightseeing" (00029): The question was: "I have another question. The dialogue says "yòu zhuǎn" means "to turn right" - in the expansion "to turn left" is translated by 左拐 - zuǒguǎi. Does "guǎi" means turning by car and "zhuǎn" turning by foot?" Amber's reply was: "拐 (guǎi) and 转 (zhuǎn) both mean turn, and could be used in either context. I find that 拐 (guǎi) is more commonly used in Shanghai, whereas they always say 转 (zhuǎn) in Taiwan. So it could be according to regional customs as well." Okay?
Posted on: Chinese New Year!
February 12, 2008 at 1:40 PMDear geminigal88, the little dog in your avatar is so, so cute! Regarding 红包, the situation is the same in Singapore. I'm approaching 40, still unmarried, with no plans -- of any kind -- to marry. As I grew older, I noticed that relatives began to say things like, "ooh, but of course NEXT year we won't be giving you hongbao [hint! hint!]... do I hear that you've got a special friend?" etc etc. Just "fishing", of course. Ouch! Does anybody on CPOD know of a nice -- but neutral -- way to respond to this? I'm asking because one of my Uncles endured the hongbao ritual well into his 50s... perhaps I should ask him!
Posted on: Study Abroad
February 13, 2008 at 12:25 PMAfter all, fudapeng, you would say, "好朋友“, wouldn't you? As in "他是我的好朋友“. And the sense of "friends who are good" would pretty much be conveyed by, say, "好的朋友可不会在你的背后说你的坏话“ ("friends who are good friends would not bad-mouth you behind your back"). Ok, that's it. You can't sue me, okay?