User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: 似曾相识
February 11, 2008 at 11:01 AMOh well, I've just discovered that the correct Mandarin word for a premonition or a presentiment is 预感 (yu4gan3). But I'm quite happy with 即视感 as my personal word for "prescience" in the hardcore "Dune" sense... just for me! All the best, Auntie
Posted on: 似曾相识
February 11, 2008 at 10:55 AMHello changye. For what it's worth, my modest dictionary (时代汉英词典) backs you up. In that 既 (ji4; no alternative tones suggested) is the character which conveys the sense of something having already taken place. But I can't help wondering --sort of blindly -- whether 即视感 might not be a very neat way of describing a "presentiment" or "sense of forewarning" (sort of, in the sense of 预兆 yu4zhao4), because of the sense of imminence conveyed by 即. Wouldn't that be cool. This Auntie is a big Frank Herbert fan, and the combination 即(ji2)视感 just made Paul Atreides' "prescience" pop in to my head. However, this is pure guesswork on my part, in the vein of "this Auntie too much free time"!
Posted on: Chinese New Year Plans
February 10, 2008 at 12:09 AMP/s: It's amazing the way worldly Chinese children -- even Stunt Toddlers like my nephew -- learn so quickly to "work" a roomful of adults in order to collect their full due. Eg., nephew was spontaneously "ching-ching"-ing all the adults, saying "gongxi! gongxi!", and thanking them sweetly. Any person who has ever celebrated CNY before as a family holiday would have seen little kids who know just how to "engage" an adult until a hongbao had been handed over (like a concierge, waiting for the tip). And I've seen little kids bold enough to collect hongbaos on behalf of siblings (wow!), which is how some end up with more than they should. I never had the guts...
Posted on: Chinese New Year Plans
February 9, 2008 at 11:58 PMHello channa. Ooh, I think you've hit on a delicate topic in Chinese families, even those in the diaspora. My nephew, the Stunt Toddler (aged 2), was forced tocough up his takings this year; poor guy was NOT a happy bunny, because he already understands money well enough to know which notes are more desirable. In Singapore, I grew up enjoying full control over all my CNY loot from a very young age, although my parents usually managed to persuade me allow them to help me bank it into to my personal "Donald Duck" savings account at HSBC (or was that Stanchart?). Usually, the thrill of depositing "a fortune" into my own account was enough to swing it. But I do recall that most of my classmates had to surrender their hongbaos (红包) to their parents at the end of each day of CNY, if not by the end of the short car journey to the next house they were visiting! Ouch. For the luckier ones, this was merely for safekeeping. That is, at the end of the CNY period, the parents would preside over the opening of the hongbaos, adding up the haul, and -- very importantly! -- persuading the siblings who somehow ended up with a hongbao or two (or three) more than the others, to donate enough of the excess cash to the siblings who were "short". But I think that the majority of the kids never saw the hongbaos ever again after the parents got hold of them. I have heard horror stories of parents who would even "recycle" their children's hongbaos, extracting the brand-new notes and stuffing them into the family's official hongbao paper for that year. Ouch. One of my streetwise schoolfriends ratted out her parents to the grandparents for doing just that; the elders actually scolded her parents and banned the practice (it can appear "cheap"; not good for family honour). channa, I hope that answers your question!
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 9, 2008 at 6:26 AMSo which seat has that on-demand DVD library and complementary yuukata? ;-) Sounds like 席 is the way to go!
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 9, 2008 at 6:05 AMbtw, nicolas, thanks for teaching me this other word for "seat" -- 席. Suddenly the term for "Chairman" -- 主席 (zhu3xi2) -- makes a lot of sense. When I looked up the word in my dictionary, I got the sense that 席 conveys a sense of the symbolic meaning of a seat, beyond the physical thing itself. Eg. a country's lawful seat in the UN -- including its role in the organization -- would be its 席位 (xi2wei4)... I think. So far I've only seen the words "硬座" or "软座" for different kinds of train seats (non-sleeper). I like to think that a 席 on a train is more high-class than a 座!
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 9, 2008 at 5:15 AMErm... I'd like to distance myself from snippy, ungracious posts like the one just above by nicolas. What did plogultech do to deserve such a response?
Posted on: Whatever...
February 8, 2008 at 9:06 AMOops, sorry downunder, I don't know what happened when I tried to post the link, but it is the "Qing Wen" lesson dated 20 July 2007 that you want.
Posted on: Whatever...
February 8, 2008 at 8:59 AMHi downunder. CPOD actually has a whole podcast on the question you asked: http://chinesepod.com/extra/negating-verbs-when-to-use-没有-meiyǒu-when-to-use-不-bu/discussion Good luck!
Posted on: The Neutral Tone
February 11, 2008 at 11:14 AMDear changye and henning, to my ear, I think I've heard before -- in Cantonese -- something like what changye has just described as the "entering tone" in Cantonese. In Cantonese, the character 读 (du2 in Mandarin; "to read") has a little catch at the end just at the point where the tone sounds lowest, so it sounds like "dtok" (or perhaps "dto' "). And on an intuitive level, I suspect that the "entering tone" may even have something to do with the very important distinction, in Cantonese, between long and short vowels. Eg. "gai" (chicken) vs "gaai" (street). But I'm setting myself up to be shot down, I'm no expert in Cantonese, just somebody who had a Cantonese-speaking nanny.