User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Adjectives with 是 (shi)

ah yeah, that's it. thanks mate. I'd forgotten that one.

Posted on: Adjectives with 是 (shi)

56s ..what does Jen say...很 or a 非常 or a ?shifen ?..not sure about the shifen.

Posted on: Adjectives with 是 (shi)

31s: “是”。。它可以表示“肯定”

Posted on: A Rarely Washed Car

let me revise my guess on 胎 being used for tyre then...maybe it's a partial transliteration of the English "tyre"

Posted on: A Rarely Washed Car

Thanks for pointing that out. I was going to say I guess I should have looked it up. I have come across this a long time ago, but looking at it now, I guess I still don't quite have my head around it. Looking up mdbg, it says the radical for 胎 is as you suggest the meat radical:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=%E8%83%8E

..but when you click on the scissors tool for that character in mdbg it shows the moon radical. What gives?

Getting back to the meat radical, here it is in mdbg:

Radical: 肉月

Mandarin: ròu

Definition: meat

KangXi no.: 130

...which looks to have the meat radical on the left and the moon radical on the right. Ah, hang on, I think I recall now. I think it's a coincidence. It started as one originally and ended as another and it just happens to be identical to the moon radical right..there's no way to tell them apart, right? One is a pictogram of the moon, and the other is a pictogram of meat and they both happen to be identical. But when it comes to acting as a radical they are offering different respective meanings. Ok. Any further insights?

My guess is that it started out as 月 and some characters adopted this older form as radical and kept it before it evolved into the current form 肉。 Is that right?

Posted on: A Rarely Washed Car

ok, haven't looked the etymology on this one:

胎

..up either, but a guess is very tempting. The right portion looks like the phonetic tai. The left portion 月 looks like the radical for moon. I'm guessing it's used here because of it's shape....the round shape of the moon and the round shape of a tyre. Also can be used for foetus...once again...the round or crescent shape of the foetal position perhaps.

Posted on: A Rarely Washed Car

This 辆 character is pretty straightforward. Without even needing to look up the etymology this time it's easy to see 车 on the left which must be acting as the radical and 两 on the right which is clearly acting as the phonetic. This makes it a very interesting measure word. I'm wondering if there are any other examples of measure words that have the thing they're measuring as a radical. It stands to reason there should be plenty.

Posted on: A Rarely Washed Car

For some time now this use of 都是 has been one of my favourite expressions. Seems so Chinese. Love it.

Posted on: A Rarely Washed Car

wa, zhen, thanks so much for the link to that thread..I never saw that thread before.

Posted on: Transportation Card

user23060,

here 才 means "only" [or just in the "only" sense]. 才 can have several meanings but context is always the clue. Here Jenny asked a question which John answered and then Jenny laughed and explained that she was only [or just] meaning the question to be for the listeners.