User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Of Kings, Emperors, and Presidents

bodawei,

You're right of course. They don't rhyme. I guess what I had in mind is that it's not that far off a rhyme, and that as Changye often pointed out pronunciation has changed over the eons [and I've also noted myself how there can be quite some discrepancy between phonetics and the sounds of the characters they're in..presumably due to this change in pronunciation over time] and I wondered if they were originally closer in sound [but it was just a wild postulation]. As to your other point above about 王 and 皇, as I mentioned above, one derivation does have 王 acting as the phonetic for 皇

Posted on: Considering LASIK Eye Surgery

我女朋友怎么甩了我，甩了这么帅哥？可能瞎子

Posted on: Considering LASIK Eye Surgery

I can see why the female actors voice drew comment..it certainly was different, though I suspect it was more for her acting than anything else. It took just that little bit extra to tune into it but once I got it, it made the sense of accomplishment better and I enjoyed the difference. I could listen to it over and again now. Somehow so enjoyable and I think it's somehow to do with tuning in to her wavelength and hearing where she's coming from...both comprehension of her words but also tuning in to her emotional state. It has just added to what I think is an excellent and interesting lesson all round. One of the better CPod lessons I'd say.

Posted on: Of Kings, Emperors, and Presidents

thanks BigUniverse [what an apt username for answering this question]. Interesting that 公 and 王 rhyme. I realise now that my 3 kingdoms example above [which I threw in there randomly] was not a good one as that was after Qin Shi Huang Di...I should have mentioned the time before him as well before this time is when I suspect the term came from [?prior to the legendary Xia dynasty]

Posted on: Possible, Possibly, Possibility

zhen,

no apologies necessary. Always helpful to get your thoughts. :)

Posted on: Of Kings, Emperors, and Presidents

ah, thanks dilu, that's a better way of putting it and I knew from the podcast discussion that that is exactly what you were doing. Yep, makes perfect sense.

Posted on: Of Kings, Emperors, and Presidents

The funny thing about these characters is that they can take a character like 王 meaning king, add one stroke to arrive at very similar meaning, in this case 主 lord...but get there via a different channel by going with the shape rather than meaning of 王 ...representing a lamp and the extra stroke a flame on top.

Posted on: Of Kings, Emperors, and Presidents

哇，I hope you weren't expected to remember all 77 titles at once or off with your head, hehe. Good point. I think I'll stick with the 3 here and take my chances. Thanks for the link.

Posted on: Possible, Possibly, Possibility

bodawei,

Thanks mate. I think that's something easy and useful to work with. Yeah definitely a matter of degree. Without looking up definitions, in my mind possible could be anything from just above 0% chance [say 1 in a million even....anything is possible] to just below 100% [certainty] but tends to hang out in the below 50% chance, and probable means anything above 50% chance [again excluding 100% chance] but probably doesn't tend hang out too close to the 50% chance too often where you'd be more likely to say something like better than average chance. Anyway, my point is that while there's overlap and they're probably not so precicely defined, they tend to hang out at opposite ends of the spectrum [with possible having a larger range than probable that sticks in it's own half].

Posted on: Possible, Possibly, Possibility

light,

I guess you're keneng right mate. While there is some overlap, generally I don't feel like the difference is that subtle [ in English at least].