User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

thanks Tim. Plenty of food for thought there. Naturally I know of Jeet Kune Do and yet I'm not sure that I've ever looked up the Chinese for that so thanks for that also ...截拳道。。with 截 being more the signature character there...meaning cut off/intercepting..the other two having the common fist character and even more common way character. So it's the way of the intercepting fist.

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

tingyun,

thanks for all that mate. I can't see anything wrong with your translations, but I guess I wouldn't be the best judge, hehe.

"Note here the 功夫 is modified by 武艺 wu3yi4 in order to make it more specific - martial art skill. Though that wouldn't be necessary in most use..."

..yes, good point and thus a very good example.

"I think you'd be totally fine saying something like 我最近在练一门欧洲的功夫"

...yes, well context is king so what you say makes a lot of sense and such good communication should go quite some way to avoiding confusion. My quandary with these terms though is less about what they specifically mean but more about how the Chinese themselves actually use them, as opposed to how we think they are or should be used. You're examples are helpful though. I do however wonder with this latter European Gongfu example above how likely it would be for a Chinese person to use it like that, even though what you say makes sense. Are you speculating here, or are you speaking with some authority? I have a lot of respect for your academic prowess so please don't take that the wrong way. I'm just curious how you know. The rest of what you say also makes a lot of sense. Anyhow, regardless of how the Chinese might put things themselves, you've demonstrated how good communication and setting the right context would go a long way to avoid confusion. Cheers mate. :)

Posted on: Introducing New Voices

欢迎 Di Lu [?spelling]. Great to hear your voice and looking forward to your lessons. Some poddies have recently been asking for some more voices to mix things up a bit so I'm sure you'll be well received. Hope you enjoy your new job. Jiayou.

Well we all know Jason's cool so it'll be fun to hear him host as well. :)

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

thanks. yeah, but why wasn't it wushu?

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

So when/what contexts do Chinese use the term 功夫？

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

hehe,"and we're not punching someone's fist"

..classic, good question linguistically and funny also. Such an action could be described as "yang on yang"

Posted on: Surfing the Web Chinese Style

jean66,

cool. What's it like? Is it hard to set up? Are there issues like spam or malware? Should we be giving it a shot?

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

and here's an video taken earlier this year of Yuan Xiaochao:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvPzvVnsvfE

...once again apologies to those in China as it's youtube. I think you'll find a clip here:

http://video.baidu.com/v?word=Yuan+Xiaochao&ct=301989888&rn=20&pn=0&db=0&s=0&fbl=1024

...but it's taking forever to load here. This French one is on the Games:

http://bugu.cntv.cn/language/french/15minutes/classpage/video/20101111/100002.shtml

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

found this video of kabaddi 【卡巴迪】 on Baidu and the commentary is in Chinese, so it should be viewable in China:

http://www.qiyi.com/jilupian/20101018/n87237.html

Posted on: The Hunan Accent

I like your story of retrospective comprehension, a very satisfying feeling and a lesson in there worth remembering.