User Comments - bababardwan
bababardwan
Posted on: Wang Wei's Diary: The Importance of Brains
July 27, 2010 at 10:51 AMlol, looks like tal's already got his finger up ready and willing for the pricking
Posted on: Smelly Cheese
July 27, 2010 at 7:12 AMNo, but I note that McDonalds does not call their cheeseburgers 奶酪汉堡包 but rather 吉士汉堡包 with 吉士 being the word for cheese ...a transliteration.
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 27, 2010 at 6:56 AMCorrect me if I'm wrong but 蟲蟻 seems to come out more along the line of "pest" which is not what a critter is. A critter is just a cool way of saying "creature". I would have that 生物 【living thing] was the closest translation. I tend to think of cute furry little animals when I hear the word critter,such as the gophers from caddyshack:
..though of course it can refer to any creature and I reckon Bill Murray would have been thinking of them more as varmints.
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 27, 2010 at 6:45 AMah, that came out wrong. I knew you'd said that. I was kinda posing those last questions to myself.
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 27, 2010 at 5:15 AM这个生词“狗熊”是一点儿有趣，因为它有“狗”而没有“黑”，而且“狗”和“熊”有关系。。它们来自同一的亚目叫做《犬型亞目》，所以长夜你应该小心一点儿吧
亞目和亚目有什么区别呢？我猜是完全一样的
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 27, 2010 at 4:52 AM"what 'coverage' is"
..don't know for sure but I thought it would have been something along the lines of taking for example in the first instance the most common 1000 words appearing in that languages media and then seeing how far those thousand words got you were you to know them. In other words if you know the 1000 most commonly used French words and then were to pick up a French newspaper you should be able to read 83.5 of the first hundred words in the first article [on average]. If you knew 5000 French words that would bump it up to 96.6% in any French article you tried to read. But Bodawei is right in that this would need to be clarified..how it is measured. For example if you look at the whole article, do you count words that appear more than once?
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 27, 2010 at 4:41 AM呵呵，真是不幸啊，确实
“我刚才踢一块石头”。。。以后 “从上面掉下来一只刺猬”
。。很好的剧情，很典型【除了，这次有一只刺猬，，哈哈，更好笑而独创】
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 26, 2010 at 9:56 PMtgif,
No worries mate. It was a good and interesting question. I did think of the carnage in wars [was it mostly males though? ...dunno...also it would seem rare that ovaries would be exposed by such carnage, and even if they were, probably obscured by the gore and as one of those articles points out what you see is influenced by what you know. Also there seems to have been taboos about dissection.But even if some few did observe them, was it enough to ascribe a word to the organ and one that made it into the language?]. I'm willing to bet my right ovary I'm close to being right, but lets see what CPod hosts know about it.
Posted on: Please Speak Chinese
July 27, 2010 at 11:12 AMTo be honest, the situation in China is different for foreigners (I'm referring to myself), as foreigners are minorities, but are often looked upon favorably.
...this is the comment I find most interesting in what you have said because it reinforces a point I was meaning to make. Namely that I think a kind of reverse form of prejudice can enter a situation like this. That is to say the reaction you describe of an Asian in North America being spoken to in an Asian language seems to be assuming some kind of prejudice or "discrimination" as you put it in the intent of the person opening the discourse based on previous treatment in that country. As you say the situation is different in China because foreigners are looked upon favourably, whereas in the American situation you are assuming that this is not the case whereas it may be that in fact the person is someone who is very interested in Asian culture and looks very favourably on such a person and may just want to start a friendly discourse and potentially have something to break the ice. And is this really to be met with a slap in the face? Would such a person not be making all sorts of judgements and assumptions themselves?