User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Designing the New Apartment

我觉得John说明关于这个词：瓷砖。。。其实，这个字“瓷”下面有“瓦”。。tile的意思。

Posted on: Designing the New Apartment

多谢你的说明。。很清楚啊

Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups

not pushy at all.You're always so helpful and supportive and it is very much appreciated.I think I came across wrong above but hopefully you know where I'm coming from.Cheers :)

Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups

Thanks zhen and I know you would if you could though of course there is never any obligation for you to do so.It was a general suggestion open to anyone.I'm not even sure I'll do any of it myself until I have a listen myself and see how I go finding time to do some of it.But it is my intention at least to listen and to then see what I can manage. :)

Posted on: Pay Verbs

Thanks again zhou_rui,

"As for homophones, trying to guess whether or not two modern Mandarin words were homophones in Old Chinese is difficult."

..yeah,it seems finding a good resource on this is difficult so I think when I do note this connections perhaps just use them as mnemonics and leave it at that if there aren't answers out there.Incidentally,I came across another one this morning where again the similarity in both sound and meaning struck me.It was from the renovating lesson:

统一 [to unite] which in the context of that lesson was being used in a very similar way to 同意。。。to agree.In fact on their own 同[together,with,same] and 统[to gather,unite..] are very similar in meaning though different in character and tone.I must say despite the fact that many of these words will have changed in pronunciation over the years,it's hard to think of them all being coincidence.But it seems it's hard to get to the bottom of these origins so I think I'll have to drop that pursuit.

Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups

Sure,I'd be very happy with that though I don't think it's overly likely that it'll happen anytime soon.I'm just very happy we're getting an Avatar lesson regardless of level...Ellie to Media is fine with me [even though Intermediate to UI would personally suit me best].

Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups

pretzell,

I would absolutely love to see a return of Movie Madness.I don't think there was as much Chinese language learning in it is there is an any lesson from Intermediate and above [and thus the planned lesson I think will be very different from what it would be if it was done as a Movie Madness episode] but I loved the format which was a lot of fun and added variety to the channels.I particularly liked the way they took part of a scene and had it in Chinese and you had to guess which movie and they even made a little competition out of it.Unfortunately that Channel was finished before I ever got to participate in that fun comp aspect.But there must have been heaps of new material come out since the channel finished so may well be time to bring it back for another season at least.Here's hoping. :)

Posted on: Chinese names, Avatar and Meet-ups

Cool,Avatar.Just the other day doodlemonster was suggesting this would be a good idea,so she must have esp.I agree Media will be less accessible,but I suppose on the other hand it will have some pretty specific vocab and it will allow them to really do the topic justice.It's definitely way above my head but if there's one thing I do this week it will be to reach up and give that lesson a really good crack.It's nice to have these motivators sometimes to really stretch ourselves.I hope to see if I can transcribe some of it and see if anyone else will throw their hat in the ring to help.I wouldn't even mind trying the whole lesson except that it would take me way too long on my own.Anyhow,can't wait to have a listen and see what's feasible.Jiayou CPod and thankyou. :)

Posted on: Pay Verbs

zhou_rui,

ok,now this explanation particularly intrigued me:

"In ancient times, there were not as many characters. Therefore, multiple meanings were assigned to a single character. Pronunciation changes were used as a disambiguation device."

...for a couple of reasons.Firstly the multiple meanings being assigned to a single character.The way wikipedia explains this could almost be a tad misleading.To me it makes it sound like they had this finite number of characters that had assigned meanings and when they ran out and new words had to be assigned characters there was just this random second use of characters assigned.However my limited understanding of character formation is that they originally were trying to represent something whether it be a pictograph,an ideograph,a combination of the two or some other method.So I'm sure with these second readings there must be some method in the madness and would like to understand that better.What is the link or connection? Or is this saying that it truly is borrowed and in these cases with these second readings there is no connection between what the character was originally trying to represent and the meaning of the character?

Secondly,pronunciation changes for disambiguation is interesting.I suppose while a lot of spoken language predates the written these must be cases of newer words then introduced since oracle bones times.Of course all languages apart from the dead languages are continuing to add new words and evolve so this should come as no surprise.

Posted on: Pay Verbs

"You need to take into account ancient sounds when studying etymologies"

..yeah,good point.Trouble is I have no good resources to find the source of those ancient sounds so all I can do is ponder these things and ask questions of learned folk like yourself.But if you are to conclude with "God knows" then maybe this is a quest for the Holy Grail after all.Clip clop,clip clop.