User Comments - bababardwan

Posted on: Difficult Cake Choices

“(I don't make any claims about Shanghai - it may be sufficiently westernised for people to use the word 面包房 or whatever.)"

...well according to google trends, the relative lookup of 面包房 was:

Shanghai

100

Beijing

29

Zhengzhou

28

Nanjing

19

Hangzhou

17

Guangzhou

8

...and while I don't know what the relative differences in internet traffic from these different locations is, it looks like you still have a point when it comes to Shanghai [and it stands to reason, probably being the most westernised]

hang on..further breakdown:

Shanghai

100

Henan

30

Beijing

29

Jiangsu

22

Zhejiang

19

Liaoning

17

Hebei

13

Shandong

12

Hubei

12

Guangdong

10

Posted on: Traveling on the Cheap

Interesting that Jenny seems to be saying that 攻略 is a relatively recent word. I thought it would be interesting to check it out on google trends:

http://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=%E6%94%BB%E7%95%A5

which shows it has been trending down since 2004...but what does this mean? I think this is just showing how often it was looked up as a search term...search volume [vs 486,000,000 google hits]. It may be that's it's trending down as a search term as it may have been pretty new in 2004 and folk were looking up what the term meant, and may at the same time be increasing in actual usage. Of course I could be way off here...

Posted on: Difficult Cake Choices

ok, just found this:

Per-capita consumption of bakery products in China stood at 4.1 kilograms, or 9 pounds, in 2009, nearly double the 2.1 kilograms per capita 10 years earlier. This compares with 36.4 kilograms per capita in Britain and 25.4 kilograms per capita in the United States, but the upward trend is in place. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/business/global/22chinabread.html?pagewanted=all]

And for interests sake:

As of 2000, the country with the largest per capita consumption of bread is Turkey with 199.6 kg (440 lb) per person. Turkish people eat more than three times their own body weight in bread annually.

Turkey is followed in bread consumption by Serbia and Montenegro with 135 kg (297 lb 9.9 oz), and Bulgaria with 133.1 kg (293 lb 6.9 oz)

So I'd conclude that if we were to go back 20 years and compare China with Britain, then there was close to a 20 fold difference in bread consumption which could account for the roughly 20 fold difference in usage of the word "bakery" and it's Chinese equivalent.

Posted on: Difficult Cake Choices

ps I was going to add that I know there is a lot of skepticism about dictionary entries and whether a lot of entries are valid, and while I think it's fair enough to take them with a grain of salt and there may be some misleading entries, I am equally skeptical of dismissing them just on the basis of not having heard them. I have particularly come to this viewpoint having seen how often folk make the comment that such and such a word isn't used in English...often in my mind being very common ordinary words.

Anyhow, I think google can be as good a guide as any here, and it seems that 面包房 gets 4,230,000 hits [interestingly 面包店 gets 9,960,000 hits] whereas "bakery" gets 194,000,00 hits. So while I think that between 5 and 10 million hits refutes your "doubt they are used" claim, it does show that you are possibly partially right in that they are much less commonly used than the English word "bakery" ...about 20 times less common. But now the question in my mind is...does this just reflect that bakeries are much less a part of Chinese culture? or is it truly a reflection of a difference in language usage? I guess if you had the figure of the number of "bakeries" per head of population in China vs the number in the English speaking world than you may gain some insight into that.

Posted on: Difficult Cake Choices

"They refer to them by their brand name, then the name of the store"

hmm, well I guess we tend to do something similar here. I don't usually say bakery either...I would usually refer to the name of the bakery specifically too. I guess where the word comes into play is when you're new to an area, don't know the brand names and then want to know where a bakery is. What would the Chinese use then? Maybe it's not heard often because you don't strike such a situation often....dunno, but anyhow, if it's understood as you say then it sounds like a pretty straight forward descriptor that should get you what you're looking for. Otherwise I guess you'd resort to just trying to describe such a place...where's a place where you can buy bread? 麻烦你，我能买面包在那里？vs 面包房在那里？

Posted on: Washing Clothes on the Road

ha, thanks mate. Given the beer drinking part of the definition, I wondered if hoser derived from this:

...but it seems it "orginates from pre- zambonie days where after a game, the losing team would have to "hose" down the ice, hence the term 'hoser" ". I guess in Chinese that would be 水龙人，哦？

btw, the Chinese for Zambonie seems to be 赞博尼 but I wonder if that would register and think 冰表面修整 would be a safer bet.

hehe, I was thinking how much the guy on the left reminded me of Rick Moranis, and just noticed when looking up urban dictionary for hoser that it is indeed him. how about that, eh?

Posted on: Difficult Cake Choices

George,

it's an online chinese/english dictionary:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

Posted on: Difficult Cake Choices

What's wrong with 面包房 which mdbg gives? Seems pretty straight to the point. I mean I guess in English bakery derives from the fact that the goods are baked...the manner of cooking them, whereas 面包房 ...literally "bread house" refers to one of the goods, so English and Chinese have had a different approach as to how they describe such an establishment, but that's often the case. You could argue that a bakery sells a lot more than bread [as it includes cakes, pies etc] and that the Chinese word is thus not inclusive enough. But by the same taken there are heaps of baked items that you won't find in a bakery usually [eg baked potatoes] so you could argue the English is too inclusive. Anyhow, I wouldn't know if this term is used or not, but it's what mdbg gives and I am curious why you guys don't think that's ok.

Posted on: Washing Clothes on the Road

haha, very good mate.

Also learnt a bit:

hos·er

  [hoh-zer] Show IPA

noun Canadian Slang .

a person who is considered unintelligent or uncouth, especially a beer-drinking man.

"Canadian tuxedo"[加拿大燕尾服]:

Posted on: Rich and Poor

"I remember using the refrigerator to hang my shirts in. Its also where I kept the phone so the ring wouldn't wake me. There was still room for beer of course"

lol...love it. Trying to picture hanging shirts in a fridge. Now I want pics and a tour of the whole pad. Speaking of bachelor pads, the best set up one I have seen is Stanley's [Dudley Moore's] in Foul Play [pg13]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzkiTpA6Lrg