User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Love Tangle 1: A Suspicious Text Message

@changye

Again I am indebted to you for that information.  You know, I learnt that once but of course I forget almost as much as I learn.  The grammar in particular goes 'in one ear and out the other'.  It comes back to me now. 

@raygo

Thanks for the 儿 links - a nice handy list of the words that actually change meaning with 儿。  I think I have just lead a poddy a little astray on another thread on this subject - but what the heck, I took about three years to get my head around it and there is still plenty to learn!

@barbs

I'm not quite up to speed on your question about the difference between 'er' and 'r'.  I thought that to raise the character 儿 in the Microsoft system you have to enter 'er'; just 'r' doesn't work, does it?   Does your question arise because, say, 这儿 is written zher rather than zheer?    So when the 儿 changes the sound of the syllable it is associated with (rather than being a syllable in its own right) it is commonly written as 'r', but it is still inputted as 'er' in my system.

Posted on: Pinyin Sections 1-2

Dear Happy River

I think this demonstrates my point exactly; humour often doesn't cross cultural boundaries. 

PS. I like your name.

Posted on: Pinyin Sections 1-2

Now that others have also had a say I would like to clarify my comments .. I really think this is a lesson series for Anglophones (particularly Americans), I wasn't just making a sly dig.  As an Anglophone myself I will still come here. But having read Mark's input above, I think CP will only earn or deserve the INTERNATIONAL tag if it makes more of an effort to acknowledge cultures other than North American. [Digression.. in Jack the Ripper film, police chief to investigating inspector who has suggested that the culprit may be an educated Englishman, 'What!! No Englishman would do this! Look for the Red Indians who live in Whitechapel..'].  Damn.. it would be so much more interesting as well!! CP guys (nod to Americans), don't take this hard or diss me as an Aussie whinger.  I am pointing the way to a richer learning experience for us all.  'You can do it! You can do it!' (another nod to a famous American we see incessantly on our Aussie TV screens.) 

Posted on: Are You Free?

@thecomakid

I'll have a go for you (from my experience and happy to be corrected).. testing my knowledge :-)

儿 has a 'formal' purpose in some words such as 有事儿, you hear it anywhere in China, perhaps because most words in Chinese comprise two characters (balance)??  儿 seems to be a common ending in lots of contexts in all of the places I have visited in China and it seems to be more about tone or aesthetic or 'balance of sounds' than meaning 

儿 is also used to describe the sound that is a common word ending in 北京华 (Chinese as spoken in Beijing) - it can seem to be a dominant sound there almost like many Americans roll their Rs.

啊 is also a common ending to so many phrases; again it seems to have a tone - what specific tone I am not sure but it can carry emphasis, and in my experience it often sounds casual and therefore friendly, but no doubt context is important.  For example, I think you also get it in angry exchanges, for emphasis.  

Maybe these kinds of sounds are more prevalent in Chinese than in English because the former is a tonal language - so 啊 might lengthen a word for emphais when in English we might make it louder or give it an accent in the sentence.

Posted on: Love Tangle 1: A Suspicious Text Message

@change

You are ever-reliable, thanks for sorting that out.  So the second use I refer to should actually be 吗 not 嘛; that is what I suspected because it would be consistent with the first use (in the opening sentence.）  And I gather that 吗 是二声或没有声，而且嘛 总是没有声。 

Do you also hear people say 现在你干吗‘啦'而不是‘现在你干吗啊‘ ？

Posted on: Hate is a Very Strong Word

@pete

'I really can't stand recharging my balance'

没问题。 我问老板，‘麻烦你, 我不会充值。给你钱以后可以帮助我？‘I assume that is bad enough to demonstrate that I really need help.

After six months in China I finally got someone to help me with ringing up for my balance.  I was always put off by this long discussion I didn't understand, until someone explained that it is just an advertisement for the new plans on offer.  Now I tune out for the advertisement and patiently wait for my message about the balance remaining.  I guess the challenge now is to get to understand the ads.  If it is like Australia the plans are in a constant state of flux.

Posted on: Love Tangle 1: A Suspicious Text Message

@raygo

thanks for your suggestion - in this transcript it does look like they are used interchangeably but I hadn't seen 吗 used mid-sentence like this before, I thought is was always 干嘛。 Nor had I seen 干嘛 as used in the second question I pose above.  I can see that it all sounds the same but I wondered if there was some difference in meaning.

Posted on: Hate is a Very Strong Word

@dunderklumpen

我是幸运儿， 没有人恨我！ 

I'm a lucky guy, no-one hates me!

Posted on: Love Tangle 1: A Suspicious Text Message

对这个课文我有一两个问题，

关于‘吗‘：  

- ‘现在你干吗啦？‘和‘现在你干嘛啦？‘， 都可以说吗？

和‘嘛‘：  

在‘干嘛不能给我看‘，‘嘛‘是什么意思？ 可以说‘干吗不能给我看‘？

有人介绍一下吗？

Posted on: Pinyin Sections 1-2

I quite like what you are doing here and look forward to the more chanllenging sounds. 

But I think Chanelle77's point is right - and I learnt that Dutch has something in common with the many Melanesian languages.  Although master of none, I can read these because the pronunciation is generally the same as pinyin.  So, while it is funny for English speakers, I think that most people who occupy the Pacific would have no problem at all with these examples in today's lesson. They would not understand the 'bangbang mang' joke.  I'd hazard a guess that the Pacific has the majority of the world's languages (because of lots of islands/ or unhospitable country that discouraged travel and interaction?) - and some of them learn Chinese! (I once had a class mate from Tahiti.)

Maybe this should be titled 'Pinyin lessons for Anglophones'?   Or, as Tvan has reminded me before, maybe I should just get with the majority.. :-)