User Comments - go_manly

Posted on: Which Time Zone?

My gut feeling is that shíjiān indicates a time period, or length of time, while shíhou indicates a moment in time.

Posted on: Set the Alarm Clock

I'll leave it for others to answer your full question. But your last sentence has no obligation words.

For starters, it says 'today', not 'tomorrow'.

And 有事 doesn't indicate compulsion. It means 'to be occupied', or 'to have sth to do'. The extra 'have to' from CPod is not a good translation. It should be 'I have something to do'.

Posted on: Come on up!

Thanks jiaojie. It was meant to sound strange, and I understand people wouldn't say that. But is it technically linguistically correct?

Posted on: What are your hobbies? (original)

Exactly which point do you want explained?

Posted on: Come on up!

Also, have you seen the inductive proof that 'all jellybeans are black'? This can be 'proved' using an initial set of 1 jellybean - it doesn't require the empty set. My preferred interpretation is that the word 'all' really only has meaning when there is more than one object.

Anyway, back to your original statement. Could the sentence 我的零个书都是红色的。(Wǒde líng ge shū dōu shì hóngsè de) make any sense in Chinese? I guess there are 3 questions here:

1. Can 零 (líng) be used as a counter?

2. If so, can 零个 or 一个 ever be followed by 都?

3. Can this sort of sentence be used in the same quasi-logical way that we would say 'I don't have any books, and all of my books are red."

I'm guessing that the answer to all three is no. I think much of what we call logic is language-based,

Posted on: Come on up!

But I wonder, are such assertions inherently logically correct, or are they only correct due to the 'logic' of the English language? What does 'all' really mean? Could the Chinese use 都 like this when there are less than 2 objects?

Posted on: Come on up!

When you think about it, is there really any difference between 'he doesn't have Chinese books' and 'he doesn't have a Chinese book' ? When you don't have something, the number you 'don't have' is meaningless.

Posted on: Personalizing ChinesePod

Will CPod be redoing these podcasts in the future each time they tinker with the system?

Posted on: Adjusting the Temperature

CPod, in the last expansion sentence, the Pinyin for 假 shows as jiǎ. Shouldn't it be jià?

Posted on: 混合动力车

I'm clearly not at your level, because I haven't attempted UI, let alone Advanced. But perhaps the podcasts on the Slow Chinese website might help you. They are still a bit beyond my level, but they feature one guy simply exposing a story.