User Comments - hiewhongliang

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

Thanks, Bodawei. Yes, hierarchy of sins is important. As with Chinese, context is also important: "get butchered" is perfectly fine to use in English except when used to butcher someone else's English, IMHO. :-)

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

The various terms I know:

husband's father: 公公gong1 gong1, 老爺lao3 ye

husband's mother: 婆婆po1 po, 家婆jia1 po1, 奶奶nai3 nai

Unfortunately, the same terms can also be used to refer to other family members depending on which part of the world you are in. Eg. for Cantonese in Malaysia where I'm from, 公公 refers to grandfather and 婆婆 is grandmother. It makes it confusing when moving from one Chinese community in the world to another.

Posted on: 癌症

开口一问，八方支援，这真非孤立无助之区。rags, 很感谢。

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

... and I'm sure a burden for the mummy too, who must not only remember what she is suppose to call everyone, but also teach her baby a different set of terms for the same set of people. And if hubby also needs to be taught, well that'll be 3 sets of terms to remember! :-S

There should be marriage and maternity preparation courses for this stuff.

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

Anyone have urls to these conversations? Would love to read what was discussed and learn.

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

When I got married, I informed my wife (who doesn't speak Chinese) that she should call my parents 妈 and 爸，but I wrote on paper the words "ma" and "pa". Now I feel like I'm in an episode of the Waltons every time my wife greets my dad. 

Shows how important it is to get your pinyin correct from the start. Sigh... :-)

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

Hi proactive. Welcome to Chinesepod as well.

Besides Chinese, we help people with their English as well. Hope the following helps:

> I didn't mean to be rude, it's just that

Should be full-stop not a comma between "rude" and "it's", or you can put a "but" after comma.

> I'm tired of seeing/hearing the English language get butchered by people

I would suggest using a correct expression like "used erroneously" instead of colloquial and incorrect "get butchered". Also, I would recommend you pay attention to your punctuation.

I don't mean to be rude. It is just that I know that sometimes if you are lax with your language, you can get insulted for no reason when communicating on online forums. So I hope you'll be careful.

Posted on: A Visit to the In-laws

Hi atlantianz, welcome to Chinesepod. Very happy to have you in our community.

Posted on: 癌症

“无助”这一个词是否来自于英文？Looks too suspiciously close to the word "helpless" to be a coincidence.

这是不是和“双赢／win—win”一样从英语混合入中文？古书有用“无助”的例子吗？

Posted on: Dad behind the Video Camera

Lens cap alarms are all part of the 白痴防-ness (ie. idiot-proof-ness) of today's gizmos. We all need it! :-)