User Comments - inland

Posted on: Traffic

Maybe unrelatedly, "bread truck" in the states is a generic term for the size and shape of what is or used to be used for bread delivery.

Posted on: Olympic Excitement

Chinese supporters in every arena have just one chant: "Jia You!'' (Go on!). It literally means "add oil"

Even the official English language newspaper China Daily admits being cheesed off with this same chant:

"Stalwart supporters are conscious of their limited scope of vocal encouragement," it said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/beijing_olympics/story/0,27313,24228087-5016818,00.html

Posted on: The Panda's Secret Wish

Posted on: The 是...的 (Shì...de) Pattern

As I understand it, shi..de is to describe or ask about characteristics of events in the past. So 这个裙子什么时候买 could be asking "when WILL you be buying pants", whereas 这个裙子 是什么时候买的？ would be When DID you buy pants?  And 这个裙子 买了 is "did you buy pants? Without any question as to the method.

Posted on: Addressing People

a) is fuwuyuan appropriate for salespeople in stores, other situations besides waiters?

b) is there a more elevated term for people like government clerks, police officers, and others who have some form of authority? 

c)  If xiansheng is equivalent to "sir", what's the equivalent to "Madam" or "lady:?  That is, what's the BROADEST respectful address?

Posted on: War Zone

Henning, interesting and valid point.  Maybe I'll go one really, really shallow layer below the surface :).  I don't entirely disagree with the position of Sherlock Holmes, who said the mind is like an attic and one can only store so much in it.

Posted on: War Zone

Changye, I was going to remark on the "ice" radical being used for "rush" or "flush" or pouring boiling water over tea leaves.  But I decided not to, having two minds on etymology.  I find it interesting but as a student, I am trying to decide between:

a) learning the thinking behind the characters is useful in remembering them and figuring out the meaning of unfamiliar characters;

b) learning the thinking behind the characters is one more thing to remember and I might was well spend my time in rote memorization through flash cards and such with minimal info on the "meaning" of the components. 

The differences in the culture between me and even the reformers in the 1950s make it clear that I'll never have much intuitive grasp of what they are getting at.  "The thinking behind" characters belongs to someone who is used to writing in this fashion, somone who is Chinese, someone who live fifty to one thousand to two thousand years ago.  It's quite beyond a casual student living in the US.

I have the Tuttle books on 500 most used characters: it has one or two sentences on the meanings of components, and most often it's "It's a phonetic" or "It came to mean" without much more explanation.  It suits me as a learner, although I find your etymological discussion interesting in itself.  I can see both chipping ice and flowing water leading to rush.  When you chip ice, pieces fly up into the sky, right?

Off topic,  I asked yi1ge4 tai2wan1ren2 gu4ke4  how he inputs in chinese.  He says he types pinyin and the program prompts him on the various characters fitting the pinyin.   

Posted on: War Zone

Oop, finally made out the radical.  As the advert at the beginning of the podcast notes, some of us have to SQUINT at the characters.  A little larger:

冲

Number 7, as in bing1 and leng3 

Posted on: War Zone

And yet another question: in the US, people in the different services have different terms for themselves, and it's bad form to mix them up.  For example, you'd never call a marine a "soldier".  Is jun1ren2 a term I can use for all uniformed persons who aren't jin2cha1, like "troops" in english?

Posted on: War Zone

Looking at this word in the supplemental for "peace", and seeing the combo of "together" and "level" or "even", I'm going to assume that an1 is a peace that an individual can have in his personality whereas he2ping2 requires at least two people with peace BETWEEN them.