User Comments - joeborn

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

Ah. I think I see what you mean. The receiver of the action 发现, namely, the tattoo, is understood. So that sentence says the tattoo is discovered by my mother.

Thanks a lot.

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

I don't understand the first use of 被 in the dialogue, i.e. "被我妈发现."  Going by the parallel pattern that follows it, namely, "我肯定会被她打死的" "I'll surely be beat to death by her," I would have thought it meant "My mother is discovered by me" instead of "My mother finds out about me."  That is, use of 被 in other contexts always seemed not only to make the verb passive but also to indicate that the object of the preposition 被 is performing the action.  Here, though, the object of 被, namely, 我, is the object of the discovering rather than the perpetrator.

Can anyone explain this?

Posted on: How was your flight?

changye,

Thanks a lot.

Posted on: How was your flight?

Both the oral dialog and the pinyin render 晕机 as yun1ji1, whereas MDBG has it as yun4ji1.  Does anyone know whether that an error on MDBG's part, as opposed to a legitimate random or regional variation?

Posted on: Fog or Smog?

ありがとうございます.

Good point about "lean-to"; it's probably something of a stretch for a non-native English speaker--except. apparently, for you.

"All my Chinese dictionaries, including ancient words dictionaries and character dictionaries." changye, you must be quite the scholar. I am unworthy :-)

Thanks again.

Posted on: Fog or Smog?

My apologies if this is too far afield, but I have a question about the pronunciation of 厦 in general.  Apparently, its pinyin is sha4 when it's used in 高楼大, gao1lou2da4sha4, it's xia4 in 厦门 Xia4men2.  So far, so good. 

But, for 厦's stand-alone definition, MDBG gives not only "tall building" and "mansion" but also "rear annex" and "lean-to," and it gives not only sha4 for the stand-alone pronunciation but also xia4 as an alternative. 

So the question is, does any native speaker know whether the alternative, xia4 pronunciation applies to all of those stand-alone definitions or only to, say, "lean-to"?

Posted on: Flying a Kite

Thanks a lot, changye.

(By the way, since I can't be helpful about Chinese, I'll be pedantic about English: "dragging" in the context is a gerund rather than participle: it's used nominally rather than adjectivally.)

Posted on: Flying a Kite

I have a question about the use of 着 in the expansion sentence "他非要拉着我去." 

Why does this expansion sentence use 拉着, whereas the other expansion sentences for 拉 simply use 拉 by itself?  Could the reason be that the "object" of 拉着 in this sentence is a verb-containing clause 我去, whereas the objects of 拉 in other expansion sentences for 拉 are not?  I.e., is this a construction analogous to that of the dialog's 跟着? 

Or is the reason instead that the "dragging" 拉着 is an ongoing or habitual action?

Or is there some other explanation? 

Posted on: Basketball

The pin yin for the expansion sentences all give 抢 as qiang1 rather than qiang3 (although the audio does pronounce it as qiang3).

Posted on: Fire in the Hallway!

changye,

Thanks a lot. That's what I needed to know.