User Comments - orangina

Posted on: Slippery Ground

I think in this context 车来了 is "the bus is pulling up" or "I can see the bus coming down the road;" once it has come to a full stop I would say that 车到了。In the dialog I imagine the bus 到了ed while the woman was slipping, then 走了ed while they were talking about how icy the ground was.

Posted on: Slippery Ground

Well, you do need to be sensible when negotiating landslides. So a warning is nice to have.

Posted on: Slippery Ground

According to my roll-over, it also means to be careful because the floor is comical... (picturing hotel lobby full of banana peels.)

Posted on: Return to the Hometown

hehe, not Chinese... just illustrating hughborg707's point that we have similar phrases to 有空来我家玩儿 (yǒukòng lái wǒ jiā wánr) in English. And that mis-communications occur.

As for "something", the guy was very nice, but not ready to be dating again. I listened more carefully and was able to politely turn down a second date.

Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming

No siteng, I apologize, I knew you were not being critical and I should have either made that clear or just kept my mouth shut... and it is mainly other Americans saying they are "proud of" or "refuse to" that irritates me. I guess hearing it from someone not native to America confirms my fears that people will think that this is what being from America is. I am sorry to have made you feel you shouldn't have said what you heard from others.

I also apologize to the community for almost starting a flame war over Celsius and Fahrenheit!

Posted on: Return to the Hometown

recent divorcee: "We should go do something sometime..."

orangina: "yeah..."

recent divorcee: "How about Friday at 7. Can you pick me up?"

orangina: (oh, dammit, he wasn't making small talk, and I already said yes.) "Sure, that would be fine."

Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming

Even if it is -3 to -1 it is still ascending and I think how it would be said in a western weather report. I am not certain of this because where I lived never went below 0 Fahrenheit, but it sounded natural to me. Come to think of it you would hear "A high of 1 and a low of -3" which is in descending order...

And I think ascending numbers are natural sounding because that is the way you count things. I have never heard Augustine's explanation, but I think pretty much everyone counts in ascending order. There are other things that go in different directions in Chinese and English, like time being up or down.

apparently, I am in a contrarian mood today

Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming

As someone born and raised in America, I find it extremely annoying that we do not use metric, or that the rest of the world does... I don't care which system is standard. (Some days learning the "new" system is fun, some days it is a bother and I just want to know what is going on.) I also find the "Americans refuse to... and are very proud of..." rhetoric pretty annoying. But I have to admit, there are some Americans who live up to the stereotype.

Posted on: The Black Spectrum of Meaning

Since "blacklist" is of English derivation, is 黑名单 a translation, or did the term develop independently in Chinese?

Posted on: A Cell Phone Ad on TV

I see plenty of people on the bus and 地铁 surfing away on their phones. And yes, there are pay as you go internet plans. (I am currently considering getting one.) As far as what percentage of the population has access to these things, I have no idea. But in a big city, they are certainly common enough.