User Comments - podster

Posted on: A Tale of Two Labor Unions

I believe the word 单位 is still in use, but the meaning has evolved to drop the associations with its past connotations of iron rice bowl, control over diverse aspects of one's life, etc. Now it simply means place of employment.

Posted on: 高考英语改革

Mark, 在三藩市是不是给公民投票的资料必须使用中文，西班牙文， 什么的？

Posted on: Telling Your 尽 Apart

darkstar94, regarding "making the n sound at the end less prominent", I don't know about n, but the lack of prominence of the ng sound does seem to be a regional variation. For example, native speakers of Shanghainese seem to tend to swallow the final sound of ~ng words when speaking Mandarin. I think it would stand out more in the north, e.g. Beijing. Welcome any native speakers to tell me if I am talking rot.

Posted on: Party Dues

It's going on your permanent record.

Posted on: Taking on the Machines

Veronique, I'm not so sure that you were wrong. And for relatively newer words like 手机 I wonder if there is some Chinese Academy of Languages that rules on these things. I had the same thought as you: 只is for animals. Also, 支 is for some handheld things. But this might just reflect my limited vocabulary. Probably a lot of foreigners would have learned early on, for example:

一只狗 : a dog

一支铅笔: a pencil

but the measure word for a cooking pot (which arguably is also something you can hold in your hand):

一只锅: a pot

It doesn't help matters that the simplified character 只 can represent two different traditional characters, 衹 or 隻, but only the latter is a measure word. Actually, the former is listed as a "variant" of 只 so maybe 只 is a traditional character on its own. I am studying simplified characters so can't be of much help here.

I wonder if there is a word in Chinese for characters that have multiple traditional equivalents. 发 is the one that usually comes to mind.

Posted on: Taking on the Machines

Thanks for the list. I found measure words for two more words, including three for cell phones (although two of these are homophones so maybe debatable which is the correct written form:

手机 shǒujī cell phone: 只，支，部

发动机 fādòngjī engine: 台

Posted on: A Self-Introduction

I meant to say "forum", not form. This web site's editing function remains broken. By the way, if you don't recognize a character or word that you see on line, there are many ways of looking it up. For one, you could cut and paste it into here: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

Posted on: A Self-Introduction

ireon,

what do you mean by "adding pin yin"? By convention, posts in the newbie form were supposed to include pinyin for any characters used. Not an enforced rule, just a conventional etiquette.

Also, when a user writes a post there will be a button in the lower part of the box that says "Convert to Tone Marks". So if I write the syllables ni + hao for 你好, each followed by the number "3" and then press the button, it converts to nǐ hǎo.

Posted on: The Trouble with Marrying a Foreigner

meant to be a reply to Tal's last post; Cpod's editing function remains disabled / broken.

Posted on: The Trouble with Marrying a Foreigner

I would think that one contributing factor for relatively fewer Chinese men married to foreign women is that historically it is more the foreign men who have the longer term assignments (or sojourns for whatever reason) while in China compared to foreign women, so its partly just a matter of odds. No data to back this up; just a guess.