User Comments - rebecka
rebecka
Posted on: It's Written in the Stars - Part 3
May 19, 2014, 01:09 PM谢谢你祝我生日快乐! 我达到了我的高级课程的目的。我等着好久了得到这个水平。我离流利还是有一个大段距离。我还需要提高我的语法和中文翻译。以前我感觉声调练习是最重要的。现在，我要集中在自己的中文翻译上。以后，我希望我可以让我的中文说得更流利。我会跟中文博客坚持学习中文 :)
Posted on: Coffee Shop
May 19, 2014, 01:01 PMYes I did, I learned mnemonics or made up my own for every single one of them. Some I did originally learn by rote though because I was learning Japanese in my teens and Chinese characters is one of the scripts used in the language. My fascination with Chinese characters actually started when I was 7 years old. When I was in 2nd grade one of my teachers one day thought it would be fun to show us what Chinese characters looked like because they were like pictographs, and she taught us a bit about how to draw them. The first characters I ever learnt were 木, 日, 月, 水 and 火. That's what ignited my passion for learning languages! I find the scripts of languages and the etymology behind words really fun to learn.
Posted on: You Can Handle the Truth
May 18, 2014, 02:41 PMI think Vera might have been talking about scandals in general or maybe 绯闻 has two different acceptable ways to say it in spoken Chinese? I found fei3wen2 on mdbg, and I also found it on the current version of the Pleco app, but the characters appear to be 诽闻. The character meaning of 诽 is slander and for 绯 I found it means red or scarlet. I'm trying to find examples of the two words online for the differences. 绯闻 seems to be used the most online. I'm not certain if they are interchangeable or not. I also found 丑闻 which means scandal too. Looks to me like you can switch between 丑闻 and 诽闻 though and convey the same meaning although there might be subtle differences. Waiting too for a Chinesepod teacher to answer this.
Posted on: Coffee Shop
May 18, 2014, 02:24 PMIt's my pleasure! ^_～ Before I began studying Chinese I spent a few months learning the character meanings of around 2000 characters, and how to break them down into chunks so when I come across a Chinese character that I've never seen before I can make up a story around the radicals to memorize that character. Doing this really helped me to learn Chinese and other asian languages. If you ever need any help with memorizing other Chinese characters, you can leave a comment on here. I try to study 1 to 3 lessons a day on Chinesepod, so I'm on here quite a lot.
Posted on: Coffee Shop
May 18, 2014, 11:16 AMI also know of a mnemonic to remember this character, if it interests you :) The character 等 can be broken down into three radicals: 寸, 土 and 竹. 寸 means a "Chinese inch" in Chinese and is pronounce cun4 (fourth tone), but when it is used with other radicals to form a chinese character I think it takes on the meaning of "glue". 土 means earth, soil. 竹 has a meaning of bamboo. So if you want to remember 等 easily picture yourself planted "bamboo" or glued "寸" to the spot "earth" where you are waiting.
Posted on: Coffee Shop
May 18, 2014, 10:32 AMYes, deng means "to wait" and the character for deng is 等
Posted on: Toilet Time
May 17, 2014, 09:36 AMI'm not sure exactly if this is used in daily conversation but I have seen it used before in more formal contexts like in articles when I was looking up examples for Chinese words online. I kind of associate the Chinese character 浴 with showering because when I was studying Japanese more intensively before I started studying Chinese, 浴 was used in a verb with the noun "シャワー" which means shower in Japanese to form a collocation meaning "to shower". The character, 浴 itself has a meaning of to bathe, so from this alone, in Chinese, I'm not exactly sure if you would use it to mean washroom, restroom, or powder room, more like a room with a bathroom or a shower. I've seen it used sometimes to refer to a public place where you can bathe yourself, like a sort of bathhouse. I also would like to know if 浴室 can be used at times to mean a regular bathroom like in a home or even a restroom so I hope a native speaker can clarify this for us. Hope this was a bit of help to you.
Posted on: It's Written in the Stars - Part 3
May 17, 2014, 09:28 AMThanks for encouraging me :) I tried one advanced lesson about a year ago and it was really intense and I had to go over the audio many times and the dialogue was a long one so it took me a few hours to complete. It was related to Chinese medicine. I gave an advanced lesson a try again yesterday following this lesson, and I'm so excited! I actually understood the majority of it with minimal searching for words ^^
Posted on: It's Written in the Stars - Part 3
May 17, 2014, 09:23 AMYeah, I'm so glad I found mdbg :D Before I was using Nciku to look up words when I first started learning Chinese. It's a wonderful site too but I find the pages take a much longer time to load. Mdbg is so much faster and I can open up multiple windows of it at a time for different words and my computer doesn't freeze anymore, plus I really like the detailed descriptions it gives for words :) I also use the denshi jisho online dictionary to look up characters to have a closer look of how they are written. Those two sites are my go-tos!
Posted on: Do You Have Swimming Cap?
May 26, 2014, 02:25 AMAt the swimming pools I've been to, I was never asked to wear a swimming cap. I don't think it's mandatory in Canada, where I live, to wear one but maybe in certain places here it might sometimes be. The only time I've ever really worn a swimming cap was when I didn't want to get my hair too wet.