User Comments - sclim

Posted on: Swearing at a Driver

So, if I catch your drift, an epithet you can spew out at someone who is baling out of a fight with you? (assuming, of course, you think you can whup him?), hehe.

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

This is a puzzle, but on reflection, I think the problem we have here is that we are translating in our minds the English literal sense of "borrow" for 借, and "to" for 向, which in reality, obey different rules in Chinese than our English words do in English.

If we accept that 借 means "to participate in a borrow-lend transaction", and that 向 (I believe 跟 can be substituted here) in this context is a connection marker, rather than the directional marker "towards" that is given in for 向 in our dictionaries, then the meaning becomes clear. Or, to put it another way, 向 means towards when one is facing in a direction, turning or taking sides. But in the lending-borrowing transaction of 借, the rules of 借and 向 are opposite from what we would infer the English Lent/Borrowed "towards" to indicate. So in this context, just forget the directionality "towards, perhaps suggesting the direction that the money flowed".

他昨天向我借了五百块钱

means "Yesterday he borrowed 500 yuan from me." as you and Chris have so elegantly translated.

The translation "asked to borrow" appears to be the translators least clumsy way of expressing the literal meaning of 向 "he directed to me an implied request to borrow", when really, the accounting for every character (in this case trying to preserve the directionality of 向) in the sentence creates more problems than it solves. So "asked (to borrow) from" for 向 is misleading and should be stricken from the translation. That's the best sense I can glean from the situation. What do you think?

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

Haha, that's a phrase resonating from my youth! Actually, I seem to remember it in a slightly different sense; one or two couples in a group with a single tagging along: the single is the 备胎.

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

I was not familiar with this either, but if I understand the phrase 被锁 to meant "to be locked (in or out)" in the passive sense, as 锁 is "to lock" in the active sense, then it seems to make perfect and consistent sense, with good economy of words. With my limited vocabulary I can't think of any other way of expressing this without a lot of circumlocution. Why would you want to avoid the use of the passive marker? Just think of it in English: I got locked in to my house; or I got locked out of my house...using the passive modifier is pretty essential, unless you resort to invoking the obligatory other party -- "someone locked me in the house", even if it is yourself -- "I locked myself out of the house". Actually, you're right, that last situation might require a specific explanation, mightn't it?

Hmm.. would it be 我自己被锁在屋子外了。 or would it be 我被自己锁在屋子外了? Jenny. Help!

Posted on: Having Spare Keys Made

Haha; you show admirable restraint, referring to the maps as "funny", i.e. not making reference to those maps actually being "normal" i.e. with the Antipodean reference frame. See, even the word "Antipodean" reflects a bias towards the Northerners being the Normal People. I suppose that's the usual way of human beings, to talk as though everyone else shares your own reference frame.

To come back to your maps example, I am reminded of the ancient Mappa Mundi ("map of the world" scrawled on parchment, (I think the original one I'm thinking of is in Hereford Cathedral) centred on Jerusalem, reasonably accurate around the middle east, and around England and adjacent Europe, but pretty vague beyond there, and filled with pictures of fantastic monsters and beasts around tha margins of the known world (I don't think it actually said "There be Monsters Yonder", but that was the implication). And more recent examples like the humorous map of USA from the Texas viewpoint, where Texas is bloated in size, squeezing the rest of the US states to an insignificant rim around Texas (this example from my memory dates from when Texas was the largest state!).

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

Dilu: I've just realized the reason for my ambivalence in putting my finger on exactly why I thought the usage was not quite right. It felt to me "correct" and "slightly inappropriate" at the same time.

From the beginning, since subscribing to CP, I felt like it was listening in to a conversation between friends, and gradually, I felt like I was being drawn into that circle of 老朋友 friendship. So I looked forward to each lesson as I would look forward to meeting old friends again. I think that's why CP works so well. In that context, the usage of the phrase in question seemed completely natural (except that the linguist in me made a mental note -- North American use, not British Commonwealth outside of Canada use). Only when, in the same lesson, you switched to didactic mode, did I suddenly realize you were my instructor as well, and suddenly the usage did not sit so comfortably. It's a 老朋友 versus 老師 的問題 (old friends vs respected teacher sort of thing)

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

Yes. Moreover, I think the omission of translation into Hanzi might have had an immediate practical point. Doesn't China have a filtering system on all internet content? The "dreaded characters" would probably be caught in the filter causing inconvenience to everyone.

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

Well, as bodawei has pointed out, "gonna" is, to all intents and purposes, totally absent from the Australian vernacular (except in jest, etc.,) and, by association, likely also from UK speech and written language. Therefore, the culprits, by default, are almost certainly the North American English speakers who apparently are the only significant body of English users in the world using "gonna" in the verbal and unofficial written form. I must have been thinking of its use by foreign speakers in proper isolation within informal speech. But I agree, now that you put it that way, in an otherwise formal sentence, when an informal word like "gonna" or "wanna" is interjected (unknowingly, by the foreign learner) the effect indeed is is disruptive.

I'd be tempted to blame this on the situation, supposedly summed up by George Bernard Shaw that "England and America are two countries separated by the same language", but even that is not the real problem. I'm sure there are informal, almost slang usages, that exist on the UK side of the Atlantic which would cause similar dissonance if spliced into an otherwise formal sentence. The problem is the promiscuous use of slang or informal speech, (itself not a problem if used judiciously) and the picking up of this habit by foreign students before the full knowledge is acquired of the appropriate situation where this should be used, and this could happen on either side of the Atlantic, or Pacific, as the case might be.

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

You'll note me lapsing into informal "incorrect" speech, no doubt influenced by "lazy" N. American patterns:). OK, for the sake of the puzzled non-native English speaking onlookers, it should be "we civilians".

Posted on: I'm gonna be Late

I fully agree, and it's a pity that this discussion went on for so long before someone thought to point this out. We won't count several quite understandable and expected, under the circumstances, minor grammatical English usage errors (which were non impolite, and I didn't care -- this is a Chinese course). I, too, can't think of any other even "borderline offensive" words or issues that came up in ALL the CP lessons I've heard.