User Comments - tiaopidepi
tiaopidepi
Posted on: Dropping and Losing 丢, 弄丢，丢掉
April 4, 2009 at 9:21 PM@miantiao: I'm pretty certain of my English grammar, but I'll admit I'm no Chinese grammar expert. So I looked at my grammar book--A Practical Chinese Grammar by Hung-nin Samuel Cheung (ISBN-13 9789622015951). It says that 把 is "topicalization" of the object by moving it in front of the verbal complex. It's not quite the same as topic-comment but both constructs come from the fact that Chinese is a topic-prominent language.
Regardless, thinking of topic-comments helped me to understand 把 sentences. And I think I can say 你把我爱。 (My sense of loathing passed...)
阿皮
Posted on: Dropping and Losing 丢, 弄丢，丢掉
April 4, 2009 at 5:43 PM@miantiao, I'd say that emphasis = 把. For example, see my example "You, I loathe." There is no "the". Likewise, my whole first paragraph was composed of topic-comment sentences.
The end result is that topic-comment is an unusual construct for English thus 把 is a very confusing concept for us poor English speakers.
阿皮
Posted on: Dropping and Losing 丢, 弄丢，丢掉
April 4, 2009 at 5:12 PM@paulinurus, gesang: Regarding your statement about 把, English does have an equivalent. Called "topic-comment" sentences, they are unusual in the language. In Wikipedia you'll find more information.
It's difficult to form topic-comment sentences in English but we occasionally do so for emphasis. Normally we will separate the sentence into two partial fragments such as "The money! Hand it over!" or "You, I loathe." (Nothing personal...I just listened to the lesson about fingers and it brought out my misanthropic nature.)
阿皮
Posted on: How Many Zeroes?
April 2, 2009 at 2:02 PM@houban: "Google" in Chinese is "百度". I only know how to say "googleplex" in Californian.
我知道...太冷！(I know...bad joke.)
阿皮
Posted on: Can You Use Chopsticks?
March 30, 2009 at 5:41 AMI'm right-handed but taught myself to use chopsticks with my left so that I could eat noodles with my right arm around the shoulder of a companion. Maybe I'm committing two taboos there...
Posted on: Valentine's Special
February 13, 2009 at 7:26 AMHappy St. Valentine's Day Massacre Anniversary! It's been 80 years since the slaughter in Chicago. And be glad you can get your booze shipped from Ireland, Pete--times are easier now : )
(I bet your bathtub milk whiskey would be mighty tasty, though.)
Posted on: Funny Business -- 搞笑， 好笑， 可笑
February 12, 2009 at 4:13 AM@matt_c: Yeah, that's a problem, and an incredibly complex one. I fixed two things bothered me: tone sandhi on 不 and 还 pinyinizing as huan when it should be hai. I fixed these but only because I found them annoying. Not an encouraging challenge :)
Posted on: Funny Business -- 搞笑， 好笑， 可笑
February 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM@matt_c: "As for programs that will fully annotate text for you - I have yet to find something perfect"
That sounds like a challenge : ) I firmly believe that the only problem with computer programs is that programmers don't know (or don't care) what users want. If you can describe to me what "perfect" looks like, I very well might be happy to try.
I know that I'm unhappy with my current Pinyinizer: I just ripped the ZDT UI to make it faster and fix the bugs the way I wanted them fixed. I could do a lot better, I know. But I'd love to know what you consider "perfect".
One caveat: while I don't have anything against Macs, I have no interest in learning to code in Objective C. Anything I write for your use would be hosted in Safari/Firefox using Silverlight. While I do all my coding for fun it serves a secondary purpose of helping me understand my customers. My customers all code in .NET.
Posted on: Funny Business -- 搞笑， 好笑， 可笑
February 11, 2009 at 4:06 PM@dunderklumpen, bababardawan: There's a Windows IME for pinyin input. I don't know a lot about it, but I've used it successfully on a few versions of Windows.
It works like a "normal" IME--you install it into Windows and when you turn it on it converts from ni3 to nǐ as you type. It only works on 32-bit processes if you're running a 64-bit OS (which is a little weird, but that's Windows for you.)
Download it from http://www.chinese-forums.com/pinyinput-install.zip
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 10: Lao Wang Plans to Sue
April 17, 2009 at 7:04 AMThere's a word missing in the pinyin of the PDF.
老王,他们说这样 做 是合法的。