User Comments - tingyun

Posted on: 出租白人

Oh sorry, just realized I forgot to answer part of the question - Actually, it doesn't matter whether you go to the Chinese or English Nciku website. I use the English one, that may be out of habit, but I think the Chinese one's format is more geared to Chinese speakers trying to find the English definition of a word.

Here's a link to 所在 in the english website - http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%89%80%E5%9C%A8/1314655

(Yes, I picked this word for how comically unhelpful the english dictionary entry is). "Collins Chinese-English Dict" is automatically opened/expanded, but there are two other dictionary entries that currently appear as unexpanded bars. Click to Expand "Contemporary Chinese Standard Dictionary" and you are good to go.

Posted on: 出租白人

Part II of reply:

A quick tutorial on using Nciku or Chinese dictionaries in general: pay attention to the little symbols before the Nciku definitions. For example, the definition of 与yu3 has 4 meanings, with the 2nd meaning listed as

2. 2. 动 [文] 交往；亲近

the 【文】 symbol means this is a literary use, while a [口] symbol means a colloqual use, and no symbol means a neutral use. You are unlikely to encounter the 【文】meanings outside of very formal writing, and so you can focus which meanings you are looking at by this.

Hmm, what else might be useful for just starting out using Chinese dictionary - the grammatical role of the particular meaning is listed first, in the above 动dong4 stands for 动词 verb, others include 副fu4=副词 adverb 形xing2=形容词 adjective 名ming2=名词 noun， 介jie4=介词 ah I don’t know English grammer words well – but the meaning is this introduces the purpose, or target, or some other noun which the action is about or done by, like 为wei4 tells you ‘why’, or read as 为wei2 introduces the person doing the action in a passive sentence, both would be 介, 连lian2=连词 conjunction

Also, consider the meaning 3 for 与

3. 介 引进动作行为有关的对象，相当于"跟""同"

Alot of entries are like this - a complicated grammatical explanation in the first clause, followed by a second clause that makes it simple by a comparison. Here, 相当于xiang1dang1yu2 means 'basically equivalent to' and then you've got "跟"gen1 "同"tong2 which you probably recognize. So you know in this meaning it functions pretty much the same as the words 跟 and 同. Knowing this might make it easier to understand the first clause (or even skip it) -引进yin3jin4 draw in 动作dong4zuo4 action行为xing2wei2 behavior 有关you3guan1 involved, related 的 对象dui4xiang4 target, object

Finally, at the final entry you'll often be told what pronunciations not to use, or what other characters you shouldn't write in place of it. This is generally done when a lot of people are either writing it or pronouncing it the other way. usual language for this is something like 不宜写作 (not appropriate to write in the following way。。。) ，不要误读为 (don't mistakenly read as。。。）。

Finally, sometimes you will see something like (taken from 蜕化tui4hua4）跟"退化(tui4hua4)"的适用范围和对象不同。meaning the scope of 蜕化 use and appropriate targets for use are different from 退化, but also indicating to you the meanings are close. Sometimes you will see something like (taken from 因缘yin1yuan2) 参见"姻缘(yin1yuan2)"的提示 - 参见can1jian4 means 'consult, refer to‘，and if you then go to the definition you are directed to consult you will be given an explanation of the difference in the terms (taken from 姻缘）跟"因缘"不同。"姻缘"专指夫妻的缘分；"因缘"泛指人与人之间的一切缘分和机缘。( 姻缘specially refers to (专zhuan1 specially 指 zhi3 refers to) husband wife fate, while 因缘 broadly refers to (泛fan4 broad指) all (一切yi2qie4 = all) fate between people. Speaking of which, here are a bunch of different words for ‘all’ you might encounter – 都 dou1皆jie1 均 jun1 . And 称 cheng1 means ‘called’ , 通称 tong1cheng1 ‘usually/often called’ 通=通常tong1chang2 ， 统称 tong3cheng1 means ‘all of the before mentioned things are known by the common name of….‘ 统=统一tong3yi1 unite.

There are alot of terms and language use to get used to - dictionary entries veer pretty formal in their language, and have their own ways of indicating things. The above is my attempt to give a basic tutorial, you should be able to pick the rest up as you go along. One great thing is looking up the word itself becomes a learning experience - I'll sometimes look up a word I don't know, discover another new one in the definition, look it up, then discover another...and follow a long train that I think is rather productive in learning results, as the whole time you are practicing Chinese.;) And also – you’ll get used to a formal way of writing, ie using single characters in place of the two character compounds, use of a wider variety of grammar particles, a more formal structure to the grammar， like saying A不同于B (formal) rather than A跟B不同 (less formal) (you’ll soon find 于yu2 is just about an all purpose grammar particle, it can be 在，从，跟, etc)…all things that will be very useful in your language studies. In China, you can’t even read a ‘don’t enter’ sign without encountering formal language – if its not闲人免进 then its闲人莫入 or some other highly formal variant…;)

Posted on: 出租白人

I exceeded the 5,000 char limit so you get two responses. ;)

Hi bababardwan,

Nciku's chinese-chinese dictionary is great - comprehensive, accurate on pronunciation, and when you encounter close synonyms, if there is a difference, one of the two entries will usually have an explanation (ie 以致yi3zhi4 and 以至 yi3zhi4, or 谋取 mou2qu3 and 牟取mou2qu3), so you can delve as deep as you like into subtle differences. Also, every meaning in the definition is accompanied by example uses. Its usually my first choice when reading modern texts

But sometimes Handian is a better choice - http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6ZdicB1ZdicA4.htm . It has the advantage of being more comprehensive, so sometimes Nciku will be missing a Chengyu or older word that Handian has. However, this is rare for words in wide modern use - Handian's primary advantage is being more comprehensive in including older uses. Ie, the link I gave is the definition for 汤 - look it up on Nciku and you will only get Tang1, but Handian also includes the pronunciation Shang1 which is used to describe the look of rapidly flowing water. 趋 qu1 in Handian also includes the ancient use of the character in the pronunciation of cu4 to replace 促cu4。This advantage is of course also a problem - you are going to generally be hit with a great many more meanings than Nciku would give you, and generally most of the additional ones are exceedingly rare or nonexistent in modern use. Generally then it would be better to use Nciku for most modern writings, where the possible definitions are already narrowed down for you, and you don’t spend hours debating between 20 definitions…

Outside of literary texts, Handian does have two special uses - 1st use - automatic looking up of words by selecting with mouse on any internet page (Nciku only lets you do it on their website, and its buggy and only links to the english dictionaries). For Handian, just go to any webpage and after it loads, navigate to this link (paste whole thing in browser, not just highlighted part)

javascript:void((function()%20{var%20element=document.createElement('script');%20element.setAttribute('src',%20'http://www.zdic.net/tools/zih.asp');%20document.body.appendChild(element);})())

Or create a shortcut with that link...anyway, you'll stay on the same page but it will load a little program, and by highlighting characters or words it will pop up a dictionary textbox. Sometimes saves time, when the website is not lagging.

2nd use - tracing history of words. Ever wondered how 涕ti4 means both 'snot' and 'tears'? Which came first? http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6ZdicB6Zdic95.htm (link goes to the 详细 tab, could also have just looked it up and then went to that tab) And follow the story... (from the first line) In 先秦 (first Qin dynasty) meant tears, and it was only later that the charecter 泪lei4 was born...and then we could follow it further down to where it picks up the 'snot' meaning...Sometimes I find this sort of thing really fun。 Or, for words, like when we were discussing the meaning of 功夫 in that other thread ..you could go to http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/5/ZdicE5Zdic8AZdic9F76755.htm (again its just a matter of going to the detailed tab) and you can see, organized by the 5 different meanings, historical examples of its use. The source text name of the quote is in blue and in brackets...and unless they note the date these are generally rather old texts (ie, the number 1 entry is from 三国志 records of the three kingdoms), whereas for the number 5 特指武术te4zhi3wu3shu4 (specially refers to martial arts) meaning, we just have some newspaper articles from the 1980s. But note in number four meaning, last use example, as meaning ability or skill 功夫 is used to mean martial arts while being modified by 武艺 (this is where I got the example for you in the other thread). Thus, it is reasonable to speculate that 功夫 wasn't widely used to specifically refer to martial arts previously, instead being skill in general (though could be modified by words or context to mean martial arts skill), and only in the modern era has its meaning heavily migrated (though I’m sure there are examples before the 1980s). Of course, we don't have that much data so we are speculating a bit, but I think its really fun to play with language in this way. ;)

Posted on: 出租白人

I think English-Chinese dictionaries are fine for giving a very generalized sense of the meaning, but they consistently lose or misrepresent subtle meanings. Just talking about Nciku - I've seen the English entries get the distinction completely opposite at times. At the media level, its probably best to start using the Chinese dictionary entries - usually much better. I'll past the Nciku Chinese entry below:

诧异 [chàyì]

1. 1. 形 奇怪，惊异

他突然退学，同学们都非常诧异

诧异的目光

Ok, so it has the meaning of both thinking matters are strange and being surprised/shocked. And the first example sentence is a condition matching the suggested - being surprise by a situation one cannot figure out (the guy suddenly withdrawing from school). So matches Zhenlijiang's japanese dictionary definition pretty well.

Posted on: Shaolin Temple

Not really - 和尚 is a transliteration from Sanskrit while 僧人 arose directly from Chinese language. Both are fairly general terms for 出家chu1jia1 Buddhist monks (there are a host of other more specific terms, like 头陀 (another Sanskrit transliteration) which generally refer to traveling monks)

That having been said, uses and implications probably differed over time. A few months ago I read The Platform Sutra 壇經 of Hui Neng 慧能 from 700ad or so, and noticed that 和尚 was used in a very respectful sense by a lower monk towards his elder. I asked a prof. and they explained that at that time it did have a highly respectful note to it, and was generally used to describe high ranking or venerated monks.

But as of now they are equivalent in the two sources I checked (actually, one of them is defined using the other in both sources).

Posted on: What are you doing?

Emasur,

The meaning is the same - and if all you are worried about is recognizing and reading, then you can leave it at that. If you'd like to be able to write and know which to use, the simplest take is that 做zuo4 is used for more concrete actions, and simpler words, while 作zuo4 is used for more abstract actions and more complicated and formal words.

I wrote up a more complete answer here - http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/10808#comment-197377

Too long and detailed to fit a newbie lesson discussion board, so I figured best to create a post.

Tim

Posted on: 网络游戏

对，谢谢你的纠正。在批评别人，自己不小心犯了类似的错误。。。；）

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

Hi bababardwan,

Haha, I am 100 percent certain it would be weird to say that sentence. ;) I was really just making the point about context - though it may be that we have here a situation where there is not a truly satisfactory perfect term. I'll pull up some entries in Baidu Encyclopedia to see what different choices they make in discussing western martial arts, and see if we find a better way:

拳击，是戴拳击手套进行格斗的运动项目。 - Ok, I don't like this one because it relegated Boxing to a kind of 运动项目 yun4dong4xiang4mu4 'sporting event' - seems to miss the broader sense of martial art and instead have an implicit narrowing of the concept.

击剑(fencing)是从古代剑术决斗中发展起来的一项体育项目， sigh here we go again with the "sporting event’。。。

摔跤（Wrestling）是重竞技运动项目之一 and again with sporting event..

Ok, so I ran a few searches trying various terms implied by your above suggestions. Heres my impression of random internet posts - You have some people using terms 西方武术 to mean martial arts from the west, but not very many, and its more often compared in something like 中国武术 vs 西方拳击. Also, came across a few that used the term 外国功夫 to mean either 1) foreigners practicing kung fu or 2) how kung fu is portrayed in western movies - yikes, so thats a potential confusion of you don't phrase carefully.

On the other hand, switching to 日本功夫 encountered few problems - plenty of discussion with this, sounds like wide acceptance of the idea of other eastern cultures having Kung Fu.

My overall impression from this is that people mostly view the western stuff as sports. In that case, you have a choice between naming specific one you are referring to (easy if its wrestling, fencing, boxing, etc), that shouldn't cause you to say something unusual. Or, embrace the weirdness and instead imply that they should be looked at similarly to the chinese arts, and define your context, similar to my example.

Or you could always sound a bit scientific and say 徒手搏击术 (徒手-tu2shou3 unarmed 搏击- bo2ji1 combat 术 - shu4 method). Or make a little more natural sounding (in my humble foreigner's intuition, which is close to worthless) and say 搏击方式. If it adds confidence, this later term got used in one of those silly internet 'whats the best martial art' debates - http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=124548449 .

EDIT - took a closer look at the debate - hilarious. All the classic characters you'd get in the english version of the same debate - from the guy who can't spell bringing up Thai-Boxing (he writes 态拳 instead of the correct 泰拳) to the Bruce lee fan insisting that 最厉害的搏击方式没有 但是论拳术的话 截拳道应该是最先进 最实用的 'there is no such thing as the best, but to discuss methods of boxing, the most advanced and practical is is Jeet Kune Do(截拳道)' to the cliche politically correct statement 感觉应该取决于个人吧 ‘I feel it should be decided based on the individual’

Anyway, I just sort of randomly constructed 徒手搏击术 and 搏击方式 from what sounds right to me, you could probably play jigsaw puzzle with various words meaning 'fight' and various words meaning 'method' and be just as well off.

Personally I'd suggest you just keep changing the way you say it - I find its best to keep language from getting to solidified, always saying the same thing is both boring and a limiting habit, better to mispeak - or say odd things and get correcting feedback - and from that aquire a more general, intuitive sense of how you can construct words to match the concepts you are thinking of, and how different way of saying things best fits different contexts.

But if I were writing some article and didn't want to put people off, I'd probably use 徒手搏击术 in more formal writing or 搏击方式 in more colloquial (note that the later is technically broader as it would include weapons, but I think that lack of specificity is the marker of being more colloquial at times) , though now we are back to my foreigner linguistic intuition - so not exactly inspiring confidence. ；） Maybe a kind native speaker will come along and give their response to the various terms (though my guess is there'd be quite a bit of variation on an issue like this - just like if you started chatting with english speakers about terms like 'martial art' (many would probably think eastern right off the bat, but some would disagree), 'methods of unarmed combat' (many would find too long and bookish, others disagree), 'ways of fighting' (clumsy term?) 'combat methods' etc etc ).

Tim

Posted on: Practicing Kung Fu

Hi Bababardwan,

So, there's a distinction between 功夫 (skill) and 工夫 (time) but this seems at least largely the invention of modern dictionaries and certainly 功夫 was used in both senses in older writings. So probably best to treat both together, though I'll observe the dictionary distinction when writing the examples.

工夫

1 - time it takes to do something， effort expended to do something.

白费工夫 - waste effort time 下工夫 - expend effort 工夫不负有心人 - determined and you can conquer the effort required to do it (yah thats terribly clumsy, I'm bad with translations...)

2 - spare time (usually used in negation, and a bit impatient sounding) 我没有闲工夫陪你 - I don't have the time to spend with you

3 - a period of time 刚到了那段工夫，我一直跟他在一起 the time when i first arrived, I continuously was with him.

功夫

4 - Beyond the obvious (ie lesson dialogue) I didn't have any ideas so I just grabbed from the use entry at http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/5/ZdicE5Zdic8AZdic9F76755.htm a quote from 秦兆阳 《苏醒》 “他原本有一套祖传的武艺功夫。” He originally had a passed down from ancestors martial art skill/method (I'm really bad at translations, sorry). Note here the 功夫 is modified by 武艺 wu3yi4 in order to make it more specific - martial art skill. Though that wouldn't be necessary in most use...

Speaking of which, you can add 武艺 (and come to think of it, 武功wu3gong1 also）to the list of terms that have meanings that could be translated as 'martial arts'. I saw that you asked above, about what the various terms describe, and whether they include foreign martial arts. Well, technically they do - since their original meanings is not really so much some defined method of kicking and punching, passed down from teacher to student - but rather all the military type skills - horseback riding, archery, close combat, etc, and certainly there is no national restriction. 功夫 is even broader than the others given its root meaning of skill. But people tend to have strong impressions as to what these words mean, and I think alot of them have become rather restricted to people dressed in costumes punching and kicking the air, as well as to China in particular, in people's minds. Thus, it may be less confusing to use 拳击quan2ji1 boxing 摔跤shuai1jiao1 wresting, etc. Then again, I think you'd be totally fine saying something like 我最近在练一门欧洲的功夫 "I recently have been training a type of european martial art", and after introducing it as such clearly, then later in the conversation just casually referring to it as 功夫. Since technically speaking there is no nationality limitation in the word, you just have to overcome any subconscious association by making your use clear at the beginning, and then you are good to go. Though you might be better off picking a word like 武功 - less immediate associations and, as a bonus, people seem impressed when you use the older terms for things...;)

As for why Kung Fu became the western term...I'd guess it was Bruce Lee's influence, though its a guess. Then again, the only book he published in his lifetime was "Chinese Gung Fu"...;)

Tim

Posted on: 网络游戏

Technically, this lesson's Chengyu 昨日黄花 is a mistake for the correct 明日黄花。It comes from 苏氏's “相逢不用忙归去，明日黄花蝶也愁”.  Apparently this mistake largely originated from a Chinese soap opera called《因为爱你》, and then spread from there...

Anyway, I realized this today after using the incorrect version (and being corrected) while chatting with a friend, and remembering I had picked it up from this lesson (I used to listen to the dialogues 50 or more times before retiring a lesson, so I still remember where I learned each word), I figured I'd come back and drop a note, in case anyone else returns to study these older lessons.

Note - I'm not criticizing Cpod on this - given that alot of people use 昨日黄花 I'm sure from many people's perspective it is 'correct'.  In the same vein, I know most people say 电光火石 (another technical mistake, should be 电光石火)，and I've personally given up on using 不以为然 in conversations because most people have forgoten its correct meaning of 不同意 and confused it with the meaning of 不以为意.

Just dropping a note for information purposes, for those who, like me, take a somewhat pedantic approach to the language...:)

Tim