User Comments - wenjong

Posted on: Walking the Bird

I lost my turtle when I was about 11 yrs old, taking him out to play in a sandpile on a rainy day. And made a wee leather harness and yarn leash for my hamster (hamsters hate open spaces, and so will nicely follow along the edge of walls... great for shopping malls!). Here I have only seen people out walking with parrots on their shoulders, and it seems to be ok on a sunny day.

Posted on: Ordering Pizza

Here in Quebec, green onions are long thin onions usually eaten raw, that are white on the bottom and long green leaves on the top, less than a cm wide at the bottom, and maybe a foot long... you would cut off the roots, and any of the tops of the leaves that aren't nice and fresh, and slice the rest to put in soups (esp asian type soups), salads, and sandwich fixings like "egg salad sandwich" "salmon salad sandwich" (ie mixed with mayo). Called echalottes in French canadian. Scallions are different, and are perhaps 2+ cm across on the bulb part. Green onions "bulbs" are not usually wider than the leaves, looking a lot like tiny leeks.

Ciboulette (correct or not) is chives, which are thin little onions like grass, maybe a mm or two wide. You don't eat the bulb part (there actually isn't a bulb part... they grow in clumps like grass, and you just pick off the top/leaf part). One usually grows chives in the herb garden. Nice snipped onto sandwiches or salads. Never cooked. Never ever heard it called "ciboule". Totally agree with alexlexilu.

Posted on: Slippery Ground

Oh how I wish here in Montreal streetcleaners washed them down. Instead they come by spraying copious amounts of calcium (or salt of some rocky sort) and petit garnotte (finely crushed gravel). Much fear of bing. We've had a few inches of snow here for the first time since the 3rd of Jan, so for the past month and a half, the only place there was di hua was in the parks where the snow had hardened into ice on the grass. Sidewalks were just a gravelly mess of salty dust. Today though we have six inch deep salt puddles and filthy salty slush. Women bu hui hua. :(

Do you think I could say slip carefully (hua de xiao xin??) to my son who is learning to ice skate?

Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming

I could be wrong, but I think maybe Damon and simonpettersson are saying sort of the same thing here... that a fluent speaker would have internalised shi1 and shi4 to be completely different words, instead of thinking "shi" "with the first tone" "shi" "with the fourth tone"... ie doesn't think of numbered tones and how to say them for each word. Certainly any phrases I have learned aurally around Chinese people, or am comfortable with saying properly, I don't consciously think what tone I am using or supposed to be using. It becomes the proper way to say it. Just like a fluent speaker of English would talk about desert or dessert just using the pronunciation unconsciously... they wouldn't be thinking "oh yeah, the double s changes the sound of the consonant, must remember that". A point in note: when I ask my chinese tutor what tone something is, she has to say it out loud to herself several times... "um, shi, shi, shi, the second tone, no the third tone"... because she just says the words correctly and naturally without thinking about it.

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

LOL! Mark, yes I suspect what "ruined my eyes" is age. How do you say "ruined my eyes"? I never wore glasses for 46 yrs, but now it has happened. Are "no-line bifocals" like "progressive" lenses? Mine have no lines but three different lenses in one... it takes some practice getting used to looking up to look far, mid to look at someone and down to look at something close... if you look at the wrong spot, your vision is even worse than before!

And thanks, yes, I only listen to newbie for bits of new vocab or little sayings now as I don't find them challenging at all... I guess that is good! Hen hao! Wo xianzai hen xihuan ting le "elementary" he "intermediate" et même "advanced intermediate" if the topic is something I am interested in... all thanks to Chinesepod, I am plodding along! xiexie nimen! (I just did a quiz at http://watchtolearnchinese.com/game and almost every one right but not the tone ones! me bad! yingai xuexi tones!

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

Wohhh! btc10 there is writing in traditional characters, non? Do people who read and write trad characters have worse eyes in general than those who read and write simplified? :D

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

I should add, that is really interesting about chinese characters ruining your eyes. The very first time my eyes were overused/problematic, was when I spent 5 days visiting my mother, doing nothing but looking up the pinyin and meaning of all the tiny characters in the Dr. Seuss Beginner's Dictionary. My eyes hurt but I kept going and going, and then one day I simply couldn't see hardly anything at all clearly and that lasted for days. Maybe it is all the fault of chinese. Wo de xin de yanjing ye you bu gui de jingjia haishi zhiliang hao de jingpian. Hen bao de! How do you say high definition anti-reflect anti-scratch progressive lenses? (sorry, I am so lazy to look up the tones... sorry, I should go back to newbie!)

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

thanks xiaophil! I'm just listening to this dialogue over and over and hopefully it will sink in! We'll see later this week when I see our Chinese tutor... if she continues the conversation I'm good and if she laughs, I'll know I need more practice! But the EXCITING thing is I can see the tone marks and tiny characters now on Chinesepod without upping the font size four times!

Posted on: Choosing a New Pair of Glasses

Oh! this is GREAT! I had an eye exam two weeks ago and just got my first ever pair of glasses YESTERDAY! I was walking home and wondering how to pronounce the difference between "eye" and "glasses"... sorry for the english... low ele student!

Posted on: Office Lunch Options

To eupnea63355, you can get a measurewords dictionary... they are usually slim books with lots of measurewords, explanations of them, and a list of nouns they can be used with. Many nouns can have multiple measurewords depending on what you mean. A bowl of water yi wan shui, a cup of water yi bei shui, a drop of water yi dian shui etc... Once you understand what a measureword means or indicates (a lump (kuai), a long thing (tiao)) it helps a lot to remember them! :D