User Comments - zaphekiah
zaphekiah
Posted on: Taking the Plunge into Intermediate
January 8, 2012 at 9:26 AMWhen I saw the characters for crossroads 十字路口 it made me think of some other words I have seen where the shape of a character is part of the meaning. Most of these strike me as being instantly memorable, like 人字拖 (flip-flops) or 丁字裤 (thong). Maybe a Qing Wen on this would be a fun way of introducing some characters.
Posted on: Bachelor's Day
November 19, 2011 at 5:50 PMI just noticed that "housewife", which comes up in the expansion sentences, is 家庭主妇 jiā tíng zhǔ fù, so it has all four tones occurring in the order 1,2,3,4. I don't know why this appeals so much to my obviously trivial mind. Does anyone else have a similar expression?
Posted on: Measure Words for Animals
November 19, 2011 at 4:05 PMI used to have an English dictionary which gave the pronunciation of margarine with a hard g and noted the soft g pronunciation as erroneous. I suppose the soft g won out because it sounds more like you can spread it from cold. I am happy to learn whatever version gives me the best chance of being understood, so I will trust CPod's judgement calls in these matters.
Posted on: Measure Words for Animals
November 13, 2011 at 7:24 AMIn the dictionary it gives 鳗鱼 as mán yú, but in the PDF it says màn yú. Either way, here is my handy mnemonic: imagine a Manchester United supporter with an eel round his neck. He is telling everyone proudly "this is my man u scarf".
Posted on: Detective Li 6: The Bloody Love Triangle (Part 2)
August 22, 2011 at 9:20 AMI like your theory about the old greengrocer having eaten the key to hide it. I would guess he murdered his wife and hid the body in the cellar. The young man is indeed the woman's son. He is not really five years old though, but he was locked up for five years in the cellar before the old man released him (the five birthday cards were to make up for five lost years). When his mother goes missing he assumes she has been imprisoned in the cellar the same way he was. He confronts the old man and demands the key, but the old man swallows it in front of his eyes. In a fit of rage he kills the old man and extracts the key. He goes down to the basement, but is horrified to find his mother already dead. He is so upset he then takes his own life using the bottle of gas that was down in the cellar for the purpose of ripening the fruit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripening.
Posted on: Getting Satellite TV
April 27, 2011 at 5:47 PMHi Hazel, here is a link to the Phoenix schedule: http://v.pcne.tv/calendar/68/ or at least the European version that I get redirected to. At the time of writing this they have two drama type shows which are repeated at various times through the day. One is "Bandits Upheaval in Southwest China" (I am sure 大西南剿匪记 has a better ring) and the other is "Happy Memories Of The Ma's" (老马家的幸福往事). They tend to swap the dramas for sitcoms at the weekend. I will have to give YouKu a look too, the "Betty" experience sounds quite surreal.
Posted on: Getting Satellite TV
April 23, 2011 at 3:35 PMI live in Spain and last year I installed satellite TV to help me with my Chinese. It has helped a lot, although the only channel I can get pretty qīng chǔ is 凤凰卫视 fèng huáng wèi shì "Phoenix Satellite TV" which is a Hong Kong channel. The drawback is that their own programs are subtitled with traditional characters, which completely throws me, but luckily they also show plenty of mainland TV serials. I wonder if any other poddies who are studying outside of China get this station? If so it might be interesting to set up a discussion group to cast some light on the plot lines etc.
Posted on: Preferences and Druthers
April 7, 2011 at 3:46 PM
I think the idea that 宁愿 is used to compare two negative things must have a few more subtleties. A little while ago there was a lesson about honeymoon destinations where the newly married guy used 宁愿 to say that he would rather go to one holiday destination than another, i.e. obviously not an unpleasant choice.
Could it be that in that situation the idea was something like "if you forced me to decide it would be..."? Or was he using 宁愿 in some sort of exagerrated way to suggest that his rejection of the first alternative was very strong?
Posted on: Reserving a Taxi Cab by Telephone
November 9, 2010 at 7:38 PMSome of the expansion sentences seem a bit contrived to me. For example "Welcome to our alien planet" - it is obvious that from the point of view of the speaker it is the person they are addressing who is alien. In order to avoid this sort of gaffe in future I think you should make sure that any sentences involving aliens are actually written by aliens.
Posted on: Email Terms and Composition
March 7, 2012 at 12:19 PMI think it means to indent two spaces, even though when I heard the dialog first I took it to mean miss two lines. I think 顶格写 means write a character in the first available space (of an imaginary grid), i.e. not indent.