User Comments - zhenlijiang
zhenlijiang
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 30, 2009 at 4:43 PMhi chanelle--glad to hear you liked Japan!
if you or anyone else are/is interested, i just started a conversation called 日语 汉语 英文 中文 that is mainly Japan-related so we can move over there 坐一坐聊一聊
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 30, 2009 at 2:26 PMpete, 祝你成功！ which i hope doesn't sound flippant, because it's not meant to be. i do think Japanese is a difficult language to get started on; i think it's difficult to teach. i think we all know that 普通话 in this aspect is much more accessible to foreigners. but also know it's not impossible to learn, mostly because of my Chinese teachers who are so good at it, some of them only having studied Japanese 5 years or so. your having Chinese as an acquired language is an obvious advantage, i think better than if it were your mother tongue.
i think of language learning like free climbing--tough and arduous work, but as long as you keep finding even one spot in the rock to get your fingers or foot in, you can keep going upward. and people who have two or more languages already have more of those spots (could even be fun in that case, not arduous).
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 30, 2009 at 1:56 PMhi changye 老师，
hm, i guess i'd assumed incorrectly that all English-speaking students of Chinese felt like i do about pinyin. it must be personal; for me it just works.
国語辞典s are frustrating for me to use. i'm not half as accomplished in my mother tongue as i should be and have to work at the reading/writing. not that it's any excuse but i've never been through the Japanese school system and so did not receive any education in 漢文／古文. just before i began Chinese, i picked up a high-school reference book to crash-teach myself some rudimentary 漢文 and found it interesting, but didn't really go into it any further. if i went back to that book now i'm sure i would find it a breeze, with my basic knowledge of Chinese. studying Chinese will get me studying Japanese in depth eventually, and i'm really looking forward to that.
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 30, 2009 at 1:16 PMchanelle, Japanese seeming easier to understand than Chinese?--wow i can't imagine. might also depend on where in Japan you were. for instance i will sometimes be on the street and think i'm hearing Korean being spoken, then get closer and realize my ears had tricked me and that it's some Tohoku (northeastern) dialect of Japanese and not Korean at all. but if a language seems comparatively easy to your ears, maybe if you ever decide to study it you'll find you have the aptitude for it. hope you enjoyed your trip here.
Posted on: 麻将风波
January 30, 2009 at 10:16 AMhi wchan 如你所知道的我不是令人 (and not someone your age!! i would never think of it. hahaha) 入迷的意思嘛。 just a way to convey that i'm not upset at your trying to call me a 大师姐, OK? actually unlike the emoticon i wink like sarah palin, needing to mobilize that entire side of my face ... 真的不好看
PS 您还是叫我"大"也OK，我不介意！
Posted on: New Clothes
January 30, 2009 at 3:21 AMjojie,
when my teacher was explaining the tone change rule she specifically taught us that the pinyin for 不 is always, even when read in second tone,
Posted on: 麻将风波
January 29, 2009 at 7:35 PMhi wchan: hmm 把"大"一个字丢掉，就可以了 (^_-)-☆
友 + 引 take along with = the deceased taking his friends along with him is the reason for the no funerals on 友引 superstition
hi to all:
did anyone else just love the mahjong scenes in 色，戒？
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 29, 2009 at 5:44 PMhi changye
(btw this discussion has long had nothing to do w/生肖...) just the thought of all those dictionaries left to read has my head spinning. the things i don't know that would fill libraries ...
in pinyin, it's true the shi si xi pronunciations of "i" aren't apparent to the eye. but once taught, you know it and don't have to be taught again. i was thinking about things like ju qu xu, where i think anyone who speaks English or another Latin language would know to make the ü sound whereas Japanese-only students seem to need to be taught, then make an effort to remember.
my teacher told us our 漢和辞典s are very interesting, which i hadn't appreciated until she pointed it out. btw she was looking up the recurring line from the anime 一休さん--the zen catechism-opener 「そもさん」. she was surprised to learn, as i'm sure you know, that it's 作麼生 / 怎麼生 (or 什么生?). そもさん is also listed in 広辞苑 as an adverb. but that's just one example, of even highly-educated Chinese who have studied Japanese or lived here for years surprisingly unaware of the extent that our culture has benefited from Chinese culture. it is ironic indeed. you would think they would know, being so proud of theirs (i don't mean this as a sarcastic dig on the Chinese people. it is simply true).
and of course, there's also a lot of un-awareness on our side. so much to learn and life so short!
Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
January 29, 2009 at 4:31 PMdunderklumpen, thanks very much for that!
pete, huh. maybe it's because the ones i meet are all teachers to foreigners of putonghua (???) and always very aware of tones and pronunciation + they themselves recently acquired/are currently studying at least one other language. so i am thinking now this may be not just about speaking a tonal language but also a high awareness of tone and resultant deliberateness in speech (after all the studies i just read about, a rather unscientific conclusion).
Posted on: Sign Here, Please
February 3, 2009 at 5:45 PMi'm no etymologist, but to add to the answers to bababardwan's question on 明天: i think 明 denotes "dawn". and tomorrow, or the next day, is the day of the dawn that will end tonight.
also, in Japanese 明ける (ake-ru) is a verb meaning to end the night or darkness (= become light), and therefore in what may seem like a contradiction, to begin (a new day, a new year, a new age). or i guess i should say it means to end, or to begin, depending on what the subject is. this is why we go around saying 明けましておめでとう (ake-mashite omedetou) to each other on New Years. the greeting means the new year has dawned, both you and i have reason to celebrate. i could go on, but enough already about the Japanese (any corrections welcome, changye!).
明星 star, as in movie star
星 （星星） stars, in the sky
新星 nova 超新星 supernova