User Comments - zhenlijiang

zhenlijiang

Posted on: The Various Guises of "Until"

January 31, 2011 at 10:02 AM

John has been inspiring us in Upper Inter lessons for years. And now maybe Jason also will join in (heard a bit in the Beijing Standard Time launch, when he interviewed Sunix--很棒！).

Sorry, but I'm really failing to see how the current Qing Wens are not teaching well.

Posted on: What's in a name?

January 31, 2011 at 9:41 AM

Here it is. I went to your profile, into your User Posts tab, and flipped down the pages aiming generally for the early days of 中文吧. Guess I could have just gone to 中文吧 and flipped down the pages aiming generally for the early days ...

Posted on: What's in a name?

January 31, 2011 at 6:43 AM

I love the name topic too. Recently I blabbered here inexpertly about Chinese naming tradition--the 族谱 (anyone know more about this--?) and generation character + personal identifier character making up the two-character given names. I mentioned there that the tutor from HK who told me about this said you need to go to Singapore, to see such Chinese traditions still being practiced and thriving today. I'm pretty sure she also said Taiwan too.

It's not that I don't like one-char names (two-char full names), in fact they strike us Japanese as bold and succinct and great in that way, because many of us already have three chars in just our given name (像我这样。我姓名一共有五个字). But I have to say I love the idea of the generational identifier character, the meaning laden in such "traditional" two-char Chinese names.

Again, probably because we Japanese have more variety in our names (though most frequently seen are 3 to 5, full names can be from 2 kanji to as many as 7 or 8; many people also use the non-kanji characters in given names; and I guess we have many more, diverse surnames in circulation to begin with--I think we're seen by Chinese and Koreans as having no principles in this regard), I always find it gives me this strange thrill, just to watch the credits roll at the end of a movie made in Taiwan, or even a TV drama. HK movies too I guess, but really the Taiwan ones. The uniform rows and rows of three-char names, where in Japan they would be jagged. The same family names appearing again and again. Obvious "good" characters appearing repeatedly. Is this just me? Am I weird? I think what I really like is that trend and fashion don't seem to have infiltrated this custom, that this way of doing things is being kept honored no matter how modern other aspects of life may be today in HK and Taiwan. What I think of as the remarkable Chinese ease with using English names as an additional identity also probably helps preserve the tradition. Personally I hope it stays that way. Old school is cool.

Posted on: Registering for a Dating Website

January 29, 2011 at 3:35 PM

〔分别 / 区别 / 差别〕

【分别】 - 不同：分别处理 | 分别明显 | 分别对待。

【区别】 - 彼此不同之处：事物的区别 | 区别特征 | 正确区别 | 区别对待。

【差别】 - 不同：缩小差别 | 指出差别 | 事物的差别 | 个性的差别。

How they're the same--都含有“不同或不一样”的意思。

How they're different--“分别”强调在方式上区别对待；“区别”强调的是事物之间的不一样；“差别”主要指形式、内容上的不同。另外“分别”、“区别”还可以作动词，“差别”只能作名词。

Sentences: 1) 这两个人所犯错误不一样，对他们应该分别处理。 2) 我看不出这两幅画有什么区别。 3) 兄弟两人的性格差别很大。

Posted on: Registering for a Dating Website

January 29, 2011 at 3:32 PM

My understanding is that 区别 as a Verb is a synonym of 分别.

As for 差别 and 区别, in 《小学生同义词·近义词词典》 they appear together in two separate entries:

〔差别 / 差异 / 区别〕

【差别】 - 形式或内容上的不同：存在差别 | 发现差别 | 主要差别 | 缩小差别。

【差异】 - 差别；不同：性能差异 | 季节差异 | 民族差异 | 城乡差异。

【区别】 - 彼此不同的地方：有所区别 | 区别对待。

How they're the same--都有“不同”的意思。

How they're different--“差别”、“差异”的意义和用法基本相同，可以互换，不过“差异”更书面化；“区别”能作状语，如“区别对待”，而且可以用作动词，如“区别好坏”。

Sentences: 1) 兄弟两人的性格有很大差别。 2) 我真看不出这两幅画有什么差异。 3) 我不知道这两个词语在用法上有哪些区别。

Posted on: Making the Most of 最 (zui)

January 29, 2011 at 9:02 AM

Hi asiangirl123, this isn't meant to come across like a smartass reply, but seriously if you want to learn tones well and quickly don't try to do it by yourself. Learn (live, face-to-face) from a good teacher--either a private tutor or in a small class. Especially if you haven't actually started yet. There's no need to go the hard route, when it could well mean mis-learning something so crucially important.