What a shame they are not Runic alphabets, such cute characters. I love them very much, of course, I can't read them at all.

Thank you for information on Norwegian and unexpected bonus info on Icelandic! I didn’t know that Icelandic still preserves the flavor of an old Nordic language, which is probably because Iceland is an “island” country separated from other European countries.

Both Finnish and Japanese used to be regarded as members of the same language family “Ural-Altaic languages”, but not anymore today. I remember I felt very excited when I read about it for the first time, “Wow, there is our sister language in such a distant country!!!”

P/S. Auntie, they must be Runic alphabets.

Furthermore, bigness doesn’t automatically mean “good” in Japan. On the contrary, Japanese people generally fond of small things, and as you may know, Japanese are quite skilled at downsizing something, such as a SONY transistor radio, Walkman and Bonsai trees. As the Japanese saying goes, 山椒は小粒でもぴりりと辛い (Good things come in small packages).

Even “日本鬼子” sounds comical and humorous to me.

Thanks for your pleasant misunderstanding. Actually, I know nothing about Scandinavian languages, but I’m very interested in the linguistic situation in the Scandinavian Peninsula. I heard before that Swedish and Danish are very similar to each other, since both belong to so-called Nordic languages, and the two peoples don’t have much difficulty communicating.

And what I would like to know is about Norwegian and Finnish (Suomi). I know that Suomi is not a Nordic language, so probably it is not compatible with Swedish and Danish, but how about Norwegian? Can you managed to communicate with Norwegian people without an interpreter or Google translator? Are Finnish people ethnically different from others?

P/S. I’m very pleased to know that you’ve been to Kyoto! Fortunately for you, Euro is much stronger than before.

You are ABSOLUTELY wrong! Actually I know almost nothing about Chinese legends. I found all of them on the Internet today. Anyway, you don't have to spend your precious time trying to search/translate everything. I think that the most important thing in our project is to divede the task, otherwise we can't keep it going. You guys roughly translate, and other guys nitpick (?) ...hehe.

This paragraph is rather difficult not because of grammar and vocabulary, but because of its legendary backdrop. Of course, we have no time to look into the legend. Just knowing that they are characters in a Chinese legend would be enough for us. 真辛苦你了！

西方(western)灵河岸上(on the bank)三生石畔(beside)

三生石 a stone in a legend, which implies “reincarnate three times” Dragon ball? hehe

赤瑕宫 a legendary palace where 灵虚真人 (Yoda!) lives. In short, it’s Dagobah.

神瑛侍者 the name of a servant working at 赤瑕宫

绛珠草 a legendary plant that was daily watered by 神瑛侍者

绛珠草一株 a measure word is often placed after the noun in 文言.

离恨天 a Buddhism term, the sky at 须弥山, something like a heaven.

灌愁海 a legendary sea relating to a Chinese goddess 嫦娥 (chang2 e2)

故其五内(= 五脏, five organs = body)便( = 就)郁结著(= 郁闷着)

乘此( = 趁此, exploiting, take advantage of 昌明太平朝世

警幻仙子 a legendary goddess of love

已在警幻仙子案前挂了号 the goddess of love already approved this plan

警幻亦(= 又)曾问及 (refer to) furthermore she said, referred ～

我并无此水可还 I can’t repay with water (because he gave me 甘露, manna)

因此一事 because of this matter

勾出(come out, brought up)多少(some)风流冤家(romantic guys)来

I’m a Japanese. I’ve never heard the phrase “同种同宗” before, and I can’t find it in ordinary dictionaries. There is a similar phrase “同种同文” (homogeneity, the same characters) in Japanese, and I hear that it was often used in Japan before the war for the purpose of justifying the Japanese invasion of China, which is the reason why the phrase is usually not used anymore in modern Japan.

And therefore, I’m a little surprised to hear the phrase “同种同宗”, which seems to be similar to the slogan exploited by the Imperial Japanese army, in the dialogue script written by a Chinese. In the past, Japan called itself 大日本帝国 (Empire of Japan), and the 大 in the name reflected the intention to invade neighboring countries.

Thanks to flood of news reports on the Beijing Olympics, a lot of Japanese people now know that 小日本 is commonly used in China, and the 小 doesn’t necessarily carry the same connotation as that in 小朋友. I’m afraid Japanese people might feel that the sentiment behind 小日本 is basically the same as that behind 大日本 hailed by Empire of Japan. The issue of “origin” is not touchy for most Japanese people, however they are very sensitive about being called 小日本.

Haha, I didn't know that "我爱，你爱，他爱 ..." mnemonic, which just reminds me of "der, des, dem, den, die, der, der, die ...." that I tried to memorize (and failed) at university. By the way, "一定" is also used as an adjective in the sense of "certain", like "一定的关系" (a certain relationship). The 一定 in "我一定要去!" is of course an adverb "certainly".

You are right. 尽管 is used as both an adverb (副词) and a conjunction (连词). 你尽管(adverb)来吧！ 尽管(conjunction)下雨，我还是要去。Anyway, I think that classification of parts of speech doesn't seem to have much significance in Chinese. As auntie68 said, its concept is slightly different from that in European languages. Of course, difference often makes things more interesting.

As lujiaojie said in the lesson, Japanese language, as well as Korean, is said to possibly belong to so-called “Altaic language family” that contains Mongolian, Turkish, Manchu (满洲语) and so on, which are (were) spoken in the northern, central and western Asia. They are all agglutinative languages, and they commonly have SVO structures and (more or less) vowel harmony.

On the other hand, Japanese scarcely has a word in common with other Altaic languages. In other words, Japanese is isolated in terms of vocabulary in the Altaic language group, which is the main reason why the origin of Japanese language is still unclear. The same can be said for Korean, which is incredibly similar to Japanese with regard to grammar and wording, but not vocabulary.

To make matters more confusing, you can find some southern elements in Japanese, for example, almost all the Japanese words end with a vowel, which is a characteristic feature often seen in Austronesian languages. Some scholars also say that there are some Japanese words that seem to be originated in those southern languages. Korean has a lot of words that end with a consonant.

Some scholars believe that the key in this issue is Korean, in particular, ancient Korean that had been spoken in 百济 (Baekje, 18 BCE～660 CE) and 高句丽 (Koguryeo, 37 BCE ～ 668 CE). Unfortunately, almost all the historical records had been lost a long ago, and it’s extremely difficult to reconstruct those old languages, which are said to have had more open syllables, just like Japanese, than modern Korean has.

I also buy this hypothesis.

Hehe, actually it's rather embarassing to say "你怎么这么漂亮？" or "你怎么这么美？" or something like that, but I (and my neighbors) often say to my chubby dog that 你怎么这么胖啊？

Bad news. According to my dictionary, 尽管 and 不管 are not interchangeable, although I don't know whether or not natives are actually distinguish them.

尽管 (even though) + a fact
不管 (even if) + a hypothetical situation

尽管下雨，我还是要去。 I have to go, even though it's raining.
不管下雨，我都要去。 I have to go, even if it rains.

Let me give you a supplemental explanation.

The above comment about 尽管 is very right, and the same goes for that famous "虽然", but in the case of a single character 虽, you always need to place it after the subject.

价格虽贵，但质量很好。(formal)
价格虽然很贵，但是质量非常好。
虽然价格很贵，但是质量非常好。

Somewhat confusingly, in formal writing, 虽然 (and 尽管) is sometimes used in the second clause, and in this case, you have to place 虽然 before the subject, and 但是 or 可是 are not required in the first clause.

质量很好，虽然价格贵。
质量很好，尽管价格贵。

Lastly, when you use 尽管 in the sense of "feel free to", it is usually put after the subject.

你尽管来玩吧！你尽管说吧！

According to the latest revision of Incoterm,  FOB stands for Free Online Boke (博客，播客).  For your information, CIF is Chinese Instructed Free of charge.

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/12/16/filthy-delicious

I hear that “你好” was “officially” adopted as a greeting after the middle of twentieth century, because there wasn’t a Chinese greeting exactly equal to “How are you?” in English until then.

At first, 你好 was a little awkward greeting used mainly when Chinese met foreign people, which is the reason why this famous phrase is not so frequently used among natives even now.

And I guess that the same can be said for 早安 and 晚安, which I think were probably introduced as counterparts of “Good morning” and “Good night” relatively recently. Just a wild guess.   

Dependents are translated as 受抚养人 or 抚养家属 in Chinese. In the history of China, "吃饭的问题" (food problem) has always been very important, so it's understandable why they selected 口 (a mouth) as a measure word for family members.

The measure word 口 is usually not used for people other than family members, but one of my dictionaries says that it is also sometimes used when talking about the population of a village （a kind of a large family?）, just like 这个村子有多少口人？

In a sense, Japan is a kind of a terminal station, or a terminal treatment plant (?) of people and culture. My chubby dog, a Shi-Tzu-hybrid dog, often tells me that a mixed-breed dog is generally healthy and intelligent. Let’s just hope so. I believe that you love TOYOTA hybrid cars, at least.

In Japanese, 凹凸 is called "でこ(凸)ぼこ(凹)".