User Comments - baomaijin
baomaijin
Posted on: Getting Internet at your Apartment
September 18, 2008 at 6:13 PMThank you for your replies, Uncle Changye and Auntie68 (though, I'm not sure I should call you auntie, since I too share that ominous number in my birthdate...)
@Auntie68: You are way too kind to me. Lord knows my written Chinese is awful, but god-forbid you should ever hear me speak it... Just dreadful...
@Uncle Changye: If I had been as diligent as you, I would have went down the list of entries under “包” in my 现代汉语词典！ 真不好意思。。。
I would translate the following "包月的话，一个是140，一个是150。包年的话，一个是1680，一个是1800." as "If you choose to pay on a monthly basis, one is 140 kuai, the other is 150 kuai. If you choose to pay on a yearly basis, one is 1680 kuai, the other is 1800 kuai.". So, unless there's something I did not understand (and, believe me, it's more than likely the case...), then the “包月” entry in the 现代汉语词典 seems to be pretty much "on the money" in this context.
That brings me back to my original grammatical contemplation: what's the relationship between “包” and “论”. Are they interchangeable in that regard? Is there a "level of speech" difference between them? Or am I just reading too much into this...
I first encountered that use of the word “论”in a "reader" published by Princeton U (titled "All things considered" by 周质平）. The sentence used to illustrate this was “我们这儿租车不论月，论天数”, so, in other words， "At our shop, we don't rent out bicycles by months (on a monthly basis), we do it by days (on a daily basis)". Following your example, my dear Changye, I looked it up in the 现代汉语词典 and here's what it says (6th entry under “论”): “按照某种单位或类别说”(or "according to some kind of unit or category"), and one of the example is “买鸡蛋是论斤还是论个儿？“ that I would (freely) translate as "Are your eggs sold by the pound or by unit?". In that sense, “论”could be interchanged with “包” in this podcast, right?
All right, enough with my faulty logic already... But, if you can enlighten me some more, please do!
Thanks again,
包迈金
Posted on: Getting Internet at your Apartment
September 17, 2008 at 4:47 PMC-Pod老师们，Changye叔叔，六十八阿姨,anyone who knows...可不可以帮我明白了？
“包月的话”这个句子，我看得懂了，明白了“包”这个词有“按照”的意思。。。可是在词典里我找不到这个意思！
不过，我以前学了“论”这个词也有这个“按照”的意思，加上还可以在词典里找到这个意思。
有“按照”的意思的“包”是否一个口语的词？有“按照”的意思的“论”是否一个正式的词？ 这个问题让我头都要看晕了！
请帮我明白了！
谢谢
包迈金
Posted on: I Can/Can't Afford it (...得起 & ...不起）
August 21, 2008 at 5:34 PM@Wolson:
I know I'm pretty late in adding to this tread, but you never know...
Maurice Meisner makes a pretty interesting analysis of the origins of the Cultural Revolution in his book intitled "Mao's China and After"
It might interest you...
包迈金
Posted on: 成语俗语
June 5, 2008 at 5:58 PM你好sophie20461,
我在dict.cn这个网站上找到了这个翻译：
when those high up do not set a good example, the subordinates cannot be expected to behave well
这个翻译，我觉得比较准确。。。
包迈金
Posted on: SBTG: Confucius
June 4, 2008 at 2:24 PMHi there C-Pod,
Love and appreciate what you do and do not by any means want to sound like I enjoy nitpicking, but I feel that the last sentence of the podcast has been mistranslated...
每个人都有值得大家学习的地方 was translated as "Everyone should find value in these teachings", whereas I think it should be something along the lines of "Everyone has something worthwhile to teach to others". 对不对？
包迈金(just a poor soul who someday hopes to be able to translate from Chinese to English for a living...)
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Xinjiang
May 30, 2008 at 2:26 PMYes Ken, having that bit of (more) authentic dialog upfront is a great idea! Keep it up!
(At first, I thought I had mistakenly dowloaded the dialog only file... What a pleasant surprise that was!)
包迈金
Posted on: Ending your sentence with 嘛 （ma)
May 16, 2008 at 5:13 PMDear C-Pod, I rarely post anything, but I just had to let you know how much I appreciate this qing wen series on 语气词. I have always struggled with these but now, thanks to your clear explanations，我终于明白了！！！ 非常感谢你们！ 包迈金
Posted on: Chinese New Year Plans
February 11, 2008 at 10:40 PMNi hao again, mayue :-) What's happening here (我们是帮你存钱) is part of the infamous 是。。。的 pattern used for emphasis. The tricky thing is that both parts of that pattern can be used simultaneously (是。。。的) or separately (是 or 的, alone). In the case of the sentence you are inquiring about, the verb 是 is used (alone) to stress the predicate (AKA the part of the sentence that is not the subject, here : 帮你存钱) in order to convey certainty or confirmation. In English, we would say "We save it for you" and we would use some sort of tonal emphasis while saying the word "save". Cheers! 包迈金
Posted on: Chinese New Year Plans
February 11, 2008 at 6:29 PMNI hao mayue, The pattern here is not 是, but rather 不是...吗, which is used to ask a rhetorical question, to show one's surprise. Here the translation could also have been something like: You do like to set off firecrackers, don't you? Hope that helps... 包迈金
Posted on: Getting Internet at your Apartment
September 19, 2008 at 5:35 PMAuntie68, Changye,
非常感谢你们！你们提供的解释终于让我明白了！
In my haste, I failed to even consider that ”论”might not be a verb (!). Auntie68, as you pointed out, I didn't totally understand the ”论” definition I quoted from 现代汉语词典, and, as Changye pointed out, it turns out that ”论”is indeed a preposition in that context.
I think I got blinded by the way the sentence “我们这儿租车不论月，论天数” was written. I failed to realize that the verb had then been elliptically omitted “。。。不论月租，论天数租“.
Thanks so much guys, I feel that I learned a lot from our little "Grammar Ping Pong" game :-) We should do it again at some point.
包迈金
P.S. I too would have wished that a CPod rep would have been inclined to jump in our little "game" and enlighten us all, but I think their absence can be chalked up to two reasons:
1) This an older podcast (I know... I'm trying to catch up as fast as I can...) and they have already (and quite rightly so...) moved on to newer stuff (AKA where most of the users can be found at the moment).
2) Maybe (and this is just a thought, not an indictment by any means...), with the new "consultation" tab that they added in the Me section (available only to "Guided" and "Executive" users), they're not in such a hurry to discuss finer grammatical points (which would not interest a lot of users) in the podcasts' comments section... It makes perfect business sense, IMO. I must admit that I am tempted to upgrade to the "Guided" level of subscription, but just not while I can still get some formal Chinese classes in my neighborhood (My Fall semester starts in less than a week! Can't wait!)