User Comments - kanjihanzi

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

Seems to be 50/50, sort of... I have one neutral tone dictionary here  (probably also based on ABC), but nciku says 4th. Anything goes if you say it fast enough :-)

Posted on: The Left-handed Child

Came to think about it:

sinister

1411, "prompted by malice or ill-will," from O.Fr. sinistre "contrary, unfavorable, to the left," from L. sinister "left, on the left side" (opposite of dexter), perhaps from base *sen- and meaning prop. "the slower or weaker hand" (etc. etc.)

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

I am always impressed by the quick fixes to problems here, Conny et al! Lend your ear(s) to the continuation below :-)

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

I am not sure if all appreciate my CSI-attitude to language studies, but personally I see it as one tiny step, of many, towards fluency somewhere in the distant future.

I have found that XANGA is a rather painless method to add sound elsewhere, but I don't seem to be able to change the size of the player to the default 80px. Worked today!

Below is a slowed down version of 那个老太太在笑我！discussed above. I have listened to it dozens of times and think we were all wrong in some way: Nàge lǎotài de hái xiào. is what I can. Is it "OK" to skip the second tai in laotaitai? Or is "de" some substitute for that tai? Or what function might a "de" have here? 的 or 得? All very interesting!! :-)

What do you hear???

Posted on: The Left-handed Child

Interesting 'politically correct' lesson. No irony :-)

You say that 左撇子 is sort of slang. Doesn't the character 撇 also inherit some of the almost deragatory meanings from the right side component 敝 bì (shabby, worn out)? This seems to be a global prejudice and in at least western societies there was no doubt in the past: lefties were no good. OK now.

敝 + two hands (弊 bì) has almost nothing positive to say: fraud, abuse, malpractice. A really EVIL character! :-) OTH the traditional character 'money' (currency) uses the same component in 幣 (Simplified as 币).OTH'2, isn't 'money' quite frequently an abused entity to ;-)

PS They got it wrong: it's the mirror stroke to 撇 (called?) - i.e the one slooping down to the right in 人，木 etc. - that's the really EVIL one and ought to be tainted with 敝 or worse, impossible to get correct and good-looking.

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

Sloppy me. Was supposed to be deleted. You are not correct :-) It's most certainly a fourth tone 'you' so my guess is 又一个美女。

Re 哪個老太太貽笑: I have a lovely little free app - Express Scribe - where you can run files down to 50% of the original speed without **too** much distortion, and I must agree with my fellow Swede dunderklumpen and suggest hai - 那个老太太还笑 - instead of yi. Honestly, I spend too many geeky hours in sound apps dissecting Mandarin and Japanese! :-)

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

Yes, I noticed that too, but didn't want to start my first day here since January 2009 by complaining :-) (Instead I mad my usual mess by post before thinking and had to delete a couple of message :-( )

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

有一個美女. You are absolutely correct, as far as I can tell. I had too many files open in SoundForge so I listened to the first one :-(

Posted on: Terrorized at the Airport

>> to express person aswell, such as 者（zhe)

Yes, I know. I've studied Japanese for almost 10 years, OK on and off very much. What surprised me here was the use of

子 in 分子. I  hadn't seen this character in more that "things-words", apart from son/child/daughter etc. of course. According to my dictionary 分子also means numerator and molecule, but then pronounced fēnzǐ. 1:st tone, instead of 4:th. (And 电子 is electron.)

BTW: I find zi and ci the most difficult sounds in Mandarin to differentiate when speaking. OK, listening is perhaps even more difficult.

Posted on: Terrorized at the Airport

Oh no! I forgot the Do Not Paste From Word:

到处都是恐怖分子! – Terrorists everywhere!

It's such an interesting combination of Hanzi in kǒngbù fènzǐ that I thought it worthy of a tiny little essay :-) But isn't the 子 ending a bit strange? I would have guessed that 人 would be the first choice when talking about a person?

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