Spooky!!

calkins,

At the risk of sounding repetitive,all I can say is awesome photo! I tried to look at this from work yesterday,and for some reason it wouldn't open,so I'm seeing it for the first time now.The picture certainly gets the message across.

I have just tried the male and female voice buttons.They sound a little like the have pasted the separate syllables together ,rather than someone pronouncing the whole 4 syllables naturally together.Still,I get the pronunciation.

I'm not sure if I've missed it in the above post,but I looked up mo2 which translates as rub and we know tian1 is sky or heaven.We also know da4 is big,and lou2 translates as building.So the literal translation is scrape sky big building which gives us skyscraper.

bababardwan, you're right!  I was experimenting with the voices...I couldn't find a sound bite for 摩天大楼, so I spliced them together.  Needless to say, I'll never do that again :)

I love the literal translation for skyscraper.  Ferris wheel is similar....摩天轮 mótiānlún...rub sky wheel.

calkins,

Good job on the splicing.I wouldn't say don't do it again.It was certainly better than not having it and all I needed to be able to then put it together more naturally myself.Didn't know Ferris wheel so thanks.One of the things I love about this language is the literal translations and how very logical it usually is.

Thanks.  I do think they sound a bit creepy though...plus it was too time consuming.  I agree about Chinese...it is so literal and logical, it kind of makes English look dumb!  Also, like Ken recently said, you can pack so much meaning into a couple of one-syllable words, like 久仰。It's a brilliant language.