钟

我的表快五分钟。 My watch is five minutes fast.
我的表慢三分钟。 My watch is three minutes slow.

I hate math, but I love this clock. Good job!

changye,

Good tip.I better remember to avoid visiting China around 17th March,St Patricks day in case I'm sending out the wrong messages !

Hi bababardwan

Five o'clock is showing " the factorial of the square root of nine" i.e. (3 times 2 ) minus one, equalling five.

Seven o'clock is Nine minus radical nine (i.e. 3) plus .999999999999999 to infinity, which can be treated as one. So 9-3+1 = 7.

Thanks Pete,

Know about factorials but never knew that symbol !

Also,I'm used to a small dot [rather than a line] for recurring decimals.

Thanks for clearing that up.Xie xie

Hi bababardwan

Glad to be helpful! High school pre-calculus came flooding back to me.

我们美国数学教育远不如中国的，甚至是东方的。

Sorry the formatting is crap, it seems to behave really erratically on my computer.

Bababardwan, I use dots for recurring demicals too.

cool zhong1.What's the maths behind 5 and 7 o'clock?

Hi calkins,

A clock (钟) is not suitable for gifts in China since the sound of 钟 （zhong1） is the same as that of 终 (to end). Furthermore, the sound of 送钟 (give a clock) is also the same as 送终 (attend upon a dying person). A watch (表, biao3) is OK.

By the same token, 伞 (an umbrella, san3 = 散, break up, san4)  and 梨 （li2, pear = 离, depart, li2） are also not good for gifts, although I don't think there are a lot of people to give an umbrella as a gift in any country.

For the record, giving a man something green is not recommended in China because 戴绿帽子 (wear a green hat) means "a man whose wife is unfaithful". I don't know if younger generations still care about these supersutitions.

calkins,

uncle changye is right. Due to the same pronunciation 送钟 has a bad symbol,which means you wish someone to die! So， be careful!

However, it is different that if you send a watch（表biao3）.表达心意biao3da2xin1yi4

Thanks changye for the (as always) great etymologies and explanations.

So I guess if a man found out that his girlfriend/wife was cheating on him, he could wear a green hat and give her a pear, an umbrella, and a clock ;)  That might get the point across!

Haha, I don't think there is a guy who is willing to wear a green hat and give away his family secret even if his wife is unfaithful.

I also want this clock...very cool.  Speaking of clocks, it was my understanding that Chinese do not give clocks as gifts because it has some meaning of death.  I learned yesterday that (at least in Taiwan) it only applies to wall clocks.  So you could give someone any other kind of clock.  Is this true on the Mainland as well?

Sebire, the formatting is really funky.  I've noticed before that when you copy characters from certain places, it shows up as "undefined."  Lots of other weird formatting and browser issues too.  I miss being able to insert HTML like we could do before the latest CPod version.

By the way, thanks for all your vocab. posts...I've really enjoyed them!