I get the sense of this but..
trevorb
May 07, 2010, 08:17 PM posted in I Have a QuestionHi All,
well I got what I deserved I sent my mate a question in Africaans (using google translate) and he promptly went out and asked a chinese guy that works for him to write me a note in reply.
Of course what he did not know is that the guys Hong Kong origin would lead to traditional chars or that the guy would write them cursively....making my life even more difficult.
I could read the Gist of it that he could not come to the pub because he had to get home but I cannot make out all of the chars. Can anyone help I can read 我们不能 x 下 x 我要早 x 回家？
trevorb
It did take a lot of ruminating to work out what I did. Of course I had the luxury of knowing he could either come to the pub or he couldn't :-)
I havn't tried MDBG's tool but I did try the Pleco handwriting on my iPhone but alas it did not help greatly, likely because I was writing it wrong, or in the wrong order or something.
I think cursive is going to be a real challenge but the way I'm going with typed chars its going to be a few years till I really get there....
zhenlijiang
May 08, 2010, 12:25 AMHi trevorb, I think it's
我们不能待下来。 我要早点回家。
(OK 待 I'm not sure about.)
go_manly
I think the 5th character is 停 (tíng).
trevorb
I'd never have got the 点 from that, well done. That starts to make it fit the meaning that I read into it. Just goes to show with the right context and a proportion of the chars recognized you can still understand the meaning.
Wonderful things brains...
trevorb
Excellent go_manly I think that completes the puzzle for me. Now all I have to do is hope my friend doesn't make too much of a habit of this :-)
Actually I don't mind if he does I probably learnt quite a bit......
go_manly
May 08, 2010, 12:31 AMI think the 5th character is 停 (tíng).
trevorb
May 08, 2010, 04:06 PMIt did take a lot of ruminating to work out what I did. Of course I had the luxury of knowing he could either come to the pub or he couldn't :-)
I havn't tried MDBG's tool but I did try the Pleco handwriting on my iPhone but alas it did not help greatly, likely because I was writing it wrong, or in the wrong order or something.
I think cursive is going to be a real challenge but the way I'm going with typed chars its going to be a few years till I really get there....
trevorb
May 08, 2010, 04:09 PMI'd never have got the 点 from that, well done. That starts to make it fit the meaning that I read into it. Just goes to show with the right context and a proportion of the chars recognized you can still understand the meaning.
Wonderful things brains...
go_manly
May 08, 2010, 11:06 PMIsn't 點 the traditional form of 点?
It doesn't look much like the character above.
I also don't see the similarity between 來 and the last character in the first sentence.
svik
I think there are several examples of the common cursive form resembling simplified more than traditional. 言 in cursive for example usually looks like the left side of 说。
trevorb
My understanding was that the simplified forms were based on the cursive forms, hence the example of svik....
But I see what you mean about the last one it does look very different.
Initially from logic I had assumed the last two chars on the first line were meant to be 下班 just because that made the sense of it not being possible to do something after work. But I couldn't stretch between that char and 班 they seem too different.
I can see how the wheat heads could mutate into one line to represent each head....
All in all looking at how some of my english colleagues mangle a mere 26 characters to the point of unreadability it does make me wonder what people can do with several 1000! I suspect cursive is a difficult step for all of us....
svik
May 09, 2010, 02:09 AMI think there are several examples of the common cursive form resembling simplified more than traditional. 言 in cursive for example usually looks like the left side of 说。
trevorb
May 09, 2010, 10:08 AMMy understanding was that the simplified forms were based on the cursive forms, hence the example of svik....
But I see what you mean about the last one it does look very different.
Initially from logic I had assumed the last two chars on the first line were meant to be 下班 just because that made the sense of it not being possible to do something after work. But I couldn't stretch between that char and 班 they seem too different.
I can see how the wheat heads could mutate into one line to represent each head....
All in all looking at how some of my english colleagues mangle a mere 26 characters to the point of unreadability it does make me wonder what people can do with several 1000! I suspect cursive is a difficult step for all of us....
bodawei
May 09, 2010, 12:28 PMI love the cursive form - I was hoping that Skritter would get on board and give us a version that takes the cursive. All too hard apparently. I have no doubt the second sentence says 'I want to go home early' but I would like to know why he writes 点 this way - if you try his form it has one fewer strokes but it is not easier to write than 点. Also curious that if doing this for a friend in these circumstances, and only a few characters, why use the cursive? Has he forgotten how to write the non-cursive?
trevorb
My friend is one of the few people that knows I study Chinese and this was his way of responding to my Google translate inspired Africaans. He was unaware of the variation in written chinese and indeed the chap that wrote it told him that although there were many dialects they could all read each others writing.....
I too an fascinated by the cursive forms, but with sooo many characters to learn I've not really give it much study...
suansuanru
May 16, 2010, 03:26 PM我们不能停下来，我要早点回家。
trevorb
谢谢suansuanru,
Between zhenlijiang and go_manly we got there then :-)
Perhaps I should tap this guy up for providing us with a regular conundrum ;-)
bababardwan
May 07, 2010, 10:06 PMSorry,can't help,but I just want to observe that I'm amazed you could read as much as you did. I don't think I could have made out a single character :( Now that you've typed the characters out I can see you picked most/probably all correctly.I obviously need to read more cursive.
ps I will give a tip though.Have you tried mdbg's tool that allows you to use you're mouse for handwriting input and then comes up with a list of possible characters?