Funny words for a fun experiment
matthiask
July 30, 2008, 08:08 AM posted in General DiscussionMy recent favorite word is 常常 - chang chang - often.
I find myself a big fan of those double sounds.
Especially because most of them seem to imitate bells or so.
bababardwan
September 28, 2008, 02:09 PMmatthiask,
I agree;I love the sound of these reduplicating words.It's kinda cute and reminds me a little of how some adults might speak to little kids [it's also the way I would like to be spoken to in Chinese so I have time to catch on ].I like "kàn kan" which kinda reminds me of the English "look-see" as in ;"give me a little look-see".
liansuo
July 30, 2008, 09:38 AMI second matthiask. Please! Neither in English nor in German dictionaries at hand can I find a decisive example for a difference. Maybe it is a feature of aspect or emotion which is not readily obvious in Western languages?
RJ
July 30, 2008, 12:49 PM
I thought 往往 was more like "sometimes" and
常常 means often or most of the time.
changye
July 30, 2008, 12:50 PMHi guys,
Let me explain the difference. According to my dictionaries, the adverb 常常 can’t be used when talking about things in the future, for example, you can say “请你常常来玩”, but not “请你往往来玩”. And 往往 occasionally implies the sense of “apt to ～”, however 常常 itself is basically neutral.
Furthermore, 往往 is usually used in the sentence where the situation is relatively specifically explained. And therefore, “每个星期天，我们往往到广场去跳舞” is natural, but just saying “我们往往跳舞” is not so natural, although I don’t know if natives readily agree with this explanation…..hehe.
Anyway, I would like to recommend you get a larger (or better) Chinese dictionary, since knowing the difference between near-synonyms is vital in learning languages. Let me guess, your dictionaries don’t explain the difference between 刚才/刚刚 or 常常/经常, do they? If so, go get a new dictionary!
matthiask
July 30, 2008, 01:47 PMobviously, one can not just depend on online dictionaries :-S . But it's time to go back to the topic. Do you guys have a favorite funny sounding word?
matthiask
July 30, 2008, 08:38 AManother one is 刚刚 - （gang1gang5，recently, just a moment ago）. Useful, easy to remember and 很好玩
my dictionary only ads "usually" to the meaning of 常常 in comparison to 往往. but maybe my dict is not correct, maybe you can enlighten me?
daizi
July 30, 2008, 03:11 PM
马马虎虎(馬馬虎虎) mǎmǎhūhū adj. careless; so-so
From 马虎 mǎhu, literally "horse-tiger": neither here nor there.
shenhe
July 30, 2008, 05:10 PMOne of the funniest expressions I've come across so far is 说曹操曹操就到 shuō Cáo Cāo Cáo Cāo jiù dào lit. "just when speaking of Cao Cao, Cao Cao comes", = "speaking of the devil..."
Translating 马马虎虎 with "so-so" accounts for the frequency with which "soso" is used by Chinese speaking English...
And I recall a weird sentence in a CP lesson (Chicago, I think) something along the lines of shishishi (是实事?).
matthiask
September 24, 2008, 02:30 PM 我的狗往往说“汪汪” ：）
Would that be okay, changye?
davidgod
September 28, 2008, 10:46 AMit is ok i think, but a little bit wierd, because 说 is speak just man can speak, so dog can just 叫
not animals and 往往 is wierd.
and the sequence of the word is not good.
but if you said 我的狗经常叫汪汪 is incorrect
bucause 叫 have two meaning "pronounce a sound" or "call somebody" so if you say 我的狗经常叫汪汪, people will thought it is "my dog is calling wangwang(other person)"
so the correct sentence would be
it will be better to say：“我的狗经常汪汪(地)叫。” hehe
changye
July 30, 2008, 08:33 AMI sometimes use 往往 (wang3 wang3, often) instead of 常常, but they are not completely interchangeable. Please look it up in a dictionary.