User Comments - BillJefferys

Posted on: Caught in the Act

In connection with the discussion of simplified vs. traditional characters, it's worth noting that many "simplified" forms are the same as or related to commonly used cursive forms. Anyone who gets far in Chinese will want to learn something about cursive Chinese writing. Not only are many signs written using cursive forms, but menus and of course letters will often use them.

I know of two books that are useful in this regard. Of these, the most comprehensive is "Introduction to Chinese Cursive Script," by Fred Fang-yu Wang, who was a professor at Yale. Copies may still be available from Yale University's Far Eastern Publications (New Haven, CT, USA). I found several copies available at amazon.com, not too expensive.

The other is an amusing book, James D. McCawley's "The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters." This is definitely available on amazon.com, also cheaply. It teaches you how to read a Chinese menu and contains a large number of eating-related words in a vocabulary taking more than half the book. Also, there are many examples of menus, many handwritten and some in various degrees of cursive (though not as cursive as in Wang's book).

Posted on: Caught in the Act

别说了!

This is an interesting sentence because of its use of the marker '了'

Often, '了' gives the effect of a past tense, but not always and not (it seems to me) in this case. Here, the 老板 is telling his subordinates to stop doing something that they are in the process of doing. So it can't be a past tense marker, because they are still in the process of doing it. Rather, the boss is telling the subordinates to change what they are doing, to complete an action, to stop talking and be silent. This is a very important function of '了' as an aspect marker.

My understanding of why '了' often looks like a past tense marker is that very often an event that took place in the past has been completed by the time the speaker is talking about it. So the "change of state" has already taken place.

Take a look at the WikiPedia article on aspect for useful information.

Posted on: Caught in the Act

@leoguerrero

When I first started learning Chinese (47 years ago!) we were amongst the first to be taught Chinese using a textbook from Mainland China that used pinyin and simplified characters. Recall that this was between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, so it was quite a novelty. However, our professor encouraged us to learn both, and when I was making up flash cards (I still have them) I used two strategies:

1. I always wrote the traditional characters on the cards I made for myself. I think it is easier to go from traditional to simplified than the other way. I might also note the simplified form, but traditional came first.
   
2. I didn't just put a character on one side and the meaning on the other side. Instead, I would make up full sentences, ones that used as many of the new characters in a lesson as possible, with the translation of the sentence on the other side. This allows simultaneous learning of both grammar (that is to say, patterns, as Ken Carroll so rightly encourages) and vocabulary.

To use the cards, I would look at the English and say the Chinese, and at the same time I would write the characters out with my finger. I learned early on that the "approved" method of writing a character with your finger to show someone else is to write it on the palm of your hand. This gave me practice in writing the character as well as correct stroke order, which is an advantage when you try to look up a character in a traditional dictionary using the radica/stroke method.

I found this method to be very efficient, as it uses four different skills simultaneously: Speaking, hearing, reading and the tactile sense of writing.

Posted on: On Location at the Beijing 2008 Olympics

I also thought that the conversation was the best part of the podcast. I followed most of it but will listen again.

Like Amber, I noticed the fact that she was speaking with quite a 南方 accent, in comparison with the driver's rather pronounced 北方话. Actually, I thought that to be a "plus" since it challenges the listener to "switch gears" while listening to the two speakers.

Good job, Amber!

Posted on: I Want This

@davidincalif:

Take a look at the Pirate's Ergonomic Keyboard!

Posted on: War Zone

@inland

冫 is the ice radical (two strokes). It is associated with cold things.

It's easy to confuse with 氵, the water radical (three strokes).

Posted on: Getting a Phone Number

@loveeverythingchinese

It depends on the computer you have; I am familiar with Macs, and if that's what you have you can use the International system preference panel to set up so that you can easily switch from English to type pinyin and get characters and vice versa.

I don't know about PCs. I think that there are some packages you can add that will do it.

There's another possibility. The MDBG online dictionary contains a lot of tools, including typing pinyin and converting to characters. It's very useful, although it is more cumbersome when in this mode than the built-in Mac method, so I don't use it.

Posted on: Clarifying how to use "every" 每（měi）

I understand that there's no real difference between

'每天'

and

'每一天',

but it occurred to me that in English there are two phrases that track these, that have very slightly different meanings: "Every day" versus "Every single day."

Even if these nuances aren't the same for these phrases in Chinese, they might be a useful way to remember that both can be used.

If Connie or Jenny has any comments on this, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Posted on: Aussie Rules

Do Clay's photos of Schlotsky's include the original shop on South Congress Avenue in Austin? It was a small hole in the wall a block or two north of Dan's wine shop.

Posted on: Olympics and more...

Amber

Do we have to subscribe specially to "Dear Amber," or will our subscription to Chinesepod (for the lessons etc) do the job?