User Comments - Budzul
Budzul
Posted on: The Wonders of WeChat
November 23, 2013, 02:54 AM|
所以嘛，前一段时间网上嚷嚷着微信也要收费，不就是那些运营商心理不平衡了，想分一杯羹呗。 So... there was a clamor a little while ago online about how WeChat should also collect fees and that it's fair to the spirit of operating a business. They want a piece of the pie. Is this a valid translation? I'm really having trouble reconciling the Chinese to the translation... can anyone help out and analyse it? Is the 要收费 really 'should collect fees'? And how do they get 'fair to the spirit of operating a business' out of any of this? |
Posted on: Lili and Zhang Liang 7: A Guy's Advice on Women
March 14, 2011, 04:56 AMAccording to the transcript that's available, Jenny says the following:
但是呢，虽然丽丽和张亮没有结婚，那么现在关系和好的男女朋友之间，就是经常会以老婆老公这样称呼.
According to my dictionary 和好 means 'reconciled' but the sense of the sentence seems to be, 'if the relationship between a couple is good then they will call each other 'husband and wife'... Is there a further meaning of 和好 which fits? I don't see how 和好 as reconciled makes sense in this sentence.
Posted on: Tai Chi
April 27, 2008, 12:22 AMby that logic maybe someone should mention that preserving qualities of smoking? Any time I bring up the subject of the bad effects of smoking someone always mentions their 3 pack a day smoking 90 year old grandfather...
Posted on: Regional Accents Part I
April 27, 2008, 12:17 AMActually some of what is being attributed to a Cantonese accent - is actually not an accent at all but someone speaking Mandarin when they can't. e.g. if an Irish person is speaking English we might say that he had an accent - if an Irish person that can't speak much English were speaking English and kept on using Irish Gaelic words in the sentences, we wouldn't call them part of his accent. Bizarrely, at my university in Australia we had a visiting lecturer for a symester in second year - and although we were basically hopeless at Chinese and were pretty much beginners - the lecturer had a very strong accent and used si for shi etc... and they threw him in to give a tuturial each week WITHOUT even bothering to mention that he had an accent and what to watch out for to decipher it. Oh, of course, if we spoke like him, we would get corrected every time by the other lecturers! I was tempted to try to learn his pronunciation and stick to it and then blame it on him
Posted on: Making the Move from China
February 12, 2014, 09:21 PMThe final -n, -ng is certainly an issue.
At the very least they should warn everyone that this is Shanghai accented Mandarin and beware that final -n's and -ng's are an issue. They should mention it more often and make a point of pointing out which are -n's and -ng's with each new word (perhaps they do?).
But if someone brings this up as an issue I think it's unfair to use the supposedly matey 'mate', in the manner of 'what do you think you're looking at mate?' (I never use 'mate' myself so I might be completely wrong about this... if you object I won't escalate :))
Sorry bababardwan, not really meaning to have a go at you. But do any of us really want to go around mixing up our -n's and -ng's simply because we've learnt all our vocab from chinesepod? But I admit that the lessons and content and voice-acting are brilliant. And yes, there's nothing wrong with learning differently accented Mandarin - as long as you know that this is not standard. I'd be happy actually, to occasionally, or even more than occasionally, hear some dialogues in quite heavily accented shi = si variants of Mandarin.
Anyway, I agree that the -n, -ng distinction is a problem and as a solution I'd be happy if it were just mentioned more often.