User Comments - Grambers
Grambers
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
December 2, 2011 at 7:51 AMProblem I have is after I cut'n'paste a sentence from the dialogue into the discussion forum. The default fonts are obviously set differently with the effect that, after I've pasted a sentence, the English font tends to be larger - nowt to do with the pinyin input unfortunately.
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
December 1, 2011 at 3:54 PMMany thanks Jenny (and ouyangjun116). When to use 值钱 vs. 值得 always confuses me - anyway, that's a question for another day perhaps!:)
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
December 1, 2011 at 10:13 AMSorry, another language question, again from the expansion sentences:
这年头大学生太不值钱了
On first reading I assumed this meant that "nowadays university students do not [know the] value [of] money" (ie they spend money too casually) as there are no obvious passive markers (though I appreciate 'passivisity' is one of the trickest things about learning Chinese!).
Is 值钱 always an abstract concept? How would I say the above sentence? Any ideas?
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
December 1, 2011 at 10:01 AMThis sentence - 男人没几个好东西 - is another fine example. These are all basic characters which should be easily read by an elementary/intermediate Chinese learner. And yet the meaning is almost impossible to comprehend from the words alone. Leaving aside the 东西 problem, why use 几个?
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
December 1, 2011 at 9:57 AMI'm having a real hard time getting my head around the use of 东西 in this dialogue (especially the expansion sentences).
Comparing this sentence - 你骂我不是东西？也不瞧瞧你自己是什么东西 - with its English translation - You're criticizing me? You should take a look at yourself first. - is an exercise in despair. The "不是东西" and "是什么东西“ look to be completely redundant. Can anyone help me to better figure out the tone and nuance of this sentence, and - more generally - how this word is used?
PS And if anyone can explain to me how to change font and font size within this edit box, that'd be very helpful too!:)
Posted on: Essential Math Terms
December 1, 2011 at 7:52 AMWhich makes a billion 十亿 by my calculations. Is that right?
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
November 29, 2011 at 4:50 PMThere appears to be one really important word missing from the supplementary vocabulary section: premenstrual.
Without knowing and understanding the full, rich resonances of this word, it seems to me there's virtually no way to make sense of the dynamics of this dialogue:)
And, no, my wife doesn't tend to follow my comments on this forum (God, I feel like I'm the one having a 勾搭 now).
Posted on: Shopping for the Husband
November 29, 2011 at 3:16 PMNo probs. I think at this conciliatory moment we can agree to differ once more and look forward to sparring on another arcane point of philosophy/culture/religion/economics in a future lesson!
Oh, but just out of interest, what are your China roots? You mentioned data collection in China. Are you/were you a research student? Where did you once call home in China? And you made reference to a blog (some time ago now, granted). Send a link if possible!
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement
November 29, 2011 at 10:00 AMHang about - 新鲜刺激 is much better here.
When I get that feelin', I need 新鲜刺激 heeeealin'...新鲜--刺激 FEEEEELIN' is just so very good for me.
Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 2: Facing Divorce
December 2, 2011 at 9:27 AMI have an incy-wincy, microscopic little complaint about the exercise section. There doesn't appear to be complete consistency in notating the 儿话 (?) accent. For example, there are lessons where to write 玩 without putting the 儿 afterwards results in you getting marked 'incorrect'. However, in this lesson, despite the 'wan-r' being pronounced in exactly the same way as always, there's no need to write the 儿 - in fact, to do so would result in the user being marked as 'incorrect'.
Sorry that explanation was a bit complicated but I hope you can get my point. I guess with this 'take it or leave it' 儿 the important thing is consistency. I would suggest never notating it as it appears to me to be non-essential to the actual meaning of the sentence.