User Comments - Tal
Tal
Posted on: Dubai
June 12, 2009 at 11:31 AM@shenyajin - Ah yes, thank you. I should have realised it was that.
It's a pity this line of the lady's dialogue was cut, (except it still seems to be present in the podcast dialogue):
这倒是！除了眼睛什么都看不到！(That's true! Except for their eyes you can't see anything!)
She's talking about the 传统衣服 of the local women. Are you trying to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities?
Posted on: Dubai
June 12, 2009 at 9:41 AMWhat is the correct 量词 to use with 帆船? I think I hear Jenny say something like "kao" when she says of the hotel "就很像一kao帆船", but that can't be right can it?
Should it be 艘?
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 11: Wang in the Doghouse
June 12, 2009 at 4:48 AM天啊！请多多包涵！我一直以为你是男的！I've never actually called anyone 'sis' before! Hmm... I shall have to ponder upon a suitably 'matey' form of address!
In any case... *bows* !
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 11: Wang in the Doghouse
June 12, 2009 at 1:09 AMI guess it is dan, but can the language of mathematics tell us if Schrödinger's cat is dead or alive?!? ;-)
@zhenlijiang - your 'littering' is always welcome bro!
Posted on: The Final Show
June 12, 2009 at 1:02 AMhey Amber, if you're still reading I just wanna say a huge thank you for all you gave to CPod in your time. You definitely don't need me to tell you how loved and appreciated you were and are, (by a great many people who don't sound out on these boards!)
I never really had any contact with you, (Candle in the Wind? 肉麻！) I was just starting to be a bit more active here around the time you left, but when I first discovered CPod I really appreciated your contribution and will never forget you!
Frankly I personally have been astonished and I have to say a little disgusted at the endless and continuing gossip and prying re. your leaving of CPod. My God people, Amber is a human being not some little internet puppet of your very own to take out of the box and spank whenever you're feeling grumpy. Let her have a life, and for pete's sake (geddit?!) let's move on!
Good luck Amber, take care! (Actually I'm totally jealous of you living in New York, I think I'd love it there too!)
Posted on: The Final Show
June 11, 2009 at 12:51 PMDear Dusty? Hmm... kinda rolls off the tongue. Go for it dude!
Any other contenders? My hat's in the ring, I could use a holiday and a new identity!
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 11: Wang in the Doghouse
June 11, 2009 at 12:33 PMI'd just like to emphasize that I'm not knocking literal translation as a learning method or technique. There are many roads to the Buddha after all! ;-)
For the purposes of learning I will still often in my notes or in my head use some literal word for word translation of a Chinese sentence or phrase for the purposes of understanding and retention, and I'd never advise someone not to do this.
But, as I said in my earlier post there are many phrases where it's a struggle to do so, and maybe not helpful either, (certainly not beautiful!)
Sorry if you thought I gave up too soon Dan, I thought I'd gone the distance! Discovering the nuances of patterns like this (as Zhenlijiang with postprandial eloquence shows us) is a pleasure to be savored at leisure.
@rj - the only exact language is mathematics? Tell that to a quantum physicist.
Posted on: Dubai
June 11, 2009 at 11:56 AM迪拜太了不起了？我可不觉得！中文怎么说：Easter Island? Cities like this, stolen from the desert, spun from the last hours of ancient sunlight, are surely our modern version of those giant stone faces.
我也没去过。If I did, I'm sure I'd be as thrilled as any of us children of the oil age at the fantastic vulgar glory of the place. I too would want the fantasy to be real, would want to believe this place made evolving from apes worthwhile and that we can all live in the fossil fuel fairy castle forever.
Ah well, let's raise another glass before the party's over! Here's to progress. (好球 barryb - you beat me to the posting of that article.)
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 11: Wang in the Doghouse
June 10, 2009 at 1:03 AMx_crm makes a very good point, one that we foreign learners of Chinese often miss (or at least don't completely 'get'.) You cannot successfully or meaningfully translate Chinese into English literally!
A literal translation may be a guide to the meaning sometimes, but often it's not even that. Some phrases stubbornly resist literal translation and require a little bit of lateral thinking, and an appreciation of the nuances of the meaning, (which perhaps can only come with continued practise and study.)
In my view, this type of construction (你这个人 etc) is one such structure.
Yesterday I was studying The Jealous Friend (great lesson!) which touches on this subject and has some great examples.
e.g. 你这个人重色轻友 = You [are the sort of person who] really will put lovers before friends.
In the podcast (for The Jealous Friend) John tells us that if you want to use Chinese to say something like: "You idiot!" to a person, you cannot just say: "你笨蛋！" You have to say: "你这个笨蛋！"
Other pronouns can be used with this pattern. In the lesson A Call for Innovation in the Office, we find the line: 我这个人说话比较直接。= I'm the sort of person who speaks quite directly/I'm the kind of guy who speaks my mind.
This pattern is very common in Chinese and I think that it is clearly very different from the way we would structure this kind of sentence in English. My own approach is to just to drill myself in examples of it repeatedly, and try to make a point of composing sentences using the pattern in my daily life.
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 11: Wang in the Doghouse
June 13, 2009 at 12:33 AMdan I'm still far from being an expert, but I think it's true that there are more than a few usages in Chinese which are not officially 'codified' in grammar books, perhaps because it's still comparatively recent that it was thought necessary or appropriate to do so.
I'm afraid I can't agree that "You, this person, just know how to waste time" or "You (this person) just know how to waste time" would be useful translations for this, (even if it was just intended to be a kind of stop-gap on the way to full understanding). I'm basically with pete on this one, that it's better to try and make a cognitive leap and just absorb it as a 'lexical chunk' without needing to try and translate it literally.
@zhenlijiang - OK, I promise not to call you sis! 当然我不失望了！Perhaps it was your avatar that led me (can't speak for others) to be mistaken re. your gender, but really if I'd thought about it I should have known. We think of Planet Earth as female don't we?