User Comments - brentulus
brentulus
Posted on: Characters - The New Co-Worker
October 7, 2018 at 3:23 PMWith regard to the ‘department’ comment: Surely you don’t mean to suggest that English (or other languages) don’t have etymology? The word ‘department’ can be broken down into components with a history, just like characters in Chinese. What is more, many Chinese characters (around 70% I believe) are sound-meaning compounds, which means that around half of the character represents sound only, and has nothing to do with the meaning of the word. Trying to imbue every part of a character with meaning - a kind of ‘making up stories’ way of learning characters -actually just confuses me. Why not just look up a real Chinese etymology dictionary to see how the characters really evolved?
Posted on: How to Type Pinyin
July 13, 2016 at 5:07 PMPosted on: How to Type Pinyin
July 13, 2016 at 5:05 PM還不明白。ｎｄｙｓｓｓｍ？
Posted on: How to Type Pinyin
July 12, 2016 at 5:01 PMH h , h h d k ch :-)
Posted on: Play this Game to Learn Chinese Word Order
May 14, 2016 at 4:59 PMI'm having the same lack-of-audio problem on my iPhone 6.
Posted on: Exploring Nature At Night
July 28, 2015 at 4:01 AMHey guys, About 过: The word 'ever' alwayshelped me in understanding this word. I've always thought about it as the 'Have you ever...' particle, but I didn't hear you guys use the word 'ever' at all during this lesson. Should I not be thinking of it that way? It seems to work, even in the homework example: if you were to ask 你写过功课马？ the meaning would be 'Have you ever done your homework?' Right? Plus, in combination with 没, the meaning becomes 'never': 我没去过台湾：I've never been to Taiwan. So an explanation involving 'ever' makes sense to me.
Edit: I see now that the translation in the dialogue does include an 'ever', so I guess that answers my question :-)
Posted on: Goodbye to Shanell
July 27, 2014 at 11:13 PMAw, I feel like we were just getting to know you! Sad news for us, but all the best for this new chapter in your life!
Posted on: "Practice" Made Perfect
June 16, 2014 at 12:00 AMYay, you guys took my suggestion! Thank you for the lesson, I found it very useful. Is it maybe possible to get some examples of how to say something like "in practice" (as opposed to "in theory": "His ideas seemed promising, but didn't work in practice") or "common practice"? E.g.: "These days, it is common practice for schools to ban skateboards".
Posted on: Why are You Studying Chinese?
May 7, 2013 at 9:13 AM"Because I wish to fulfil my lifelong fantasy of sitting in a tea house beside a rice paddy, sipping tea and playing Mahjong with wizened old men while exchanging witticisms in Mandarin Chinese" 中文怎么说？
Posted on: 66 Enjoyable Characters with Joy #1
November 11, 2018 at 4:20 PMWhile the attempt to make characters more memorable is understandable, I’m just so wary of these little stories people make up. Wouldn’t it be better to teach that the 辶 radical is a version of 辵, and that it always has to do with motion or walking? Then we could use that knowledge when learning other characters, instead of making up a new story each time.