User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Originally Original
November 2, 2009 at 6:24 AMHi shike4li4
Just a small (useless) tip. The word "料理" in the sense of "cuisine, dish" is relatively new in China. "料理" originally means "carry on, attend to, treat", and "料理" (cuisine) became popular in China in the past decade or so, perhaps. I guess the new usage was probably borrowed from Japanese.
Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!
November 2, 2009 at 4:07 AMHi orangina
Please take a look at the English translations of exmaples shown in the page (nciku) below, where all the "换" is used in the sense of "replacing something for another thing", both concretely and figuratively.
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%8D%A2/1306399
P/S. "换" can be used for changing nuts, because it's a replacement of old one with new one.
Posted on: Picking Up a Friend at the Airport
November 2, 2009 at 3:38 AMI don't have many guests who visit me here in China, so I rarely use words such as 接人 (jie1ren2, pick up someone) and 送人 (song4ren2, see/send off someone). Instead, I often use 接水 (jie1shui3, get water) and 送水 (song4shui3, delivery mineral water).
Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!
November 2, 2009 at 3:14 AMHi orangina
The character "换" connotes rather differently from 变/改. It only means "replace/exchange" but not "change" in the sense of "transform/alter". Of course, "换" can also be translated as "change", like "change clothes (换衣服)".
I recommend you remember Chinese characters through short phrases such as "颜色变了" (color changed), 改错误 (correct an error), and "换衣服" (change clothes). Just remembering a single character leads to misunderstanding.
Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!
November 1, 2009 at 5:26 AMHi thecomakid
"节" is the simplified form of the traditional Chinese character "節", and both have the same meaning and usage. "节" is one of simplified Chinese characters, "简体字" (jian3ti3zi4), which were introduced in the PRC in 1950s. They were created mainly by modifying traditional characters, "繁体字" (fan2ti3zi4).
Traditional characters are still used in some countries and regions, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. The shapes of traditional ones have basically remain unchanged over one thousand and several hundred years. The shapes of current traditioanl characters are based on those shown in 康熙字典 (kang1xi1zi4dian3, 1716)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_Dictionary
Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!
November 1, 2009 at 3:37 AMHi thecomakid
The character "改" has two meanings, "change" and "correct". On the other hand, "变" only means "change". A little confusingly, there is a similar word "改变" (gai3 bian4), and this also only means "change".
You can use "改错" only when correcting something. There are not much nouns that contain "改" listed in a dictionary, but in reality, a lot of verbs can be used as nouns in Chinese, which is a conspicuous characteristic of Mandarin.
For example, “改变” is a verb in dictionaries, but actually it's often used as a noun, such as 中国的改变 (the change of China) and 发生改变 (a change happens).
Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!
November 1, 2009 at 3:19 AMHi thecomakid
改好 = 改 (change, correct) + 好 (completed, finished)
名字已经改好了。
ming2zi yi3jing gai3hao3 le
The name is already changed.
错误已经改好了。
cuo4wu4 yi3jing gai3hao3 le
The error is already corrected.
Posted on: Originally Original
October 31, 2009 at 2:17 PMHi miantiao,
Hehe, you've got me there. To tell you the truth, that was just a typo! The fact is that I hurriedly flipped one of my chengyu dictionary to find those three variations after I read your comment. Anyway, thanks to MY TYPO and YOUR POINTING THAT OUT, I now have a good excuse for making the same mistake (?) next time. My motto is "turn everything into profit".
Posted on: Originally Original
November 2, 2009 at 7:51 AMHi simon
I think "it turns out" is not so appropriate for "原本", but good for "原来". Unlike "原来", "原本" usually doesn't carry "surprising" connotation. The best translation of "原本" should be "originally".