User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Hong Kong Visa Run
May 6, 2009 at 10:07 AMHi jckeith
Chinese people tend to save evergy for uttering words by emplying neutral tones especially for words in everyday use, provided that it will not cause much confusion in discerning meanings. Dictionary-wise, 电脑 should be pronounced as "dian4 nao3", but actually people often just say "dian4 nao", which is easier to pronounce than "dian4 nao3". The same goes for 汉语 (han4 yu3). I suppose that third tone of the last character of a word is often nuetralized. Maybe third tone is rather cumbersom to utter even for native speakers, hehe.
Posted on: 未来世界大战
May 6, 2009 at 9:38 AMHi miantiao
你写得很精彩，太搞笑了。到时候我把日本捕鲸船和企鹅战斗飞行队派遣到南极洋而跟澳大利亚鲸鱼航母队一起行动！我们两国好好合作怎么样？
Posted on: Seeing off a Monk, Returning to Japan -- 送僧归日本
May 6, 2009 at 9:01 AMMost Japanese people know the moving story about 鉴真 (jian4zhen2, 688-763), a prominent Chinese monk who helped to propagate Buddhism in Japan. In the eleven years from 743 to 754, Jianzhen attempted to visit Japan some six times, and he became blind due to his harsh journey to Japan. Jianzhen has long been respected in Japan.
Posted on: Hong Kong Visa Run
May 6, 2009 at 4:11 AMThe single word "学生" is pronounced as "xue2 sheng", but "学生" used in compound words is usually pronounced as "xue2 sheng1", like 留学生 (exchange student)，大学生 (college student)，学生证 (student ID card)，学生优惠 (student discount). Nuetral tone is usually used in order to make pronunciations easy. Which do you think is easier to pronounce, 学生证 (xue2 sheng zheng4) or 学生 (xue2 sheng1 zheng4)?
Posted on: Excuses for Being Late
May 6, 2009 at 2:47 AMHi chand
Wow, Hindi alphaberts are just cool! I wish I could read them.
Posted on: Seeing off a Monk, Returning to Japan -- 送僧归日本
May 5, 2009 at 12:20 PMHi lotsofwordsandnospaces
You are right. Katakana scripts are thought to have invented by Japanese monks around the 9/10th century. Monks used Katakana as auxiliary symbols when reading/translating Chinese texts. Katakana were made using a part of Chinese characters. For example, カ (ka) in "ヨドバシカメラ" is the left part of "加" (jia1), and the Chinese character was also pronounced as "ka" here in China more than one thousand years ago.
Posted on: Taking it all off
May 5, 2009 at 12:08 AM这也是“审美疲劳”吗？
Posted on: Zombies: Deader than Ever
May 4, 2009 at 12:17 PMGuys
Ninjas are NOT ghostbusters. I would prefer "Ninjas vs 007", hehe.
Posted on: Counting Coins
May 4, 2009 at 12:09 PMHi jack
零钱 (ling2qian2) means "small change (money)" in Chinese. You often hear people say "你有零钱吗？我没有零钱。" at a shop in China. The character 零 mainly has two meanings, "zero/nil" and "fractional".
Posted on: Seeing off a Monk, Returning to Japan -- 送僧归日本
May 7, 2009 at 12:57 AMHi christian and bababardwan
China was referred to as 上国 in ancient times becasue of so-called "China centrism". In short, China (or central dynasties in 中原) was called "upper countries", and local kingdoms outside 中原 (the central plains)，neigbouring countries included, were called "下国" (lower countries).