User Comments - changye

Posted on: Stinky Feet

Hi missworldtraveler

对不起 I'm sorry, excuse me
不好意思 feel ashamed (to), feel embarrassed

Posted on: Reporting a Loss

Hi garfaldo

If you are learning simplified Chinese, only remembering 里 would be OK. And just forget about 裏 because it's mainly used in "traditional Chinese in the PRC", which means you seldom come across the character.

P/S. To make things more confusing for you, sorry, 裏 is very commonly used in Japanese.

Posted on: Stinky Feet

The character 臭 (chou4/xiu4) consists of two parts, namely 自 (zi4, oneself) and 犬 (quan3, dog). "自" is the original character of modern 鼻 (bi2, nose), and 自 later obtained an extended meaning "oneself" because a man often points a finger at his nose when meaning "myself, me".

So, 臭 originally meant "smell", but not "stinky". As you know, a dog has a sensitive sense of smell and always noses around. And a new character "嗅 (xiu4, smell)" was made by adding the mouth radical "口" and replaced 臭, but actually 闻 (wen2, smell) is more commonly used than 嗅 in modern Mandarin.

Posted on: 醋的妙用

Looks like that Chinese people "eat everything", even if they are not edible! There are about 80 words under the index character 吃 (chi1) in one of my Chinese dictionaries, including more than 50 words that are not directly related to eating food, such as 吃苦，吃力， 吃惊，and 吃亏. The most hilarious one is 吃鸭蛋/吃光蛋 (get zero in the exam/get a goose egg).

Posted on: Reporting a Loss

Hi garfaldo and pete

裏 was created more than two thousand years ago, on the other hand, 裡 is a relativelyl new character. Probably it was made only a few hundred years ago.

裏 is considered to be a traditional counterpart of 里 in the PRC and used in 繁体字版 of online newspapers and magazines, but it seems Taiwan medias primarily use 裡.

Posted on: Reporting a Loss

Hikdombros

You are right. 民族 is a Japan-made word, which is a transliteration of a western word that means "an ethnic group", but I don't know its original word.

Posted on: Reporting a Loss

double post, deleted.

Posted on: Watch Out!

Hi tarcy

Come to think of it, "我中文学了三年" is a shortened form of "我学中文学了三年", just like "他说汉语说得很流利" is often simplified into 他汉语说得很流利 (He can speak Chinese fluently). As you know, 他说汉语很流利 is grammatically incorrect.

Furthermore, you can also say "他会说流利的汉语" (He can speak Chinese fluently), and this is grammatically similar to 他学了三年的汉语, where the modifier is placed before the object. Anyway, modifying a Chinese "V+O" phrase is not so easy!

Posted on: 醋的妙用

Hi kmiik

Probably "可以吃的～/可以喝的～" are more commonly used than "可吃的～/可喝的～" when you mean that something is eatable/drinkable. You can also say "可以食用的" to mean "edible".

I noticed it was drinkable but didn't drink a lot.

我知道这是可以喝的，不过我没多喝(我没怎么喝)。

Posted on: Reporting a Loss

In English, what term is usually used to describe "民族" (and "民族名") used to mean "an ethnic group" (like 汉族，藏族，满族) ? I would appreciate answers from native English speakers. Thanks!