User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 11, 2009 at 7:57 AMHi tarcy
That's a clever way to (grammatically correctly) say "I've studied Chinese for three years" in Chinese. Maybe "中文我学了三年了" would be OK, too.
As for "我学中文三年了", I guess that it might be a shortened form of "我学中文已经有三年了", in which the phrase "我学中文" functions as a subject.
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 11, 2009 at 2:06 AMHi evasiege
The grammar book I mentioned in my posting devotes 30 pages for explaining the usage of 了, and I've read them a few times so far. BUT, honestly speaking, I still don't understand well how to use 了 properly, haha.
As is often the case, actual conversations made by native speakers are more flexible grammatically than examples in textbooks, and grammatical "tolerance" varies from person to person, which makes things more confusing!
As for the phrase 我学了三年(的)中文, maybe it's the most "precise" way to say "I studied Chinese for three years" in Chinese. In this case, 三年 works as a modifier (adjective?), so it's placed before a noun "中文", just like 五年的工作.
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 10, 2009 at 12:21 PMHi evasiege
Native guys naturally understand what these five sentences (A～E) mean, however I'm not sure if they are all grammatically correct.
I think (C)～(E) are probably OK, and confusingly, one of my grammar books (written by a native author) says (A)/(B) are incorrect (and (C)/(D) are correct)......wow.
I agree (B) is a little unnatural, but I often see (A) type sentences on the Internet. I would appreciate other people's opinions.
(A) 我学中文三年了。
I've studied Chinese for three years.
(B) 我学了中文三年了。
I've studied Chinese for three years.
(C) 我学了三年(的)中文。
I studied Chinese for three years.
(D) 我学了三年(的)中文了。
I've studied Chinese for three years.
(E) 我学中文已经(有)三年了。
I've already studied Chinese for three years.
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 9, 2009 at 9:24 AMHi cassie
Thanks to the mistake, I've learned the chengyu "举一三反" (ju3yi1san1fan3) today, for which thank you. There is a good Japanese saying I like: "転んでもただでは起きない", and this literally means "跌倒也不白起来还要随手捞一把" in Chinese. I don't know how to say it English, but its free translation should be something like "turn everything into profit".
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 9, 2009 at 9:12 AMHi rjberki
In China, trucks talk, and even desk calculators (if not all) talk, like "san1 jia1 wu3 deng3yu2 ba1 (3 + 5 = 8/三加五等于八)", probably in order to prevent sellers from cheating buyers. I think it makes a good souvenir from China. I would recommend light487 to get one during his travel in China, haha.
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 9, 2009 at 6:54 AMHi Jenny
Thanks for the correction! I agree that 注意别感冒/注意不要感冒/小心感冒 are commonly used but not "注意感冒". 写中文要注意语法！
Posted on: Watch Out!
March 9, 2009 at 5:43 AM注意 (pay attention) can be followed by more nouns than 小心 (be careful) can. For example, you can say both 注意感冒 (flu) and 小心感冒, however you can't say 小心发音/语法, while 注意发音/语法 (pay attention to pronunciation/grammar) is OK.
Nouns placed after 小心 must be something negative, or something that can possibly cause a trouble, such as 感冒 (flu)，火灾 (fire)，汽车 (car)，and 玻璃 (glass). That said, a bad pronounciation (发音) also might cause a trouble in communication, haha.
Posted on: Munich
March 9, 2009 at 1:38 AMHi bettine and dunderklumpen
The character 条 (條) originally indicated "a twig, a branch", and later it had an extended usage as a measure word that is used mainly for something long such as 一条裤子，一条河，一条街，一条路，一条鱼，一条(or 只)狗，and 一条(or 头)牛！
In the case of 狗 and 牛, probably ancient Chinese people focused attention on their tails, which are long in general. Interestingly, some scholars say that 一条狗 is originated in the image/shape of a dead dog hung at a meat shop.
In short, a measure word does not necessarily represent the characteristic of a thing as a whole. Sometimes it only represents a characteristic part of a thing counted, just like tails of dogs and cows.
By the same token, 口 (a mouth) is used as a measure word of pig, which I think is a very humorous way. 牛 has another measure word "头" (head), and this also represents a part of a cow, but not a cow as a whole.
Having said that, 一条狗 might not be so appropriate for my chubby dog, haha.
Posted on: Munich
March 8, 2009 at 1:12 PMHi light and bababardwan
The historical transition of pronunciation "Beijing" is roughly as follows,
(1) bok-king > (2) boi-king > (3) bei-jing
(1) is the sound used before 10th century, and the same one is still used in 福建话 （Hokkien, Fujianese） today. (2) was used between (approximately) the 11th and the 18th centuries. Western missionaries began to come to China in the 16th century. (3) is modern pronounciation after the 18th century.
You can see two very important changes in pronounciations in this transition.
Firstly, the stop consonant (entering tone, 入声) "k", as well as "t" and "p", started to disappear around the 10th century in northern dialects, however some southern dialects still preserve them today. The stop consonant "k" changed into a vague tail vowel, such as "i" as seen in (2).
Secondly, the consonant "k" changed into "j" around the 18th century, and this change happend only when the consonant was followed by vowel "i". And some other cosonants located before "i" also changed their sounds. As a result, six different sounds were consolicated into three, namely "ji", "qi", and "xi" in modern Mandarin.
And this is the very reason why putonghua has a lot of words and characters that begin with these three sounds, ji/qi/xi. If you have a paperbound Chinese dictionary, please check it out. There are a lot of words such as "ji", "jin", "jing" and "jiu", for example. But you can never find a word that begins with the sound "ki", of course.
Posted on: 醋的妙用
March 11, 2009 at 1:17 PM我家冰箱里有我自己做的“健康醋”。做法很简单，把洋葱片放到陈醋里就可以了。我喝这个健康饮料已经有五年了。但是长期喝过量的醋会伤害胃，喝醋的时候当然需要加水。
Incidentally, there are two interesting "醋" words. I first thought that both would mean "jealousy", haha.
醋心 (cu4 xin1) sore stomach/heart burn
醋意 (cu4 yi4) jealousy