User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
January 28, 2009 at 5:19 AMHi bababardwan,
The shape of the repetition symbol tageimugei mentioned is a cursive form of "〃" , "=" or something like that. It's originated in the Chinese character "二" (two), and was already used in China more than two thousand and several hundred years ago. As you know, Mandarin is a very word-saving language. For the record, in Japan, they usually use the symbol "々" for a repetition of the same Chinese character.
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 27, 2009 at 12:21 PMHi zhenlijiang,
I envy you for having such good dictionaries. I didn't know at all that CASIO sells an electronic dictionary that contains 中日大辞典（大修館）. That's just great. The prestigious dictionary lists more than 200,000 words, including archaic words, which must be helpful when reading classical Chinese.
Haha, it must have been a rather tough job to "read" a dictionary, even if it's a nicely edited one. Why didn't you "read" 東方中国語辞典 instead of that. I hear 東方辞典 is a good dictionary. It's not thick, but shows you a lot of tips about grammar/eymologies and Chinese culture. It was edited by 相原先生, wasn't it?
I guess that 中日/日中辞典 published by 講談社 are very good. Honestly, I've long been wanting both of them, but they are too expensive. I wish Chinese dictionaries sold in Japan were as inexpensive as English ones. I can't afford them, much less an electronic dictionary. So I basically buy dictionaries here in China. Their prices are reasonable.
Speaking of 岩波中国語辞典、I happened to come across its counterpart, the first edition of 岩波日中辞典 (by 倉石先生) at a used bookstore here in China a few years ago. I was very delighted when I found it. I thought that maybe it was fated, so I immediately bought it without thinking.
Just like you, I'm also an ardent fan of paper dictionaries. Lately I've been reading 甲骨文辞典 bit by bit in bed every night, haha. In China, you can get a lot of good dictionaries, modern and classical ones included, that you can never find in Japan. This is one of the advantages of living in China. Let's enjoy learning! Good night.
Posted on: Pregnancy Series 2: Pregnancy House Ar-rest
January 27, 2009 at 11:38 AMHi leeht,
That's a nice story. If western missionaries had known your etymologies and stories in the past, their work would have been more successful here in China.
Now, please allow me to point out a small flaw in your story. "我" is not a character that consists of 手 and 戈, although the left part of the character actually looks like 手. The whole "我" is originated in the shape of an ancient three pronged pike, 三戈戟 (san1 ge1 ji3). Here is a photo ot it.
http://www.so888.com/article/20050414/080839.asp?id=19&sid=184&self_ID=884425
In short, the three pronges changed into the shape of the left part of "我". In the past, there were some interesting variants of the character "我", for example, "刀 + 戈" and "勿 + 戈", but no "手 + 戈", unfortunately. I'm sure you can come up with a bit modified version of your Christian etymologies.
Posted on: Making Dumplings
January 27, 2009 at 10:49 AM"面" is a good example of a simplified character that has lost its important semantic part. Its traditional form is "麵" (麦 + 面), and this makes good sense. Incidentally, wheated food is generally called "面食" (mian4 shi2) in China. 面条 is also part of 面食.
Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
January 27, 2009 at 10:33 AMSpeaking of 《唐诗三百首》, it actually contains three hundred and ten Tang poems (三百十首唐诗), so you can get extra ten poems as a bonus. On the other hand, the books titled 《唐诗三百首》 sold at bookstores in China often list a smaller number of poems than three hundred. In short, they are "excerpts" of the original edition. Please be careful when you buy one, haha.
Posted on: Free Association
January 27, 2009 at 8:46 AMHi iurii,
As smigoo explained, 单位 (unit) is also used in the sense of a company, or working place, in modern China. So Chinese people often say "你是哪个单位的？" (Where do you work?).
The word originally indicates a department, division, or branch of a governmental company and organization when the PRC was still an economically "cummunist state" a long time ago.
Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
January 27, 2009 at 8:12 AMThe format of this poem is called "七言绝句", which consists of four lines where every line has seven characters. In 七言绝句, the last characters in the first, second, and fourth lines are basically required to rhyme.
渭城朝雨浥轻尘，(chen/dzien)
客舍青青柳色新。(xin/sien)
劝君更尽一杯酒，
西出阳关无故人。(ren/nien)
The middle Chinese sounds (中古音), dzien, sien, nien, perfectly rhyme with each other, that is, they all have the same vowel. And even modern sounds also belong to the same rhyming group called "人辰".
This four-line poem also follows the format called "起承转合", where these four characters mean as follow,
起 (qi3) introduction
承 (cheng2) additional explanation for 起
转 (zhuan3) transition to another viewpoint
合 (he2) summing up the poem
渭城朝雨浥轻尘，(起)
客舍青青柳色新。（承）
劝君更尽一杯酒，（转）
西出阳关无故人。（合）
The first two lines, 起/承, and the last two lines, 转/合, make couplets (对句) respectively. In this poem, the first couple depicts the scenery, and the second one depicts the two people, 王维 (a poet) and 君 (you, his friend).
Please don't ask me questions. Honestly, this is just all I know about 七言绝句, haha.
现学现卖到此为止了！
Posted on: Pregnancy Series 2: Pregnancy House Ar-rest
January 27, 2009 at 7:07 AMHi leeht,
I think that "神" (god) is also an etymologically interesting character for western people. It consists of "ネ" and "申", and the former indicates "altar", and the latter "the shape of lightning" in ancient forms. Please look at the following page.
http://chinese-characters.org/meaning/7/7533.html
I believe that most westererns would probably associate this etymology with Zeus, the Greek god of lightning. Incidentally, "申" is the original character of "電/电" (dian4, electricity), but, of course, ancient people didn't know electricity.
Posted on: Making Dumplings
January 27, 2009 at 6:53 AMHi ihatemidterms,
The 蛮 (man2, very) is originally a dialect usage mainly seen in 吴方言 (i.e. Shanghainese).
Posted on: Seeing off an Old Friend 渭城曲
January 28, 2009 at 5:39 AMHi dunderklumpen,
The symbols 《 》 are used to indicate the name of a book in China, just like 《论语》. They are called 书名号, one of 标点符号 (punctuation marks). That said, actually they are also used for other proper nouns such as movie and TV program titles.
You can display them by pressing "shift key" + "<" or ">" when it's a Chinese input mode. Mine is Google pinyin IME. Probably the same holds for other Chinese input methods. Good luck.