User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 25, 2009 at 8:11 AMHi 陈博士，
日本十二生肖基本上跟中国的一样。但是，在日本民间习俗中第十二个动物“猪” (pig, boar)变成为“野猪” (wild boar). 这是因为古代日本没有养猪文化，也就是说古代日本人不吃猪肉而吃野猪肉。据说，西藏/越南/泰国的十二生肖里没有“兔”而有“猫”，哈哈，太有意思了。不过，我想老鼠肯定觉得有点紧张，再说猫也不敢站在狗的旁边。
Posted on: Chinese New Year Plans
January 25, 2009 at 7:48 AMHi emberswift,
"老套/老一套" should be translated as "same old stuff", and "老套话" as "same old story". FYI, "pet phrase" is "口头禅" (kou3 tou2 chan2). If you would like to say "not this again", I guess just saying "又来了！" would be OK.
Regarding "从来都不", in this case, the "都" is used to emphasize the meaning "have never ～ so far". It would be also OK to say "从来不～" without using "都". The meanings of the two sentences are basically the same.
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 25, 2009 at 7:07 AMHi zhenlijiang,
As wchan nicely explained, the date of 春节 in the solar calendar varies from year to year, and the new zodiac animal takes effect on the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar, which automatically means that it's still the year of rat (鼠年) here in China as of now, 3:20 p.m. January 25, 2009. It sounds a bit funny to modern Japanese people, but not to Chinese people.
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 24, 2009 at 10:05 AMHi zhenlijiang,
Honestly, I also sometimes talk about zodiac animals, just like "原来你是属火马的！". Actually, it's a kind of conversation piece or a joke, but not a genuine supersutition. It's just for fun. There are still a lot of similar things in Japan, for example, blood types, zodiac signs, and Omikuji.
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 24, 2009 at 9:29 AMHi zhenlijiang,
My wife happens to belong to so-called "火马" (Fire Horse) zodiac animal, but fortunately enough, I'm still alive, at least, as of now. As you said, a lot of Japanese people (and maybe Chinese and Korean people) tried to avoid having a 火马 baby girl in the past, but not anymore in modern Japan, except for very superstitious guys or some elderly people who live in rural area. The problem is that not a few modern Japanese women don't want to have a child, regardless of whether it's the year of 火马 or not, anyway!
P/S. My daughter is "Tiger", wow!
Posted on: Farewell, Son 游子吟
January 24, 2009 at 9:27 AMHi mikeinewshot,
Yeah, there is no new lesson today, so I'm NOT very busy now!
Posted on: Farewell, Son 游子吟
January 24, 2009 at 9:09 AMHi mikeinewshot,
Actually, ONLY 37 comments out of 155 have been posted by pete, which accounts for about 24 percent, but please don't ask me to count the number of words used in all the comments here, haha.
Posted on: Pregnancy Series 2: Pregnancy House Ar-rest
January 23, 2009 at 12:45 PMHi leeht,
I like your "etymology" of "義" very much. It really makes religious sense. Interestingly, one of the well known etymologies of "義" happens to be somewhat similar to yours.
The character "羊" connoted "好吃，温柔，美好" for ancient Chinese people, so "羊 over 我" (= 義) meant "something good for me", which later led to the meaning "righteous".
"我" originally meant a kind of weapon, "a pike" in ancient times. So another etymology says that "義" consists of "sacrificial lamb" and "ritual weapon", which implies "righteous".
Hi raspa and bababardwan,
I think that some knowledge about Latin and Greek would definitely make learning English words more interesting and efficient. I tried before a mnemonic method based on prefixes and suffixes originated in Latin and Greek..........without success, haha.
Posted on: Pregnancy Series 2: Pregnancy House Ar-rest
January 23, 2009 at 6:50 AMHi pete,
难怪我在弥撒曲中经常发现《羔羊颂》这个曲目。看样子西方古人很喜欢吃羊肉！有意思的是中国古代殷商人也很爱吃羊肉，而且羊就是古代祭祀常用的牲畜之一，所以殷墟甲骨文里有很多有关“羊”的字。其中最有趣的是“羴”（三个羊字, shan1）。《说文》说，“羴，羊臭也”，这是可以理解的！
Posted on: Birth by Chinese Zodiac
January 25, 2009 at 8:54 AMHi zhenlijiang,
Describing characters by blood types is sometimes very harmful, as you pointed out, because it's often disguised as "science", and therefore, even un-superstitious people are often easily taken in. In fact, it's just nothing more than pseudoscience.
On the other hand, astrology is basically innocent. It's just for fun and can become a good conversation piece for most modern people unless you are very superstitous, since they know that it's scientifically nonsense.
That said, astrology was actually a genuine science in ancient times. In a way, astrology was equal to astronomy. You can say that astrology promoted the development of astronomy, just like the close relationship between alchemy and chemistry.