User Comments - changye

Posted on: Karaoke

Hi Jenny,

It seems that you have to start another business to earn the USD 20,000 for registering a new company.

Posted on: Karaoke

Here is a little bitter story of the Japanese guy who invented Karaoke. In short, he didn’t patent it, alas! According to the article below, in 1999, Time Magazine called him one of the 20th century’s most influential Asians along with Mao Zedong and Mohandas Gandhi, which was not great comfort to him, perhaps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisuke_Inoue

P/S. I like 阿牛 very much.

Posted on: Instant Noodles

Hi wchan,

I hear that the instant noodle "出前一丁" is very popular in Hong Kong. They say that it has about 50% market share in instant noodles in HK. "出前一丁" is one of the longest-lasting and the most popular brands of an instant noodle product in Japan. It came to market in 1968.

"出前" (de-ma-e) is the name of a traditional Japanese catering service especially developed in noodle shop business. "一丁" (i-cchou) means "one order", so "出前一丁" means "to deliver one order", which is often used by people who work at noodle shops.

Posted on: Personal Trainer

You can say both "难度(强度)很大" and "难度(强度)很高", but I feel that "很高" is slightly more formal than "很大". For the record, you can say "温度很高", but not "温度很大".

Posted on: Instant Noodles

Hi xinjiapo2703,

放 (fang4) and 加 (jia1) are sometimes used interchangeably. For example, you can say both "放点盐" and "加点盐"　(add salt) when you are cooking. That said, the basic meanings of "放" and "加" are "put/release" and "add" respectively, so there are a lot of cases that you can't use them interchangeably.

Posted on: Relativity

Hi kubus,

P/S.2
氕 = protium, hydrogen (氢)

Posted on: Relativity

Hi kubus,

What a coincidence! I came across "熵" (shang1) in a dictionary by accident a few days ago. Actually, this character was newly invented in the 20th century, perhaps after the establishment of the PRC (1949), and is used exclusively in the sense of "entropy" in Chinese.

You can find a lot of such "new face" characters mainly in the periodic table of the elements (元素周期表), for example, 氕 (hydrogen), 氘 (deuterium), 氚 (tritium). Be noted that the number of vertical lines in these characters nicely represents the characteristics of the three chemicals.

As for "熵" (entropy), this character was invented based on the principle "会意" in the six Chinese character classifications (六书). "火" connotes "energy", and one of the meanings of "商" is a math term "quotient", which exactly describes the physical definition of entropy.

P/S. I guess that ordinary people don't know the character, except for some students who learn chemistry/physics at school.

Posted on: Google vs. Baidu

Hi sushan,

Thanks a lot for nice info. I guess that almost all the people don't know the etymology of "百度". Of course, I didn't know that at all, either.

青玉案 元夕

年代：【宋】 作者：【辛弃疾】

东风夜放花千树，
更吹落，星如雨。
宝马雕车香满路。
凤箫声动，玉壶光转，
一夜鱼龙舞。

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，
笑语盈盈暗香去。
众里寻他千百度，
蓦然回首，那人却在，
灯火阑珊处。

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hangzhou

Hi everett,

You can use "拍" for both video recording and photographing, like 拍电影，拍录像，拍照片。

Posted on: 重走丝绸之路

中国甘肃省有一座历史名城叫敦煌。古代的时候，这座小城市非常繁荣因为敦煌位于丝绸之路上的一个重要分岔口，就是商队的交叉点，同时也是东西文化的汇合点。敦煌地区有《敦煌石窟》，也就是说举世闻名的世界遗产《莫高窟》。1900年这个遗迹出土了大量珍贵的古代文物，而且这些所谓《敦煌文献》中竟然发现了古韵书《切韵》唐代抄本的片断。

 《切韵》是对中国音韵学来讲是最重要的基本古文献之一。汉语音韵学者主要是分析《切韵》音韵系统来推测中古音等汉字古音。但是这本古韵书的刻本佚失已久。现在传世的《切韵》系韵书只有《广韵》《集韵》等北宋以后编写的修订本，所以《敦煌文献》惊动了全中国语言学界。中国历史悠久，国土庞大，我相信将来还有许多令人吃惊的重大考古发现。