User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Registering with the Police Station
September 23, 2008 at 2:39 AMHi lujiaojie and wenjin,
Thank you. Let me try to address a policeman as 警察先生 the next time I go to 公安局 to renew my visa!
Posted on: Buying on Taobao
September 23, 2008 at 1:20 AM淘金 (tao2 jin1) pan for gold in a river
Posted on: Registering with the Police Station
September 22, 2008 at 9:18 AMHi lujiaojie,
Thank you for the answer, but I think it's a little strange that 警官 is used in the dialogue without any explanation despite the fact the word is rarely used in mainland China. As a foreign guy, I personally hesitate to address a policeman as 警察同志.
Posted on: ID Check at the Internet Cafe
September 22, 2008 at 8:10 AMHi bababardwan,
In Taiwan, there are mainly three input methods, bopomofo, cangjie, and dayi method. Of course, bopomofo (注音符号) is by far the most widely used. The keyboard in the picture in your above post is based on the cangjie (仓颉) method. 仓颉 is the name of a man in a legend, who is said to have created Chinese characters, a long long time ago.
Cangjie (仓颉)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_method
bopomofo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin
Dayi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayi_method
Posted on: ID Check at the Internet Cafe
September 22, 2008 at 7:34 AMP/S. In Taiwan, the situation is different. They usually use input methods based on 注音符号 (bopomofo). You can see a standard keyboard used in Taiwan in the following page.
Posted on: ID Check at the Internet Cafe
September 22, 2008 at 7:24 AMHi bababardwan,
Looks like that you've never used pinyin input method yet. Most Chinese people input Chinese characters the same way as we foreign learners of Chinese do. In short, you input pinyin (alphabets) first and after that convert them into Chinese characters. There is no trick. So the keyboards used in China are basically the same as those in your country, except for some minor differences.
Please read this Wiki article first,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_method
And, download Google pinyin method and enjoy it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pinyin
Posted on: Don't Never Say Never
September 22, 2008 at 6:01 AMHi pchenery,
As you said, there are a lot of Chinese characters that have several meanings, and that is the reason why two-character words, such as 从来 and 从容, are very frequently used in modern Mandarin. Thankfully, these words usually only have one meaning, although basic words, of course, tend to have a few meanings, just like other languages.
Posted on: Street Food Buffet
September 22, 2008 at 4:11 AMHi bababardwan,
You can see how Chinese children learn 汉字 and pinyin by seeing the following web page. Actually, textbooks and readers for children are very beneficial for us foreign learners, especially Tang poems or history books, since they have pinyin readings above all the Chinese characters.
Posted on: ID Check at the Internet Cafe
September 22, 2008 at 3:51 AMA bar counter is called "吧台" (ba1 tai2) in Chinese.
Posted on: Buying on Taobao
September 23, 2008 at 7:31 AM我喜欢在当当网等中国网上书店购买书，因为商品种类很丰富，发货也迅速，而且价格都有优惠。不过网络书店也有一个缺点，就是库存管理很差劲。网站虽然表示有货，顾客汇款后却往往有缺货通知，退款很麻烦，简直是受不了。不管有没有短处，但是网上书店的优势越来越明显，都起因于传统书店提供的服务不周到。我在网上只买书籍，从来没买过比较贵的东西。我这个胆小鬼很担心，卖家万一会”逃跑”！