User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Don't Never Say Never
September 22, 2008 at 2:57 AMHi gregg and jonsnow,
Fortunately, both 从 (cong2) and 从 (zong4) are pronounced as "cong2" in modern Mandarin. And there is no pronunciation such as “cong1” (从) in any of my Chinese dictionaries. I hate to say this, but as far as I can judge from the explanations in your posts, the online-dictionaries you are using don’t seem so reliable.
Posted on: Don't Never Say Never
September 21, 2008 at 1:04 PMConnie has a date today!
Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member
September 21, 2008 at 1:01 PMHi auntie68 and henning,
Someone please ask Captain Picard if Klingon is an agglutinative language. Anyway, I believe that Finnish is more difficult to learn than Klingon, because I hear that even a devil could not master Finnish, but at least Klingon people, who look “devilish” to me, can speak them very well.
Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member
September 21, 2008 at 9:58 AMHi pete,
I’m very happy to know that your future goals include my mother tongue, Japanese. You’ve already learned some fusional languages, such as Latin, French, and Italian, and mastered an isolating language “Chinese”. And therefore, I think that your next logical step would be selecting one of agglutinative languages, i.e. Japanese. I wish you every success in your new job!
Posted on: 妈妈在哪里？
September 20, 2008 at 2:40 AMHi dubaobao,
我见识多了。 (wo3 jian4 shi duo1 le) I know too much!
Posted on: F1 in China
September 20, 2008 at 2:15 AMHi eyux,
upside down 上下相反 (xiang1 fan3)，上下颠倒 (dian1 dao3)
right-left reversal 左右相反，左右颠倒
inside out 表里相反 wear trousers inside out 穿反裤子
Posted on: F1 in China
September 20, 2008 at 1:55 AMHi tvan,
It seems that “房车” is used in two senses in Chinese. Please look into the following web page. You can see two types of cars there.
http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&lm=-1&cl=2&fm=ps&word=%B7%BF%B3%B5
Oxford Learner’s English-Chinese dictionary defines “a stock car” as “普通汽车”, but I think the translation is too 普通 to mean “a stock car”.
In short, 房车 means a car that has a ceiling, just like a house (房子), and it’s an antonym of a car without a ceiling, like a F1 race car (赛车).
Actually, “a stock car” is also rather difficult for non-native English speakers to get its meaning. It could have been translated as “存货车”, “股票车” or “株车”.
P/S. 存货车 and 库存车 are right Chinese words!
Posted on: F1 in China
September 19, 2008 at 11:47 PMHi tvan,
I know nothing about NASCAR, or NASDAQ (?), but google search results are as follows,
NASCAR 纳斯卡赛车，全美房车大赛，美国房车大赛
"A stock car" is "房车" in Chinese. Does it make sense? For the record, "Nazca Lines" in Peru is translated as "纳斯卡线条".
Posted on: Street Food Buffet
September 22, 2008 at 3:44 AMHi bababardwan,
As watsonqu said, Chinese children learn 汉字 with the help of pinyin. Interestingly, when children can't remember how to write a 汉字，they often write it in pinyin instead.
In the past, pinyin was for "children only" and not important anymore for adults, but the situation has changed. Most Chinese people use pinyin-input methods now.