User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Considering a Credit Card
September 13, 2008 at 3:29 AM我没有信用卡，也没有银行卡，只有一张火锅店的优惠卡。
Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market
September 12, 2008 at 8:39 AMHi auntie68,
Haha, you are very merciful, because I guess that you've not yet shown the best ones out of the videos you've watched so far.
Posted on: 妈妈在哪里？
September 12, 2008 at 7:55 AMHi auntie68,
I also love this kind of lessons. Actually, reading and listening a monologue written in Chinese is very beneficial for us learners of Mandarin. For instance, just focusing on how "了" is used in the monologue gives you great insight into its proper grammatical usage and the concept of tense in Chinese. In a sense, Chinese monologue is always full of "historical present", and "了" is occasionally used as a spice. As you know (I have no doubt that you are a very good cook), the usage of spice is a very difficult part in cooking.
Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market
September 12, 2008 at 5:21 AMHi andrew,
Juat a hilarious photo. It's like a "Little Boy" atomic cucumber.
Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market
September 12, 2008 at 3:22 AMI sometimes see very ripe "yellow" cucumbers at a market. Of course, people don't want to buy such "old" ones. I also love young "green" cucumbers.
Posted on: Trip to the Vegetable Market
September 12, 2008 at 1:35 AMIt's very good to see our charming teachers in the videos. I also look forward to watching the "horror" vocab video on the Chinese meat market hosted by John, and I wonder who will host the video "Trip to the Body Parts". I'm sure that Chinesepod staff will NOT disappoint us ardent male poddies. Btw, I think that you should have mentioned 香菜 (Koreander) in this video. Thanks.
Posted on: 农产品补贴
September 11, 2008 at 1:37 PM保护自己国家的农业和农民就是理所当然的措施。这几年来全球粮食价格不断上涨，比如说黄豆价格比几年前涨了一倍多。因为地球气候异常变化和各国人民生活水平的提高，食品价格走高的趋势不可避免。在世界市场失衡很严重的情况下，每个国家都不但需要加强粮食安全保障，更需要确保国内粮食产量和耕地面积。我相信有钱也买不到粮食的时代马上就要到来了！
中国是拥有八亿农民的农业大国，但是中国农民大部分都是耕种小片土地的零星农户，并且实现现代化的可能性很小，因为在中国农业大规模化和机械化就意味着发生大量失业农民。扩大对外农业开放不仅不促进现代化，而且可能将来导致社会不稳定。我认为中国与其受到国际制裁，还不如保护八亿农民，否则历史上一直被官吏剥削欺负的中国农民无法挽救，简直是太可怜。
Posted on: 农产品补贴
September 11, 2008 at 1:21 PM.
Posted on: 日本人的起源
September 13, 2008 at 6:05 AMHere is a supplementary to the above comments on transliterations. As well as 加, the character 基 (ji1) is also confusing. It is often used to transliterate the sound “ki” in foreign words, such as 基辛格 (Kissinger) and 基尔霍夫 (Kirchhoff). I was confused when I came across these words for the first time, but I soon realized that the reason is very simple. There is no character that has the sound “ki” in Mandarin, and 基 (ji) is used as a substitution for “ki”.
And, as is often the case with 汉字，基 is pronounced “ki” in modern Cantonese, Korean and Japanese. Furthermore, as you can easily expect from above comments, the character 基 had the sound “ki” in the past even in Mandarin, but it’s actually quite recent that the sound “ki” changed into “ji”, probably around the 18th century. This change happened because of “palatalisation” induced by the vowel “i” placed after the consonant “k”.
The same phonological change happened to the character “加”, and that is the reason it’s pronounced “jia” in modern Chinese. The historical transition of the pronunciation of 加 ( [keai] < [ka] < [kia] < [tɕia] = jia ) is very intriguing in some ways, especially in the sense that it shows you a quick and typical sketch of the historical relation between 汉字 pronunciations in old/middle Chinese, modern Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Japanese.
…...…IPA…..汉语拼音
上古音 [keai]…( geai )
中古音 [ka]……( ga ) = Cantonese, Korean, Japanese
近代音 [kia]…..( gia )
现代音 [tɕia]….( jia )
As you can see from above, modern 汉字 pronunciations in Cantonese, Korean and Japanese are mainly based on 中古音 (middle Chinese sounds, 5th～10th century). In those days, a lot of Korean/Japanese students, politicians and Buddhist monks visited 长安 (西安), the capital of 隋 (Sui) and 唐 (Tang) dynasties, and they brought back brilliant Chinese culture, including then- latest pronunciations of 汉字, to their home countries.