User Comments - changye

Posted on: Afraid of Dogs

Hi kybod4,

You are right. 狗屁 is BS, and it's sometimes used like "狗屁废话" (gou3 pi4 fei4 hua4), where 废话 also means BS.

Posted on: Afraid of Dogs

My chubby dog probably suffers from binge eating disorder.

Posted on: Afraid of Dogs

There are two Chinese characters that mean “a dog”, namely 狗 (gou3) and 犬 (quan3). The former one, 狗, is a word for daily use, and the latter one is a rather formal character.

犬 is used for words such as 警犬 (jing3, police dog), 军犬 (jun1, military dog), 导盲犬 (dao3 mang2, guide dog), 犬齿 (chi3, canine tooth), and 狂犬病(kuang2 quan3 bing4, rabies).

Posted on: Afraid of Dogs

Hi mikenotinjubei,

You've raised a good topic.

Before the advent of simplified characters, 虫 and 蟲 had different meanings respectively, i.e. the former mainly meant "serpent", and the latter "insects and worms". Btw, I hate snakes very much.

And that is the reason why reptiles are interpreted as "爬虫类" (pa2 chong2 lei4) even in modern Chinese. Unfortunately, simplification sacrificed the original meaning of some Chinese characters.

Posted on: 输入法

Hi auntie68,

As you know, Japanese people usually don't use yojijukugo (chengyu) very much in Japanese writings, because people don't want to make themselves sound pedantic, which I think is a plausible excuse not to learn chengyu diligently.....hehe!

Posted on: 输入法

Hi calkins,

The situation is a bit more complicated, and please allow me to copy and paste a comment about the issue I posted half a year ago. Conclusion, simplified characters will definitely remain.

-----------------------------------------------------------
A working group of scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan have long been discussing ways to unify variant Chinese characters in those countries. Last year, they finally agreed to establish what are called “unified characters” in the near future, which are supposed to replace existing variants in a phased manner.

Most irritating thing about the news is that Korean scholars took the initiative in calling for other countries to join the project. I am sorry this is going to sound somewhat nationalistic, but I would just like to say to them, a little ashamed though, that please stay away from this issue because it is none of your business.

Ordinary Korean people usually do not read and write Chinese characters anymore, even though they half-heartedly learn one thousand and eight hundred hanzi at school, and the importance of Chinese (as well as English) is increasing in Korean society as their economy is getting more deeply involved with China than ever before.

You can hardly find Chinese characters in books and newspapers in Korea, except for some history-related or academic publications. In general, Korean people basically do not care about Chinese characters, let alone “variants”, however I must say the situations in China, Taiwan, and Japan are completely different.

As for China, at first the kingdom of hanzi joined the project in a passive manner, because China wanted to keep their simplified characters intact. But the country has recently become positive about the unification, since they think that simplified characters have been becoming a de facto standard for hanzi worldwide.

In other words, China already has confidence in holding a stable position of “简体字” around the world and do not have to fear “unification” anymore, therefore China agreed with the plan under the condition that simplified characters will keep status quo, even if their counterparts in “繁体字” are modified for standardization.

In my opinion, there is no need to unify variants in Chinese characters in every country, because hanzi themselves have a great recognizability or discriminability, and it would makes almost no difference whether or not, e.g. there are few more (or less) strokes in a Chinese character, when you discern and read them.

On the other hand, such unnecessary unification of hanzi could cause certain confusion in a writing system domestically, which means that you cannot maintain notational consistency anymore even between recent past and the near future. In a sense, a minor change might be much more troublesome than a major one.

Let me take “学” as an example. Its traditional form is “學”, and it is “学” both in “简体字” and Japanese kanji. As I wrote above, China has no intention to modify their “学”, and other countries have three choices for unification, namely (1) 学, (2) 學, (3) create a new character similar to “学” and “學”.

I think all of them are nonsense. Japanese never choose (1) “學” simply because it is too complex. And if Taiwanese people select (2) “学”, it would just mean they accept the simplification as China did two score years ago. If so, I would rather recommend that Taiwan import all the simplified characters from China. The option (3) is out of question.

I personally think that some countries should keep using traditional Chinese characters from the point of view of cultural heritage preservation. “繁体字” are not a big burden anymore in this computer and WP era. Of course, it’s completely up to the local people to decide to select which set of characters for their mother tongue.

I hope hanzi unification will not happen within my own lifetime.

Posted on: 输入法

Auntie and tvan,

Guys, thanks a lot for your quick replies. Looks like that the destinies of “phonetic symbols” are almost the same in any countries. They are important, but not many people care about them….except for foreign learners!

＞I've also heard that more mainland schools,
＞particularly around Guangdong,
＞have reintroduced traditional characters.

Wow, it’s very interesting! If someone has further information, please let us know! Having said that, it might not necessarily be good news for school students in 广东 region. If I were them, I would just say “Come on!”

Posted on: 输入法

Hi auntie68,

I have a question. Do native English speakers usually pay attention to pronunciation symbols? Phonetic symbols for English are naturally very important for us non-native speakers when looking up in an English dictionary, because English pronunciations are rather arbitrary.

By the way, pinyin was originally introduced to replace Chinese characters, or probably to tentatively soothe radical advocates of Romanization of Mandarin, in 1950s. Even some prominent linguists, such as 王力, were ardent supporters of the stupid abolitionism of 汉字.

Thankfully, with the development of Chinese economy and rising nationalism, the status of Chinese characters seems to be more stable than ever. I was impressed to hear that Olympic teams entered the main stadium not in alphabetical order but in Hanzi stroke count order at 北京奥运会.

Posted on: 输入法

Hi goulniky,

Needless to say, pinyin is very important for foreign learners and Chinese children, but not anymore for grown-up Chinese people. Good or bad, they usually don’t care much about pinyin in daily life because they ARE native Chinese speakers. And that is just why your Chinese friends are not “proficient” in writing pinyin.

Posted on: 输入法

五笔输入法确实蛮快，可是我怎么也学不会呀！