User Comments - changye

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi yashimg-san,

Please don't discourage future learners of Japanese language.....hehe!

Posted on: Morning at the Office

Hi auntie68,

The following samples all mean "Where did he go?", but I don't know if there is some difference in nuance. I guess that (b) and (c) might be "economical" forms of (a).

(a) 他去了哪儿了？
(b) 他去哪儿了？
(c) 他去了哪儿？

When talking about things in the future, "了" is usually used in this way.

他快到了。
他快要到了。
他马上就到了。

Posted on: We're going to miss the plane!

他们俩不用那么着急，反正飞机经常晚点，延误，或者被取消！

Posted on: Booking a Plane Ticket

These three examples are all correct. "Time span" depends on the feeling and situation.

本届北京奥运会快要开始。(e.g.08年7月)
本届北京奥运会正在进行。(08年8月8日～24日)
本届北京奥运会非常成功。(e.g.08年9月)

Posted on: Morning at the Office

Hi auntie68,

Actually, the "了" issue is a headache. I think that your explanation about 了 is to the point, but I'm not so sure if the translation done by Cpod staff is corret. I also think "Where did you go this morning?" may be right.

Posted on: Morning at the Office

Hi aipi2,

It is believed that Chinese scholars didn’t realize the existence of “four different tones, 四声” in Chinese until the fifth century. Conversely speaking, in ancient china, people (scholars included) spoke their language even without knowing what tones are, but there is nothing surprising because they were NATIVE speakers! So I understand what your Chinese friends said about tones. Feel your Force!

Posted on: Morning at the Office

A useless information about “上”.

This character is a 多音字 (a polyphone), and it traditionally has two strains of pronunciation, i.e. shang4 and shang3. The latter one is used only when referring to “the third tone” in Chinese phonology, where the four tones are often referred to as 阴平, 阳平, 上声, and 去声.

As you can see below, the tones of 阴阳上去 are the same as those the four characters represent respectively. Why is the third tone called 上声 (rising tone)? Why don’t Chinese linguists call the second tone 上声? It’s a long story. I can’t explain it well in English, anyway. 

First tone….…一声……阴平 (yin1 ping2)
Second tone…二声……阳平 (yang2 ping2)
Third tone…...三声……上声 (shang3 sheng1)
Fourth tone….四声……去声 (qu4 sheng1)

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi jwosmun,

Your comment is very suggestive. Actually, automated translations between Japanese and European languages generally don’t work well. In fact, they are often just disastrous. And interestingly enough, the same goes for Chinese and Japanese, even though both languages traditionally have numerous Chinese words in common.

This means the two languages are very different from each other in terms of grammatical structure. In a sense, Chinese might be grammatically far closer to English than Japanese. On the other hand, the language that has the best chemistry with Japanese is definitely Korean. You can get a miraculously beautiful translation.

(A) 私は貿易会社に勤務しています。私は毎日、地下鉄で出勤します。会社の社長はとても裕福で、自動車を三台、洗濯機を二台、冷蔵庫も二台持っています。

(B) 나는 무역회사에 근무하고있습니다. 나는 매일 지하쳘로 출근합니다. 회사의 사장님은 매우 유복하고 자동차를 세대, 세탁기를 두대, 냉장고도 두대 가지고 있습니다.

Look at the above two samples. A sample (A) is written in Japanese, and (B) in Korean. At first glance, they look completely different from each other because of their characters, but actually they are incredibly similar with regard to both vocabulary and grammar. It’s readily apparent, if you look the following sentences.       

(A) 私は 貿易会社に 勤務しています。
(B) 나는 貿易会社에 勤務하고있습니다.
(C) I work for a trading company.

(A) 私は 毎日, 地下鉄で出勤します。
(B) 나는 毎日 地下鉄로 出勤합니다.
(C) I take the subway to work every day.

(A) 会社の 社長は　とても裕福で、
(B) 会社의 社長님은 매우 裕福하고
(C) The president of the company is very rich,

(A) 自動車を 三台、洗濯機を 二台、冷蔵庫も 二台 持っています。
(B) 自動車를 세台, 洗濯機를 두台, 冷蔵庫도 두台 가지고있습니다.
(C) He has three cars, two washing machines, and two fridges.

In the above (B) sentences, borrowed words from China and Japan are written in Chinese characters as it was in Korea a few decades ago. Every word in (A) corresponds one-to-one with that in (B), and furthermore (A) and (B) have a lot of Chinese words in common, which is why auto-translation works well for Korean and Japanese.

Exactly speaking, Japanese-into-Korean translation is slightly better than the other way around. Both Korean and Japanese have a lot of homonyms, obstacles to translation, but in written words, thanks to Chinese characters used in Japanese, auto-translator can very easily select right Korean words correspond to Japanese ones.

For the record, the Chinese words displayed in red are not used in Mandarin, since they are all borrowed from Japanese, not China, and they rooted deeply in Korean society mainly when it was under the rule of Japan in the first half of the 20th century. Good or bad, this is another reason why Japanese people can relatively easily learn Korean.

Posted on: Here she comes

P/S. In the case of custom and habit, you can use 总是, just like 他总是迟到 (= 他经常迟到). But 总是迟到 connotes worse than 经常迟到！

Posted on: Here she comes

经常 often  他经常迟到。
常常 often  他常常迟到。
老    often  他老迟到。(conversational)

总是 always 他总是热情地教我。
老是 always 他老是热情地教我。(conversational)