User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Internet is Down
July 13, 2008 at 3:44 AMHi yagna,
The word 杀毒 is a shortened form of 杀掉病毒 (sha1 diao4 bing4 du2) or 杀除(sha1 chu2)病毒 (to kill viruses), and 杀毒软件 means an antivirus software in Chinese. FYI, 毒品 (du2 pin3) usually means drugs/narcotics, not poison, in China.
Posted on: 磁悬浮
July 13, 2008 at 1:46 AM子曰，私下批评，公开表扬，不亦君子乎。
Posted on: Internet is Down
July 13, 2008 at 1:27 AMHi tommyb,
The verbs like “上网” and “开机”, which have V+O structure, are a little tricky. They sometimes “separate”, just like some super robots in Japanese anime, when you use them with 不了, and so 上网 and 开机 become 上不了网 and 开不了机 respectively. Both 我的电脑开不了机 and 我的电脑开不了 have the same meaning. Some natives even say 开机不了！
As for 杀毒软件开不了了, the first “了” is read as “liao3”, but the second one is “le”. And the last 了 indicates the change of the situation. And therefore, the phrase 开不了 simply means “I can’t start it”, but 开不了了 (kai1 bu liao3 le) suggests that I can’t start it now (although there was no problem until a while ago.) “了” is really a confusing character.
Posted on: Internet is Down
July 13, 2008 at 12:45 AMHi auntie68,
I guess you've been busy for the past few days, perhaps dued to another big toy for your Stunt Toddler. I hope it is a super giant robot this time.
Posted on: Internet is Down
July 12, 2008 at 7:58 AMToday's lesson is brief, but very substantial and worth listening to repeatedly. I think this style should be applied to newbie and elementary lessons. Time is money.
我的电脑开不了机！
我的电脑关不了机！
我的电脑启动不了！
我的电脑关闭不了！
杀毒软件用不了了！
杀毒软件开不了了！
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 11, 2008 at 11:57 PMHi xiaoanoga,
苍 is a strange character. As you wrote, its meaning is blue/green, but interestingly, 苍白 means "pale", and 苍苍 "gray, dark green, vast (sky or sea)", and therefore 白发苍苍 literally means "ash-colored hair". Its implication is "old, elder". "沧" also means "blue", and this character usually indicates "dark green water". The chengyu "沧海桑田" is very famous both in China and in Japan. Actually, I "literally" realized its meaning after I came to China. Everything changes so quickly here.
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 11, 2008 at 1:42 PMHi xiaoanolga,
＞ 青、取之於藍，而青於藍 (荀子)
This verse is well known in Japan too. Its Japanese translation is “青は藍より出でて藍より青し”. I don’t know if there is an equivalent English saying, but its free translation should be “outstrip your master” or something like that. By the way, I’ve come up with a new version, 静脉，成之于血，而青于血。
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 11, 2008 at 7:49 AMHi dldshanghai,
＞ like 炮 or 饱, it's hard to relate them with
＞ the concept of 会意字. They are all 左形右声的形声字.
I forgot to mention this in my previous posting. The original meaning of 炮 is said to be “to grill paste-wrapped meat” according to my 古代汉语字典 (商务印书馆). As for 饱, I can easily imagine a guy who got a big belly eating too much! How about you? In this case, the radical 包 suggests that a lot of food is “wrapped in stomach”, just like a fetus wrapped in membrane.
Anyway, be careful not be taken in by etymologies. Every etymology is seemingly very plausible, and there are usually several “plausible” etymologies for one character. And to make matters worse, some scholars employ somewhat distorted reasoning to explain their interpretations. That being said, etymology is a very exciting part in learning Chinese.
Posted on: SBTG: Health Class
July 11, 2008 at 5:30 AMHi dldshanghai,
说文解字 (100 A.D.) is a great dictionary, but in a sense, its content is already somewhat obsolete. A traditional theory known as 六书, six ways to invent Chinese characters including 形声字 and 会意字, also sometimes doesn’t fit the reality of Chinese characters’ interpretation. As for 会意兼形声字，it’s a relatively new concept, I don’t think it’s so important to discuss whether it belongs to 形声字, 会意字, or a brand new category. It’s just a matter of classification.
The point is the fact that sound radicals in 形声字 also often indicate important meanings. Conversely, even 形声字 needs a sound radical’s assistance to make its meaning more clear. For example, 胞 is generally categorized in 形声字, but its sound radical “包” explicitly suggest the original meaning of 胞. Some people mistakingly believe sound radicals always only indicate “sound” simply because they are called “a sound radical”.
I don’t think ancient Chinese people selected a sound radical solely based on its sound. I believe that they naturally tried as much as possible to use a sound radical that is appropriate both acoustically and semantically. And of course, their efforts were sometimes successful, and sometimes unsuccessful, due to limited number of radicals available. The character 胞 is a typical example of success, and you can easily find a lot of “successful” characters in 形声字.
Let’s look into 包-related characters. (A) 胞，泡，袍，苞，雹，鲍，炮，疱，炰，皰，饱 (B) 孢，刨，齙，跑，咆，庖，砲，骲. It seems to me that the characters in group (A) clearly connote “wrapping something” or “something round and wrapped” by using “包”. Please look at 泡, for example, the combination of “water” (水) and “wrapping” (包) beautifully illustrates “foam”. It is 会意字 rather than 形声字，and that’s just why you need a new concept “会意兼形声字”！
Posted on: Golf
July 14, 2008 at 12:46 AMHi richwarm2,
I feel there is a kind of irony in using 早就 in the dialogue. Anyway, the span of time covered by 早就 depends on speakers' intentions. 我刚才不是说了吗？(wo3 gang1 cai2 bu2 shi4 shuo1 le ma) would also be OK in this context.