User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 6, 2008 at 1:13 AMHi auntie68, Sorry for my LATE reply. I’m now enjoying today’s first cup of coffee in the office. Here is some advice from a non-native speaker. Thanks to you, I’ve just learnt how to read 牡 and 牝 in Chinese. male and female 男 (nan2) and 女 (nv) for human beings 公 (gong1) and 母 (mu3) for animals 牡 (mu3) and 牝 (pin4) for animals 雄 (xiong2) and 雌 (ci3) for animals and plants For animals, 公 and 母 are probably most commonly used, e.g. 我的小狗是母的 or 它是母狗。And in conversational Chinese, you can also find some interesting expressions, such as 郎猫 (a male cat, lang2 mao1) and 女猫 (a female cat, nv3 mao1), according to some of my dictionaries.
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 5, 2008 at 11:15 AMHi dtoronto, > ya, well, in China, > you buy cats by the pound. One of the funniest jokes I ever heard! Your son is indeed witty. I can’t help laughing!
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 5, 2008 at 7:41 AMOn second thought, the lesson title “Cat in the Hat” should be translated as “戴帽子的猫” (dai4 mao4 zi de mao1), and “猫在帽子里” is “the cat is inside the hat” or something like that. Am I wrong? Anyway, my chubby dog, as well as calkins’ cat, seems to be too fat to get into a hat.
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 5, 2008 at 5:41 AMHi calkins, As far as I can judge from the effect of the diet seen in your photo, I’m sure that my chubby dog would certainly become fond of “Iams Weight Control cat food”. Now, let me try to make your attractive photo more educational. You can learn Mandarin even from a photo of a cat. Btw, my dog has also been on a diet recently. 1) 这张图片里的猫很胖。 The cat in the photo is fat. 2) 你的猫比我的小狗胖。 Your cat is fatter than my dog. 3) 我的小狗没有你的猫胖。 My dog is not as fat as your cat. 这张 (zhe4 zhang1) 图片 (tu2 pian4) 很胖 (hen3 pang4) 你的 (ni3 de) 我的 (wo3 de) 小狗 (xiao3 gou3) 没有 (mei3 you3)
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 5, 2008 at 2:08 AMHi calkins, 哎哟, 你的猫比我的小狗胖！
Posted on: 对症下药
May 5, 2008 at 12:14 AMHi casie, Thanks for your reply. I’m not a Japanese teacher. I’m working for a small Sino-Japan joint venture company here in China, but actually I sometimes teach Japanese as a volunteer at a local language school at the request of a Chinese friend of mine. Last year, I also taught Japanese, of course free of charge, to the daughter of a friend of my boss. It’s always great fun to teach Japanese to local young guys, but at the same time, I often find it somewhat difficult to effectively teach my own language to foreign people. Learners sometimes ask me grammatical questions I haven’t dreamt of in my life. Conversely speaking, I can “relearn” my mother tongue from a different point of view by teaching it. I’m happy to hear that you’ve learnt Japanese at university. When it comes to a language, I’m sure there is a very large difference between “I know a little” and “I know nothing”. In my case, I’m just an elementary (all but newbie) learner of Korean, but even my limited knowledge is very helpful when I’m reading books on history of the language.
Posted on: Mobile Repairman
May 4, 2008 at 9:24 AMIn my city here in China, I sometimes see a woman shouting out “旧衣服换鸡蛋 (jiu4 yi1 fu huan4 ji1 dan4)! 旧衣服换鸡蛋!” on the street. I didn’t understand what she was saying when I heard it for the first time. And later one of my Chinese friends explained me that those women would give you some eggs in exchange for your old clothes. I think it is a very reasonable system. China is really a recycling-oriented superpower.
Posted on: 对症下药
May 4, 2008 at 8:38 AMHi rich, You are right. It takes me time to write both in English and in Chinese, and, as you can imagine, it naturally takes me a looooooong time to write Chinese in that stupid “even-lined” style. It is always “an ordeal of joy” for me, so to speak. So, I sometimes try to stop the cumbersome habit, but without success. I know well that it is just a self-satisfied way of posting, and my Chinese writings often become more unnatural and less readable due to the even-lined style. On the other hand, there is a good point in this style. I have to look up dictionaries (or Internet) and find alternative phrases to adjust the number of characters in a line. It might sound stupid to you, but it is educational for me. For example, if one character too many, I use “不用” instead of “用不着”, and when one character short, I replace “我的小狗狗” with “我的小狗宝贝”. In doing so, I can learn several words and phrases that mean the same or similar thing. Anyway, I don’t recommend this to you busy guys!
Posted on: 对症下药
May 4, 2008 at 6:45 AMHi casie, 我已经学了蛮多年的汉语，好像都快十年了！很不好意思说，不过我终究还是只有这个汉语水平。其实我的办公室有很多会日语的同事(包括老板)，他们说日语说得很不错，比我的汉语流利得多，我太丢面子了！ 我的中国朋友也几乎都是当日语教师的，当然我和同事朋友们主要是用日语沟通，可惜我的小狗宝贝也只会犬语，而且我一般在家不看中国电视节目。总之，虽说我在中国生活已很久，我接触汉语的机会却并不多。 再加上我这个人绝不是个认真努力学习的人，我记性本来就不好，脑子也动得不快，最近我这些天生的毛病好像是越来越厉害了！哎哟，我有很多借口啊！不瞒你说，我已经放弃了提高外语会话水平的念头。 但是我几年前终于找到了别的乐趣，就是中国音韵学文字学等有关汉语的历史，尤其是中韩日三国汉字读音变化的比较特别有意思。我感兴趣的对象已经转移到古汉语中去了。如果可能的话，我想将来查看越南语中的汉语发音。 幸亏(?)我的工作不太忙，天天有的是时间， 那我就慢慢来吧。但是你们年轻人抓紧学习吧…..lol！
Posted on: Cat in the Hat
May 6, 2008 at 1:56 AMHi aunti68, I’m a bit too late, but thank you lujiaojie! That is a good and tricky question. And Google results have shown me a lot of words such as 小母鸡，小母马，小公牛，小公羊, and so on. It seems that 公 and 母 don’t necessarily imply “father and mother” when talking about animals. For the record, there is the word “崽子(zai3 zi)”, which means “young animals”, e.g. 狗崽子，猫崽子，牛崽子 etc. Moreover, you can also say “小鸡雏, 雏鸡，鸡雏儿, 小鸡崽子” to mean 小鸡. “雏 (chu2)” means “a young bird”. 我家五岁的小母狗没有下过崽子！