User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Country Standings
April 27, 2008 at 9:41 AMHi hoovernash, In my above posting, I missed one critical thing. There is no word that begins with the consonant “r” in Mongolian, Manchu and Japanese, which is a commonly seen characteristic among so-called Altay language. And that may also be one of the reasons why the Russian word “Россия (r-o-s-s-i-ja)” was transcribed as “oros” in those three languages. Chinese language does not belong to Altay language, and does not have the “r” rule. And therefore, if Chinese people transliterated the word “directly” from Russian, they would have selected other Chinese characters than “俄”.
Posted on: Country Standings
April 27, 2008 at 6:57 AMHi hoovernash, You are right. As you said in the above posting, “俄罗斯 (e2 luo2 si1)” is phonetically closer to “Россия (r-o-s-s-i-ja)”, however, in fact, the Chinese word is not a direct transliteration of “Россия”. It is a transliteration of the Mongolian (or Manchu) counterpart “Oros”, of which initial sound “or” was employed probably because of the strong tongue-rolling sound “P (r)” in “Россия (r-o-s-s-i-ja)”. Interestingly, there are also similar Japanese words to mean Russia, i.e. おろす (orosu) and おろしあ (oroshia). I suppose they were imported from the Chinese continent several hundred years ago.
Posted on: 撒娇
April 27, 2008 at 5:55 AMHi pituitaryadenoma, Thank you again. Anyway, it looks like that foreign learners need to be careful using those two a bit “dangerous” words, “撒娇” and “撒赖”, especially in front of native Chinese ladies.
Posted on: Months
April 27, 2008 at 5:22 AMHi hitokiri6993, I've just sent a message full of character names of "るろうに剣心" to your Chinesepod account. Enjoy Japanese anime!
Posted on: Months
April 27, 2008 at 4:49 AMHi hitokiri6993, That is just what I expected! Of course, I love "るろうに剣心", and I've read all the series of the original manga (漫画). My daughter also loves 剣心 both in manga and in anime (动画).
Posted on: Months
April 27, 2008 at 3:28 AMHi hitokiri6993, I’m curious about your ID, i.e. hitokiri. If it is a Japanese word, it would be “人斬り”, which means “cut a man with a sword”. Wow, a bit frightening! Did you find the word in Japanese anime or movies? Btw, in Chinese 101 and 110 are somewhat tricky. The number 101 is “一百零一”, and 110 is “一百一“ or “一百一十” in Chinese. I don’t think that 一百十 (110) is grammatically correct, at least on textbooks.
Posted on: Overseas Chinese
April 27, 2008 at 3:15 AMHi auntie68, Is there any mention of "华侨 in Korea" in the book?
Posted on: Overseas Chinese
April 27, 2008 at 3:12 AMHi auntie68, I can’t imagine the life without CD players or stereos, though I also don’t care about DVD players. Below is the link to my most favorite classical music radio site in US. http://www.wguc.org/listen/streams.asp By the way, my PC is also on the verge of “giving up” now, probably it is infected. Looks like I need to reinstall both Windows XP (Japanese) and (Chinese) in a few days.
Posted on: 撒娇
April 27, 2008 at 2:57 AMHi pituitaryadenoma, Thanks for another tip, as always. Btw "撒赖" is defined as "make a scene, or act shamelessly" in my dictionaries. Does the word actually imply anything like the conversation between Jenny and connie at the beginning of the lesson? I'm a bit confused now!
Posted on: Overseas Chinese
April 27, 2008 at 12:01 PMGuys, I’m confused about “华人, 华侨, and 华裔”, so let me organize them. Below are definitions of those terms from 现代汉语词典 (and Wikipedia Japan). 华侨： 旅居国外的中国人（or 旅居在国外并且拥有中国国籍的汉族人, and this term does not include 留学生. by Wiki） 华裔：华侨在侨居国所生并取得侨居国国籍的子女。 华人：1) 中国人, 2) 指取得所在国国籍的中国血统的外国公民。 Don’t ask me which category Taiwanese belong to. It is a typical “高度政治敏感问题！” I sincerely hope this posting will NOT confuse you more.