User Comments - changye
changye
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 15, 2008 at 6:12 AMHi aert, Thanks for your lecture on German. Having heard that German Grammar is not as complicated as some other Indoeuropean languages, well, I am now willing to change my “limiting-point language” from English to German. I only wish that there were no distinction between masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns in German! By the way, I guess that an English word “munch” may probably be derived from German “mund”, and “gander” from “gan”.
Posted on: 马丁· 路德 · 金
February 15, 2008 at 4:00 AMThe Chinese transliteration of “King” interested me very much. The character “金” (jin1) has been cleverly selected for the sound “king”. It is understandable because there is no word beginning the sound of “ki” in modern Mandarin anymore. Please open your dictionary and check it out soon. The reason why “king” was replaced by “jin” is that “金” had been pronounced something like “kiem” until the 18th century in northern China. Later, “k” changed into “j” because of palatalization caused by the vowel “i” located behind “k”. The consonants “k” and “j” have close ties with each other in Chinese. p.s. “金” is pronounced “kin” and “kim” in Japan and Korea respectively.
Posted on: 马丁· 路德 · 金
February 15, 2008 at 2:57 AMI have a dream. Someday I will be able to speak Chinese and English fluently.
Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 15, 2008 at 2:46 AMHi auntie68, Don’t care, you cannot gratify everybody’s taste and needs. I have always thought this place was sort of “a quasi chat room”, because you can usually get a response very quickly and enjoy a lot of jokes and banters here. As for the new picture, at first I thought I was looking in a mirror…….!
Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 15, 2008 at 12:14 AMHi auntie68, 第一次世界大战 and 第二次世界大战 are also being used in Japanese. In China, as is always the case with Chinese words, they are often abbreviated as 一战，二战，and 世界二战. Chinese is a very energy-conserving, or word-saving language.
Posted on: Study Abroad
February 15, 2008 at 12:05 AMHi venker31, According to one of my Chinese friends, “随缘” is often used when talking about male-female relationship in China. In that case, the word’s meaning should be “to pursue your destiny, or trust to fate”, although I think that you might have to fight against destiny at critical times.
Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 10:46 AMHi heshan, Pocky day is just something of a joke and not prevailing in Japan, but Pepero day is very important in Korean society, and young boys and firls in the country are relatively busy on that day, just like Valentine’s Day. The manufacturer’s marketing strategy seems to have been successful. Furthermore, I hear that there are several more similar “Days” in Korea. I sincerely envy and, at the same time, sympathize young Korean guys Korean Pepero http://images.google.com/images?hl=ko&q=%EB%B9%BC%EB%B9%BC%EB%A1%9C&lr=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Posted on: Valentine's Day
February 14, 2008 at 9:01 AMHi auntie68, sushan and casie, I am not a native English speaker, but as always I boldly weigh in. I have found another phrase for 小气, which I think is an euphemistic and not so negative way to mention such persons. “He is careful with his money.” Casie, what sushan said is right. You have to be careful when selecting a dictionary. Unfortunately, English dictionaries edited in China are still in early developing phase, although some of them include a large number of words.
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 14, 2008 at 8:37 AMHi aert, I learned German at college a few decades ago, but, what a shame, almost all the knowledge about the attractive language has already “gone with the wind.” I still remember that I nearly flunked several German exams when I was a freshman, mainly due to cumbersome case inflexion. After graduation, I made up my mind not to take any language if their grammar rules are more complicated than those of English. I love learning Chinese because it does not have case and inflexion, but I hear that some personal pronouns had cases more than two thousand years ago.
Posted on: Finding One's seat
February 15, 2008 at 6:56 AMHi henning, If so, I sincerely hope that linguistic genders in German will further degenerate to the level of modern English in the near future!!