User Comments - chris

Posted on: It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity

My mouse-over software (Lingoes) states that kaoxiang is more common in Taiwan and kaolu on the mainland.

Posted on: It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity

I've spent time in both SH and HK in the summer months. With the exception of 2010, SH has always felt slightly worse. Could never work it out before last year, but the Expo shed some light on it. Last summer was actually not too bad in SH and there were significantly more blue sky days than previous years I've been living here. The air also felt cleaner and cooler when outside. This can probably be explained by the moratorium on construction work and closure of local factories during the 6 months of Expo. I'm not hopeful for this summer - suspect it will be back to the pre-2010 situation. Perhaps we could have Expo every year!

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

Hilarious xiaophil. I can't believe he actually did that, but also can't believe he actually did some due diligence on whether the station would indeed payout if he did! I suspect even the latest laser removal techniques would have trouble with that one.

Posted on: Getting a Tattoo

I had the same thought Joeborn. I think had they used the possessive marker 的, i.e. "我的吗" it would have avoided the confusion. However, as we know the possessive "de" is often dropped for family members. I guess the context actually makes it pretty clear - but I've not reached the appropriate level to pick up context every time yet!

Posted on: What's in a name?

The middle character of my Chinese name is also relatively challenging to write and from time to time native speakers fail to recognise it (although that's more likely to be my continuing poor caligraphy!). Full name is 艾睿杰 (ai4 rui4 jie2). The rui4 means far-sighted and the jie2 means heroic. Unfortunately, the ai4 means mugwort....perhaps I should think about changing that one, although it is pleasingly easy to write :-)

Posted on: Reinstalling Windows

只是 - in two of the three expansion sentences that cover this word, it seems to colocate with 想 to have the meaning of "only because I want to...".  For example:-

我今天来只是想拿回我的东西 - I only came today because I want to get my things.

Note that the "because I want to" is my translation - the expansion sentence translation simply used "I only came today to get my things".  However, this translation doesn't really take account of the 想 in my view.  Hence, I thought of it as "I only came today because I want to get my things".

This made me wonder whether we need the 想.  For example, does the following sentence also work with the same meaning?

我今天来只是拿回我的东西

Posted on: Reinstalling Windows

What is the difference between 重 and 再?  For example, in the expansion sentence 重听请按"9", could I also say 再听请按"9"?

Posted on: Reinstalling Windows

Real gem of a lesson for some grammar points I'd always struggled with!  Couple of questions on the dialogue:-

1) In the sentence 我们把东西都保存到移动硬盘里 is the 里 absolutely necessary?  I know there is the grammar pattern 到。。。去  e.g. 我明天要去北京去 and I know in this example we can drop the final 去 and the sentence is still OK.  So can we also drop the final 里 in the dialogue's sentence?

2) Referring to everything on the desktop, the dialogue has the following structure: 桌面上的东西.  Isn't the 上 redundant because we've already used 面 with the 桌？

Thanks, Chris.

Posted on: Awkward Silence

what floor are you guys on John? Suspect there may be some flushed and out of breath faces this morning! And the Saturday working thing just to get an extra day later in the week - still struggling to get my head around that aspect of Chinese holidays!

Posted on: Reinstalling Windows

Haven't listened to the lesson yet, but a novel solution to the problem might be for the Microsoft user to actually pay for what they're using ;-)