User Comments - dunderklumpen

Posted on: Outrageous Power Bill

tvan, miantiao

Oh, that was difficult. It seems I know too little about chinese culture and history to understand those things. But thank you anyway for expaining. I searched a dictionary and found that the word for egg is very popular in "bad" words:

蛋    dan4 eggs; term of abuse
笨蛋  ben4 dan4 fool / idiot
坏蛋  huai4 dan4 bad egg / scoundrel / bastard
混蛋  hun2 dan4 scoundrel (term of abuse for bad person) / bastard
王八蛋 wang2 ba1 dan4 bastard (insult) / son of a bitch

I think its all in the tone

I always thought of son of @ bi##h (the english version...) as being insultive not in a tone kind of way but in a religious kind of way. Wikipedia: "A bastard (also called whoreson) ... is a person whose parents ... are not married to each other." So I figured bastard or SOB was very insultive at the times when the chistian church had a strong influence over society. I might have to discard those ideas then :)

Posted on: Outrageous Power Bill

Hi miantiao

Is there an explanation to why 王八蛋 is a insult? The words, king, eight and egg seem sort of friendly. Son of a b##ch or bast@rd are not so friendly...

Posted on: Seeing Somebody to the Door

flyrealhy

不用谢 bu4yong4xie4 You're welcome.

Posted on: Seeing Somebody to the Door

Hi flyrealhy

well, you just listen to the sentence and type in the word/words that are missing. You type in pinyin and indicate tones with numbers, i.e. 1 for first tone, 2 for second and so on. Neutral tone is 5. So, to score in the first sentence you type zou3. No spaces are alloed, so if you were to type the word 麻烦 (trouble) it would be ma2fan5. Not ma2 fan5.
Now check you message inbox :)

Posted on: Lost in the Desert

Thanks matt!

Posted on: Lost in the Desert

Hi all,

is there a way for us poddies to add a lesson set? I'd like to add one on le...

Posted on: Don't push that button

Hi pete

Thanks for the reply!

Summary:
这是给你买的。zhe4 shi4 gei3 ni3 mai3 de5 This was bought for you.
这是被你买的。 zhe4 shi4 bei4 ni3 mai3 de5 This was bought by you.
Audio: gei, bei

Posted on: Where are you from?

Hi neerajshokeen!

According to the dictionaries I use:
印度 yìndù yin4du4 India
印度人 yìndùrén yin4du4ren2 indian
You can listen to yìndù here.

Posted on: Don't push that button

Many thanks, lujiaojie

这是给你买的。
This was bought by you (emphasizes the object)

(The object is "you", right?)

Apparently I'm not too familiar with 给. I thought this would mean "This was bought for you" (给 gei3 to, for, give). But then I looked it up and found 给 ji3 can also mean to supply or provide. Hence "This was bought by you" I guess. So, how would one say "This was bought for you" in chinese?

Posted on: Don't push that button

Thanks john.

Hi mikeinwshot

For some reason I am unable to edit my previous comment.

That happends to me too.

Hi pete, chris, Wande, Chiongzibide

So the point isn't so much to emphasize the adjective （as in a 是...的 sentence) as to simply describe the noun.

I'm not really sure when to use the shi...de... pattern.

E.g.

The person who is looking for miss Wang is very tall.
zhao3 wang2 tai4tai de ren2 hen3 gao1.

Is this a use of the epmhasizing function of shi...de... or is it just that this sentence can not be built in an other way?

One more example: let's say we are talking about cars and I want to say "his is big". This could be
ta1 de da4, rigth? (No shi4 needed since chinese adjectives sort of include the "is".)
ta1 de shi4 da4 de is also OK, right? Now, is that to use the epmhasizing function or is it just a short form of ta1 de shi4 da4 de che1? We need shi4 here since da4 de che1 is not an adjective but rather a noun(?)

Sorry, this post is a mess and my question is not crystal-clear :/