User Comments - longdehua
longdehua
Posted on: Mobile Repairman
May 14, 2008 at 9:02 PMGah ... the 修东西的 used to wake me up every morning with his rattly bike and loudspeaker. Scheu: 打9.5折 see: http://www.ylfood.cn/Article/dgddhy/dghy/200702/318.html for example. Love the whole system of getting paid to recycle things - it makes it so much more efficient. Only downside was when I was having quite a serious chat with a friend and drinking a can of something, an old lady came and stood right next to me waiting for me to finish. When I asked her to come back in a few minutes she basically said "I can't wait round for you all day! I've got to go do the other side of the park too!" Very rude of me to hold up her job by taking the time to enjoy the contents of the can before giving it to her ...
Posted on: Ping Pong Nation
April 26, 2008 at 11:55 PMSophie20461: Billiards means any game on a table with balls and a stick. The most popular kind is pool so I think the best translation for 台球 is pool. Another kind is snooker and 英国一直统治snooker界！ :-) Auntie, I have also been coming across some sentences of that flavour that would sound very out of place in a British context. Of course for westerners to criticise it can smack a little of 殖民主义! No easy answers there ... Finally I'm a Brit and I say ping pong. But people have laughed at me for it before.
Posted on: What is a Chengyu?
April 18, 2008 at 8:36 PMGoulniky: 七张八嘴 = at sixes and sevens, wow, what a weird coincidence. Not sure really where the English one comes from either! Does anyone else miss the "do it again, do it again" music intro from Feb? I used to always have a little boogie on the 地铁 while listening to that bit before my CPod lesson.
Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Math class
April 11, 2008 at 3:14 PMOh, and Sebire: at a high level you use less and less English and more and more Greek so, although it's spoken out loud differently in different languages, maths looks pretty similar on paper. Probably a reason that collaboration is so successful in maths between people of different countries!
Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Math class
April 11, 2008 at 3:10 PM谢谢大家留数学词语。用中文说道很专业技术的题目好难啊。我最近尝试写个小简历。我上大学的时候也是学数学的（拓扑学）。I'm now working in biological modelling. Trying to describe the research I came up with: 我使用数学的方法，并通过电脑模拟，来解析引起炎症的细胞。 Any corrections from native speakers or more able poddies would be very welcome!
Posted on: Baseball
March 25, 2008 at 12:41 PMHey Casie, Not too sure but I'm guessing that 三振出局 means "three strikes and you're out". As in, if you don't hit the ball three times in a row then you are out. A "touch-down" is in 美式橄榄球, when you touch the ball on the ground at the end of the pitch. In 英式橄榄球 you score in the same way but it's called a "try".
Posted on: Knitting a Scarf
March 21, 2008 at 12:14 PMCornelia, the prefix for Shanghai is 沪 (hu), not 海. This goes for car number plates as well as cuisine (沪味). Other provinces which are less obvious are: 渝 (yu) = Chongqing 皖 (wan) = Anhui 闽 (min) = Fujian 粤 (yue) = Guangdong 琼 (qiong) = Hainan 冀 (ji) = Hebei 豫 (yu) = Henan 鄂 (e) = Hubei 湘 (xiang) = Hubei 鲁 (lu) = Shandong 晋 (jin) = Shanxi
Posted on: London
March 10, 2008 at 9:53 PM哦，我又写错了。钟楼其实叫 the clocktower of the Palace of Westminster. Big Ben 是里面的大钟，St Stephen's Tower 是另外的一个塔。 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_Tower%2C_Palace_of_Westminster
Posted on: London
March 10, 2008 at 9:48 PMUK is with Northern Ireland and Great Britain is without. But I think a British person can come from Northern Ireland ... I thought you could use just 联合王国 for UK, but it seems you need the rest that changye mentioned. 你们知道吗？ 大本钟只是钟的名字。钟楼其实叫 St Stephen's tower. 想看大本钟你必须进去。
Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Math class
May 14, 2008 at 9:10 PMHey light487, fractions are a bit weird and upside down: X分之Y = Y over X and now you can do percentages too: 百分之Y = Y%