User Comments - pretzelllogic62
pretzelllogic62
Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?
July 3, 2011 at 6:42 PMMaybe because shuāng is only used for things that come in pairs, in other words, two of a same kind, but kùzi are normally thought of as all one thing, such as duǎnkù (shorts) and qúnzi (skirt), both of which also use tiáo as a measure word even though in English you can say a pair of shorts. I'm not even sure shuāng is even a measure word per se in Mandarin. Better get better advice on that, yoming, but hang in there.
Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?
July 3, 2011 at 6:29 PMJust noticed this diatribe unleashed on poor yoming and a bunch of irrelevant adhominems by someone who seems to be carrying around all sorts of hang-ups extending back to English classes in his youth. General
trivia: 'for whom the bell tolls' extends back to a poem writtten by John Donne in the early 17th century. Hemingway then made it better known with his novel by that name late in the 1930s.
Posted on: Beijing Olympics: Opening Ceremony
July 2, 2011 at 5:29 PMWhy not say 'yesteryear' for zuónián because we never say 'last day' for zuótiān? Maybe also use 'the coming year' for láinián? Btw, qiántiān
shàngbànnián hé xiàxún zǒu le hé zuótiān xiàbànnián he shàngxún lái le!
Posted on: What have you done in 2009?
July 2, 2011 at 4:55 PMQiántiān shàngbànnián hé xiàxún zǒu le! Zuótiān xiàbànnián hé
shàngxún lái le!!
Posted on: Playing Wii
July 1, 2011 at 7:45 PMCan one say "Tā dǎ le yī ge pái" = "He played a card"? And the 5th expansion sentence is supposed to be in the present as it is, isn't it?
Posted on: Skiing, Not Ice Skating
July 1, 2011 at 6:48 PMMay liǎng ge in the dialogue and last two expansions also be translated as 'both', e.g., "I thought both were about the same"?
Posted on: Picking Up a Friend at the Airport
July 1, 2011 at 4:17 PMThank you, architpol, for uncovering some of the ambiguity here! At first "Today I put you guys hard-at-work" came to mind, then it became "Today you guys worked hard", but I see this is not quite what Jason had in mind.
Posted on: Buying a Bike
July 1, 2011 at 3:04 PMIs it also all right to just say 'sān bǎi wǔ kuài' rather than just "sān bǎi wǔ shi2 kuài" as said in the dialogue?
Posted on: The Pen and Paper Mystery
July 1, 2011 at 2:23 PMA question concerning the third tones expressed and not expressed in the next-to-last expansion sentence: Is the pattern in the 1st four tones expressed 3-2-3-3 for "Nǐ kěyǐ xiě..."? It sounds that way to me but my old ear is not very acute at times.
Posted on: Stopped at the Gate
July 3, 2011 at 7:27 PMSorry, but hěn, not hǎo, ought to be the example in the previous statement here. Hǎo may also fit the bill, but hěn definitely does according to a comment written by a worker at Chinesepod whose name escapes me