User Comments - silktown
silktown
Posted on: A Phone Call to the Moving Company
November 16, 2009 at 3:14 PMYou can see the character 楼 lou2 in every British high street. It appears in the name of many Chinese fast-food takeaways and restaurants. (Actually, they're usually Cantonese, so it's the trad.form.) Since I've started learning characters, this has puzzled me - why do they use the hanzi for floor/tower/multi-storey building? Are they trying to look grand? Or is it a Cantonese usage?
Posted on: Jet Lag
November 16, 2009 at 12:07 AMThanks for the reminder of the Pinyin Program, John. Your explanations of how to pronounce sounds are brilliant, especially j,q,x (Section 10) and r (Section 4). Those sounds defeated me until I followed your advice.
Posted on: Jet Lag
November 12, 2009 at 11:10 AMPlease could somebody comment on the woman's pronunciation of 醒醒 xing3 xing5! wake up!? It sounds to me like xing xiou, quite different. Am I way off the mark?
I get jet lag without even travelling. And I get hangovers without even drinking. I think it's called getting old. Another problem with getting old is dodgy hearing.
Just realised: is it xing xing a! with the final sounds blending together?
Posted on: Visiting a Friend at the Hospital
November 5, 2009 at 4:25 PMMmmm... 骨头汤 gǔtoutāng bone soup!
Actually, just drinking the broth is a waste. I recently had a meal sitting next to a pregnant Chinese girl. She was very keen on one dish, so I tried it, too. Cubes of 土豆 potato, cubes of 猪肉 pork (?) meat and some grey cubes that weren't what they seemed - they had a firm but crumbly texture, like damp chalk. 骨头 Bone! cooked in a pressure-cooker, I think. Not unpleasant, just rather dull.
I couldn't help thinking of the character 骨 with its boney cubes.
Posted on: Which Time Zone?
November 4, 2009 at 6:19 PMCorrection: GMT 和 UTC 不一样 GMT hé UTC bù yī yàng GMT and UTC are not the same.
GMT is derived from astronomical observations. UTC is derived from the average of readings from 300 atomic clocks around the world. Unfortunately, the Earth's rotation is slowing, so the two get out of step. Only occasional adjustment of UTC by "leap seconds" means that it differs from GMT by up to 0.9 secs. I wouldn't want to mislead anyone as this could matter if you have a very busy lifestyle. Whoops, you've just used a lifetime's ration of leap seconds reading this... 对不起 duìbuqǐ sorry.
Posted on: Which Time Zone?
November 4, 2009 at 1:38 PMThanks for the fast response, Lily.
I don't think I'd ever have guessed Greenwich - 格林威治 gélínwēizhì. I'll stick to GMT - looks like Chinese understand it.
Posted on: Which Time Zone?
November 4, 2009 at 11:28 AMHi, lily_counselor. Thanks for the phrase 北京时间比GMT 早八小时 běijīng shíjiān bǐ GMT zǎo bā xiǎoshí Beijing time is eight hours before GMT.
How would you say it the other way round? Would it be GMT比北京时间 晚八小时 GMT bǐ běijīng shíjiān wǎn bā xiǎoshí GMT is eight hours after Beijing time.
Well, maybe you'd never put it like that, but you might want to say New York is five hours after London, for example.
Daylight saving is a nightmare for another reason: I'm in England but I used to deal daily with North America. We change clocks on different dates and there are a few tricky days when I get it wrong. Just as well I'm not running an airline.
Hurray for GMT, clears up any confusion. So, China still uses the phrase "GMT"? how is it pronounced? Nowadays, much of the world says "UTC" (Coordinated Universal Time ).
Posted on: Applying for a Loan
November 3, 2009 at 12:22 PMThanks, Changye, for saving me from my own naivety.
很好笑！
Posted on: Applying for a Loan
November 3, 2009 at 10:38 AMI enjoy pointing out to Chinese people that Hong Kong is consistently near the top of the transparency tables Bodawei is talking about (??) - i.e. low corruption. In 2008 it was No. 12, immediately ahead of Germany, Norway, Ireland, UK, Belgium, Japan, USA (in that order). Singapore was No. 4, Australia No.9.
I'm sure this is partly a function of size, but it looks like there's plenty of grounds for optimism in China. Graft isn't an inevitable part of Chinese culture.
China was at No. 72, out of 180 surveyed.
Posted on: A Phone Call to the Moving Company
November 16, 2009 at 3:33 PMMaybe I'm talking rubbish - I've just searched on Google and can't find 楼 lou2 in any of the restaurant names! But it certainly appears in the name of my local, and I've seen it elsewhere.