User Comments - timlb

Posted on: Animal Proverbs: A blind cat meets a dead mouse

Or “even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while”.

Posted on: 语法课程：“其它”，“其他”和“其余”

Total guess here (but a reasonable one): 他 uses the person radical 人 but 它 uses an animal (cow) radical -- in traditional characters, 牛. So don't use the animal (cow) radical to refer to people. I am not an expert.

Posted on: Coffee Break Series #5 - Making an Appointment

Is the idiom 择日不如撞日 only used with 日? As you mentioned, it can be translated as "there's no time like the present." Can this idiom be used with other terms relating to time, such as 时间, or just 时?

Posted on: 1920-40s Jazzy Songs in Shanghai

Wonderful lesson, please more! Following lyrics can be difficult due to the loss of tones. Also as a musician and ethnomusicologist I appreciate your insights into style and history. It’s also fascinating to map lyrics to idioms and connections to other cultural traditions. Well done.

Posted on: Airport Check-In Problems

Is there a difference in usage between 积 (ji) and 加 (jia)? Maybe a subtlety between "adding" and "accumulating,", or are they really the same?

Posted on: Airport Check-In Problems

Not a native speaker, but I think 原因should't just be translated as "the cause." I see it broader than that, in this case meaning "Due to weather reasons", or "Due to reasons having to do with the weather" -- we say "Due to weather" or "Due to the weather" in English is a shortcut, it's actually incomplete: due to the weather what? We mean "due to bad weather" or due to changes in the weather, in other words, due to reasons having to do with the weather.

Wow, sorry, used lots of words there. :-)

Anyway, redundant or not, I hear Chinese use this a lot at the end of sentences when they're explaining why things are the way they are.

Posted on: The Depth of 深

Can't say I found this less precise myself. As for your specific points:

深的了解 -- I guess you're questioning the translation, not the Chinese use, right? As a native English speaker, I see a difference between "I have a deep understanding of someone" and "I have a deep understanding of someone's mindset/moods." I certainly would say I have a deep understanding of my wife. But then I'm American, and seeing as you're apparently a citizen of the part of the world that created English, I'll defer to you on that one! :-)

The "foundations" versus "skilled" for 功底 is interesting as well. Nciku.com translates this the whole gamut from "foundation" to "master," so I'm guessing this word contains both meanings. The 功 perhaps is the skilled part and the 底 refers to foundation. Maybe it's a concatenation of two different terms? Anyway, it seems the English differentiation you're making might not apply, and there might not be a better way in English to say it. Maybe in Chinese you wouldn't use the term 功底 to refer to University studies...(?)

Posted on: Travel Wedding

The final sentence in this dialogue is interesting to me: 那随便你吧, is the context in which this would be used one where there's been some discussion, perhaps disagreement, and one person uses this as a way of backing out of the situation and letting the other person have her way? I.e., it wouldn't be used simply as a way of saying "do whatever you want", as in when a friend might not be able to decide to buy the red one or the blue one and asks your opinion, would you use this here? Or just if she wanted to buy the red one and you wanted her to buy the blue one, and finally you give up and say 那随便你吧. In this case is it like 你说了算吧？

Posted on: Travel Wedding

As Homer Simpson would say, 都！ （Okay, that was lame...)

Posted on: Travel Wedding

说得倒好听 seems like a nice chunk; it's translated as "that sounds great." Here it is in a negative context; that is, it's followed by "but..." -- is it always used that way, or can it be used in a positive context as well? Is part of it a structural portable chunk, like 说得倒容易 "that sounds easy" (probably followed by "but")?