User Comments - xiaoanolga

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xiaoanolga

Posted on: Language Power Struggle
August 26, 2008, 06:26 AM

某人在马路上跟我说: "hello, you ...."
我: ".....??? 很不好意思, 听不懂! 请你再说一遍"
"hello, you ...."
我回答: "对不起我不会说英语, 但我们一起可以说中文...."
啊呀, 我的母语就是法文, 有一些好处...

Posted on: Chinglish in Reverse and University Culture
August 20, 2008, 10:32 PM

After "干杯 " we always 慢慢drink...

I also like 慢慢坐 or , even completely translated "sit slowly!"

Xiaoan

The most amusing chinglish I happened to see was in a hotel in Hangzhou, where the 乒乓球 room was postsigned "Pennis-Table"...it even beats "handiccapped elevators"!

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team
August 20, 2008, 05:10 AM

Ahahah! 一定 is also a stative verb! I will complain to my chinese teacher next time I meet her....(or, more to the point, revise my grammar....)

Changye, ich wünsche Dir viel Spass mit der deutsche Sprache!

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team
August 19, 2008, 07:24 PM

Hi capozzi!

I seem to remember that 一定 can only be used as an adverb, but that 肯定 can also be used as a verb (to approve , to confirm) or as an adjective meannig certain, precise such as in 请给我一个肯定的答复. Of course  肯定 can also be used adverbially and then I think it means the same as 一定 .

Ciao!

Anna

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team
August 19, 2008, 03:03 PM

Hi Changye....I totally agree, perhaps languages courses should take the plunge and have a serious rethink about what are the real concepts in chinese grammar! (Have you heard about the authentic story of the teacher making the student conjugate 爱:
我 爱, 你 爱, 他 爱, 她 爱, 它 爱, 我们 爱, 你们 爱, 他们 爱...and so on for past, future, subjunctive, imperative etc!) I sometimes have got the impression that chinese grammars only use a cut and paste from original imported occidental concepts!

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team
August 19, 2008, 12:41 PM

Changye and auntie68: many, many thanks!

Xiaoan

PS auntie68, how right you are with your comment

"Chinese grammatical concepts are so different from Indo-European ones" ....I sometimes even start to doubt the conept of "word" itself (not speaknig about relation between "words"...). From the example of Changye, it seems that 尽管 can be used as a conjonction or as an adverb...

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team
August 19, 2008, 05:46 AM

Hi friends!

A little grammar question on 尽管

你说   您尽管来问我

或者说 尽管您来问我  ?

I seem to remember that there are rules on where to place adverbs according to monosyllabic/bisyllabic, but that modal adverbs behave in a strange way...

Anyway, thanks for the help and the lessons are great!

Qiren: un bon conseil: apprends l'anglais (ce n'est vraiment pas difficile pour un francophone ET c'est une langue indispensable actuellement....). Quelques mois d'efforts, en valent vraiment la peine!

Posted on: Measure Words for Counting People
August 18, 2008, 04:57 AM

Well, measures words are really wierd! And I think the strangest feature is that they were not used in classical 文言!

Xiaoan

Posted on: Measure Words for Counting People
August 17, 2008, 01:45 PM

Hi, eunica...

in fact, 家 can also be a specifier (confusing, no?) as seen in the following: 一家饭店.

Abolish NOW the SPECIFIERS (in fact, I browsed through my lectures notes and discovered that I have noted more or less 100 nouns-classifiers)

Xiaoan

Posted on: Measure Words for Counting People
August 17, 2008, 10:32 AM

Hi Checkingoutchina,

you should say

我哥哥和我的朋友....

classifiers are usually used in the context of

Number + Classifier + Noun (numbers may not normally directly precede a noun)

Certains quantifiers also need a classifier

星期

One can also consider 一些 as a quantifier

一些笔

but of course, this is just a very, very rudimentary intro to that subject (in fact I'm seriously thinking of founding the "get rid of classifier fan-club"!)

Xiaoan