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Re:pronounciation for: 她是白癡。或什麼?
Now why would you want to go and say a thing like that? Gracious!
There are a couple of challenges with your request. First, while most of the hundreds of different Chinese languages use the same writing system, they all pronounce the words differently. Since I happen to speak some Mandarin, which is the official government language in China (and not what most people speak, for example, in Hong Kong), I'll talk about Mandarin.
The next problem is that Chinese has a whole bunch of sounds in the language that don't exist in English. But I'll try to get you as close as I can.
The "Ella es una idiota" form of what you wrote is: Ta1 shi4 bai2chi1 huo4 shen2me. In English, I think I'd write that,
"Tah shrr. buy?chrr huaw. Shunmuh?"
That ought to get you fairly close to how they'd pronounce it in Beijing. The funny punctuation in there is to get you saying some of the tones correctly. If you say a word in Chinese in the wrong tone of voice, it completely changes the meaning of the word.
Also, you've got my curiosity up. I'm familiar with all of the words, but I can't figure out this 或什麼 part, Huo2 shen2me, sounds like you're saying, "She's an idiot. Maybe what?"
I'm wondering if you might not have grabbed the wrong character. Is it possible you meant 我什麼? Wo3 shen2me? "She's an idiot. What am I?" This doesn't make a whole lot more sense, but it does make more. That would be pronounced,
"Tah shrr. buy?chrr Waw... Shunmuh?"
The "Tah" and the "chrr" are both first tone, which means you have to say them higher in tone, kind of like you would say something you found rather unbelievable: HUUUHHHH? But the tone doesn't rise like a question does. It's an even steady tone, like in that song from the Sound of Music, when she sings, "SO, a needle pulling thread" The note when she sings, "SO" is a perfect first tone. That's how you want to say the Tah and the chrr.
I put a question mark after "buy" to get you to pronounce it with a rising tone.
The Waw... is kind of weird. It's a low tone, but it's not steady. It dips down and back up again, making you sound like your contemplating something troublesome, or accusing someone of lying: "Johnny....." Your turning a name into a word that means if you don't fess up right now, you're going to be a very sorry kid. That's the third tone, the one you have to use when you say "buy..."
I hope that helps. Let me know if I need to clarify anything I said.
And next time, give me something nice to have you say, will ya?
¡Que te disfrutes!
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 6, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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zaijian / you jian dao ni comparison
Message I of III for Zhangyan 4/6/05
Hi Zhangyan,
Duibuqi, hao jiu mei xiele.
I thought I had answered these last couple of your messages and I now realize that I never did.
I finally worked out your explanation in Chinese, about the difference between ~{TY<{~}, zai4jian4 and~{SV<{5=Dc~} you4jian4 dao4 ni3. Everything you said was familiar to me except for the word, ~{1mJ>~}, biao3shi4, "expresses", but everything is so rusty for me, I had to look up most of it to refresh my memory. It was good exercise.
>Let me explain ~{!0~}you jian~{!1~} to you. It means you meet somebody again. It doesn~{!/~}t mean bye bye.
~{!0SV<{5=Dc!1~}
"you4 jian4dao4 ni3"
"I see you again"
~{RbK<JGTYR;4N<{5=Dc!#~}
Yi4si shi4 zai4 yi1ci4 jian4 dao4 ni3
The meaning is, "another time I see you."
~{Hg9{NRCGK5!0O#M{CwLlTY<{5=Dc!1#,~}
ru2guo3 wo3men shuo1 "xi1wang4 ming2tian1 zai4 jian4dao4 ni3,"
If we say "I hope I see you again tomorrow,"
~{Ub@o5D!0TY<{!1R21mJ>TYR;4N<{5=Dc!#~}
zhe4li3 de zai4jian4 ye3 biao3shi4 zai4 yi1ce4 jian4dao4 ni3.
This "zai4jian4" also means, "another time I see you."
In English, we would say, "we meet again!" For some reason, we never say, "I see you again, even though this would make perfect sense. We also have some more playful versions of the expression, like, "You again!" (pretending to be annoyed by an unwanted person who is following you around,) or, "You again!"
We also have the ironic form, "Long time no see!" (hao3 jiu4 bu3 jian4) Of course, with the exception of the first one, these are all very informal expressions.
So it seems to me that the expression in Chinese, ~{TY<{~} zai4jian4 is an idiom. The words mean "see again", and the sense is, "see you later," but the intent is, "good-bye" Do I understand correctly? Because all of the other places you use~{TY<{~} it really means to see again.
My letter is too long to fit in one message, and the next part isn't really about vocabulary or translations. So I hope you won't mind tootling over to the "making friends" board, where more of the locals are likely to appreciate our conversation. Of course, if you don't like bouncing around between board areas, you can go to the very bottom of the board selection page and select "View all messages" This will lump everything into one board so that you can see everything at once. This is the way I normally read the boards anyway. In either case, I'll see you there!
See "Making Friends" board for part two of today's message.
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 6, 2005
# Msgs: 10
Latest: April 12, 2005
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April Fools' jokes: Part II of II
In my opinion, April fools pranks are funny when nobody is in any danger of any kind of significant harm, and when the person being teased has a good sense of humor and will be likely to enjoy the joke as much as everyone else. Compared to many Americans, I think my views on this are very conservative. I would much rather pass up a good joke than risk humiliating or hurting someone. There are people who think it’s okay if people are hurt as long as it isn’t too serious, and the jokester has a good heart.
For example, I used to work in construction many years ago, and the workers on my crew liked practical jokes any day of the year. One time I was working to move the scaffold that we used to go up and down the outside of the building. I was on the roof, wrapped around a beam that extended over the edge, connecting the cable for the scaffold to the beam on the roof. While I was out there hanging four stories above the ground, a couple of my co-workers lifted up the counterweights that kept my beam from falling over the edge of the roof, probably about a foot up in the air and dropped it. All this time, I’m straddling this beam, leaned over on my belly and clinging to this beam while trying to tighten a nut with a crescent wrench. Suddenly I find myself slowly dipping down and than suddenly jerked back up again with a big “KWOK!”. You can imagine, this gave me a horrible scare. I was afraid for my life, and it didn’t make me laugh. Now, of course, with the knowledge that nobody got hurt, it’s a great story. And we don’t mind laughing at fictional characters in movies who do things like this. Maybe I’m too stodgy, but I’m not willing to have my life at risk so that somebody can have a good laugh. In my opinion, that’s over the line.
I think that “less is more.” You can be clever enough to play a much better joke that is less elaborate and much funnier. Mow somebody’s lawn for them when they’re not at home and let them wonder who would do such a thing and why. I don’t know. I’m not the cleverest guy around with such things, but I have a lot of feelings about hurting and humiliating people in order to have a laugh.
Thanks for the question, it was fun. Do you have any holidays in China when people play jokes? I just learned that in Thailand they have water fights to celebrate the new year in the middle of April. That sounds like some fun!
Talk to you soon,
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
48990 Cai Jie
April 4, 2005
Reply
Re:Re:Re:Re: Soaps
Mark ,is April Fools' Day a important fun holiday in the US?How do you spend it?All the books I have read say that it's huge for you.
One of my friends put two clocks in her friend's room that day ,and the clocks are set to "sing" at 2:00 am and 3:00 am .Do you think this is acceptble?
Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
This is a reply to message # 48545
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 5, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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April Fools' jokes (Part I of II)
Hi Cai Jie,
Practical jokes are a very personal thing. Some people don’t have that kind of a sense of humor, and others do. You really have to know the person you’re thinking of playing a joke on. The most common type of April fools gags we see are telling somebody some plausible, but pretty outrageous lie and wait to see how long it takes the person to remember that today is April 1, and that folks might be having them on (teasing them):
What, you didn’t know all the classes are cancelled today? The Dean’s wife had a baby, and he’s sharing his joy with the whole campus!
I would confess my joke before it was too late for my friend to make it to class on time, but many people aren’t so nice.
When I was first in College in 1981, the college I went to was much more outrageous. Some pranks I saw or heard of there not April fool’s pranks, but the same kinds of pranks we think about on April Fools:
1) Disassemble a Volkswagon Beetle and put it back together inside somebody’s dorm room.
2) Get eight guys to pick up a VW Beetle and put it down sideways in its parking slot, so that there is almost no space between it and the cars parked on either side. (VW Drivers suffered a lot of torment at that school).
3) On the very first night of classes, all of the freshmen were awakened after midnight by upperclassmen screaming and lighting off balloons filled with Acetylene gas (basically, a fancy sort of firecracker that is easy for College students to make). We were all herded off into the woods and left there to find our way back to the dormitories
4) Sneak into somebody’s dormitory room and bolt all of the furniture to the ceiling. If you want to take this to extremes, you can glue everything carefully to the desk and stuff, exactly as you found it when you arrived, so that it looks like the room has been just turned upside down. (I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve heard of it often).
Once when I was in the Air Force, we decided to play a joke on a friend of ours who had been out drinking and came back to the dormitory very drunk. We let him sleep for about twenty minutes, and then we reset his clock so that he would think it was time to get up. We attended to every detail, making sure that there were people doing morning chores, taking showers, shaving, and everything. It was all we could do to keep our faces straight when he kept saying, “My God, it feels like I’ve only been asleep for half an hour!” You should have seen the look on his face when he found out it wasn’t yet 2:00 a.m. That was definitely the best April-fools-type prank I’ve ever participated in.
(Continued -- Mark)
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 5, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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Re:Re:Re: Soaps
"I love my family". That's very cool.
Actually, I would never have called "Friends" a soap opera. I would call that a "Sitcom", which is slang for a "Situation Comedy," or a comedy show based on some particular kind of living or working situation.
Mark
Sacramento, cA
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
March 30, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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Re: Soaps
Yes, the soap operas are engaging, and it's easy to get used to watching them.
I have used Soap operas in Spanish as well as in Mandarin to develop my conversational skills as well.
Which soaps do you enjoy watching?
Recently, I found DVD disks of my favorite one in English, an old spoof of soap operas called, "Soap," which was really good. They only have three of the five seasons available just now, but they're very inexpensive for a collection of TV eposodes, and I really had fun watching them again after so many years -- the series was on TV way back in the 70's and early 80's.
Enjoy,
Mark,
Sacamento, USA
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
March 28, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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Re:Re:do you like chinese?
aloha!! I am a taiwanese outcasted on the island of maui, hawaii. I speak both chinese n' english. If ya r interested in beach n' nature stuffs, then we might have someting to chat about in both languages. I just want to know more about what's going on outside of my little island paradise...ciao
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Language pair: Chinese, Mandarin; English
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Outcast
March 27, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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tones
Yes, yours is an elegent, expressive language. Whenever I hear people speaking it, I feel joy, like returning to a beautiful place where one has fond memories.
Thank you for your comment, that the tones are not used in Chinese to express emotions. I probably should have clarified that in my message.
The problem is, for an English speaker who has no experience with a tonal language, we have no way to understand the tones or what they are supposed to sound like. If I just say, "high tone," "rising tone," "low falling and rising tone," and "falling tone," especially in an e-mail where I cannot demonstrate what I'm talking about, this information is very vague, and really doesn't mean very much to an English speaker--at least, it never would have to me.
However, because we often use tone of voice in our language to convey shades of meaning, as you gathered from my message, these kinds of emotional tones we use in English can be helpful to an English speaker in trying to understand what the tones sound like. They certainly were a great help to my classmates and myself when we were studying Mandarin.
And what you say about stress is a very good point, and works in English, too. I remember an English teacher explaining the same thing about the question, "Did John tell you that?" which can have five different meanings in the same manner as your sentence, "Ta2 shi5 wo4 ma2ma" (I'm guessing that that is what you meant by "ËýÊÇÎÒµÄÂèÂè." Chinese characters don't always appeare correctly here when you paste them in from other programs. The only reliable method I know of is to use the translators offered here).
Wo3 hen3 gao1xing4 zai4 kan4 ni3,
Make
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
March 27, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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Finding Computer Technology and other stuff
Zhangyan, Hao,
I need to quit for tonight, but I want to answer your question about using the board tonight when it might be more useful for you.
When you click on the Bulletin Board link on the left side of the screen wherever you are on MyLanguageExchange, it takes you to the listing of all of the different topic areas. The different boards are grouped by similar topics, as follows:
Language Exchange and Discussions
Language Learning Technologies
Teaching and Studying
Other Interests
Language Partners
General
If you look under the section called, "Language learning Technologies," you will see that this area has three boards listed. The first one, "computer technology," was the one I was referring to. If you click on "computer technology," it will open up that discussion area. Then, you can either reply to messages there, just as you have done before, or scroll down to the very bottom to find the link that allows you to add a new message.
Your home sounds absolutely lovely, with all of it's lush wilderness and a beautiful river nearby. I'm fortunate to have the American River flowing through my city of Sacramento, and we don't have to drive too far to find some wonderful mountain country to visit.
The material you typed in in Chinese didn't come out in characters, but looks to me like this: ÓÖ¼ûµ½Ä㡱Òâ˼ÊÇÔÙÒ»´Î¼ûµ½Äã¡£Èç¹ûÎÒÃÇ˵¡°Ï£ÍûÃ÷ÌìÔÙ¼ûµ½Ä㡱£ÕâÀïµÄ¡°ÔÙ¼û¡±Ò²±íʾÔÙÒ»´Î¼ûµ½Äã¡£
I have seen people get Chinese into their messages by using the translators provided by My Language Exchange, but I don't know if there's any easy way to do it if you're already writing it in Chinese. That would also be a good question to ask in the Computer Technology area of My Language Exc hange Bulletin Boards.
I'll talk to you again soon,
Zai jian!
Mark Springer
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
March 27, 2005
# Msgs: 10
Latest: April 12, 2005
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Outcast
March 27, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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