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02-26-2005, 01:10 PM | #16 |
Superior Inhabitant
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Sweden
Posts: 73
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Is there a star-constellation called "rooster"?
If there is ,then I kind of understand why the character for "(year of) rooster" and "west" looks so similar. :p |
02-26-2005, 07:46 PM | #17 |
I am not young enough to know everything
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Tokyo Japan
Posts: 16
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WELCOME to Kanji 101 with professor "lorcafed"
Thank you Sensei for a most interesting class! I had no idea that the years were written differently! However after you mentioned it I looked up 酉 (tori) in my Kanji dictionary and it said: 酉 COCK 酉年 The YEAR OF THE COCK I think I'm going to like this year! I wonder why we don't use a lovely word like "cock" much anymore to mean rooster? Anyway thank you lorcafed for straightening me out! Last edited by Izanagi; 02-26-2005 at 07:53 PM. |
02-26-2005, 09:02 PM | #18 |
Professor
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,462
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Wow. I hope more and more western people learn Chinese as we learn English.
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02-26-2005, 10:10 PM | #19 |
The future is unwritten
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
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Which Chinese, Billy? There seems to be a bunch of different dialects.
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02-26-2005, 10:59 PM | #20 |
I lurk with the best of them
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: not close to philadelphia. :( well, not THAT close.
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Mandarin and Traditional Chinese is the way to go.
As far as Chinese goes, there's only one way to write it but lots of different dialects. |
02-27-2005, 02:13 PM | #21 |
The future is unwritten
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
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Hmmmm...you mean lots of dialects as in different words and/or different meanings for the same words but only one alphabet to transcribe them all?
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The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump. |
02-27-2005, 04:09 PM | #22 |
When Do I Get Virtual Unreality?
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Raytown, Missouri
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When I was a junior high aged lad, "cock" was freely used as slang, roughly equivalent to "neat" or "cool", only with an edge. One usage is immortalized in one of my yearbooks: "To a really cock kid...see you this summer."
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"To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off." - Robert Moog |
02-27-2005, 06:14 PM | #23 | |
UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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02-27-2005, 09:27 PM | #24 |
Professor
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,462
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The same word has different pronunciations in different China zones. The pronunciation problem is caused by the poor communication. Now more and more speak, use and understand the Mandarin. Japanese and Chinese have some same words, but Japanese use old tone. Somtimes we can guess the Japnese meaning, but we cant speak.
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02-28-2005, 01:27 PM | #25 |
Slacker
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Posts: 144
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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
Hmmmm...you mean lots of dialects as in different words and/or different meanings for the same words but only one alphabet to transcribe them all? No, the written character is not phonetic, it is a pictograph. So you would have a picture of a table (somewhat abstracted) and totally different words for table in say Mandarin or Cantonese. There are hundreds of pictographs, and the radicals that make them up. The character for Chi is a picture of steam escaping from a bowl of rice on a fire, for instance with steam and rice pot radicals. To put together a keyboard with all the radicals would be way too complex, so if you go to your local Beijing internet cafe (and these places are hopping) they use Roman letters. I'm guessing that they type in the pin yin (roman letters for Mandarin Chinese, which is phonetical) and the characters appear on the screen. Many Chinese feel that the complexity of the written language has held them back technologically. The Japanese created a phonetical alphabet (albeit in characters) many years ago and only use the classical characters, which are similar to Chinese, occasionally. Actually most of the guys I met at the internet cafes in China played games rather than wrote. And the keyboards were worn down so you couldn't read the letters on the keys that move your game pieces. |
02-28-2005, 01:31 PM | #26 |
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And since Chinese was originally not widely written- just in the scholarly class, it developed without having to refer to the common languages of the different provinces. So it isn't just a matter of different pronunciation. My Dad worked with a Chinese woman who had to communicate with her Chinese husband from a different part of China in English. But today they all learn Mandarin in school and on TV.
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02-28-2005, 06:07 PM | #27 |
I lurk with the best of them
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There is also the case where the bopomofo is a key on the keyboard, and you have to spell it out that way. It's slow to use at first, and difficult to learn how to type in that fashion quickly... and I absolutely hate pinyin, so I'm kinda stuck at the moment. ^_^
And don't forget about dialects like Taiwanese, where there are some phoenetics which have no hanji equivalent, so it needs to be written out using bopomofo. |
02-28-2005, 09:45 PM | #28 |
The future is unwritten
Join Date: Oct 2002
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There sure are a lot of people that know a lot about chinese on this board. This is great.
The things you learn from a seal.
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03-01-2005, 12:30 AM | #29 | |
Professor
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03-01-2005, 12:42 AM | #30 | |
Professor
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I agree you that many young people play games or chat by QQ (like ICQ.At first we think it is copy of ICQ) in Netcafes. Once in Beijing a child fired one netcafe and many young people were killed. |
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