Archive for the ‘Explanations’ Category
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
A friend just came back from Taiwan where he (somehow) met a local bear expert. The man told him:
"On the mainland they call pandas 'xióng māo' 熊猫, but here in Taiwan we say 'māo xióng' 猫熊."
Regional differences are common in the Chinese-speaking world (e.g. spoon). But what's notable about this ...
Posted in Explanations | 16 Comments »
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Here's a little trip down grammar lane, trying to get to the bottom of how the English word "one" can be translated so many different ways in Chinese.
It might surprise you how the Chinese say:
1. "one of my friends"
My first impulse was, of course, a sort of word-for-word translation:
yí gè ...
Posted in Explanations | 11 Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
I was waiting for my turn at the ping pong table the other night, when an older teacher started walking past me. I'd seen him several times before and even played ping pong with him once.
"Nǐ hǎo 你好," I said.
He stopped his walk and said, in all sincerity that most ...
Posted in Explanations | 45 Comments »
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
As I'm sure my English-speaking readers would agree, the agent marker "-er" is tough for Chinese learners. We use it all the time in English (3 times in the previous sentence) but it's not so readily available in Chinese.
Example 1: Tennis Player
Imagine I see a girl walking down the street ...
Posted in Explanations | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Quiz time!
1. Look at the picture
2. Answer the question (to yourself)
3. Check the answer below (no peeking!)
Question
This is a picture of graffiti advertising for machine drilling a new well (jī zuàn jǐng 机钻井). I asked my students why there were so many phone numbers advertising the same exact thing. ...
Posted in Explanations | 9 Comments »
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