Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby OldBoring » 2018-11-11, 7:32

No idea on how to do it.
All your questions are how to do something. But this is life. You can't have a tutorial on anything. If you want to do something, study, try to practise, fail, make mistakes, try another way, and learn from your mistakes. That's how you learn.
Everyone is different, has a different kind of memory and learns differently. Like in your example, ruokakauppa (food store) wouldn't stick for me.

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby langmon » 2018-11-11, 8:19

OldBoring wrote:No idea on how to do it.
All your questions are how to do something. But this is life. You can't have a tutorial on anything.


I fully agree that it isn't possible to have a tutorial on everything.

And as for practice and so on, well, this is what I actually am doing with the languages I am learning :). It's just that sometimes, asking a question like the one I asked about Chinese tonality, or any other question of that kind, did provide some additionally useful output. I never intend these questions of mine to be something replacing anything that I am able to do myself, but sometimes they can be something supplementary.

There is a recent example, and I do like to double-emphasize and even triple-emphasize that I am only mentioning it for the purpose of explaining something. When I asked a certain question in the Czech-related thread, the result was some output helping myself to connect some more dots and to realize that Czech, Polish and others, were (once again) easier than I thought.

This would be the link to both of someone else's reply and my follow-up:

https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?p=1124055#p1124061
this is a reboot

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby langmon » 2018-11-12, 9:44

Do small Chinese kids mix up words that are the same, other than having a different tonality (like the different ways of saying "ma"), just like other kids mix up similar sounding words in English, for example?
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby linguoboy » 2019-01-08, 20:55

I'm currently reading «马桥词典» by 韩少功 in the English translation of Julia Lovell. In one of the entries, 韩 claims that the dialect of 马桥 employs both 他 and 渠 as third-person pronouns, with a contrast in meaning. (马桥 is supposedly located in 湖南, though the author never says exactly where; 韩 himself is from 长沙.)

I've never heard of a variety of Chinese with a contrast like this. Is this something he simply invented for the novel?
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Saim » 2019-02-08, 18:14

From the English Wiktionary entry on 時候 (时候):

當我想你的時候
当我想你的时候
when I think of you

If 时候 means when what is the function of 当?

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-08, 18:50

Saim wrote:From the English Wiktionary entry on 時候 (时候):

當我想你的時候
当我想你的时候
when I think of you

If 时候 means when what is the function of 当?

Just to alert you that a temporal clause follows.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_grammar#Conjunctions.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Saim » 2019-02-08, 19:38

Linguoboy wrote:Just to alert you that a temporal clause follows.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_grammar#Conjunctions.


I get it now, thanks!

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The characters wbich make up the character 鞋 👞

Postby schnaz » 2019-02-09, 14:12

祝大家新年快乐。
Zhu4 da4 jia1 xin1 nian2 kuai4 le4.
Wishing everyone a happy New Year.

In the process of investigating the make up of the character for shoe 鞋 I was made aware of 2 components: ge =革 = radical 177 indicating leather, animal hides etc. The second component, the one which puzzles me, is gui1 = 圭 = jade pointed at the top, (old)jade tablet, a ceremonial badge of rank. Thanks for any light you can shed on this.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-09, 15:06

It’s a straightforward phonosemantic compound. Subsequent language change has simply obscured the phonetic similarity.

For more details, see the Wiktionary entry for 鞋.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby schnaz » 2019-02-12, 3:18

Thank you linguoboy. What do you think of this site? https://projects.invisionapp.com/m/shar ... /122458498
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-13, 17:48

schnaz wrote:Thank you linguoboy. What do you think of this site? https://projects.invisionapp.com/m/shar ... /122458498

I can't really tell much from a single screenshot.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby schnaz » 2019-03-04, 13:18

大家好, da4 jia1 hao3, Hi everyone, and linguoboy please excuse my delay in responding. I know I need to fight my procrastination but I keep putting it off. Here is a link to the Outlier linguistics site which I obliquely referred to previously. /https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/blogs/chinese I feel it may be worth looking into. If I ever decide to invest in their program I will report back on whether I think it was a good move or not.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Saim » 2019-09-16, 10:43

快点说没看我这儿正忙着呢吗?
Get on with it, can't you see that I'm busy?

What is the function of 正 in this sentence?

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby OldBoring » 2019-09-16, 12:07

doing sth right now

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Saim » 2019-09-16, 17:59

OldBoring wrote:doing sth right now


I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understand what you mean. 正 means “doing something right now” or you’d translate the second half of the sentence as “doing something right now”?

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby linguoboy » 2019-09-16, 18:06

Saim wrote:
OldBoring wrote:doing sth right now

I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understand what you mean. 正 means “doing something right now” or you’d translate the second half of the sentence as “doing something right now”?

I assumed the latter. This is a very common usage. The LINE dictionary is full of examples.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Saim » 2019-09-16, 19:13

linguoboy wrote:
Saim wrote:
OldBoring wrote:doing sth right now

I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understand what you mean. 正 means “doing something right now” or you’d translate the second half of the sentence as “doing something right now”?

I assumed the latter. This is a very common usage. The LINE dictionary is full of examples.


Thanks! That dictionary looks really good, I had been using glosbe and bare Google searches for example sentences and understanding expressions but it doesn’t seem to work so well for Chinese.

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby linguoboy » 2019-09-16, 19:17

Saim wrote:Thanks! That dictionary looks really good, I had been using glosbe and bare Google searches for example sentences and understanding expressions but it doesn’t seem to work so well for Chinese.

With Google searches I was having the problem of finding too much machine-translated gibberish. LINE isn't perfect (and not useful at all for current Taiwanese Mandarin), but they seem to have a pretty extensive database of vetted examples, so they've become my first stop.
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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Saim » 2019-09-25, 12:25

Are the different pronunciations of 扎 in Mandarin associated with different meanings or are they fully interchangeable?

Wiktionary gives the Mandarin readings of 扎 as zha1, za1 and zha2, and gives the meanings as 2. to stab; to prick; to puncture and 3. to tie; to fasten; to bundle (the other meanings mentioned are not Mandarin or not possibly related to the context I found this word in).

On Yabla, however, it gives za1 for "to tie" and zha1 for "to prick". (And zha2 would mean "penetrating" or "struggle"?).

Now in one video in Yabla, which is a tutorial on how to tie a ponytail up into a bun, there's the following sentence:

我们要先扎一个高马尾
wo3men yao4 xian1 zha1 yi1 ge4 gao1 ma3wei3
We need to first start with a high ponytail

She also clearly says zha1 and not za1 in the video. Musn't she mean "to tie" here? I'm guessing from the context because the English translation paraphrases a bit by using the verb "start".

In another video about why hair falls out there's a similar sentence with the za1 pronunciation: “梳头的时候扎头发的时候...” (the sentences goes on further from there).

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Re: Questions about Chinese / 关于中文的问题 / 關於中文的問題

Postby Yasna » 2019-09-25, 15:53

Saim wrote:Are the different pronunciations of 扎 in Mandarin associated with different meanings or are they fully interchangeable?

Judging by how many times people have asked about the pronunciation of 扎 on Baidu, there seems to be some regional variation in its pronunciation, but most answers agree that the standard reading for "to tie" is za1. Here's one quote from the preview of a site that's not loading at the moment: “一般日常生活中很多人把扎{za}头发说成扎{zha}头发。有很多误区。” Note that prior to simplification, 扎 (zha1) was used for "to prick" and 紥 (za1) was used for "to tie".

This could be completely wrong, but maybe 扎 (za1) is being pushed towards zha1 by 夹 (jia1), which has a pretty similar meaning (to clamp) and is used in phrases related to hair styling.
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