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Lao Kou
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Lao Kou »

GrandPiano wrote:大家好!我两年左右学习汉语,但我的汉语不很好。我要练习。
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Thakowsaizmu »

磨杵作鍼

李白少讀書、未成棄去。道逢老嫗磨杵、白問其故、曰:作鍼。白感其言、遂卒業。
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by k1234567890y »

Thakowsaizmu wrote:磨杵作鍼

李白少讀書、未成棄去。道逢老嫗磨杵、白問其故、曰:作鍼。白感其言、遂卒業。
看來你懂文言文,不錯 :)
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: 这练习中文

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Thakowsaizmu wrote:磨杵作鍼

李白少讀書、未成棄去。道逢老嫗磨杵、白問其故、曰:作鍼。白感其言、遂卒業。
難道不是「道逢老磨杵」嗎? [;)]
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Re: 这练习中文

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[:P] 【用漢語】
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Thakowsaizmu »

k1234567890y wrote:
Thakowsaizmu wrote:磨杵作鍼

李白少讀書、未成棄去。道逢老嫗磨杵、白問其故、曰:作鍼。白感其言、遂卒業。
看來你懂文言文,不錯 :)
我在學習呢。
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

我幸福我們的老師學習繁體字!
Spoiler:
No idea how to form more complex sentences like that yet. There prolly are a few particles and some sort of conjunction missing there.

Hopefully you can guess what I mean! [:)]
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Znex »

你的意思是不是说你们的老师教你们繁体字?
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

是的, 我思這樣.

(I feel kinda guilty making too liberal use of the dictionary/translation sites. I didn't know 教, so I made due since I had cheated enough! For the above, I don't know if 思 can be used like that. Also, Google Translate did a shit job of translating the previous post for me, hopefully I understood it right.)
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Re: 这练习中文

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Thrice Xandvii wrote:I don't know if 思 can be used like that.
Maybe in the dynasties. [;)]

日日思君不見君...
I think of you every day but do not see you

我那麼想。
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Lao Kou wrote:
Thrice Xandvii wrote:I don't know if 思 can be used like that.
Maybe in the dynasties. [;)]

日日思君不見君...
I think of you every day but do not see you

我那麼想。
Heh.

We had to memorize the pronunciation and characters of "Thoughts on a Still Night" by Li Bai in my college Chinese class. Perhaps it's a carry over...
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Re: 这练习中文

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Thrice Xandvii wrote:We had to memorize the pronunciation and characters of "Thoughts on a Still Night" by Li Bai in my college Chinese class.
舉頭望明月,低頭思故鄉

It's very famous! (as they like to say here)

And I daresay Li Bai counts as livin' in the dynasties. [;)]
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Re: 这练习中文

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In Chinese (especially in 書面語, literally the language written in books, the way we use to communicate through writing) many words need to have collocations with words that have similar meanings.
For example, 思想(thought, n.) si1 xiang3
思考(to think, v.) si1 kao3
思維(thinking, n.) si1 wei2
思念(to think of sb. or sth.) si1 nian4... etc.

目(eye /mu4/, or the logogram for eye) cannot be singled out and used separately as well in modern Chinese.
To express words or phrases meaning/related to "eye", here are two possible ways:
1. Using other compound words
眼睛(eye, n.) yan3 jing
明眸(a pair of clear and shining eyes, n.) ming2 mou2
眸子 mou2 zi has a similar meaning with 明眸, but note that both 明眸 and 眸子 is very literary. They are commonly used to describe the beauty of someone's eyes, presumably that of a teenage girl.
E.g. 回一笑百媚生 (白居易 長恨歌)
Turning her head, she looked back, smiled so sweet and full of grace.

2. Using the same word but with other collocations to form similar/other meanings related to "eye"
注目zhu4 mu4(to put yoyr focus on sth. Or sb.)
目光mu4 guang1(sight, n.)
目光短淺mu4 guang1 duan3 qian3 (shortsighted, adj.)
目標mu4 biao1(goal, n.)
目的 mu4 di4(purpose, n.) (的 is not pronounced as /de/ here because it means the target, n.)
Note that 目 is not commonly used separately in modern Chinese, like 思.
In classical Chinese however, they can be used in such way.
E.g. 目之 to see sth./sb.
低頭思故鄉(... to feel nostalgic, to remember the place where the poet used to live)

So it is unnatural if you simply put 思(without collocations) in a sentence in modern Chinese,
But definitely ok if you are writing classical Chinese.
P.s. Modern chinese still keep the use of Classical chinese in a few ways, so it is only unnatural but not ungrammatical.
E.g. idioms 朝思暮想 zhao1 si1 mu4 xiang3 (to think of something day amd night)
Deliberate use (inc. Literature poems in Tang, Song etc.) 哀思 ai1 si1 a sad thought (feeling sad)

I used the pinyin notation instead of ipa... it's less time consuming.
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

謝謝你, lhykv!

While I know that a lot of words in Chinese must have a secondary component (what you called "collocations," a word I had never heard before) my knowledge on characters and actual vocab in Chinese is vanishingly small, which is one of the reasons I am sorta embarrassed to post here. I intend to pick back up learning characters and try to find a website to teach vocab to supplement.

Also, for matters Chinese, I at least, prefer Pinyin to IPA notation.
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by GrandPiano »

I, too, agree that Pinyin is usually a much better choice than IPA when it comes to Chinese. Besides being designed for the language and therefore more convenient in this case, most of the characters are readily available on a regular Latin-alphabet keyboard, and those that aren't can be swapped for ones that are; tone diacritics can swapped for numbers, and ü can be swapped for v.

评论中文的时候,拼音比国际音标好。
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by lhykv »

別客氣,難得有人來練習中文 [:D]

Personally, I think Chinese is not that hard to learn (Arabic?!! learning the writing system just made me feel depressed [o.O] ), provided that you are familiar with a group of commonly used words and phrases. The rest is just the grammar, which is much simpler than most European languages.

The tricky part always goes to memorising characters. Some are fairly easy to learn, e.g. 一(one), 日(sun), 月(moon), ... etc.
While some that may need more practice...
maybe this can help you: the Liu Shu 六書 method suggested by Xushen (some random guy that you would hardly use in daily conversation).
1 Pictograms: use your imagination; try to guess how it changes from a picture to a Chinese character e.g. 山(mountain) 水(water) 人(person)

2 Simple ideograms: they are icons singled out or added to a pictogram which express words based on pictograms e.g. 一(a single stroke meaning 1) 本(一 added to the bottom of the 木 character, indicating the root) etc.

3 Compound ideographs: combined pictograms or ideograms (木+木+木=森 木+木=林 森林the woods [xD] ) 信(人+言=truthfulness, the words of a man)

4 Rebus (phonetic loan) characters: just ignore this. It's not commonly used.

5 Phono-semantic compound characters: this one is important. The majority of words in the Chinese language is formed using this method. Words arranged in this manner consists of two parts: 1 for the denoting the sound, while the other one shows its meaning (the family it belongs to). e.g. 椰 (木 wood+耶 /ye1/) ye2 (coconut) 椰樹(coconut tree)
Try to read the word out loud for a few times. It sounds funny but it works, at least for me to learn Spanish...

6 Derivative cognates: same as 4.

Try to build up your vocabulary using mind maps. It is extremely important because similar words may have different meanings, and using a mind map would help you to compare the differences between them in a systematic way. Write sentences for each word as well - if you don't know how to say it in Chinese, always look up the dictionary (and listen to the pronunciation if it's an online one).

沒錯,拼音學起來簡單又有趣!
mei2cuo4, pin1yin1 xue2qi3lai jian3dan1 you4 you3qu4!
meɪ̯2tsʰu̯ɔ4 ,pʰin1jin1 ɕy̯œ2 tɕʰi3laɪ̯5 tɕi̯ɛn3tan1 ji̯ɤʊ̯4 ji̯ɤʊ̯3tɕʰy4!

Yup, simple, concise and much more appealing when compared with IPA. [:P]

Try to find out word collocations with the character 山/水/人 (choose one as you prefer) and make some sentences using the listed words! [>:D]
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by GrandPiano »

One big problem with that memorization method is that it doesn't always work with simplified characters (which are what I use). Take, for example, the traditional Chinese character 龜, which means turtle. This character is very easy to remember, because it closely resembles a turtle (in fact, the way it still resembles its meaning so closely is why it's my favorite traditional character). However, the simplified equivalent, 龟, doesn't bear quite the same resemblance, so you just have to flat-out memorize it. The traditional character 國 guó, meaning nation, is a phono-semantic compound, where 囗 "border" is the semantic part (because nations have defined borders) and 或 huò provides the sound. 国 doesn't work quite the same way, though, because 玉 is pronounced yù.

Also, there are characters which don't mean what they meant when they were devised (most of which, I think, are the "rebus characters" you mentioned). Take, for example, the traditional character 這, which means "this". It is composed of 辶, the walk radical, and 言, which means "speak", because it originally meant "meet", so it represented someone walking somewhere to talk. However, because it now means "this", you cannot remember the character based on its origin. To make matters worse, in the simplified version, 这, 言 is swapped for 文. Why? I don't know. Maybe it resembles the cursive form.

But for many characters, that memorization technique will work; more for traditional characters than for simplified characters, but it can still help on both sides. I've found this website to be very helpful in finding characters' etymologies (after you search for a character, click on the "Etymology" tab).

One final note - IPA doesn't use numbers to represent tone; it either uses diacritics (má ma᷄ ma᷈ mâ) or special tone letters (ma˥ ma˧˥ ma˨˩˦ ma˥˩). [;)]
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by GrandPiano »

My textbook has "除了英语以外,我还会法语。" as an example of the 除了……以外 construction. Is that a typo, or can you actually say "I can French" to mean "I can speak French"?
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by Lao Kou »

GrandPiano wrote:My textbook has "除了英语以外,我还会法语。" as an example of the 除了……以外 construction. Is that a typo, or can you actually say "I can French" to mean "I can speak French"?
It's fine. Clearly, it's a shameless rip-off of the German "Ich kann Französisch." [;)]
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Re: 这练习中文

Post by lhykv »

會should be considered as a verb in this case. It shows the ability of sb/sth

E.g. 你會游泳嗎?Can you swim?
So... it's not 還會 法語 but 還 會法語 (I also know French.)
You can add 說(to speak) after 會 as well → I also speak French.
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