Comments | elanid: Epic Chinese Words

elanid

Epic Chinese Words

Aug 13, 2008 14:11

Chinese is an awesome language, which is going to basically destroy my soul sometime soon, but hasn't done yet. One of the more interesting...features of Chinese is the tendency to take a famous proverb, cut it down to four characters, and make that word mean the moral of the entire proverb. Obviously, these make very little sense if you don't ( Read more... )

awesomeness, chinese

Comments 4

brugenmeister August 13 2008, 22:34:58 UTC

You bastardizer of pinyin! I would hate trying to pronounce those... and I'm Chinese. Not that my heritage qualifies me in any way. I stopped taking heritage language classes when I was 12.

elanid August 13 2008, 22:38:14 UTC

I know, that pinyin I just murdered brutally, it is sad, but do YOU have any idea how to write 1st and 3rd tone on a computer? I did not think so! Ha!

The worst part of this story is that I sat on the sofa last night, dictionary in hand, frowning earnestly at those monster words above and muttering pronunciations, complete with stupid tonalicious hand gestures, on account of my inability to pronounce tones without twitching my fingers in the approximate direction. Woe.

glaikery August 14 2008, 05:25:17 UTC

I love this language so fucking much. I realize I'm not allowed to say this yet, but seriously. Thanks, dahling. I have teeny bits of confidence in your soul. Wee bits. Specially for you. *toneless*

XP

(Also. These will help distract me from the bat that is no longer in my ROOM but instead in the room with my laptop charger and my book. *WHINE*)

Agree't; intrigued by that last one most. Tell me, when you do, but that goes w/o saying, *stare* (Hang on a moment, MAYBE IT DOESN'T, you posted this at 2:13. I am detracting points. I don't know what I'm detracting points from, but I am certainly detracting points from something. *gasp*)

*tease* No, though...

Bastardized pinyin they may be, but they are lovely, oui.

glaikery August 14 2008, 05:26:50 UTC

I actually said "toneless" there without meaning...uhm, I meant it in the way of people who know hardly anything about the existence of tonal languages and noticed irony second post-submit. Whoops. I claim excuse of WILDLY FLYING SURPRISE BAT.

/clarification