It's basically the same meaning with or without the shi. The example is fine. You can disagree with my 'shi' example if you wish, but I'm relatively sure my workmate from Beijing would take it as a very normal example.
What I said above was taken directly from sentences and thing I hear people say every single day of the week on the mainland. Maybe it differs in HK. What is better or not doesn't matter, the sentence means exactly the same thing.
Shanghai (read Ballard's _Rising Sun), and from what I read in the State Department archives, the British were arresting people at will pretty much anywhere they wanted. We were fighting skirmishes with the Japanese in the late 1930s in China (the novel _The San Pebbles_ is about that sort of US activity). We supposedly sent troops to protect the missionaries. The French and others also had concessions in at least Shanghai. The Europeans divided China up into spheres of influence. It wasn't officially colonized, but it wasn't in charge of its own internal affairs the way Japan was (Japan's myth of racial unity is just that -- it's probably a model of hybrid vigor with populations from Korea, Siberian, and Polynesia).
One of the incidents I read about in the State Department archives concerned a guy who the British had beaten up in Washington, DC, for supporting Indian Independence in the 19 teens. The man felt that there would be no peace in Asia until all the competing foreign powers got out of China, including the Japanese as well as the Europeans.
Rebecca,
I've watched and read the Rising Sun, but not the San Pebbles.
You mentioned that many of the coastal cities, but the one that was very westernized was Shanghai in the early 30s, Chinese took back control of the city post WWII, leaving only 1 coastal city Hongkong completely in the hands of western control, and that's not too many. The rest were inland, and the island, Macau.
The other city I can think of which was also under western control along with Shanghai, and which also fell back to the Chinese around the same time, was parts of Yunnan, called the Xishuangbana.
This is of serious significance and disastrous results. When the European powers began carving up China, the French saw the potential in Xishuangbana as a tea developing state to compete with the British in India. The French gave the excuse that it needed to guarded its interest in Laos and Vietnam, and wanted Xishuangbana as a defense line.
Xishuangbana is the often considered the cradle of tea plants, it is from here that the tea varietals spread east to India, south to Laos and Thailand, north-west to Zhejiang, and south-west to Fujian. Xishuangbana is also the site of the 6 famous tea mountains, and its poduction was the Pu'er teas. The french seized this area, and didn't do pretty much to promote the tea trade however, letting the 6 mountains' tea production and trade slide into decline. What was interesting, is that of all China, I believe this is the only place to have produced coffee - thanks to the French, and it is supposedly to be great coffee too.
Trying to steer us back on course...
But only manga aimed at the youth have furigana, hiragana printed in a small size next to kanji. Adult fare manga make no use of these, so the narratives and dialogs are no different than those in picture-less texts.
Japanese is a very compact language and so is well suited to the limited text space imposed by the comic form. The 5/7/5 structure of haiku in Japanese doesn't carry the sense of profound distillation of thought that result with the awkward attempts of this form in English. Also, take a look at the size of the books next time you visit a Japanese bookstore. Massive, inches-thick volumes are very uncommon for the simple reason that Japanese can convey ideas using much less ink.
Finally, I do hope you're not casting any sort of disdain on comic books, Lew. I'm a pretty bright guy, and I read them. Just the good stuff, though -- R. Crumb, Chris Ware, Seth. Why, even the New Yorker publishes work by the likes of these guys. And my wife, good Japanese that she is, reads Japanese comics all the time, some with quite mature themes unsuitable for polite discussion in a forum like this.
I've heard adults in France are also fond of comics. Is this true, Kuri? How about in other parts of Europe? You know, R. Crumb now lives in France.
--crymad
It is indeed the sameas long as they can understand each other, is it not?
You mentioned that : "The northern version of putonghua does have the "r" sound usually in words that end in an 'i'. For instance, the word "shi" which is the equivilant of our "to be" (is) verb. They say "shir" while the southerners usually have much difficulty pronouncing the "r" and even the "h" so you mostly end up with "si." The difference between 4 (si -
4th tone) and 10 (shi - 2nd tone) in the South is a real pain in the ass and the Cantonese even have a hard time understanding each other at times."The point here is that it is not determined by the vowel 'i' to throw in the 'er' morpheme (er hua yin), you are talking about 2 separate things here. In the pinyin system, the morphemes 's', 'c', 'z' have a counterpart which comes with a 'juan she yin' - a curl of the tongue to produce that soft 'er' sound. To write this, we use 'sh', 'ch', 'zh'; together with 'r', these are the vocalic 'r' sounds in pinyin. When 'sh', 'ch', and 'zh' are paired with 'i', 'e', 'a', 'u' they become vocalic with the soft 'r', but not with 'o' sound.
You mentioned that with 'shi' it would sound like 'shir', with the emphasis on 'r'? That is what we call Beijing 'Qiang', the Beijing dialect, or sometimes what is referred to as 'Beijing Tu Hua'. These are words and phrases that come with a very strong 'er' sound at the end.
It is believed that the southerners have a longer tongue, and couldn't pronounce not the 'er', but the 'sh', 'ch', 'zh' sounds. The 'r' comes out more like 'l'. The 'er' sounds they are quite capable of pronouncing, which they can fake a half-baked 'er hua yin' but not when it comes to 'ch', 'sh' & the 'zh' sounds.
Danny
You are right, I forgot about Zhangjiang. It was leased tothe french in
1898, but not much western influence was asserted on the territory. It was called "Guangzhouwan" back then. The french lost it to the Japanese in 1943 and the Chinese took it back in 1945 after the War.Danny
Albeit intrinsickly linked.
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Ah, sarcasm. How could I have missed it? Well, a discussion like this requires just a thin linguistic foundation, no? Anyway, very interesting. Use the word "variety" in place of "dialect" and thus solve the whole issue.
But, I like the sound of Mandarin better than the Cantonese, and I like the taste better too. Sorry.
Michael
Yes, a lot of adults read comics. I was told that used to be considered as something for dumbies before the 70's. My uncle that was in the B.D. (comics) business told me that when he started the *reputable bookstores* would refuse to sell any of his grown-up comics, only supermarkets would sell them. But as the BDs got a huge success, selling hundred times more than other books, the image has changed completely.
Belgium is the country of comics. The B.D. was born there, and many people in the street look like characters that would have escaped from the albums.
Kuri
What argument ? I'd really like to know your logic.
influences in the roots,
These are *hypothesis* among others, and what's the point here ?
You're aiming at demonstrating what exactly ? That Chinese children that are living in poverty and not receiving any education would magically become literate if China was getting rid of the characters ?
You're sure the Japanese would prefer a similar fate ? Just for the fun :
Quote :
in northeastern Oklahoma.
Qualla Boundary in North
the ethnologist James
characteristics of both the
people in the Snowbird
the seventh largest group of
eastern Oklahoma and
13 000 + 700 + 350 = 14 050 speakers. How many of them are literate ?Kuri
True, but asking for direction to a place and asking the interpretation to a name are two very different things altogether Mydnight. One can go by various routes to arrive at a destination, but the interpretation to a name is less varying.
Have you asked anybody from the Uni or the older generation on the interpretation of Mao's name yet?
If the name is given without any supporting history and context, the interpretation may be much freer, but when it is seen within a context, the interpretation becomes more limited. Your initial interpretation of Ze Dong is based on the limited resources that you have at hand, which I believe is taking the characters on the values stated in a dictionary. If you know more about Mao's background, your interpretation of his name may be very different.
An interpretation of any language requires more than a dictionary's assistance - take for example the different translation of Harry Potter books in the Chinese market, which ranged from the bad literal translations to the much better ones which try to translate the 'essence' of the books, or even Shakespeare's works, which can be quite comical when reading them in Chinese because they are far too literal sometimes and miss the finer wordplay.
Or watch the Chinese subtitles to an English film.
Danny
Wo ye shi.
(me too)
On all accounts.
Few more small cities around there in the Jiangmen area that had the same thing happen. Yangjiang might have had the same thing happen, but I know Zhanjiang for sure.
Have you asked anybody from the Uni or the older generation on the interpretation of Mao's name yet?
My post grad UNI teacher friend. This is where I derrive most of my information about China and Chinese culture. I trust his words.
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Mydnight,
It's hard to know to what you are referring unless you leave enough of the original post to allow a context.
Michael
I've complained before also about his seemingly non sequitor posts. No change. So unless he notes otherwise I just assume he is talking to himself. I occasionally post indirectly too you know who but that is between him and me. But it isn't just a quip so others can follow if interested. This one might be about tones but one shouldn't have to guess.
Jim
Michael Plant wrote:
Hey,
I guess we all have our little annoying quirks here in the great internet family of man.
Michael
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Hey, that's only one! :")
His info on China and Chinese culture seem to be on course, but his interpretation on Mao's name is not quite right - I assumed you have asked him this? Like Rebecca, I would ask him to google more on the Chinese web, especially the discussion forums on Mao, I heard there are many interesting topics...
Danny
Basically, this is a tea group -- and all of us, including me, are getting farther off topic. What I didn't want to see was Mydnight getting thrown off posting his very interesting observations of various regional Chinese tea customs that are on-going today. I think some of us are jealous of his youth, his opportunities, and his enthusiasm. I admire his youth, opportunities and enthusiasm and want to hear more about his travels and experiences with tea as it's being grown now.
Japanese *does not share the same language roots as Chinese* and *isn't* in the same family.
I didn't say that Cherokee, Turkish, Japanese were in the same language family, just that Japanese and Cherokee have syllabaries (among other things in the case of Japanese) instead of alphabets.
You're either really stupid (a typical Jank as Jeff Boyd would say) or you're trying to be silly.
I teach college writing, so my patience for adolescent acting out is exhausted by the time I go on line.
As far as the Cherokee Nation's ultimate fate, it's hard for 25,000 people to stand up militarily to something like 5 to 10 million (the US was around 2 million at the time of the American Revolution). That they're still surviving as a tribe in NC when all other tribes have culturally collapsed and have NO surviving native speakers says something about the value of a really good way to transmit lore (I've read translations of oral histories taken from some of the last surviving mono-lingual Cherokee). Being that much smaller a group than the people trying to take over your land requires having something like the atomic bomb or a lot of moral pull to slow down invasions.
Japan was larger and able to fend off Europeans until after the worst excesses of the colonial period.
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