Reason not the need

[flemmings]

I tell myself that if I'd just sit down regularly with my Chinese grammar book I'd make much faster progress in learning hanzi (to say nothing of grammar) than I do spending an hour with mandarin tools trying to make sense of someone's icon or someone's post secret postcard, but I'm not sure it's true.

The fingers of one hand are not enough to count the languages I've studied from texts and charts- mostly with a view to reading ability, not speaking- and in only one have I actually achieved reasonable dictionary-less literacy. That one is Japanese and it happened largely because some fourteen years ago next Wednesday I went to a Comic City sale where I bought a stack of stuff that I absolutely had to know what it meant. So, yeah- icons and postcards are baby steps now, but they have their uses. Cause I know I've come across the simplified version of 言 before but only now, after twenty minutes' frustration, do I have it firmly in my head that it's not the common form of 辵 which it so much resembles online. cf 订 and 辽, that make so much more sense to me as 訂 and 遼

Comments

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

oooh, your tools very fun useful. The kanji for copulate is so apt ^^;;

busyfingers count: english, french, german, japanese, and chinese are mentioned before or obvious. busybody asks: what are the other two (or three, or four)?

things we like to repeat
1. (chinese grammer... tropical tundra)
2. simplified kanji == retarded kanji

re fic we wants Thing in Closet.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Kanji for copulate...?

Latin and Spanish in HS, classical Greek and Erse (snigger: is twelve) aka Irish Gaelic in uni. I don't count Chinese since I'm barely past the panicky 'kanji-heavy passage here, no wait, no kana-- OMG it's Chinese get back in the car!!!' stage.

'Grammar' for lack of a more inclusive word, aka what tone does 'de' have when it goes here and not there?

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing Latin and Spanish at least. Maybe some Dutch and Portuguese as well. Who knows?

And yes that's one more vote for Thing in Closet!!! ^__^ Hee

Maybe we can start our dear friend on Malay as well! She is awesome.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Henh. She has infinite enthusiasm for languages and no ear or memory at all. A sad case of one's interests and talents not matching in the least.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. 'Swap tails' or whatever it is.

This was stuff like "The general's hand uhh (flip-flip-flip) 'crawled' up the boy's white uhh (flip-flip-flip) 'upper thigh' and uhh (flip-flip-flip) 'fiddled with' err 'the lower half of his body??' end sentence. He said 'uhh (flip-flip-flip) 'get on all fours' and uhh (flip-flip-flip) 'hold it in your mouth'.'

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

I think the dear lady is a little modest compared with us who struggle with three. ^__^ ...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You can *speak* three. I speak one and two-halves, and cannot keep the halves straight when I'm speaking, which is disastrous. Equally I read one and a half and a quarter, and the others are gone in the fuzziness of time. Ten years of Latin might as well not have happened. This brain is not geared to retain languages, alas: and any 'can be understood in two languages, can understand a couple more when heard, and dirty jokes in a fifth' Singaporean makes me feel an utter failure.

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

Pasted kanji to make sure we are talking of the same one ^^;;

肏

It looks like 'enter' on top of 'meat'. *sniggers* And the top of the 'meat' looks very phallic in relation to the opening bottom of the 'enter'.

Do you mean the possessive thingie 的? Uh. People seems liberal about the tone as long one vacillates between 1 and, urgh, something. Hereabouts, de4 is acceptable.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Is this the one Singaporeans pronounce "kao"? I never knew there was a character for it. :D

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Ehhh! One: English with fluency; Two: Malay if forced to at weddings and funerals, and sometimes to cabbies and shopkeepers who incidentally are Chinese of one dialect or another; and Three: You're not speaking of Japanese are you? I can muddle through, with ordering food, counting and supermarkets, but uh...otherwise hmm I'd count it as a half. ... or Mandarin, you know simple greetings, saying "I cannot speak Chinese, sorry." That would be it! I'm afraid.

And really you shouldn't feel like you do. I wish I had half the ability you do. ^__^ ... and you write wonderfully too. So I certainly wouldn't complain.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

*sniggers along with you* - heh!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

肏 is totally new by me. You went and wrote copulate in the English paste-in, yes? I was thinking of 交尾. Well-spoken Japanese kanji dictionaries don't have 肏.

Yup, 的. Luckily I'm not trying to speak any version of this language.

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

Exchange-tail is new to me ^^;; so that sort of makes us even....
I am not update of current slang hereabouts. In my young days we said this (http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/wordlook.pl?word=%E5%B1%8C&searchtype=trad&where=start) for 'screwed'. It's weird how the formal definition is actually 'penis'.

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

sorry! My ability to follow nested LJ thread = C-. I put the answer to your question in my reply to mjj's comment.

Addendum: "kao" might originate from or be related to this gao3 (http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/wordlook.pl?word=%E6%90%9E&searchtype=trad&where=start).