Tag: Some Things I’v Learned on the Way
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Where am I
I have long thought that prepositions are the most annoying feature of English for students of that language. Why is it “in the night city of time”? Why am I “in the house” but “at home”? Why is “of example” wrong, but “by way of example” is correct?
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Thinking about thinking
So how to translate different conceptions of the English verb “to think” into Chinese? I don’t claim to have entirely resolved it, but this is how I, well, think about it.
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Tone-deaf
One of the most important tasks in becoming truly fluent in a language is to pronounce its sounds properly.
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The holiday season in Taiwan
In this piece I share some thoughts on Christmas (圣诞节 Shèngdànjié) and New Year’s (新年xīnnián) in Taiwan.
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Act natural
In this article I want to discuss several aspects of Chinese sentence construction that don’t always come naturally to English-speaking students.
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Leading to frustration
They are 使得(shǐde), 讓(ràng) and 令(lìng). They all seem to mean “lead to,” “induce,” “bring about.”
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Speech of parts
But in Chinese, apparently, these components fall into two categories, with different words.
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In Chinese, it’s never relative
One of the workhorse parts of speech in English and in most European languages is the relative pronoun. These include that, when, which, who/whom/whose, where and a few other less frequently used ones. Usually they …
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Searching for the meaning of “找”
As you can see already, English and Chinese words do not exactly match one to one.
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How to receive things in Chinese: 收(shōu)vs. 受(shòu)
In English among many other things one can “receive” a piece of mail, and one can “receive” good or bad emotional news. In each case, the verb is “to receive,” and we think of those …