Stumpy Joe Pete

1,745 reputation

315

bio	website	peterthenelson.com
	location	United States
	age	25
visits	member for	11 months
	seen	4 hours ago
stats	profile views	34

I lived in China for a couple years. My Chinese isn't too bad, but I'm always trying to get better. Special interests in:

Etymology
Historical phonology
Winning arguments in other languages

	1,745 reputation	bio	website	peterthenelson.com	visits	member for	11 months
315 badges		location	United States		seen	4 hours ago

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1d	comment	What does it say on the stamp? @QuestionOverflow Put it in an answer, you might get 100 points :)
May 21	comment	How to say properly translate “circulation”? In the first example, is that any different from, say, a ceiling fan? I'm not familiar with the term "circulation fan", although it's easy to imagine what it means.
May 20	comment	Did a king ask for a ball? How did 王 + 求 become 球? Brilliant answer.
May 15	comment	How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese? @孤影萍踪天(tiān), 跹(xiān), and 圆(yuán) do all end in [ɛn], while 山(shān) and 关(guān) do not. The rhyming rules for classical chinese poetry are complex and do not have much to do with Mandarin pronunciation. See this for a lengthy exposition of rhyming rules in Classical Chinese poetry.
May 15	comment	How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese? @NS.X. It's entirely possible you both perceive them as rhyming; but that would be a product of your "feeling" for Chinese phonology. If you were a foreign language learner, it would not be helpful to think of 煙 as being 一 + 安.
May 15	comment	How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese? @孤影萍踪 "An" is pronounced [an], while "yan" (or the "ian" in words starting with consonants) is pronounced [jɛn]. They're both spelled the same, and it's entirely possible you perceive them the same, but the vowels are different (e.g., pot = [pat], pet = [pɛt])
May 14	comment	How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese? How do you know what a "K" sound is? Is that any more illuminating than saying that "cow" starts with the same sound as "kid"? Also, I disagree with your casual switch from "Learner" to "children". Learners of a foreign language need to be taught how to pronounce things. Children generally don't.
May 14	comment	How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese? I find it somewhat humorous to see `浅` broken down as `七-衣-安` because the "an" in `安` doesn't even rhyme with the "an" in 浅. Of course, the point still stands that you can indicate initials and finals by comparison with other characters.
May 13	comment	How do we describe a “sophisticated person”? @孤影萍踪 I'd love to see you give an answer w/examples. You always give a lot of attention to detail in your answers.
May 12	comment	Are tones sometimes glossed over? @OlleLinge My take: If you have a small change, edit it into the answer. If the answerer really disagrees with you, they can reject the edit. If it's a big enough change (in your own opinion), make your own (complete) answer.
May 11	comment	Are tones sometimes glossed over? @OlleLinge I'm not entirely sure when it's "OK" to edit someone's answer. Worst case, you can always make your own. In any event, it's better to have answer-information in an answer, rather than in comments.
May 11	comment	Are tones sometimes glossed over? @OlleLinge I hear there's this thing where you can post answers. And then people can upvote them. Nawww, probably not a real thing.
May 9	comment	Correct usage of “behind schedule” Thanks for all of the really great examples! I only have one upvote to give, unfortunately.
May 9	comment	What is the correct pronunciation of 垃圾? 在大陆，不管是哪个意思都是laji
May 7	comment	What is the correct pronunciation of 垃圾? @deutschZuid Oops. Somehow I didn't see it there (I was looking at the translations at the bottom). The si->xi transition is indeed quite common (Mandarin did it after all); not sure the "femininity" of Suzhou dialect has much influence on sound change though.
May 7	comment	What is the correct pronunciation of 垃圾? @deutschZuid Interesting. That's pretty similar to the 苏州话 pronunciation given by Wiktionary: [lɒ³¹⁻²²si⁴⁴]. If you can find a link, please edit in the pronunciation ^_^
May 6	comment	What is the correct pronunciation of 垃圾? @CongXu I'm not suggesting the characters `垃圾` didn't exist until the PRC; I'm suggesting that the pronunciation `laji` didn't exist until around then. (Certainly the narrative I'm seeing is "Northerners who didn't have `垃圾` in their native dialect mispronounced it based on the phonetics"). If you have more sources that can help date when the `laji` pronunciation became common/popular please help find some and edit them in.
May 4	comment	What is the correct pronunciation of 垃圾? Where are you that you have heard `lese`?
May 3	comment	Why do you say 我没有错 instead of 我不错 to say “I'm not wrong”? When should I use 没有? I'm still not getting it. In `我(知道)错了`, it looks like that's the same as `我知道我错了` to me. In order for `错` to be a N, it would have to mean "I know (an) error", not "I know that I erred (i.e., made a mistake)"; In the other scenario: `你没(做)错`, I see it as an ADJ acting as a complement (结果补语) to the V (i.e., `做错`，`写错` are like `听懂` or `打砸`). Notice that you can add an object, so it doesn't make sense for it to be a N: `我写错作业`.
May 2	comment	Why do you say 我没有错 instead of 我不错 to say “I'm not wrong”? When should I use 没有? Interesting. To clarify, you're saying that in my examples, `错` is considered a shortened form of `做错`? In that case, `错` is acting as a verb, although not the way I had imagined (Note that in both `我错了` and `你没错`, `错` is the predicate).