第六十三天

[nnozomi]

第七天！一个星期怎么这么快。No grammar points today, post something you like in Chinese (a song, a poem, a drama quotation, a useful study thing, a painting, something funny, you name it).

Mine: since someone brought up Chao Yuen Ren last week, here is one of his many interesting quotations (this one both Chinese linguistic-related and a bit 耽美-avant-la-lettre, although he didn't mean it that way).

In Dora Black's lectures [in 1920 in China], she mentioned the problem of marriage. At one of her lectures she mentioned "those young men and women who are not married." Since "to marry" in Chinese takes a different word whether it's a man or a woman, I had to translate by different verbs. But I twisted them around using the wrong verb and came out with something which would sound like "those young men who have no husbands and those young women who have no wives," and the audience, of course, roared with laughter. When Miss Black asked me what they were laughing about, I told her [whispered] "It'll take too long to explain; I'll have to explain to you afterwards." Ch'ü is the verb literally "to take," to marry by a man, and chia, literally "to go home," is a verb to marry on the part of a woman.

(Thank goodness we can just say 结婚 these days. I think the first verb must be 娶, which I had to look up, and the second one 嫁...)

Starting around tomorrow I hope to institute a slightly new format, adding some vocabulary along with grammar (so people can choose to practice either or both as preferred) and maybe doing one masterpost/review and one "share something fun" 第七天 on alternate weeks. Keep letting me know how it looks. 辛苦了或加油！

Comments

[nnozomi]

Thank you for the rundown! HanBook and Speekoo both sound promising (I'm really tempted by the city part, that sounds like my thing, and by the HanBook Word Books). Very much appreciated!

[yaaurens]

I'm not sure how advanced Speekoo is going to get, I think it's still under construction, but I do like getting all my little facts! I've moved to Guilin, I think it was?