第一百八十七天

[nnozomi]

语法
Measure words! I feel like we should take a few days over these just because there are so many, but let’s see how it goes.
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Measure_words_for_counting

词汇
两, two (pinyin in tags) ...is there a theme today?
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-1-word-list/

Guardian:
我告诉你，我跟你都一样，只有两只眼睛，一张嘴巴的普通人。I’m telling you, I’m just like you, an ordinary person with two eyes and one mouth.
两个朋友之间，贵在知心, what is valuable between two friends is to know each other’s hearts
你又不是长生不死，我凭什么随随便便欠你一条命啊！You’re not going to live forever, how am I supposed to owe you a life like it was nothing?

Me:
如果要选择的话，我比养一条狗更喜欢三只猫(爱狗人不好意思)
生日的时候，他给了我买三支黄玫瑰。

・Following up on Zhu Yilong’s pronunciation of 聊天儿，照片儿，上班儿 etc., I made Yu-jie listen to bits of his livestream, and she laughed and said “yup, that’s a Beijing 儿化 all right!” At some point I’ll have to watch his 武汉话 movies and see how different he sounds...
・顺便来说，我之后要去考HSK呢，请你们祝我好幸运！

Comments

[donutsweeper]

Every time I think I get a handle on measure words I realize I don't. I keep trying though.

[nnozomi]

There are so many. I'm always grateful to be able to fall back on 个 if all else fails...

[presumenothing]

+1 on 个 as a fallback option – there's probably not that many cases where using the inappropriate measure word will actually make someone misunderstand you, at least!

[sakana17]

yup, that’s a Beijing 儿化 all right!

:D

顺便来说，我之后要去考HSK呢，请你们祝我好幸运!

祝你走运！预祝你取得成功！

Lost Tomb Reboot, episode 16:
他们两个是焦老板的人

[nnozomi]

谢谢你！

I was also reminded of Chen Moqun from episode 29, saying something like 林楠笙和朱怡贞，一个国，一个共。

[sakana17]

That is such a great scene! I thought it would be a good one to transcribe for Chinese practice, and I've put it in a Google doc. I'll add other scenes as I work on them (good motivation for finishing some of the ones I started). Anyone here can feel free to add any dialogues from The Rebel as they wish! [But maybe I am the only one foolhardy enough to go to the effort to transcribe from the hardsubs...]

[nnozomi]

ooh, thanks! That's an awesome resource and a great idea. (I'm still busy playing with the Guardian script, but if I ever finish that, now I know where to look next...)

[sam_gardener]

祝你考试好运! 加油！

[nnozomi]

谢谢你！:)

[grayswandir]

Measure words!

Possibly useful: Wikipedia's list of Chinese measure words, with usage notes. (Incomplete, I guess, because it doesn't mention 峰 for camels!)

(Is it weird that I love measure words? Not to say I'm good at guessing which one to use in any given situation, but just, as a concept they're so cool.)

Good luck on the test! :D

[nnozomi]

谢谢你！

(Is it weird that I love measure words? Not to say I'm good at guessing which one to use in any given situation, but just, as a concept they're so cool.)
If it's weird, then I'm right in there being weird with you. They're a nuisance, but they're fun!
(In Japanese--I haven't checked on the Chinese version yet--birds are counted with 一羽、二羽, which makes sense because they have wings...except so are rabbits.)

Thank you for the link, I'm going to steal it for today's post as well!

[grayswandir]

(In Japanese--I haven't checked on the Chinese version yet--birds are counted with 一羽、二羽, which makes sense because they have wings...except so are rabbits.)

This is strangely adorable! I'm pretty sure birds and rabbits are both just 只 in Chinese (and I just looked up 羽 and don't see any mention of it as a classifier), but the rabbit thing feels a bit like English "flock" referring to both birds and sheep, to me -- like it creates some mysterious sense of correlation. Rabbits, birds, sheep... they're all very fluffy???

On a random note re: classifiers, a couple of years ago my language partner showed me a Hong Kong game show where one of the games that came up regularly was classifier-related. The contestants would sit in a row and clap in time, and the first person would have to say a number and some kind of noun (skipping over the classifier), pronouncing each syllable in time with the clapping. The next person had to immediately repeat the same number and noun but with the correct classifier, keeping in time with the next few claps. So a bit like if in English, the first person in the game clapped out "Se·ven·crows," and the next person had to continue clapping and say "Se·ven·mur·ders·of·crows."

I asked my language partner why this game wasn't too easy, since surely most people know all the classifiers? Though of course the contestants were purposely picking rarer words to try to trip each other up, and apart from thinking of the right word and saying it quickly, they also had to remember the number. Anyway, my language partner's answer was, "It's hard enough that people get mixed up, but easy enough that it sounds really funny when they do."

My Chinese wasn't really good enough to follow along with the game much at the time, but it was amusing to watch people cracking up when someone picked the wrong measure word, and I did find it encouraging to know that thinking of the right classifier in a hurry can be challenging even for native speakers!

[trobadora]

Aw, that sounds delightful! And yep, very reassuring. *g*

[nnozomi]

Rabbits, birds, sheep... they're all very fluffy???
好可爱❤️ I always think of rabbits having big floppy ears like wings...

The classifier game is delightful! I wish we could all do that together in real time. And as you say, it's very comforting to think that even native speakers struggle with these sometimes...

[elenothar]

Oh oh oh, that explicated something about mass nouns vs other nouns that I hadn't consciously thought about in relation to classifiers before, nice.

At some point I’ll have to watch his 武汉话 movies and see how different he sounds...

I haven't seen the funeral film yet, but he definitely sounds very different in Embrace Again - my listening comprehension is still not great, but even I could hear a lot of differences, it was very fun.

[nnozomi]

that explicated something about mass nouns vs other nouns that I hadn't consciously thought about in relation to classifiers before, nice.
I never thought about it that way, but it's helpful! Also now tempted to see what silly sentences come up by jumbling classifiers...

he definitely sounds very different in Embrace Again - my listening comprehension is still not great, but even I could hear a lot of differences, it was very fun.
Oh, neat! Embrace Again is a mixture of "things I REALLY WANT to see" and "no thank you not at all," so I'll have to figure out how to get myself to watch it.

[sakana17]

Here's one of the longer videos where he's speaking Wuhan dialect. CW: It's from January 2020, and it's a message about the same topic as Embrace Again, but maybe not as difficult as watching the movie? (For me it helped to turn off the English captions.)

I've heard that in some (most?) overseas markets, the version of Embrace Again that's available for streaming is in standard Mandarin/Putonghua, not Wuhan dialect, which is really disappointing.

[nnozomi]

Oh, thank you! Oh dear. I'd have to listen sentence by sentence carefully to hear the proper differences, but it does sound like there aren't any of those hard 儿 sounds ;)

the version of Embrace Again that's available for streaming is in standard Mandarin/Putonghua, not Wuhan dialect
Why would they do that, good grief.

[trobadora]

I don't have a problem with measure words in theory - I like them, and they're useful/necessary what with all the homophones and near-homophones - but I still can't remember most of them. /o\

Good luck for the HSK!

SHL, Scorpion King: 一个天窗之主，一个恶鬼头子。 这两个魔星怎么会碰到一起了呢?

[nnozomi]

I like them, and they're useful/necessary what with all the homophones and near-homophones - but I still can't remember most of them. /o\
Yeah, same, and I keep coming across ones I've never heard of. There's always 个 to fall back on (like the Scorpion King)...
and thanks!