第十七天

[nnozomi]

Continuing with the 能，会，可以 theme, today is 会 for being able to do something as a learned skill. Please see the two previous posts for more detail on this thanks to wonderful commenters!

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_a_learned_skill_with_%22hui%22

Guardian:
ZYL：黑老哥，还演呢。除非你会那个什么消除记忆，把我的记忆消除了。
SW：你怎么知道我不会呢？
(Zhao Yunlan: Hei lao-ge, still pretending. Unless you can erase memories, erase mine. Shen Wei: How do you know I can't? [thereby answering my question about whether Shen Wei's powers use 能 or 会...])

My practice:
我不会写汉字（我写的汉字好像小学生的）。
林楠笙会说日语。(good grief, why does my computer know the 汉子 for Lin Nansheng)
学习中文不容易，但如果继续好好努力我们会的！

Comments

[presumenothing]

Baidu lists 罗曼史 instead but I admit this is a great swap to put the bad in bad romance lmao.

Mostly I've heard it used in the context of 罗曼蒂克 I think? The subtle art of "let's show those pesky English words who's boss" XD

[nnozomi]

罗曼蒂克 oh my god, and I thought Japanese was bad. (Also，curious about the difference between 罗曼 and 浪漫.)

[presumenothing]

Oh Japanese is downright polite about loanwords in comparison. 罗曼 and associated words are more slang though.

[grayswandir]

I'm glad you pointed this out, because I'm dumb and just assumed that 罗 must be the simplified form of 浪 based on the context (and the fact that I run across 浪漫 fairly often), and didn't even realize it actually said 羅曼 (which is definitely not something I've ever seen before!).

Reasons I need to actually learn simplified characters...

[nnozomi]

just assumed that 罗 must be the simplified form of 浪 based on the context (and the fact that I run across 浪漫 fairly often
Ha, I only know 罗 thanks to 罗浮生. ;) I wonder if 浪漫 was originally a back-borrowing from Japanese, in which it's actually pronounced rо̄man?

(Replying to two comments in one place to spare your inbox)
I always thought Japanese used traditional characters. Using a mix sounds like it would be even more confusing
Japanese simplified its characters on its own recognizance after the war, but not to the extreme extent that mainland China did, so the parts are mostly recognizable (never forgive 简体字 云 for 雲)，but most of the super-complex ones are reduced somewhat. I find it a nice happy medium, but I may be biased ;) To the extent that I can read traditional characters, it's due to time spent struggling with prewar Japanese texts...

[grayswandir]

Ha, I only know 罗 thanks to 罗浮生

Hah, I figured out what name this must be after looking at it for a few seconds, but hadn't seen it in Chinese characters before. Maybe I'll remember it now. :) I'd seen 羅 as a traditional character before, but only in place names (e.g. Russia, 俄羅斯/俄罗斯).

I wonder if 浪漫 was originally a back-borrowing from Japanese, in which it's actually pronounced rо̄man?

Oh, that would make sense. 浪 seems like an odd phonetic match, coming from Chinese...

I find it a nice happy medium, but I may be biased ;)

That actually sounds nice to me, too. I enjoy how much etymology is packed into the traditional characters, but some of them have so many strokes, it seems very reasonable to want to simplify them. Just, yeah -- maybe not all the way down to 云!