April 26, 2009

Hey everyone! How is it going? I got an interesting question today, so I thought I would answer it in this blog. The question is as follows:
How come you used to study Chinese, but no longer do. You seem to know a great deal about translating Chinese, yet you say you no longer study it.
First and foremost, that is a great question. So, here is the answer. The problem with me, is I do not speak it well. There are 4 (actually 5) tones in the Chinese language. I understand a great deal about Chinese characters because amid the studying I do for Japanese kanji, I look at the Chinese counterpart. There are several characters that exist in Japanese that are the same in Chinese. The first one being 愛, "ai" or "love." However, in Chinese there exists a simplified form of pretty much each word. Japanese don't have simplified kanji. Anyways, there are also some words that are greatly varied from each language. The best example I can give is the word 沖. In Japanese, it means open sea, or sea shore, to that extent and is pronounced oki. In Chinese, it too deals with water, but instead of talking about the sea, it means "rinse" and is pronounced as Chong.
For me, I have an increased amount of difficulty in changing my tone when pronouncing Chinese words. In standard pinyin, the tones are represented as numbers next to the word. Again for 沖 it'd be displayed as "Chong1" and that's normally how I write pinyin on Yahoo! Answers.
So if anyone else has a question, please feel free to email me. And of course I can let everyone else know who may or may not have the same question.

Aside from all that, the day has been pretty slow. Last night I rented Dave Chapelle on Stand-Up. Very hilarious. I've became very bored in recent days, so I need to find things that help me get away from the reality that I am stuck on a small island that is only about 100 km long and about 27 km at it's widest point. The truth is, this island is tiny! All well...
Anyways, there really isn't anything new. I am planning a trip back to the United States around September. じゃね