cheers100

On Sat Feb 22 2014 04:21:12 GMT+0800, surrender2air said:

云南镇的很漂亮但是我没去过，只看过照片。

真的

On Mon Nov 25 2013 17:06:26 GMT+0800, linguaholic said:

很可惜，我还没去过杭州。我也听说过，那个地方真美。尤其是那个西湖。如果在未来有时间的话，肯定要去看看一下。

以后有时间的话

（你的表达虽然是对，但是不流畅。特别是“在” 最好去掉。）

I have no idea what the first level of Chinese you refer to. If it is about test, I think usually your textbook or syllabus will outline the volume of vocabulary. Basically it is at least 4000 characters which are the most frequently used. 

It depends on your expectation about the proficiency on a language, and your orientation of occupation-i.e. translator, diplomat, teacher, businessperson, etc..

8 minutes ago, Blaveloper said:

That reminds me to a language I created a couple of months ago and totally forgot about its existence (I even had to look the domain name up with my domain supplier to see how it went again):
http://www.blafundo.com/

It's a mix of Dutch, English, German and Hiragana.
It's useless, but still funny to see how far a custom language can get.

Hallo, 

Dank u!

I just visited your website. It would be a benefit for Japanese people to learn Engish and German, and Dutch. Virtually they absorb considerable loan words from English but written in katakana as you are aware. 

On Tue Dec 01 2015 02:26:10 GMT+0800, Mameha said:

I have this problem. In addition to Korean and Chinese, i wanted to learn Spanish because it is more similar to Italian, i like it and it's really spoken in the world. I have a friend from Sud America who is here in Italy since when she was young, in fact she considers Italian her first language and she speak spanish only with some Sudamerican friends or with her family sometimes. I asked her many times to teach me Spanish because it's a great opportunity to speak with someone who's near you and to have a conversation, it would be a luck! But unfortunately she avoids this and it seems like she would not teach me Spanish. When i think of this, i compare myself to her, if someone near me would ask me to teach Italian to him i would be really happy to do this because it's beautiful to share my own language and culture. Why some people are so reluctant to teach a language to a friend or anyone? what do you think of this?

Probably she just wants to be relax when she hangs out with you.

Teaching would be a tedious job to her,  and she will have to be patient to explain the grammar rules and the meticulous usage of the language.

I never try to bother my friends who are native speakers of some languages I was learning or intended to learn. Mostly I post on the forums. I don't want to occupy the leisure time of theirs.  

However this is just my assumption. I think real friends should share their thoughts to each other instead of being speculating. Why don't you ask her on your own?

On Thu Dec 17 2015 20:26:17 GMT+0800, BWL said:

I had learned to read basic Chinese before hiragana, so after finding out that hiragana was invented over a thousand years ago by simplifying cursive Chinese characters, I just used their source characters as mnemonic devices. For example:

あ (a) was derived from the kanji 安 ('an' in Mandarin as well as in Japanese onyomi).

い (i) was derived from the kanji 以 ('yi' in Mandarin)

か (ka) was derived from the kanji 加 (pronounced 'jia' in Mandarin, but 'ka' in Fujianese, my native dialect) etc, etc

It was the highly stylised and squarish katakana that I had problems distinguishing when I first started studying Japanese rather than hiragana

I agreed. I learnt those hiragana many many years ago, and I remembered those hiragana almost without any effort.  I quitted learning Japanese. And they just log into my memory, and I never forget them so far.

And oddly, I learnt Persian alphabet, and words just last year, and later I had a traffic accident, and I forgot almost all of them. 

1 hour ago, linguaholic said:

That's exactly what it means. It is probably a little bit more 'efficiently' than hard. Tüchtig is an adverbial adjective.

Have you heard of Duden? You can always find some good info about all kind of German words there:

http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/tuechtig

 

Thank you for your reply. I heard about native speakers mentioned about Duden, but I had thought it was completely in German. It is beyond my capacity as I just teach myself German for less than 1 month, and I take a very slow step on it. 

Unlike Inflectional languages i.e  English, or other European languages, the Chinese language is an analytic language. In other words, it depends on adverbs, auxiliary, or adverbials or the context to identify or distinguish the tenses, the numbers. Luckily most Chinese words are without genders like modern English.

Congratulations if you've really grasped a number of Chinese characters which seem to me are the most difficult for non-native speakers, and the next thing is the tones. Each character would be a drawing.  As to grammar, personally I don't think it is that important, unless your goal is to be a linguist of Chinese. 

Probably you can buy a  good or so-so Chinese grammar book instead of going to so-called standard Chinese grammar course.

My two cents. 

21 minutes ago, linguaholic said:

你说的对，但是不要忘记了，在文言文里，很多汉子的意思不一样。比如说那个 ’是‘： 在文言文，是的意思不是 ‘to be', 是的意思在那个时候大部分时间是 ‘this/these (Demonstrative Pronoun). 然后文言文的 ‘之’ 也不是跟白话 （普通话）的 之 一样的。文言文的 ‘之’ 意思很多！

言之有理。

现代汉语中也有部分保存文言的词语，并且在现代汉语中的”之“字也有不同的语义，这并不是文言文所特有的。

我不知道你例举的”是“ 的具体用法，因为没有上下文。但是一般受过中等教育，且母语为汉语的中国大陆学生，如果语文成绩在中上的话，去理解一般的文言文，并不是一件特别困难的事情。很多时候，都是凭语感。

这就像受过较好教育的欧洲人虽然不是特别精通拉丁文（或者不会写或说），但是一般能基本看懂拉丁语一样。

http://jiaoyu.baidu.com/ModelEssay/story/?categoryId=7

Hope this helps. 

On Thu Feb 20 2014 22:10:37 GMT+0800, CeliVega said:

我只学过白话文的华文，看了看文言文后觉得华文实在是太深奥了！但感觉会的人不多啊，现在基本都不用文言文来沟通了，这样下去会失传的吧？这里有人对文言文有较深的认识吗？

不会失传，中国的很多大学都有开设的汉语语言专业，并且很多学生学习这个专业。另外，在初中义务教育，中学的课本就引进了一些文言文名著，虽然不是太多。高中教育语文课本也有一些文言文名著。

我可以看得懂一些简单的文言文，但是是不会写。如果给我一年的时间多看一些，我想我就能基本用文言文来写作了，因为多数文言文的汉字都学过了。

On Sun Dec 20 2015 01:19:07 GMT+0800, Nekomimi_mode said:

太好了！为什么你学过中文？你特别喜欢什么？汉学是什么？冬寒假快到了，你计划去旅游吗？ 我想去台湾各地自助游。我也想去中国和香港。可是我得懂（或者学习）很多的汉字。这样，我到那里后，我就可以和中国人交流了。然后我可以平平安安地放心出门 。

1. 懂行程？我不明白你的意思。

2. 汉语中，不用冬假或夏假，而是用寒假和暑假。

3. 平平安安出门。 我想你是指你可以放心出门了。（不会顾虑到那里语言不通而遇到困难。平平安安一般是指遇到危险，比如抢劫等，你侧重的是安全性的问题。）

4. 为什么你学中文？ “过” 是指过去式，一般是已经完成的动作，所以“过”要去掉。

4 hours ago, Blaveloper said:

@cheers100 No, I'm not aware of this.
Sorry about that.

It's fine. Thank you for your reply. Have a great day! 

On Fri Dec 18 2015 20:58:32 GMT+0800, Blaveloper said:

@czarina84 My advice is to just set up the US International keyboard, it's a keyboard layout that's already available in all modern operating systems.

All you'll need to do is this:
" + o = ö
~ + n = ñ
^ + e = ê
' + a = á
` + u = ù
Right alt + s = ß
And so on.

I can imagine you will find this annoying as a native English speaker, but it'll become very convenient over time.

Hello,

This is very helpful. Do you know what the short cut for a German quotation mark is- the one is lower, and the other is up.

Thank you! 

Guten Tag,

What does "Abeite tüchtig" mean?

Does it mean "work hard" or "work efficiently" ?

I am stumbled by tüchtig, which has several meanings according Collins German English Dictionary.  

I don't have more context about it. I read it from my German Textbook, which just illstrates how a verb with the ending of "t" works for a imperative sentence. The word-tüchtig is not listed in the vocabulary of this lesson.

Vielen Dank im Voraus!

Thank you very much for your help again!

Have a great day! 

Guten Tag,

Ich besuche dich heute Abend. Geht das?

Geht das = Is it okay? 

Is it correct if I say, " Geht es"?

Vielen Dank im Voraus!

Thank you so much for your help again. Have a good day!

Hello,

Er hat heute Geburtstag. - Is that native speakers would say?

I feel unconfortable to put "heute" in the middle of the sentence. Do you think I can move it to the end of the sentence- Er hat Geburtstag heute?

Thank you very much!

PS. I am not sure it is about grammar. Sorry if I post in the wrong forum. 

Thank you so much for your help! 

Hello,

Could you please tell me the difference between zu and nach in the following sentences?

Wohmit fährt Hans zum Kaufhaus?

Wohmit fahren Sie nach Hause?

Is "nach Hause" a set phrase? And the rest, generally should I use zu?

Vielen Dank!

Hello  Linguaholic,

Thank you very much for your welcome and answer to my question, as well as your corrections.

Have a great day! 

Regards,

Cheers100

Hello,

I am a newbie to the forum and German.

Could you please tell me what the differences between bestimmt and sicher. Are they interchangeable in the following sentences?


Das ist  sicher nicht falsh.
Das macht ihnen bestimmt freude.

Many thanks!