oh.
[quote=“renner”]This is from an email from my old chinese teacher, it’s the only part of the email I don’t understand:
我去台灣大學（離我家很近），坐著看書，好舒服!
What I get out of it is: I’m going to Taiwan University (it’s close to my home), sit/travel by ??? read book, good comfortable.
Appreciate any help![/quote]
I go to Taida (it’s close to my house), sit and read a book. Very comfortable (nice).
ko
It’s just a grammatical construction. Kind of like adding “ing” to a word. With that character, it emphasizes that the person is sitting while reading. Without it, it would sound a little like “sit down and read a book” as opposed to reading a book while sitting. If you want to look it up in a dictionary, make sure you look under “zhe” and not “zhuo”.
what does the phrase “─沒想到吧？” mean?
thanks again.
“Who’d have thought it?” “You wouldn’t have thought so, would you?” “Surprise, surprise!” “Well, what do you know?”
OK, my turn. How do you say 隊呼 duihu in English? It’s what the members of a sport team, or maybe a sales team, shout to pep themselves up. I can think of “cheers” and “hoorah” but I feel there must be a better word for it.
I think I am beginning to forget English, get senile, or both. Yesteday I could not think of the word “roast” - only “bake”. :s
What would be the Chinese version of “Having said that,”.
How about:
說到這裡了呢…
[quote=“Juba”]OK, my turn. How do you say 隊呼 duihu in English? It’s what the members of a sport team, or maybe a sales team, shout to pep themselves up. I can think of “cheers” and “hoorah” but I feel there must be a better word for it.
I think I am beginning to forget English, get senile, or both. Yesteday I could not think of the word “roast” - only “bake”. :s[/quote]
Chant might be a better word for duihu.
I have the same problem all the time with my English now. Had to say 消防隊hsiao-fang dui in the middle of an English sentence when talking to my wife the other day because I couldn’t think of fire brigade/fire-fighters. It just wouldn’t come out.
Cheers
How about:
說到這裡了呢…[/quote]
I think this is a good stab, but doesn’t quite work. One thing that makes me suspicious is the equivalence of ‘say’ and ‘shuo’ in the the original and targets.
Let me suggest a strategy first and then a translation.
As a non-native speaker [apologies in advance if you are a native speaker], I think you should never ask the question ‘How do you say x in Mandarin?’ unless x is a noun. The reason for this is that what makes Mandarin difficult for speakers of European languages is that the usage is so different. Don’t try to force Mandarin to say things that you say in English. So you should only use phrases that you have actually heard in Mandarin before; never start out with an English phrase and ask for the English equivalent. Here lie dragons.
If you absolutely must, ask a native speaker of Mandarin with near-native English proficiency. But don’t expect satisfactory results every time.
Now let’s look at the phrase in question here. When do we say ‘Having said that’? Usually because we want to concede a point so that we sound more reasonable. So something like ‘sui1ran2 ru2ci3’ may work in some situations.
In the end, I think I would have to ask you what you are trying to say. Give me a context and I will see what I can do.
How about:
說到這裡了呢…[/quote]
If you mean it in this context: “Having said that, I will leave and be on my way now.” I use “說到這裡了呢…”
As for ‘sui1ran2 ru2ci3’ (雖然如此…), I would use that to mean, “That may be true…”.