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Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

From:J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 12, 2001, 5:07
In a message dated 11.12.2001 02:28:47 PM, dreamertwo@HOTMAIL.COM writes:

>Aiya! I get so confused trying to remember ayi's and gugu's and waigu's >and shenshen's and buomu's and yimu's and then all the numbering with dagu >and ergu and sangu. AIYA!! It's enough to drive a sane person crazy!
Chinese
>family trees are terrifying! >
I possess an "abridged" copy of the Zhang/Chang Family scrolls. They trace my Family back about 2,000 years back. Even tho' it's an abridged version, it runs to about 100 pages of very detailed family lines. I tried to get someone to translated this nightmare & the person - from Mainland China - literally had a full-blown panic attack when he took one look at this mess. (And it is a mess... cramped lil poorly photocopied pen-&-ink Chinese characters - traditional ones, not the simplified - all written tighter than calligraphy on a rice grain. Afterall, this abridgement had to be smuggled out of the Mainland...) I approached another person - from Taiwan, naturally - who said quite frighteningly, "This is may cost you a lot." My turn at a panic attack...
>Adam who must have been hanging around chaosmaster czHANgie too long
AiYaH!! ::slaps arms a-top head:: now ya blame it on me, la? ;) Now try figuring out how to say "chaosmaster" in Mandarin, Adam :P (Thanx for the off-handed high praise BTW) *gigglagoogolbyte*/*spassogoogolocteto* Verfremdungseffekt << ostraneniye >>