娃 – Wa2 – Doll

娃 – Wa2 Wa5 – Baby, Doll

Another of the songs Jenny sometimes randomly sings is 泥娃娃 – Ni3 Wa2 Wa5 – Clay Doll. I’ve always found the tune and lyrics (once she told me what they meant) to be somehow sad. Here are the lyrics:

And here’s an MP3 of the song.

陽 – Yang2 – Sun, Bright, Light

And this is the Yang2 of 陰 – Yin1 and 陽 – Yang2. Perfect, because today we saw Yin Yang Master 2! (not as good as the first, kind of long and boring.)

I don’t know what I’m going to do if they make a Yin Yang Master 3.

泰 – Tai4 – Peaceful

泰國 – Tai4 Guo2 – Peaceful Country — Thailand

Tonight we finally watched a Thai movie that Walde has been bringing over for ages: Last Life in the Universe. It was interesting, pretty good. But my favorite recent movie was 2LDK (2 bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen). 2LDK is the best movie you’ll ever see that was made on a bet.

澀 – Se4 – Rough, Grating

This word describes a certain texture of food that is unknown in English. Chinese seems to have lots of these, words for tastes and textures that just don’t translate. Certain numb sensations, itchy feelings on the sides of your tongue, food that gets stuck in your throat and makes your voice crack, all have words to describe them. It would be a fun project to catalog them all. 澀 is used to describe food that makes your mouth feel sort of rough and not as slippery as usual. Foods that are known to cause this: spinach! guava! cranberry juice! and according to Yvonne, Coca-Cola! (but not Diet Coke!) Can you think of the texture of all of those foods and pick out the common feeling of 澀? I can pretend I can.

Coming up with word-of-the-days is easy when Yvonne is around. Just listen to her and Jenny talk and pick out words you don’t understand. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel when you know as little Chinese as I do. Unfortunately, she goes back to New York, and back to school, tomorrow.

軟 – Ruan3 – Soft, Weak, Gentle

Today: the mystery of staleness! Jenny was telling Yvonne to wrap some cookies back up tight so they don’t “Yang2 Diao4″. Yvonne said “What?” Jenny said “you know, Yang2 Diao4. Go stale!” Yvonne decided Jenny was crazy. Apparently in Yvonne’s family food left out never goes “Yang2 Diao4″, it only ever 軟掉 – Ruan3 Diao4 – Goes Soft (cookies or crackers), or 硬掉 – Ying4 Diao4 – Goes Hard (bread or cake). She had never heard of “Yang2 Diao4″ before and didn’t think it was Chinese! Jenny is pretty sure that’s how her mother always said it, but doesn’t know how to write it. None of the online dictionaries have anything close.

TODO: solve this mystery.

朋 – Peng2 – Friend

朋友 – Peng2 you3 – Friend

One of those questions from Yvonne I don’t quite know how to answer: “Are Americans hard to make friends with?”

風 – Feng1 – Wind, Custom, Fashion, Manner, Style

I wanted to watch My Tutor Friend, as recommended by James, but Walde didn’t have it with him. Instead we saw Windstruck, Jun Ji-Hyun’s latest. It sucked! Completely weak! Quite similar to My Sassy Girl (same director, same lead actress, same themes) but nowhere near as funny or interesting.

I’m also disappointed with the Chinese title for this one. My Sassy Girl was called 我的野蠻女友 – Wo3 De5 Ye3 Man2 Nu3 You3 – My Barbarian Girlfriend, and this movie is 野蠻師姐 – Ye3 Man2 Shi1 Jie3 – Barbarian Classmate. It’s like they’re advertising the fact that it’s just like My Sassy Girl right in the title. One of the number one giveaways that a movie stinks is when it is advertised as “if you liked X, you’ll LOVE Y!” or, even worse, “it’s like X mixed with Y!”

(by the way 師姐 is actually more specific: it means an older, female classmate.)

達 – Da2 – Reach, Attain, Convey, Express

山達基 – Shan1 Da2 Ji1 – Moutain Attain Foundation — Scientology

We went to a restaurant in New Haven and were rewarded with a windshield full of Scientology propoganda! Including two FREE tickets to a movie, shown at the New Haven Church of Scientology! “ORIENTATION: A SCIENTOLOGY® INFORMATION FILM” I’m not even kidding with the ® symbol. The bottom of the “ticket” has this disclaimer: “SCIENTOLOGY and the SCIENTOLOGY symbol are tradmarks and service marks owned by Religious Technology Center and are used with permission.”

(By the way, I’d like to congratulate Daniela Minutillo, who I don’t know, for making the Scientology enemies list. She used to always be the second hit in the early days of computer networks when I did vanity searches for ‘minutillo’. The first hit was always my uncle.)

I should also mention that the restaurant Yvonne took us to, Roomba, was SUPER GOOD! Expensive ($20+ entrees) but worth it.

臂 – Bi4 – Arm

I liked the second 獨臂刀 – Du2 Bi4 Dao1 – One Arm Sword — One Armed Swordsman way better than the first. I also like the way the two titles work in Chinese better than in English: we get “One Armed Swordsman” and “Return of the One Armed Swordsman”. Boring. They get 獨臂刀 – Du2 Bi4 Dao1 – One Arm Sword and 獨臂刀王 – Du2 Bi4 Dao1 Wang2 – One Arm Sword King!

But I’m still trying to figure out how a kung fu book can be burned so that only the instructions for the left hand remain.

塞 – Sai1 – Block, Clog, Stuff, Squeeze In

塞車 – Sai1 Che1 – Clog Car — Traffic Jam (in Taiwan!)

堵車 – Du3 Che1 – Stop Up Car — Traffic Jam (in China!)

This is one of those things that is said differently in China and Taiwan. I don’t think I know enough to characterize how different Mandarin as spoken in China and Taiwan is. I get the sense that they’re pretty different, maybe even as different as British English and American English.

會 – Hui4 – Can, Possible, Assemble, Meet, Gather, Association, Group

奧林匹克 – Ao4 Lin2 Pi3 Ke4 – Olympic

運動 – Yun4 Dong4 – Move Action — Sports

奧運會 – Ao4 Yun4 Hui4 – Olympic Sport Meet — Olympic Games

Today was all tennis all the time! We got up around noon, and have been watching live tennis ever since. It was supposed to be over at 5 PM (midnight, Athens time) but it’s still going now, 7:40 PM here, 2:40 AM Athens time.

Gold medal point…
…and it’s all over! I’m not going to tell you who won, in case you want to watch on tape. (I only spoil bad movies.)

店 – Dian4 – Shop, Store

I’m confused. My Chinese CDs say that 酒店 – Jiu3 Dian4 – Wine Shop means Hotel and 飯店 – Fan4 Dian4 – Rice Shop means Restaurant. But Jenny and all my dictionaries agree that 酒店 actually means Bar (which makes a lot more sense), and Jenny and Google say that 飯店 means Hotel. What gives?

危 – Wei1 – Danger

危險 – Wei1 Xian3 – Dangerous

情人 – Qing2 Ren2 – Passion Person — Lover

危險情人 – Wei1 Xian3 Qing2 Ren2 – Dangerous Lover — Stalker

過 – Guo4 – Cross, Pass

I’m listening to these Chinese CDs to try to improve my speaking and especially my tones before we go to China. The thing is, they teach you how to speak like you’re from the mainland, which is a little different than how Jenny and her family speak, since they’re from Taiwan. If I speak the way the CDs teach, I sound really funny to them.

Today the CD taught me a new strange way to say later: 過一會兒 – Guo4 Yi1 Hui3 Er2 – Pass One Moment – Later. I’ve always said 等一下 – Deng3 Yi1 Xia4 to mean Wait A Moment or Later. A lot of the things they’re teaching me on these CDs have this “r” sound on the end, which I wrote above as 兒. It’s apparently meaningless. Some dictionaries list it as “diminutive suffix”, and I remember finding some pretty good explanations before on why it’s there in mainland-Chinese but not Taiwan-Chinese. But right now I can’t find them! Next time.

對 – Dui4 – Correct, Right, Proper, Face, Oppose, Treat

This is a powerful word. You need it to say 對不起 – Dui4 Bu4 Qi4 – Sorry, Excuse Me and to ask 對不對 – Dui4 Bu4 Dui4 – Right? and to say 對阿 – Dui4 A5 – Right, which is a really common interjection, at least for Taiwanese speakers of Mandarin, kind of like the way you might say a quick “yeah” over the phone to let the person on the other end know you’re still listening.

You also need it to say 對手 – Dui4 Shou3 – Oppose Hand — Adversary, Rival which is what Sun-Mi and Young-Mi from All About Eve are. I couldn’t believe yesterday that the internet didn’t contain a shot of them facing off, which they do like 18 times an episode, so I captured one myself. I had to circumvent Apple’s stupid disabling of the Grab utility when playing a DVD (simply by installing MPlayer) to do it.

半 – Ban4 – Half

We have now watched 一半 – Yi1 Ban4 – One Half — Half of All About Eve. 10 episodes down, 10 to go. It’s pretty good, but not great. My all time favorite is still Rooftop Room Cat (which you can download here, but only on weekends).

闊 – Kuo4 – Wide, Broad

My two favorite features of this house are the 廣闊 – Guang3 Kuo4 – Vast backyard, and the 小貓 – Xiao3 Mao1 – Little Cat — Kittens.

裸 – Luo3 – Naked

裸體 – Luo3 Ti3 – Naked Body — Naked

鬼 – Gui3 – Ghost

吸血鬼 – Xi1 Xie3 Gui3 – Suck Blood Ghost — Vampire

Are you like me? Have you seen Wild Zero and liked it? Does your video store now carry Moon Child, and are you thinking you might like it too? STOP!

Starring the self-proclaimed “Norwegian vampire” Gackt and the slightly less strange Hyde, those two “post Visual-Kei” Japanese singers that you’ve heard so much about (at least if you’ve been reading Diluendo’s LiveJournal (that is, until she closed it down to non-LJ members)), it turns out to be a painfully lame and boring vampire buddy/love movie with fairly weak Matrix-style action scenes thrown in every once in a while in an attempt to keep you awake. Since you are going to take my advice and not watch it, I’ll give away the whole movie in this plot summary: It’s your standard boy meets vampire, boy is fatally wounded, vampire bites boy saving his life (un-life?) and making him a vampire too, boy and vampire get tired of life (death?) and incinerate themselves on a beach watching a sunrise story. Dime a dozen.

Oh, while I’m here, I should mention that 鬼 is the character that the “ghost fighter” has on his head and cape in Invincible Obsessed Fighter.

全 – Quan2 – Perfect, Complete, Whole

全像 – Quan2 Xiang4 – Complete Image — Hologram

張 – Zhang1 – Stretch, Spread, (a surname)

You are cute dinosaur. I am cute dinosaur. 張善為 – Zhang1 Shan4 Wei2 – Zhang Shan Wei is cute dinosaur.

We are all cute dinosaur!

臘 – La4 – 12th Month (Lunar Year)

臘腸 – La4 Chang2 – 12th Month Intestine — Sausage

臘腸狗 – La4 Chang2 Gou3 – Sausage Dog — Dachshund

We finally got to see Toto and Effie’s dog “Frank” today. It’s cute! About kitten sized, runs around a lot, too small to cause any real mischief, even too small to jump up on the couch. But that doesn’t stop him from trying, all night if you let him.

Tomorrow: Coming soon: We are all cute dinosaur. (the site I was going to link to is down!)

憶 – Yi4 – Remember

記憶 – Ji4 Yi4 – Memory

From the end of a hypnotic commercial for some sort of memory improvement course, on KISSRADIO:

Ling Ba Ling, Chi Yi, Chi Yi Chi Yi (080 717171)
“Trust me, you can remember” (spoken in English)
Ling Ba Ling, Ji Yi, Ji Yi Ji Yi (080, memory memory memory)

I think I’ll remember that phone number forever.

Tomorrow: We are all cute dinosaur.

鷺 – Lu4 – Heron

蒼鷺 – Cang1 Lu4 – Blue Heron

We went for a bike ride today and we think we saw a Great Blue Heron in the old canal next to the path. He was standing very still on a log that was right in the middle of the water, waiting, I suppose, for fish. We watched him for a while. He was very still and every once in a while glanced at the bikers and roller bladers passing by, but mostly ignored us. We hoped he might catch a fish or something while we were there, but the most interesting thing he did was scratch himself.

現 – Xian4 – Current, Present, Emerge

現代 – Xian4 Dai4 – Current Era — Modern

But if you’re talking about art, or style, or the kind of stuff they sell here, you can call it 摩登 – Mo2 Deng1 – Modern.