niobe *hearts* the internets
I don't know any Mandarin.* I have no opinion about the relative merits of the Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles systems of transcribing Chinese characters. But it makes my soul sing when I run across a site called Pinyin.info, which describes itself as a guide to the writing of Mandarin Chinese in romanization, and begins by proclaiming: "Most of what most people think they know about Chinese -- especially when it comes to Chinese characters -- is wrong."
I mean, how can I be anything but enchanted by a discussion of Apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin: when and where to use them, which informs me, in no uncertain terms:
Here's all you really need to know about when and where to place apostrophes when writing Mandarin Chinese in Hanyu Pinyin: put an apostrophe before any syllable that begins with a, e, or o, unless that syllable comes at the beginning of a word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash.
Examples:
Cháng'ān
chāo'é
dān'ouhūn
Tiān'ānmén
é'ér
dì-èr
Ōu-Ān-Huì
That's all there is to it. Nothing could be simpler.
So, tell me, what kinds of odd pieces of information or scraps of knowledge do you lap up like the cat who's just discovered the cream jug sitting on the larder shelf?
*Though I've been trying to persuade my sister-in-law, who was brought up in a Mandarin-speaking household, but claims she doesn't remember much of the language, that it would be a wonderful idea to send her almost-two-year-old daughter to a Chinese class when she's a little older.
10 comments:
What I found that I am almost giddy over was not found on the internet. It is the Thorndike Century Junior Dictionary, published in 1935. I stumbled across it quite a while ago but only in the last two days have I sat down and looked at it closely.
A couple of years ago I seized upon two big boxes of books that were up for grabs. In my AP class I have the students do an altered/deconstructed book project. When the students choose their book I tell them the choose it by how it feels to them both physically and on a deeper level (corny, yes,, but I tell them to choose a book that “speaks” to them). Anyway, this dictionary kept catching my eye and so at some point I set it aside.
My intention was to turn it into art. Now that I have been looking through it I am enchanted by everything about it. It is a visual delight: the illustrations, the font, the type settings, the cover, the weight and texture of the pages. I am not sure exactly what I will do with it/because of it but I am inspired!
Weirdly enough, I find myself attracted to odd bits of trivia, information, and statistics.
For instance, just the other day in a magazine, I read that men use something like 78 more cell phone minutes a month than women. I love interesting little tidbits of information.
I don't think I can begin to answer your question. I horde/collect/save/remember all manner of little oddnesses, tangible and intangible.
I get all gooey over bee dances. Frickin amazing.
Etymologies. I don't know how I'll survive if I ever lose access to the Oxford English Dictionary online.
Gosh, Sara. Now I'm overflowing with envy. Maybe I'll look into whether L can arrange for me -- uh, I mean, for him -- to have access.
I was wondering why you were reading websites about Chinese characters. Glad you explained.
I'm a Strunk and White fan.
(blush)
I'm addicted to weather sites and the weather channel. I know way to much about occluded fronts. I even took a "Weather and Climate" class in college taught by a local meteorologist.
i LOVE language. i need to get something to teach me mandarin to put on my ipod because i'm planning a trip to china. i'm also gradually learning the russian alphabet, then will learn to read russian, and then learn what i'm reading. i've taught myself lots of phrases and practical words in several different languages: korean, hebrew, dutch, italian, romanian, bla bla bla...
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