Hands, hands, two hands
Here's part of a page from a Chinese exercise book for learning English, with a student's notations added in blue ink:
Archive for Transcription
He / she / it / none of the above
I missed this article in the Chinese edition of China Daily when it first appeared on June 20, 2012, but it raises an issue that is sufficiently important to warrant addressing now that William Steed has kindly called my attention to it:
"Qián Jīnfán: 84 suì hòu kuà xìngbié 'rénshēng de cànlàn qī cáigāng kāishǐ'” 钱今凡：84岁后跨性别 “人生的灿烂期才刚开始” ("Qian Jinfan: 'the most glorious period of a person's life only begins' after age 84 when one transcends gender")
Chinese character transcriptions for "nerd"
Chinese speakers have phonetically transcribed the word "geek" as jíkè 极客, qíkè 奇客, etc., and these transcriptions are fairly widely used and recognized, even among Mandarin speakers (the initials would be velars in many non-Mandarin topolects, so they would sound more like "geek" than do the Mandarin pronunciations). So far, I don't know of any Chinese character transcription for "nerd", certainly none that is broadly circulating.
Words in Mandarin: twin kle twin kle lit tle star
Randy Alexander sent me the following photograph and asked how long it would take for me to identify the text in the background:
Neo-Babylonian brick
My brother-in-law, Dan Heitkamp, bought the following object at an estate sale in Seattle:
The transcription of the name "China" in Chinese characters
There's a joke going around in mainland China about the best way to transcribe the name of the country in Chinese characters. Each line is redolent of some social issue: Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook = you must die
Brendan O'Kane received this image posted to Facebook from a friend of a friend, and he kindly passed it on to me:
