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Peter Piper in Spanish?
Check this out!
Pepe puso un peso en el piso del pozo; en el piso del pozo Pepe puso un peso.
Bet you can find more like this if you search for it on the Internet!
How cool is that?
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: Spanish; English
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Mark S.
April 7, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Tradcir las noticias al español 040605
Favor de corregir mi traducción. Tomé la noticia abajo, y lo traduje al español. Déjame saber todo que he escrito equivocado. Gracias por su ayuda!
Con recuerdos,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
Kurdo escogió por presidente provisional de Irak.
Hace 2 horas, 36 minutos. Oeste mediano, AP
Por Antonio Castaneda, escritor de AP
Bagdad, Irak—El parlamento iraquí escogío el miércoles al lidero Jalal Talaban, quien durante todo su vida se oponía a la dominacíon árabe, como nuevo presidente intermedio del país, alargando la mano a la minoridad kurda represado durante larga rata, acercando el país a su primero gobierno seleccionado por elecciones demacrados desde hace 50 años.
Miembros desbancados del régimen antiguo, incluso el líder derribado Saddam Hussein, miraron el suceso en el televisor en sus celdas de cárcel, dijo el ministro de derechos humanos.
El anuncio que Talaban hubo ganado levantó aplausos en el Asamblea Nacional. En el norte, Kurdos bailaron en las calles al oír la noticia.
Kurd Picked As Iraq Interim President
2 hours, 36 minutes ago Middle East - AP
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi parliament picked Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who has spent a lifetime resisting Arab domination, as the country's new interim president Wednesday, reaching out to the nation's long-repressed Kurdish minority and bringing the country closer to its first democratically elected government in 50 years.
Ousted members of the country's former regime — including toppled leader Saddam Hussein — watched the event on television in their prison cells, Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin told Al-Arabiya television.
The announcement that Talabani won drew applause in the National Assembly. In the north, Kurds danced in the streets upon hearing the news.
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Language pair: Spanish; English
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Mark S.
April 6, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:pronounciation for: 她是白癡。或什麼?
Now why would you want to go and say a thing like that? Gracious!
There are a couple of challenges with your request. First, while most of the hundreds of different Chinese languages use the same writing system, they all pronounce the words differently. Since I happen to speak some Mandarin, which is the official government language in China (and not what most people speak, for example, in Hong Kong), I'll talk about Mandarin.
The next problem is that Chinese has a whole bunch of sounds in the language that don't exist in English. But I'll try to get you as close as I can.
The "Ella es una idiota" form of what you wrote is: Ta1 shi4 bai2chi1 huo4 shen2me. In English, I think I'd write that,
"Tah shrr. buy?chrr huaw. Shunmuh?"
That ought to get you fairly close to how they'd pronounce it in Beijing. The funny punctuation in there is to get you saying some of the tones correctly. If you say a word in Chinese in the wrong tone of voice, it completely changes the meaning of the word.
Also, you've got my curiosity up. I'm familiar with all of the words, but I can't figure out this 或什麼 part, Huo2 shen2me, sounds like you're saying, "She's an idiot. Maybe what?"
I'm wondering if you might not have grabbed the wrong character. Is it possible you meant 我什麼? Wo3 shen2me? "She's an idiot. What am I?" This doesn't make a whole lot more sense, but it does make more. That would be pronounced,
"Tah shrr. buy?chrr Waw... Shunmuh?"
The "Tah" and the "chrr" are both first tone, which means you have to say them higher in tone, kind of like you would say something you found rather unbelievable: HUUUHHHH? But the tone doesn't rise like a question does. It's an even steady tone, like in that song from the Sound of Music, when she sings, "SO, a needle pulling thread" The note when she sings, "SO" is a perfect first tone. That's how you want to say the Tah and the chrr.
I put a question mark after "buy" to get you to pronounce it with a rising tone.
The Waw... is kind of weird. It's a low tone, but it's not steady. It dips down and back up again, making you sound like your contemplating something troublesome, or accusing someone of lying: "Johnny....." Your turning a name into a word that means if you don't fess up right now, you're going to be a very sorry kid. That's the third tone, the one you have to use when you say "buy..."
I hope that helps. Let me know if I need to clarify anything I said.
And next time, give me something nice to have you say, will ya?
¡Que te disfrutes!
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 6, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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zaijian / you jian dao ni comparison
Message I of III for Zhangyan 4/6/05
Hi Zhangyan,
Duibuqi, hao jiu mei xiele.
I thought I had answered these last couple of your messages and I now realize that I never did.
I finally worked out your explanation in Chinese, about the difference between ~{TY<{~}, zai4jian4 and~{SV<{5=Dc~} you4jian4 dao4 ni3. Everything you said was familiar to me except for the word, ~{1mJ>~}, biao3shi4, "expresses", but everything is so rusty for me, I had to look up most of it to refresh my memory. It was good exercise.
>Let me explain ~{!0~}you jian~{!1~} to you. It means you meet somebody again. It doesn~{!/~}t mean bye bye.
~{!0SV<{5=Dc!1~}
"you4 jian4dao4 ni3"
"I see you again"
~{RbK<JGTYR;4N<{5=Dc!#~}
Yi4si shi4 zai4 yi1ci4 jian4 dao4 ni3
The meaning is, "another time I see you."
~{Hg9{NRCGK5!0O#M{CwLlTY<{5=Dc!1#,~}
ru2guo3 wo3men shuo1 "xi1wang4 ming2tian1 zai4 jian4dao4 ni3,"
If we say "I hope I see you again tomorrow,"
~{Ub@o5D!0TY<{!1R21mJ>TYR;4N<{5=Dc!#~}
zhe4li3 de zai4jian4 ye3 biao3shi4 zai4 yi1ce4 jian4dao4 ni3.
This "zai4jian4" also means, "another time I see you."
In English, we would say, "we meet again!" For some reason, we never say, "I see you again, even though this would make perfect sense. We also have some more playful versions of the expression, like, "You again!" (pretending to be annoyed by an unwanted person who is following you around,) or, "You again!"
We also have the ironic form, "Long time no see!" (hao3 jiu4 bu3 jian4) Of course, with the exception of the first one, these are all very informal expressions.
So it seems to me that the expression in Chinese, ~{TY<{~} zai4jian4 is an idiom. The words mean "see again", and the sense is, "see you later," but the intent is, "good-bye" Do I understand correctly? Because all of the other places you use~{TY<{~} it really means to see again.
My letter is too long to fit in one message, and the next part isn't really about vocabulary or translations. So I hope you won't mind tootling over to the "making friends" board, where more of the locals are likely to appreciate our conversation. Of course, if you don't like bouncing around between board areas, you can go to the very bottom of the board selection page and select "View all messages" This will lump everything into one board so that you can see everything at once. This is the way I normally read the boards anyway. In either case, I'll see you there!
See "Making Friends" board for part two of today's message.
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 6, 2005
# Msgs: 10
Latest: April 12, 2005
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Diane Daniels
Hi, I need help with German. If any one could help me I would be thankful. I help any one who wants to learn American English.
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Language pair: English; German
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Diane D.
April 6, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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April Fools' jokes: Part II of II
In my opinion, April fools pranks are funny when nobody is in any danger of any kind of significant harm, and when the person being teased has a good sense of humor and will be likely to enjoy the joke as much as everyone else. Compared to many Americans, I think my views on this are very conservative. I would much rather pass up a good joke than risk humiliating or hurting someone. There are people who think it’s okay if people are hurt as long as it isn’t too serious, and the jokester has a good heart.
For example, I used to work in construction many years ago, and the workers on my crew liked practical jokes any day of the year. One time I was working to move the scaffold that we used to go up and down the outside of the building. I was on the roof, wrapped around a beam that extended over the edge, connecting the cable for the scaffold to the beam on the roof. While I was out there hanging four stories above the ground, a couple of my co-workers lifted up the counterweights that kept my beam from falling over the edge of the roof, probably about a foot up in the air and dropped it. All this time, I’m straddling this beam, leaned over on my belly and clinging to this beam while trying to tighten a nut with a crescent wrench. Suddenly I find myself slowly dipping down and than suddenly jerked back up again with a big “KWOK!”. You can imagine, this gave me a horrible scare. I was afraid for my life, and it didn’t make me laugh. Now, of course, with the knowledge that nobody got hurt, it’s a great story. And we don’t mind laughing at fictional characters in movies who do things like this. Maybe I’m too stodgy, but I’m not willing to have my life at risk so that somebody can have a good laugh. In my opinion, that’s over the line.
I think that “less is more.” You can be clever enough to play a much better joke that is less elaborate and much funnier. Mow somebody’s lawn for them when they’re not at home and let them wonder who would do such a thing and why. I don’t know. I’m not the cleverest guy around with such things, but I have a lot of feelings about hurting and humiliating people in order to have a laugh.
Thanks for the question, it was fun. Do you have any holidays in China when people play jokes? I just learned that in Thailand they have water fights to celebrate the new year in the middle of April. That sounds like some fun!
Talk to you soon,
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
48990 Cai Jie
April 4, 2005
Reply
Re:Re:Re:Re: Soaps
Mark ,is April Fools' Day a important fun holiday in the US?How do you spend it?All the books I have read say that it's huge for you.
One of my friends put two clocks in her friend's room that day ,and the clocks are set to "sing" at 2:00 am and 3:00 am .Do you think this is acceptble?
Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
This is a reply to message # 48545
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 5, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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April Fools' jokes (Part I of II)
Hi Cai Jie,
Practical jokes are a very personal thing. Some people don’t have that kind of a sense of humor, and others do. You really have to know the person you’re thinking of playing a joke on. The most common type of April fools gags we see are telling somebody some plausible, but pretty outrageous lie and wait to see how long it takes the person to remember that today is April 1, and that folks might be having them on (teasing them):
What, you didn’t know all the classes are cancelled today? The Dean’s wife had a baby, and he’s sharing his joy with the whole campus!
I would confess my joke before it was too late for my friend to make it to class on time, but many people aren’t so nice.
When I was first in College in 1981, the college I went to was much more outrageous. Some pranks I saw or heard of there not April fool’s pranks, but the same kinds of pranks we think about on April Fools:
1) Disassemble a Volkswagon Beetle and put it back together inside somebody’s dorm room.
2) Get eight guys to pick up a VW Beetle and put it down sideways in its parking slot, so that there is almost no space between it and the cars parked on either side. (VW Drivers suffered a lot of torment at that school).
3) On the very first night of classes, all of the freshmen were awakened after midnight by upperclassmen screaming and lighting off balloons filled with Acetylene gas (basically, a fancy sort of firecracker that is easy for College students to make). We were all herded off into the woods and left there to find our way back to the dormitories
4) Sneak into somebody’s dormitory room and bolt all of the furniture to the ceiling. If you want to take this to extremes, you can glue everything carefully to the desk and stuff, exactly as you found it when you arrived, so that it looks like the room has been just turned upside down. (I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve heard of it often).
Once when I was in the Air Force, we decided to play a joke on a friend of ours who had been out drinking and came back to the dormitory very drunk. We let him sleep for about twenty minutes, and then we reset his clock so that he would think it was time to get up. We attended to every detail, making sure that there were people doing morning chores, taking showers, shaving, and everything. It was all we could do to keep our faces straight when he kept saying, “My God, it feels like I’ve only been asleep for half an hour!” You should have seen the look on his face when he found out it wasn’t yet 2:00 a.m. That was definitely the best April-fools-type prank I’ve ever participated in.
(Continued -- Mark)
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
April 5, 2005
# Msgs: 7
Latest: April 5, 2005
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Re:Re:Is it an error of the grammar book?
I may be misunderstanding what you are saying here, but maybe I can help clarify.
In English, regular common and proper nouns (that is, everything but pronouns like us, you, him, her, it) are made plural by adding -s or -es:
Caroline --> Carolines (meaning two people named Caroline)
And possessive by adding -'s
Caroline --> Caroline's (something belongs to Caroline)
Plural and possessive by adding -s'
Carolines (plural) ---> Carolines' (Something belongs to everyone named Caroline, or to several people named Caroline --not a very useful example -- used more often with a last name, so let's look at that:)
Jones (a person named Jones) ---> Joneses (several, maybe the Jones family)
Joneses (The whole family) ---> Joneses' (belongs to the whole family --say, their house, for example: The Joneses' house--plural and possessive at the same time, so the apostrophe follows the s).
Caroline's does not show plural of any kind, because the apostrophe is before the s. This means one Caroline with a possession. The English Language is very consistent about distinguishing from possession and plural. Plurals have s before the apostrophe, and if there's no apostrophe, it's not possessive.
It can get confusing with pronouns, because the rule is just the opposite. Pronouns never use apostrophes: my, his, her, its, your, my, their. And the possessive pronoun "its", is naturally confused often with "it's," which is not a possessive at all, but a contraction of "it is."
Your suggestion of saying: She is a good friend of Mark and Caroline is excellent, because it is always correct, and will save you face if you get confused about the rules.
Nonetheless, the suggestion I gave in my previous message on this topic is a good practice, because native speakers will very often use the other forms, and you'll want to be able translate them correctly.
Mark and Caroline's house (belonging to both gets only one -'s)
Mark's and Caroline's toothbrushes (separate possessions get separate -'s)
Follow this rule and you'll get it right every time.
Mark Springer
English Major and composition instructor
California State University, Sacramento
Re:Is it an error of the grammar book? Kasia
I don't think it is an error. But I think you should say...She is a good friend of Mark and Caroline. Because when you have Caroline's with the apostrophe that means that there is more than one object..ex:more than one Caroline...or it is also used when you are talking about her possession. ex: Caroline's book. I hope that helped.
This is a reply to message # 48509
Language pair: Spanish; English
Category: Vocabulary/Translations
Post date: April 3, 2005
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Language pair: Spanish; English
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Mark S.
April 4, 2005
# Msgs: 3
Latest: April 4, 2005
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Alida
Hello, I would like to say everyday conversation, such as "How are you this morning" in Italian. I speak English.
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Language pair: Italian; English
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Alida A.
April 1, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:Is it an error of the grammar book?
> Reply to message # 48509
> Is it an error of the grammar book? Laura Gil
> I found this sentence in a grammar book, could you tell me if > > > this is a mistake?
> She is a good friend of Mark and Caroline's.
> Thanks!
This is correct. What makes you think it is a mistake? How would you have said it differently?
There are two ways of doing possessive for plural possessors. Either the two or more share some possession in common, as Mark and Caroline share their girlfriend, or there are multiple objects and each possessor has their own, in which case you have to put both owners in the possessive:
She brought Mark's and Caroline's toothbrushes to them.
Here, since Mark and Caroline each have their own toothbrush, we say it a little differently.
Likewise, you could say, "David and Leslie were good friends of Mark's and Caroline's," if David is Mark's friend and Leslie is Caroline's friend.
Does that help? Let me know if I've missed your point.
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Language pair: Spanish; English
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Mark S.
March 31, 2005
# Msgs: 3
Latest: April 4, 2005
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