Does anybody know what this means?

[Schobbejak]

http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/6195/dsc00339c.jpg

click and see

[renzhe]

Feb 28th 2008, Today I had a lot of fun and I am very happy. Hu something

二零零八年二月二十八日。今天我玩得很开心。 胡子。。。

There might be a better translation for 玩得很开心. Basically s/he did something fun and is happy.

胡子 means mustache or beard, but It's probably the surname Hu + name here.

[xianhua]

Is it me, or is that written in simplified Chinese apart from the 开 which looks like the traditional variant? I wonder if it's common to mix the two.

[renzhe]

Other than 玩, all other characters are exactly the same, and I wouldn't be surprised if 玩 were not a common shorthand anyway.

[daofeishi]

The name seems to be 胡子庭 (Hu Ziting)

[xianhua]

Other than 玩, all other characters are exactly the same

I noticed that 胡 has a traditional variant too.

[skylee]

I am not sure I understand the traditional/simplified discussion. I think it is written (badly) in traditional Chinese.

[trien27]

二零零八年二月二十八日。= February 28, 2008

今天我玩得很開心。= I had fun today.

胡子庭 = The student's name. = It is very unlikely that the name should be in Pinyin, due to the fact that it's all in Traditional Chinese. I could be wrong. It could be Hu Ziting / Hu Chi Ting if in Mandarin or Woo Tzi Ting or Wu Tzee Ting in Cantonese.

It has nothing to do with Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese, because it's written all in Traditional Chinese, where 開心 seem to be meshed into ONE single character.

Is it me, or is that written in simplified Chinese apart from the 开 which looks like the traditional variant?

It's just you, because it's not Simplified Chinese!

Other than 玩, all other characters are exactly the same, and I wouldn't be surprised if 玩 were not a common shorthand anyway.

What shorthand?! It's correctly written, just that the chalk is lighter in color.

I noticed that 胡 has a traditional variant too.

You should say instead that 胡 is the simplification of 鬍, but here 胡 is the person's LAST NAME.

Edited March 31, 2010 at 01:55 AM by trien27

[Daan]

It is very unlikely that the name should be in Pinyin, due to the fact that it's all in Traditional Chinese.

?

[Schobbejak]

Thank you so much! I was very curious and you guys just know what it means

(the only thing I see is a bunch of chinese marks).

And for as far as I know, his name is Hu Chi Ting.

[Lu]

胡子庭 = The student's name. = It is very unlikely that the name should be in Pinyin, due to the fact that it's all in Traditional Chinese. I could be wrong. It could be Hu Ziting / Hu Chi Ting if in Mandarin or Woo Tzi Ting or Wu Tzee Ting in Cantonese.

Hu Chi Ting is not a valid romanisation of this name. Correct Wade-Giles would be Hu Tzu-t'ing, bad W-G would be Hu Tzu-ting. Of course if this person is from Taiwan, there's no telling how he likes to romanise his name.

[renzhe]

Just to clear up -- there is a more complex variant of 玩, written 翫. I was also surprised to find this, as I wasn't familiar with it before.

But the way I understand, 玩 is more common in traditional materials, as it is itself a traditional character, and present in the Kangxi dictionary. But I don't know for sure, as I'm more familiar with simplified characters.

Other than that (and 开), all other characters are exactly the same in both simplified and traditional scripts, so there is no mixing here.

I noticed that 胡 has a traditional variant too.

Not as a surname.

Edited March 31, 2010 at 02:02 PM by renzhe

[Daan]

My Zhōnghuá dictionary says 翫, which I had never seen before either, is 『玩』的異體字, so I suspect it's not a difference between the traditional and the simplified character sets, although it is of course possible that the character 翫 is never used when writing in simplified characters.

[skylee]

So you guys thought that people who used traditional script wrote 翫 instead of 玩? Interesting.

This is similar to assuming 纔 is used instead of 才, and 祗 instead of 只. I would think that the formers are archaic.

Edited March 31, 2010 at 10:27 PM by skylee

[xianhua]

It's just you, because it's not Simplified Chinese!

You really are very patronising. If only we could all be as great as you.

[Shi Tong]

It's very common for some Taiwanese to use 玩 instead of the other traditional variant, this is because I think people are too lazy to write it.

Same kind of rule applys to 医 because the traditional zi is 醫 and that's really complex for a commonly used word.

[trien27]

Thank you, Skylee for clearing this up.

[Lu]

It's very common for some Taiwanese to use 玩 instead of the other traditional variant, this is because I think people are too lazy to write it.

No, it's because the other variant is just outdated, and not in use anymore. Same as 才. 醫, on the other hand, is still very much in use.

[Shi Tong]

Well, Lu, point is that some people start changing to more simplified characters over time for various reasons. 醫 is in common use, but my wife said that a lot of people write 医 because they're getting lazy to write such a long word. At least, this is what she felt the reason was for this shift and I think it sounds reasonable.

Of course, I would have thought that the majority of people still write 醫, but the point is that sometimes you can find simplified characters in Taiwan, especially when randomly written on a blackboard by a random person, so it wouldn't surprise me if there was an odd mix of traditional and simplified in Taiwan.

Occasionally.