Same thing, different names

[tooironic]

Time for some good old Aussie tucker:

- baked beans: 焗豆、烘豆、烤豆子、茄汁豆

- barramundi: 尖吻鲈、巴拉曼底鱼、盲鰽 (usually pronounced mángcáo but technically should be mángqiú)

- vegemite: 维吉麦、维奇酱、酵母酱、蔬菜酱

[OneEye]

In Taiwan, 'leggings' are 內搭褲. Maybe there are other words used here too, but I don't know them.

[Kobo-Daishi]

The "same thing, different names" word is "doll".

Ariel Lin alert!!!!!

I was reading the thread titled "Wawasomething: Chinese Stick ice cream: half vanilla, half chocolate, has a face.",

http://www.chinese-f...ate-has-a-face/

when I remembered this classic scene from Ariel Lin's "It Started With A Kiss".

It's the scene where Zhi Shu is presented with a Xiang Qin doll, made by Xiang Qin's two bffs, in thanks for his having conducted a "buxiban" to help the "F-ban" kids graduate high school.

This still is from the Hong Kong Cantonese dubbed edition of the series. The standard Chinese subtitle has "娃娃" for doll, while the spoken Cantonese uses "公仔".

When they talk of the stuffed dolls that Zhi Shu's mom has placed all around Xiang Qin's room, they are called "bu wa wa" and "bou gong jai" (or "bou gong zai" if you prefer Jyutping), "cloth dolls".

This is a still from the Hong Kong Cantonese dubbed edition of the Korean adaptation of "It Started With A Kiss" titled "Playful Kiss". In this scene, the "Zhi Shu" character has won a doll for "Xiang Qin" from a claw machine and they call it a "玩偶" in the standard Chinese subtitles, with "gong jai" in the spoken Cantonese.

http://www.google.co...&q=claw machine

There you have it. Three ways of saying "doll".

http://www.google.co...h?tbm=isch&q=娃娃

http://www.google.co...h?tbm=isch&q=公仔

http://www.google.co...h?tbm=isch&q=玩偶

When I do Google images searches, they all return "dolls", but, they're not all the same, depending on characters used. Though, I assume they are all interchangeable.

Speaking of "gong jai", "instant ramen" are called "公仔麵(公仔面)" in Cantonese.

http://www.scmp.com/...-are-you-saying

They kind of talk about it in this recent article South China Morning Post article, but, not really. Supposedly, an instant ramen company was giving away dolls as a premium with purchases of the stuff and the name stuck. That's according to a thread at the Sheik Cantonese web site's forums.

Alert!!!! Another Ariel Lin reference coming up.

In the Ariel Lin romance drama "In Time With You" where she works as a northern district shoe buyer for a department store, a type of ladies shoes are called "娃娃鞋".

I know nothing about women's shoes, so, have no idea what they're called in English.

http://www.google.co...?tbm=isch&q=娃娃鞋

Whenever I hear wa wa, I think of the classic George Harrison song "Wah Wah" that he wrote about the hassles leading to the breakup of the Beatles. Or of the wah wah pedal for electric guitars.

Kobo.

[skylee]

Speaking of "gong jai", "instant ramen" are called "公仔麵(公仔面)" in Cantonese.

I think perhaps it is more accurate to say that the term is used in Hong Kong or by Hong Kong people, instead of in Cantonese.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Skylee wrote:

I think perhaps it is more accurate to say that the term is used in Hong Kong or by Hong Kong people, instead of in Cantonese.

I suppose you're right. But with the Internet and satellite TV, who knows.

Maybe one day we'll see a standard Chinese dictionary entry for "公仔麵(公仔面)" with a "fang" preceding the definition "instant ramen". Then a few years later no "fang".

Looking at the Google Image search for "公仔麵(公仔面)" shows a few Taiwanese entries as well as a few mainland ones.

Some packages of instant ramen have the characters "公仔麵(公仔面)" on their packaging.

Kobo.

[heifeng]

Survivor:

幸存者, 生还者*

*As seen here^^

^^Random comment time: Although I must admit this article made we worry since US's Fox News apparently does ges picked up by foreign media. Fox is not exactly the golden standard of news reporting I didn't even realize this network reported on anything other than popular celebrity lipstick colors in fact. Maybe they have hired an intern that reports on real news....I suppose anything is possible.

[skylee]

These are countries, not exactly “things” –

Republic of Trinidad and Tobago - 特立尼達和多巴哥。千里達及托巴哥。千里達及多巴哥 (where I am, the place used to be simply called 千里達, a fantastic translation)

Côte d'Ivoire - 科特迪瓦。象牙海岸。

Croatia – 克羅地亞。克羅埃西亞。

Georgia- 格魯吉亞。喬治亞。

Slovenia - 斯洛維尼亞。斯洛文尼亞。

Mauritius – 毛里裘斯。模里西斯。

[skylee]

Re 幸存者 in #206. I've looked at the word for more seconds than usual to try to determine if there was something wrong. I think if it is meant to be simplified Chinese then it is all right. In traditional Chinese the word is usually written as 倖存, i.e. 僥倖生存, although the Taiwan MOE Dictionary says that "倖同「幸」。如：「僥倖」、「倖存」、「倖免於難」".

[Michaelyus]

epigenome = 外基因组、表观基因组

epigenetics = 表观遗传学、拟遗传学、表遗传学、外遗传学、后遗传学 (oh dear...)

[heifeng]

瓢鞋又称为船鞋 (not to be confused with what is a boat shoe in English of course. In chinese it refers to a closed toe strapless women's shoe)

Bumped into 瓢鞋 here

[skylee]

As mentioned in this thread -

two-way ticket, return ticket, roundtrip ticket - 來回票。雙程票。往返票。

PS - 來回票 and 往返票 were mentioned back in #16.

[MandarinCslpod]

An interesting topic. Did somebody mention these items:

Mandarin:华文vs 汉语

SMS: 簡訊 vs 短信

software: 軟體vs 软件

subway:捷運 vs 地铁

[Kobo-Daishi]

I don't know if these have been done before. Didn't go through all the back pages. At 11, too much to go through.

 

But this is another one from Ariel Lin's It Started With a Kiss.

 

The Cantonese dub had 兼職  gim jik1 for her moonlighting as a waitress at a roadside restaurant to earn enough money to buy Zhi Shu a pressy to thank him for having taken the time to tutor the f-ban students to pass high school.

 

Mandarin dub/standard Chinese subs had:

兼職(兼职)
臨時工(临时工)
打工

 

It's good to have a lot of synonymous words under ones belt when learning Chinese (or any language) to become truly fluent.

 

Kobo.

[imron]

Didn't go through all the back pages. At 11, too much to go through.

On the search bar at the top of the page click the button on the side that says "Google".  You'll get a drop down list allowing you to search only within this topic.

[skylee]

兼職 is part-time job (ie not full time job). 臨時工 is temporary job ( ie not permanent job, can be full-time or part-time). 打工 means to work and get paid. They are not exactly the same, though you can use them to refer to the same job, say a temp part-time job.

[tooironic]

臨時工 ia usually translated as "casual job" here.

[Kobo-Daishi]

 

On the search bar at the top of the page click the button on the side that says "Google".  You'll get a drop down list allowing you to search only within this topic.

I didn't know that you could do that.

 

Good tip.

 

Kobo.

[Kobo-Daishi]

 

打工 means to work and get paid.

So 打工 is any paid employment regardless whether it's an after-school job (mowing lawns, newspaper route), a seasonal job (X-Mas), summer job, or your regular career employment? Just as long as it's a paying occupation?

 

I'm getting into learning more synonymous words in Chinese because being fluent in English I'm able to express myself more fully because I know more words that mean roughly the same. Not so with Chinese. It's mostly the same words learned from the few years of Chinese 101 learned in college. And the occasional word or two gleaned from the few Chinese movies or TV shows watched.

 

Kobo.

[skylee]

Yes depending on the context, 打工 can also mean one's regular employment. Like if someone blames me for a policy of my organisation and if further explanations cannot pacify that person I might resort to telling him that I am only 打工 and I didn't make that policy.

PS - I envy people who say that they are fluent in this language or that, as I am not fluent in anything other than my mother tongue.

[Kobo-Daishi]

 

I was watching a recent episode of the American horror drama Supernatural set in Chinatown, because Chinatown is eerie and spooky, when I saw the above sign. (Okay, this episode didn't make out that Chinatown was anything where supernatural things happen. No Goonies or anything odd. One of the characters just went there to get a tattoo.) Obviously, a noodle house/restaurant.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural_%28U.S._TV_series%29

 

Anyway, I always thought that 京華(华) meant Beijing because of an old Hong Kong romance drama I had seen back in the 70s or 80s called 京華(华)春夢(梦). In those days we only had one international station in the greater Los Angeles area. No cable channels or anything (except for those in the mountains where reception was inaccessible and then they just got the regular network stations via cable). And the international station only broadcast a half hour of Chinese news a day. Sharing the time with Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Persian, etc. Though on Sundays they had an hour of Chinese programming and for a while they ran this serial.

 

It was set during Republican era China. I guess it was Republican era. No queues so couldn't be Qing and there wasn't any communists in charge yet. But it was set in Beijing so I just assumed from the title that 京華 meant Beijing.

 

Anyway, this time I decided to look it up just to make sure. So I input the characters into the Guoyu Cidian web site and this is what I got:

1.　京華
 注音一式　ㄐ｜ㄥ　ㄏㄨㄚˊ
 漢語拼音　ｊ ｎ 　ｈｕ       注音二式　ｊ ｎｇ　ｈｕ

相似詞:　都門、都城、京都、京城、京師、首都      相反詞:　

 

國都所在，為文物、人才匯集的地區，故稱為「京華」。文選˙郭璞˙遊仙詩七首之一：「京華遊俠窟，山林隱遯棲。」清˙陳維崧˙賀新郎˙擲帽悲歌發詞：「我在京華淪落久，恨吳鹽只點離人髮。」

 

So, any capital city, not just Beijing. And 京都 also means Kyoto, the old capital of Japan before they moved it to Tokyo.

 

For synonymous words (相似詞) they've got 都門、都城、京都、京城、京師、and 首都. No antonyms it seems.

Kobo.