The Official: What is used with greater consistency!?!??!

[xuechengfeng]

I'll keep this as a running tally instead of constantly annoying with questions. We learn a lot of words that people look at me cross-eyed for using, or say that "so-and-so" is more common. So we'll find out.

星期或者禮拜﹖

[Quest]

personal preference.

[roddy]

Xingqi is more common on the mainland, as libai has religious connotations and was 'discouraged' for a period of time. It's heard more and more often though now.

If you want to be formal, you might want to try 周. If you want to confuse people, try saying things like '我星期三没时间，礼拜三怎么样？'

Roddy

[xuechengfeng]

I don't wanna screw up the characters, so just tell me what's more common for Hamburger.

I had a teacher from Taiwan say Hanbao, and he's never heard Hanbaobao, but my teacher from Mainland taught me that one.

[skylee]

漢堡(包)

It is 漢堡包 in HK. I have the impression that it is also so in the Mainland. (I remember my Putonghua teacher, who was from BJ, spent plenty of time teaching us how to pronounce bao1 properly.) It does seem that it is simply called 漢堡 in Taiwan.

Anyways, I think you can compare the names of hamburger in the following websites ->

http://www.mcdonalds.com.hk/chinese/products/prod3.htm (I think the 飽 used in this website is wrong, very disappointing.)

http://www.mcdonalds.com.cn/products1.htm

(The taiwan McDonald's website has the same url with a ".tw" suffix. But each time I accessed it I got a warning of this virus - "PWSteal.Trojan". So I don't post a link here.)

[Lu]

I think very often it's just a mainland/Taiwan difference. Like libai/xingqi, and gei ni da dianhua/da dianhua gei ni.

How about zhongtou/xiaoshi? I learned zhongtou first, but never heard it IRL, neither in Beijing nor in Taiwan.

[geraldc]

Isn't 钟头/小时 a north/south thing. I think you hear 钟头 a lot more in the south.

[Quest]

always 钟头 in colloquial cantonese.

[xuechengfeng]

To save having to see another thread from me, I'll just ask in here.

請大家在第四剪票口剪票。

Would this mean Everyone at Train 4 entrance, have your ticket punched?

[trevelyan]

I like 周, which has the added benefit of SMS-thrift. Otherwise, the only time I don't hear 星期 is when people are referring to Sunday.