你們吃飯了嗎?

[muckefuck]

Chinese verbs are often compound. This is partly due to homophony, since a monosyllabic verb would often be ambiguous, and partly because such compounds allow the expression of distinctions that in other languages would be handled by derivation, temporal and aspectual suffixes, adverbial phrases, and the like.

A good example is the verb 吃 chi1 "eat". Add 完 wan2 "finish, complete" and you get a compound roughly equivalent to English "eat up". With 飽 bao3 "full", 吃 expresses the meaning of "eat until full". If you 吃飽 your meal, the implication is that, like Mr Creosote, you really couldn't eat another bite, whereas 吃完 simply means that you're finished eating (perhaps because you had the misfortune of sitting near Mr Creosote). If neither of these conditions necessarily applies and you have no other object handy, it's typical to use 吃飯 chi1fan4 (lit. "eat-rice") so that you aren't left with a bare verb.

This was a 吃飽 kind of weekend.

Saturday afternoon, it was birthday boy bunj's desire to check out tapas townhouse 1492 before the Caravaggio exhibit. While it hasn't dimmed my affection for Café Ibérico, it didn't disappoint. Well, maybe the tomato sauce was nothing special, but I was very pleased with the boquerones and I loved the lacy crisps that accompanied the solomillo and the rich mousse-based dessert I shared with febrile and lustronheloise.

I can honestly say, though, that it was all left in the dust by dinner that night: grilled lamb chops, champiñones al ajillo, a 1995 Muga, and a dulce de leche tres leches cake from Bombon that truly has to be eaten to be believed. monshu couldn't stop talking about any of it. I didn't hear him say a word about what he thought of the tapas, but at least four times between Saturday evening and Sunday evening, he praised some combination of (1) the evening as a whole; (2) the lamb; and (3) the cake (which he really, really wanted a second piece of but manfully restrained himself).

Sunday we had shopping to conduct in South Chinatown, so I called up Nuphy and made a dim-sum date out of it at Three Happiness. I hardly need to elabourate, do I? Perhaps the man exists who can go to dim sum and eat no more than he actually needs to keep his body functioning, but I certainly haven't met him.

No wonder dinner Sunday night ended up consisting of Triscuits, hummus, and swiss cheese nibbled in front of the tv.

Comments

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

It didn't start out as laziness. It used to be a matter of principle. A few years ago I hated China so badly that I swore never to speak Chinese again, nor ever to write the language again. So I certainly wasn't going to install a Chinese word-processor. However, since people keep reminding me that Chinese is actually an interesting language (damn it!), I may look into NJStar etc. at some point -- but not until I've finished my translation, survived the impending Rotterdam International Film Festival and mentally prepared myself for yet another time drain. As if Photoshop wasn't bad enough!

IME vs WP

[pne.livejournal.com]

If you just want to type Chinese (e.g. on LiveJournal), you don't need to get a full-fledged word processor; it would seem to me that an IME would be sufficient.

If you want to go the NJStar way, they have one of those (NJStar Communicator), which would also be cheaper than buying one of their word processors.

If you're using Windows XP, you could also give the Microsoft IMEs a go -- I believe they have several different options each for simplified (zh-CN locale) and traditional (zh-TW locale) characters.

Unfortunately(?), I'm not sure whether Pinyin input is one of them for either locale, so if you're not too good on Zhuyin Fuhao input or Wubi or Cangjie etc., then NJStar Communicator may be better.

Re: IME vs WP

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

I do use Windows XP, so I may give the Microsoft IMEs a go, once I've had time properly to look into them. But whatever I end up with, it will have to have Pinyin input. I did once learn Bopomofo, but it's fairly rusty, and I much prefer Pinyin, anyway. I don't want to go anywhere near a Wubi-input system, as the one Wubi dictionary I used as a student nearly drove me insane. So, as far as I'm concerned, it will have to be a Pinyin-input system. If that means investing in NJStar Communicator, so be it. But, as I said, it will have to wait at least a few more weeks, as I'm going to be frightfully busy for the next few weeks.

Thanks for your input! Much appreciated. :-)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Microsoft IMEs are what I use. I prefer the Taiwanese with Bopomofo input, but a Mainland localisation is also available and both allow Pinyin input. They are available free from the Microsoft website. I had some installation problems when I tried to run the installer from the webpage, but downloading it first and then running it off the desktop solved them.

Let me know if you need any more pointers.

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

Aha! So I can get traditional characters with Pinyin input if I want? And I can download these beautiful fantizi from the Microsoft website, for free? Fabulous. I suppose I really don't have an excuse not to go for them, then...

Thanks a lot!