.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
for the record
kara (in a mix of chinese and english only intelligible by my roommate):
"[i'm going to clean up a bit today.]"
roommate:
"go back to sleep. it six am."
Labels: busy, chinese, worthless words
¶ 5/14/2009 01:29:00 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, April 23, 2009
earth. with a capital E. Earth.
so the other day i was in Chinese class and we were studying about something when earth was mentioned.
the characters for earth look like this: 地球
this shouldn't mean anything to you if you don't know Chinese, so I'll try my best to explain. i then asked if this was Earth, like not just any old planet. is this E a r t h, you know like China is C h i n a, or Texas is Texas...Johnny Depp is Johnny Depp? it is. it is Earth, what we have known for thousands of years as ours, as this, as only t h i s particular planet.
many chinese words are made up of multiple characters. for example, the word homosexual, 同性恋：
同 tong means
[1] same; similar; equal; identical; common
[2] share; agree
[3] together
性 xing means
[1] nature; character; natural property; disposition; temper
[2] a quality or property
[3] sex
恋 lian means
[1] love (one of the other sex); be in love
[2] feel a persistent attachment (for a thing)
okay, so you get the point. it makes Chinese a fascinating language to study because there are often so many cultural biases embedded in the language, subjective descriptions by individual characters that all together makeup a name that signifies something completely different. for example, most of the chinese minorities have either the "female" or "animal" radical in their minority classification name. carol adams, suck on that. a radical is even smaller than a character, a radical is one of the individual symbols that make up a character. wikipedia gives this example:
"采 Cǎi ‘to pick, pluck’ is an associative compound comprising two elements or components, a hand 爫 (zhǎo or zhuǎ) picking items from a tree 木 (mù). Later, a redundant hand 扌 (shǒu) element was added in the character."
moving back on track. so how does Earth play into the multiple characters that you were talking about first in the homosexual example? well, lets break apart Earth, 地球。
地 di
[1] earth
[2] land; soil; ground
[3] region; territory; belt; place; locality
[4] position; place; situation
[5] an adjunct after a word (usually adjective) to form an adverbial phrase
球 qiu
[1] ball; sphere; globe; round
[2] the globe; the earth
all sports that you play with a ball have the 球qiu character in them, usually at the end. anyways with the knowledge that 球qiu means round, this was what got me thinking:
how long has the Chinese name for the Earth been 地球？how long have they known the shape of our planet? keeping this knowledge for thousands of years with no interaction with foreigners? in the 1400's Christopher Columbus decided to act on a "hunch" and prove the world was round. novel idea...
¶ 4/23/2009 08:42:00 PM 0 Comments
the characters for earth look like this: 地球
this shouldn't mean anything to you if you don't know Chinese, so I'll try my best to explain. i then asked if this was Earth, like not just any old planet. is this E a r t h, you know like China is C h i n a, or Texas is Texas...Johnny Depp is Johnny Depp? it is. it is Earth, what we have known for thousands of years as ours, as this, as only t h i s particular planet.
many chinese words are made up of multiple characters. for example, the word homosexual, 同性恋：
同 tong means
[1] same; similar; equal; identical; common
[2] share; agree
[3] together
性 xing means
[1] nature; character; natural property; disposition; temper
[2] a quality or property
[3] sex
恋 lian means
[1] love (one of the other sex); be in love
[2] feel a persistent attachment (for a thing)
okay, so you get the point. it makes Chinese a fascinating language to study because there are often so many cultural biases embedded in the language, subjective descriptions by individual characters that all together makeup a name that signifies something completely different. for example, most of the chinese minorities have either the "female" or "animal" radical in their minority classification name. carol adams, suck on that. a radical is even smaller than a character, a radical is one of the individual symbols that make up a character. wikipedia gives this example:
"采 Cǎi ‘to pick, pluck’ is an associative compound comprising two elements or components, a hand 爫 (zhǎo or zhuǎ) picking items from a tree 木 (mù). Later, a redundant hand 扌 (shǒu) element was added in the character."
moving back on track. so how does Earth play into the multiple characters that you were talking about first in the homosexual example? well, lets break apart Earth, 地球。
地 di
[1] earth
[2] land; soil; ground
[3] region; territory; belt; place; locality
[4] position; place; situation
[5] an adjunct after a word (usually adjective) to form an adverbial phrase
球 qiu
[1] ball; sphere; globe; round
[2] the globe; the earth
all sports that you play with a ball have the 球qiu character in them, usually at the end. anyways with the knowledge that 球qiu means round, this was what got me thinking:
how long has the Chinese name for the Earth been 地球？how long have they known the shape of our planet? keeping this knowledge for thousands of years with no interaction with foreigners? in the 1400's Christopher Columbus decided to act on a "hunch" and prove the world was round. novel idea...
¶ 4/23/2009 08:42:00 PM 0 Comments
Sunday, February 22, 2009
CLASS ENTRY #1 ／ 第一个日记内容
so in place of one of my classes i'm working for a filmmaker/painter/photographer in an area of old factories turned artist bohemia.
unfortunately my professor says that i must keep a journal about what i do there.（how does one take all the fun of writing blog entries(?): make them mandatory.） in order to combat the dryness of what would otherwise be a grueling and itemizing task, i've decided to document everything in chinese. this will help my chinese along and supplement the easier language class i decided to stay in. although most of my readers only know english, i will post the chinese entries on here for my few friends who can read chinese. i also think chinese characters are beautiful so it's fun to write this way for a change.
二月二十二号二00九年
我今天去M50地区。我在image tunnel工作。我用老板做的书懂了image tunnel历史。我的老板的工作是艺术家， 不过她做很多东西不一样！他对moganshan路的地区感兴趣。差不多十年以前她班她的画工作室从别的上海地方到moganshan路五十号。我觉得她真喜欢moganshan地区和这个附近雕刻她的作品。
在image tunnel的blog她说：
“同样在2004年双年展期间 9月30日我的《轮回》影像展在四行仓库开幕，展览素材取材于这几年本人纪录的上海城市正在消失的一些场景，城市的发展让我感到纪录可能是最快的保护。”
看她的moganshan书和她的moganshan电影以后我觉得用唯地方做艺术作品很有意思。
我也觉得人人－－美国人，中国人，法国人，墨西哥人，印度人，等等等－－都知道一些概念的地方是很重要和有意思的。都人明白重要的地方因为都人有一个家乡和都人有一个奶奶爷爷也有一个家乡。都人有一个地方是最喜欢的。知道我的意思呢？用汉语描述我遇到困难因为我的汉语水平很地道。这个照片有一个楼我的老板尝试停毁坏机，不过你会看他们已经拆除这个楼。太可怕了！
我们今天也一起跟她的朋友们去她的朋友们的家。他们是一个男人和一个女人，可能他们结婚了。他们有很好的房子。这么舒服啊！他们有很多多西藏的唐卡。我认为他想必是卖作品工作的。他们聊天差不多四个小时！我一边画画一边听话。
unfortunately my professor says that i must keep a journal about what i do there.（how does one take all the fun of writing blog entries(?): make them mandatory.） in order to combat the dryness of what would otherwise be a grueling and itemizing task, i've decided to document everything in chinese. this will help my chinese along and supplement the easier language class i decided to stay in. although most of my readers only know english, i will post the chinese entries on here for my few friends who can read chinese. i also think chinese characters are beautiful so it's fun to write this way for a change.
二月二十二号二00九年
我今天去M50地区。我在image tunnel工作。我用老板做的书懂了image tunnel历史。我的老板的工作是艺术家， 不过她做很多东西不一样！他对moganshan路的地区感兴趣。差不多十年以前她班她的画工作室从别的上海地方到moganshan路五十号。我觉得她真喜欢moganshan地区和这个附近雕刻她的作品。
在image tunnel的blog她说：
“同样在2004年双年展期间 9月30日我的《轮回》影像展在四行仓库开幕，展览素材取材于这几年本人纪录的上海城市正在消失的一些场景，城市的发展让我感到纪录可能是最快的保护。”
看她的moganshan书和她的moganshan电影以后我觉得用唯地方做艺术作品很有意思。
我也觉得人人－－美国人，中国人，法国人，墨西哥人，印度人，等等等－－都知道一些概念的地方是很重要和有意思的。都人明白重要的地方因为都人有一个家乡和都人有一个奶奶爷爷也有一个家乡。都人有一个地方是最喜欢的。知道我的意思呢？用汉语描述我遇到困难因为我的汉语水平很地道。这个照片有一个楼我的老板尝试停毁坏机，不过你会看他们已经拆除这个楼。太可怕了！我们今天也一起跟她的朋友们去她的朋友们的家。他们是一个男人和一个女人，可能他们结婚了。他们有很好的房子。这么舒服啊！他们有很多多西藏的唐卡。我认为他想必是卖作品工作的。他们聊天差不多四个小时！我一边画画一边听话。
Labels: art, chinese, shanghai
¶ 2/22/2009 09:20:00 PM 1 Comments
