An American In Taiwan

Posted By 美國人 on August 24, 2009

This is the second entry into the little phrasebook set of posts I’m doing. This sentence is designed to show how one says “After event #1, event #2 happened.”

在我老婆游泳之後我們一起看電視

zài wǒ lǎopo yóuyǒng zhīhòu wǒmen yīqǐ kàn diànshì

After my wife went swimming, we watched television together.

• 在 … 之後 is a construction used to refer to the “first… later” aspect.
• 一起 means “together”
• 電視 is “television”

So, you can see that by saying 在, inserting a clause (I did something, something happened, etc), following that by 之後 and another clause, you can create a vast array of complex sentences! 在我學習漢語跟我朋友之後我們在餐廳吃, for example.

Category: Chinese Language | No Comments »
Tags: Chinese Language, phrasebook, pinyin, 中文

Posted By 美國人 on August 20, 2009

Started thinking about how to create interesting, relatively frequent updates that are actually useful. So, I decided that doing an on-going number of posts about how to say certain things in Chinese, along with little bits of information regarding the words, would be handy. Let’s begin!

今天早上我一起床就煮了一壺咖啡

jīntiān zǎo shàng wǒ yīqǐ chuáng jiù zhǔ le yī hú kāfēi

When I woke up this morning, I made a pot of coffee.

• 早上 is used to mean “early morning”
• 就 means “at once, right away”, in this case it’s really closer to “immediately”
• 煮 is a verb meaning to boil or cook, in this case to boil the 咖啡
• 壺 is a counter used for bottled liquid (the pot of coffee), hence “一壺咖啡” means “a pot of coffee” (literally “one pot coffee”)

Category: Chinese Language | 1 Comment »
Tags: Chinese Language, phrasebook, pinyin, 中文

Posted By 美國人 on August 18, 2009

Phase one was getting to phase two. So… phase one, complete.

Phase two includes getting married, beginning an 8-5 administrative job, and getting my Ph.D. So far, I’m two for three. I know I’ve been ignoring the blog. I’ve just been busy. Getting everything squared away with the old job and getting geared up to start the new one. Takes its toll on you, you know?

Anyway, the new job seems like it rocks. Got a big desk, dual-screen monitors, looks like it’ll be a lot of fun. The people there are just as nutty as at my old place, which is, strangely, a relief. Still trying to think of items that make an office feel like more than just an office. I’ve got a picture of my wife, a picture of my parents when they were both 8 years old, my electric kettle, a little glass statue of Taipei 101, my swiss ball to sit on, a bunch of snacks, a Chinese clock and a picture on the wall.

There’s a lot of things wrong with the current project I’m working on, stuff that was wrong before I got there, stuff that I’m going back through and fixing. I just hope the other people who work on the project are attentive and get their work back to me in a timely fashion. Crossing fingers, here.

I’m not necessarily looking forward to the students coming back. Parking gets much more difficult. Still, it’ll be a nice change of pace. At least I’ll be taking classes again and get actual weekends to work on things.

Now if I can only get my thesis back so I can finish it…

Category: Blog related, Daily Life, Non-Taiwan Related, Thoughts | No Comments »
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