Ed Jaggard's Chinese Words for Week of 02-16-98

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Sunday

diao4 hao4

tone mark; key signature

diao4 - tune, melody; tone, tune
hao4 - mark; sign; symbol

This Chinese word serves double duty meaning a tone mark, linguistically, or key signature in music. These meanings derive from the root meaning of diao4 - to transfer, shift or move.
Anyone who has studied a language with tones such as Chinese, is probably familiar with tone marks which are placed over certain vowels in a transcripted word to indicate the tone of the word. For instance in Mandarin there are five tone marks to indicate the high tone, rising tone, falling-rising tone, falling tone and the lack of a tone (neutral tone).

The second meaning of diao4hao4 is key signature. This is a term from music to indicate the key in which a piece of music is to be played. It is usually depicted in written music by sharps or flats placed after the clef. A lack of any sharps or flats would indicate to someone trained in reading music that the music is in the key of C. Three flats indicate the key of E flat (a favorite of mine, but don't ask me why (I just don't know!))

February 22, 1998


key signature

Tonart's Music Theory Question of the Week
A site that I am adding to my favorites list!!!

MiBAC Music Theory Reference
Learn about the Circle of Fifths, Key signatures, Scales, etc.

Resources and How Chords Are Named
Just what the title says - worthwhile checking out!!

Saturday

tong3 yi1 ma3

Unicode

tong3 - unify, unite
yi1 - one
tong3yi1 - to unify, unite
ma3 - symbol; code

UNICODE is a 16 bit character to integer coding scheme which allows for 65,000 unique characters. This could allow a unification of many of the characters in the languages of the world into one coding scheme doing away not only with the ASCII (and EBCDIC) that we are familiar with here in the US, but eliminating the need for different coding schemes required for the double-byte characters found in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

The links to the right should provide you with some basic info about UNICODE and the second link relates Unicode to Chinese characters.

February 21, 1998


PC Webopaedia
This page describes the term 'Unicode' and lists other pages on the Web where you can find additional information

Unicode and the Chinese Writing System

Friday

hong2 zun1

rainbow trout - Oncorhynchus mykiss

hong2 - rainbow
zun1 - trout

February 20, 1998


Rainbow Trout
A little info about the rainbow trout

Rainbow Trout Farm
Where you can still catch a fish for a buck.

The Trout and the Salmon
Click the link for Rainbow Trout
Thursday
Today's word is in response to an e-mail from Steve Feit suggesting that I put in some computer and music terms!! Thanks for the suggestion, Steve.

sheng1 hao4

Sharp (#) [music]

sheng1 - go up; rise; ascend
hao4 - mark; sign; signal

Without getting all involved in the technicalities of music theory, let's just say that a sharp raises the value of a note or musical tone in pitch by a half step. In musical notation it is denoted by a # symbol and can appear in the key signature of a piece of music or can be attached to a note when the composer wants to indicate a sharp where the key signature would have indicated a natural or a flat for that particular note. If that sounds involved, it may be because it's past midnight and I'm starting to lose a little focus.

Anyhow, this is the internet and there is a ton of information out there on this subject, so I'll add a couple of links and then hit the pillow!!

February 19, 1998


Tonart's Music Theory Question of the Week
A site that I am adding to my favorites list!!!

MiBAC Music Theory Reference
Learn about the Circle of Fifths, Key signatures, Scales, etc.

Resources and How Chords Are Named
Just what the title says - worthwhile checking out!!
Wednesday

jie1 jiao3

prong (of an electric plug)

jie1 - to join; connect
jiao3 - foot; leg

This is one of those words that you hardly ever come across when learning a new language, yet it's such a common item that when you find out how to express it - you just say "Wow!!". At least that's the way it is with me. I've been studying Chinese for some years and now it seems that I've finally come to appreciate words for common, everyday ordinary things like bottle caps and plastic squeeze bottles. In fact, as you may have noticed, this type of word makes up one of the categories in this web endeavor. Where else could you find equal billing for words for phased radar array, covalent bonds and electric plug prongs??

In the case of this word, I guess you could translate it back into English as "connecting leg" which sort of describes what the prong on an electric plug would be and do.
±µ¸} is a simple and beautiful word!!

February 18, 1998



Tuesday

zhi3 shu4 han2 shu4

exponential function

zhi3 - 1. finger 2. point; direct 3. indicate; refer to; mean
shu4 - number
zhi3shu4 - index; exponent
han2 - 1. letter; correspondence 2. armor 3. to contain; to envelop 4. sheath
shu4 - number
han2shu4 - function (math)

I like words like this because they allow me to review several words at the same time. This one contains two words, exponent and function, which combine to form a new word meaning exponential function. So there are actually three distinct words here (as reflected in my dictionary attached to this page.)

You will run into han2shu4 in other mathematic terms such as logarithmic function, trig function, etc. I won't bother to explain what these words mean. I've provided a couple of links and the search engines are primed and ready, not to mention math books.

February 17, 1998


Write and Plot a Function
Insert the function y=5*e^x into the box hit enter and you'll see an exponential function plotted!!

Visual Calculus - Derivative of an Exponential Function
Another cool math (animation) site. You need to get a plug-in "x-theorist" to make it work, though!
Monday

xian4 xing2 mu2

swage

xian4 - to sink; cave in
xing2 - a mold for casting
mu2 - mold; form

I found this word yesterday while looking for words to update my Chinese database. I had never seen the word swage before, so I looked it up in my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

swage - a tool used by metalworkers for shaping their work by holding it on the work or the work on it and striking with a hammer or sledge.

So for some of you, like me, here is a new word in Chinese and in English as well. It was a little tricky picking a definition for the first character, xian4. It's primary meaning is pitfall or trap. It can also mean "to get stuck or bogged down." The meaning I chose seemed to be the closest fit; if anyone has a different idea, let me know.

February 16, 1998


CORBIN Manufacturing and Supply, Inc
Check out the link "Everything for Bullet Swaging"




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