Ed Jaggard's Chinese Words for Week of 12-29-97
Sunday
pao2 gua1
calabash
pao2 - gourd; bottle gourd; calabash
gua1 - a general term for melons, gourds, etc.
A calabash is a dried gourd which is used as a utensil usually for dipping or scooping. I've found a few sites on the internet which feature decorative calabashes. Calabashes seem to be common globally.
The first time I ever saw the word was travelling through coastal North Carolina on US 17 where it refers to a town (link at the right) as well as an entire region.
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January 4, 1998
Calabash, North Carolina
Bottle Gourd
Gourd Artists' Guild
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Saturday
tiao4 ma3
bar code
tiao2 - stripe
ma3 - symbol; code
Probably everyone knows what these ubiquitous little sets of black and white lines are by now, even former President Bush!!!! From a previous episode of X-Files, we know that agent Scully has one implanted in her brain. Some people associate these marks with "The Mark of The Beast" of the end times. Most people recognize them as little thingees on supermarket products that make check-out time a little bit easier than it used to be (but we still like to see a price on the products we buy.)
The Chinese word describes it like the English word - stripe symbol or stripe code.
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January 3, 1998
Information on Barcode Symbologies
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Friday
kui3 lei3 xi4
puppet show
kui3lei3 - puppet
xi4 - a drama; a play
I realize that puppet show is not that unusual a word, but I think that the Chinese characters ³ÈÀw - puppet are interesting. They are characters that you don't see very often. You will find them at the beginning of phrases for puppet government (kui3lei3 zheng4fu3) and puppet regime (kui3lei3 zhengquan2) as well as puppet show. |
January 2, 1998
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Thursday
zhang1 liang4
tensor
zhang1 - to open; spread; stretch
liang4 - a quantity
I discovered tensors some years ago while pursuing a degree in physics. Tensors are mathematical objects that incorporate scalars and vectors and beyond. One of my interests is general relativity where they are heavily used to describe laws of physics for multidimensional quantities in a form invariant under a change in reference frame. Got that?? Yeh, right!! Tensors are used in many fields of physics such as electomagnetics and solid state physics.
My best bet in describing them is to provide a few links to web pages that deal with tensors. Please forgive my emphasis on relativity and cosmology, that's my personal scientific bias showing.
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January 1, 1998
Peter Diener's WWW-exhibition - Description and visualization of particle trajectories near black holes
The mathematics of general relativity
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Wednesday
Tuesday
lie4 ling2
serow
lie4 - mane
ling2 - antelope
And the word for today is - serow. I had to look it up in the dictionary. It's a kind of heavyset goat antelope found in eastern Asia some of which have distinctive manes (thus the name mane-antelope.) The word serow comes from a Tibetan word for a long-haired Tibetan goat.
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December 30, 1997
Formosan serow
Japanese Serow Page
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Monday
zi4 zhu4 xi3 yi1 dian4
laundromat
zi4zhu4 - self-help; self-service
xi3 - to wash
yi1 - clothes; clothing
dian4 - store; shop
This is a good review word. It has five fairly common characters. zi4zhu4 itself is a useful combination of characters which you will see in compound words pertaining to self-service. This Chinese word is easy to learn and review. Although it refers to something fairly common, you won't find it in every dictionary.
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December 29, 1997
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