The following is an interview with Pleco founder Michael Love, regarding the Pleco iPhone app, which is now in beta testing.
John: The long wait for the iPhone app has caused much distress amongst all the Pleco fans out there. Any comments on the development process of your first Pleco iPhone app?
Michael: Well, much of the delay stems from the fact that we really only started working on the iPhone version in earnest in January ’09 – …
I just recently had the pleasure of trying out the beta version of the new Pleco iPhone app. In case you’re not aware, Pleco is the software company behind what is regarded as the best electronic learner’s Chinese dictionary for any mobile device (and possibly the desktop as well). Given the dearth of really good Chinese dictionaries for the iPhone, Chinese learners have been eagerly awaiting the release of this iPhone app for quite some time. The wait has not …
I recently looked up the word 贫民窟 (meaning “slum”) in nciku. The definition included this example of usage:
She decided to slum it for a couple of months.
她决定去贫民窟待几个月。
The Chinese sentence, translated back into English, would be:
She decided to stay in a slum for a couple of months.
I think the translator missed something in this particular case, and the content of the sentences (as well as the order) strongly suggests that the Chinese is a (not …
I just learned recently that in mainland China there’s a whole business centered on getting pregnant women into Hong Kong to give birth so that the babies get extra Hong Kong citizenship privileges. This trend has been dubbed “maternity tourism.” Surreal.
Of course, there’s also a backlash. But anyway, the reasons to do it:
Giving birth in Hong Kong not only guarantees them world-class health care but in many cases secures citizenship in the city of 7 million for
…
I’m a bit of a sucker for Venn diagrams. When I was recently asked by a student about the Chinese modal verbs 会, 能, and 可以 (all of which can be translated into English as “can”), I recalled a nice Venn diagram on the topic and dug it up.
What creates the most confusion with these three modal verbs is not that they can all be translated into “can” in English. The problem is that they are usually …
I wasn’t expecting to find anything Chinese-related on the new site, Easier to Understand than Wave (referring to Google’s new software, called Wave). But this was the first thing I got:
Chinese Telegraph Code
[Source: Wikimedia Commons]
Oh, and by the way, in this instance, Google Wave wins, 65% to 35%, making it part of an exclusive club of things harder to understand than Google Wave, which also includes “women, Scientology, the United States Tax code, Chinese …
It’s the October holiday in the PRC, and I’m enjoying a slooowww 8-day vacation. Fittingly, I recently also discovered a site called Slow Chinese (via Chinese Forums), and thought I’d share it here.
Slow Chinese, as far as I know, is the first site to do this (and just this) for Chinese. I know that the same “slow” concept has already existed for some time for learners of German (Slow German), and that it is quite …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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