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Author Topic: English and Chinese,  (Read 978 times)

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Offline lenny

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English and Chinese,
« on: December 21, 2005, 10:15:12 PM »
This linguistic board is too hard for me. Let me be selfish and bring up a topic from my perspective.

I can't help comparing these two languages when I was studying English or teaching Chinese. Lemme start with a simple sentense:

"His hair is long."

Yeah, that was in English. But if it is said in Chinese, the words are EXACTLY the same. I mean it is like "His" +"hair"+"is"+"long", with each of these four words replaced by its corresponding word in Chinese , and the sequense remains the same.

However, there is also another way of saying this, and it's like:

 "HE" +"hair"+ "is"+ "long".

In the previous case, the subject is "his hair" but in the latter case, the subject becomes "he" instead.

Is there a smiliar case in English? I don't know. Tell me.     :unsure:

Thanks for watching Lenny Channel, have a good day and stay tuned. :)
« Last Edit: December 21, 2005, 10:27:06 PM by lenny »

Offline pooka

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English and Chinese,
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2005, 04:21:59 AM »
He's long-haired or He's Hirsute.  Hirsute just means "Hairier than normal" and had a meaning more at the percent of the body covered with hair, but could be applied to a long haired person.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."  Comte de Saint-Simon