Korean Job Discussion Forums

Hyeon Een · Joined: 24 Jun 2005

克里斯多弗

ChuckECheese · Joined: 20 Jul 2006

Give us a hint. Where did you find those pictographs.

mithridates

Kiwi Paul · Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Location: Auckland, New Zealand

djsmnc · Joined: 20 Jan 2003 Location: Dave's ESL Cafe

克 means "dancing helicopter man"

里 means "man who thinks a lot"

斯 means "my child draw silly picture"

多 means "that thing that the Empire sent to spy on the rebels and cause problems for Luke Skywalker at the beginning of The Empire Strikes back"

弗 means "man with some problem"

Qinella · Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib

chilgok007 · Joined: 28 May 2006 Location: Chilgok

Yup, Mirthridates is right on. It's the standard Chinese transliteration of "Christopher." In Mandarin, it's pronounced: "Ke4 Li3 Si1 duo1 fu2" The characters themselves don't actually mean anything, they are just selected to approximate the sound of the English name. I think Xin Hua is the organization that sets the standards for English/Western names. If your looking for an exact translation, it means something like:

"Gram, Mile, "??," many, "??""

Sorry, I'm not exactly sure what the literal meaning of the 斯 zi and the 弗 zi are. The above characters are often used in transliterations, but aren't too common in "real" words anymore.

bluelake · Joined: 01 Dec 2005

http://zhongwen.com/zi.htm

http://hanja_dic.zonmal.com/

chilgok007 · Joined: 28 May 2006 Location: Chilgok

bluelake · Joined: 01 Dec 2005

Zoidberg · Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:40 pm Post subject:

I like Chinalanguage.com, mainly because it has various chinese dialect readings for characters. A bit annoying as it is uses images instead of text for the characters though.

djsmnc · Joined: 20 Jan 2003 Location: Dave's ESL Cafe

chilgok007 · Joined: 28 May 2006 Location: Chilgok

Bluelake and Zoidberg: Are you both Chinese learners as well? Very Happy

Zoidberg · Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 12:34 pm Post subject:

I'm an on and off learner. My wife is from Hong Kong, and it's annoying not being able to read everything whenever I go there. But more, I interested in Chinese dialects, especially the less well known ones. Not for learning so much, just out of general linguistic interest. Not alot of info around though.

bluelake · Joined: 01 Dec 2005

I've been studying Chinese characters much like Zoidberg--on and off; I've been doing it ever since I first lived in Korea twenty-three years ago. However, although I can understand probably a couple-hundred characters on sight, I can actually write far fewer (I have to work on that). A lot of my knowledge comes from research I've done on Korean traditional archery, as historically most everything about it was done with Chinese characters.