Monday, January 31, 2005

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I recently read this sentence in Mian Mian's Panda Sex:

如果有人克隆我,我会很高兴送她一个拷贝。

I learned the word ke long (克隆) when I was living in Tianjin. I still remember the moment I learned it because it was one of those words that somebody just repeats and repeats, and then the meaning suddenly dawns on you: clone! But I had never seen kao bei (拷贝) until I read it this time. Like "clone", it's a phonetic borrowing of the word "copy" from English. Phonetic borrowings are rare in Chinese, compared to other Asian languages like Japanese. So I usually remember them when I come across one. I think you could call pai dui (派对) a phonetic borrowing of the word "party".

The sentence given above can be translated as "If somebody were to clone me, I would gladly give her a copy of myself."

1 Comments:

At Jan 23, 2006, 5:04:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said:

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Best of luck.

 

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