The Golden Axe - 2

The first sentence in the story is: 这是个炎热的夏日. Here is the translation and pinyin for each character in the sentence: 这(zhe4;this)是(shi4;is)个(gu)炎(yan2-scorching;buring hot)热(re4-hot)的(de)夏(zia4-summer)日(ri4).So literally translated this means: This is a scorching hot summer’s day.

Notes:

1.  I translated the general measure word (个) as a even though strictly speaking Chinese does not have an indefinite article. I am wondering is the original should not have been 一个 instead of just 个. http://mylanguages.org/chinese_articles.php
2. The possessive particle 的 is used here purely to indicate that it is the day that is hot. I initially thought that it was used to indicate that an adjectival verb (热) was used as a pure adjective instead of a verb. That would have meant that 炎 would have been the adjectival verb’s (热) intensifier. I cannot find evidence for this.

If anybody is reading this and disagrees with any of my translations or thoughts then I would appreaciate any feedback.

The Golden Axe - 1

To practice reading Chinese i downloaded an iPhone app that contains the story of the golden axe. I think this story is a variant of The Honest Woodsman story. The iPhone app is not brilliant but it does have the English for the story as well as the simplified Chinese characters.I am going to start doing my own translations and explanations based on this app. It should prove to be a good learning exercise. Lets start with the title of the story: 金斧头 (jin1 fu3tou2). 金(jin1) means golden and 斧头 (fu3tou2) means axe. So its quite simply: Golden Axe or The Golden Axe. I am still a bit confused about how some words are formed for example: 斧(fu3) means axe or hatchet. But 斧头(fu3tou2) also means axe or hatchet. Why would the title not simply be :  金斧 (jin1 fu3)?

White(百) Board

This last weekend I bought myself a mini white board to help me practice my Chinese writing. We use white boards extensively at the office for design etc. so I thought a white board would be ideal for learning Chinese. I did however not know that white boards were made in this mini format. All I an say is that its awesome. It is so nice to be able to write a character a couple of times at a couple of different sizes to get the stroke order right. Here is a picture of my board with some practice material on it. (The grammar might be a bit wrong :)).