关于背单词是背英文解释还是背中文解释？

> 由于现在一些“适合中国人的英英词典”面世，
> 我本人也使用了多年，觉得是比英汉词典查
> 得更多单词，但是在记忆词汇的释义时不知
> 道该记 中文释义还是英文释义？如果记英文
> 释义，觉得效率似乎不高，如果记中文释义
>，又怕不能“英语思维”，真是骑虎难下

Question: When you as a Chinese student learn a new English word, should you memorize its English or Chinese definition? The English definition suffers from low efficiency and the Chinese definition obstructs thinking in English.

Answer: How about memorizing its English synonym? Let's say the word is "cranky". You remember its meaning as "unhappy". Since "unhappy" is a very easy word, using that for its meaning won't be harder than using the Chinese translation.

English translation: US Financial Crisis

Partial translation of an excellent article published on a Taiwanese forum

http://yong321.freeshell.org/misc/US_financial_crisis.html

Off-topic: Barack Obama is not an ordinary black man

While economy is definitely the top issue, Asian Americans have one other item in the top priority list, i.e., personal safety, or crime rate. On average, one Asian immigrant gets killed per year in homocide in the greater Houston area, mostly by a black man, occasionally by a Hispanic. (The number may be higher because I only care about high profile cases and mostly only cases involving Chinese immigrants.) And there's frequent robbery, once per week maybe. This is one of the reasons Asians hesitate about Obama.

Let me use the term "black" here instead of "African Americans" but I have no intention to be politically incorrect. The reason for this choice of word is that American black people have very different traits compared to the African Americans proper, those that grew up in Africa and immigrated to the US, or to a less extent those whose parents, but not grandparents which is too far away, grew up in Africa. I want to bring to my Asian friends' attention that Obama is nearly a true African American. I won't say much here about the difference but I think you can guess what it is.

As I alluded to in my earlier off-topic posting, assuming no ill intention, an intelligent man does good deed, and tremendously good deed if given high power, just as a dumb man does dumb things, and tremendously stupid things if given high power. Although McCain could bring some prosperity, or rather less economic disaster, to Houston, than Obama, the wide area properity or less economic damage would be better achieved by a man with more brain cells. Lastly, an America with weaker emphasis on war mongering will win more friends in the world, and if done right, less hatred from Americans' enemy and terrorists. (I bet most people don't know the three reasons Bin Laden quoted why he hated the US. It's in a long PBS article in late 2001.)

Omission of "to" after "is"

> All you can do is remove yourself from her mailing list
> remove 这事做什么词性 充当什么成分

You can omit "to" only if it follows "all [or what] ... to do", e.g.,

All you can do is wait.
All there is to do is wait.
What needs to be done is ask for more money.

牛津双解还是朗曼双解？

I used Longman a long time ago. The example sentences are the best among all dictionaries I've used. Longman also has a rule that the examples only use words from a 2000-word vocabulary. (There're exceptions and the exception words are clearly marked.) Back in the days without the Internet, example sentences in dictionaries are crucial to English study. Now you can find them with a Google search. But still sentences in dictionaries are guaranteed to be correct in grammar and spelling. I highly recommend it to the people studying English as a foreign language.

Off-topic: More freedom after Olympics

Blogspot.com and wikipedia.com used to be blocked in mainland China, until some time before the Beijing Olympics. I was not sure whether the blockage would be lifted after the Games. Now it's mid-October, two months after the Games. The two web sites seem to be still open in China. And it's said foreign journalists in China get extended freedom about street interviews. Regardless other problems, I'm glad to see the positive effect of the Olympic Games on China's progress.

Singular or plural: "bird's nest" and "apple tree"

> 为啥鸟巢用 bird's nest 而苹果树没有's呢？
> 还有为啥是bird's nest 而不是birds' nest呢？？
> 为啥是apple tree 而不是apples tree呢？

I'm not sure why we don't say birds' (or birds's) nest, even though the nest we're referring to should be for more than one "bird". Just remember it for now.

"Apples tree" is wrong. You always use singular noun as an adjective, like "car mechanic", "computer network" (even though the network connects to many computers).

> 我知道100-meter race这种表达是对的
> 但是有没有 100 meters race这种表达的？！
> 或者是应该100 meters' race?

100-meter race or 100 meters race. Either one is OK. I'm not sure if I've seen 100 meters' race (with an apostrophe). Also see message 8 by yuzhoucn at
http://forum.putclub.com/viewthread.php?tid=145045&extra=page%3D1

How to read keyboard symbols

~	tilde (sounds like til-da); be prepared to explain to non-technical people saying "you know, the wave-shaped thingy"
!	exclamation; commonly read as bang in computer shell programming as in #!/bin/sh
@	at
#	pound; but commonly read as shee in computer shell programming as in #!/bin/sh, not sure why
$	dollar
%	percent
^	caret; not many people know this word so be prepared to say "no, not carrot; it's the character above 6, an arrow pointing up"
&	ampersand
*	star; some read asterisk
(	opening parenthesis (some may shorten it saying paren)
)	closing parenthesis
_	underscore; once I heard people say underbar
+	plus
-	minus, hyphen; as symbol before arguments in commands, some people including me read dash, easier to say one syllable
=	equals
`	backtick or backquote
{	opening brace
}	closing brace
[	opening bracket
]	closing bracket
|	pipe or vertical bar
\	backslash; be prepared to explain to some non-technical people
:	colon
;	semicolon
"	double quote
'	single quote
<	less than; some may read left angle bracket
>	greater than
,	comma
.	dot; period if in English text
?	question mark
/	slash or forward slash; some non-technical people may be confused about / and \
	space
(), [] and {}	may also be called brackets in general. In that case, they specifically call [] square brackets and {} curly brackets. I never like this. Open and closing may also be called left and right.

Difference in pronunciation between "fond" and "found"

It's better to listen to a good speaker. I think most Chinese have problems with "ou" in "found" or "ow" in "town". If you slowly pronounce "found" as f-a-u-n-d, it will be good. Instead, many Chinese pronounce "found" and "fond" as (I think) f-a-n-g-d. "Fond" is really f-o-n-d, where "n" is not "ng", and "o" is that in "dog".

"up to now" and "up till now"

> up till now一般是和现在完成时搭配的，表示个时间一直持续到现在。
> Until now, doctors have/had been able to do very little to treat
> this disease.

Generally, "up to now" is different from "up till [or until] now". When you have the word "till" or "until" in a negative sentence, it implies that something did not happen before that point in time BUT IT DID HAPPEN AT THAT TIME! The above sentence you gave means that the doctors now ARE ABLE TO do something significant to treat this disease. "up to now" may or may not have that implication or side effect. It's much less used. In fact, I always say "until [till] now" to HAVE that side effect and "so far" to AVOID that.

Answers.com and thefreedictionary.com claim that "up to now" can only be used in negative sentences (see e.g. www.thefreedictionary.com/up+to+now). That may be just grammarians' summary. You can see people's usage by searching on Google for this phrase (wrap the three words in double quotes), and ignore the cases where the phrase "be up to" is meant.

The implied state of change by "until" or "till" in English probably does not exist in other languages, such as Chinese, and possibly French, Spanish, or German (e.g. "Les restructurations ne se traduisent pas jusqu'ici dans les inscriptions à Pôle emploi", literally meaning "So far the restructuring does not result in enrollment at the employment center", and Google translator uses the phrase "so far" for "jusqu'ic").