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").

Translation of "班长"

[quote]原帖由 lavender0914 于 2008-8-19 09:22 发表
I hope our monitor is all right now. 我希望班长已经一切正常。[/quote]

I vaguely remember the translation of "班长" to "monitor" in some Chinese-English dictionary. That's misleading, to put it nicely. I know exactly what a 班长 is. In case anybody had a chance to watch the American TV series produced by PBS (Public Broadcast Station) a few days ago, the interview with a Chinese 班长 student used the term "class president". I think that's a fair translation, although it can only be understood by American audience based on the context, because there's no such role among the students in the US.

Off-topic: Post a message and sign with real name

>> ...
>> Yong Huang

> 楼上每次发帖子都要署名累不累？

It's actually a well established etiquette on the Internet, or Netiquette as some call it. Chinese forums are different for some reason, probably because most members are younger. But if you post questions to a forum non-Chinese participate in, lack of a name at the end is not polite. See
http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/10-2007/msg00470.html
---begin quote---
By the way, please note that many people on this list usually do not respond
to questions posted by anonymous parties. Myself included. In the future,
if you want help, please have the good manners to identify yourself. At
least be good enough to provide a name more meaningful than "anysql".
---end quote---

(The user anysql is my Chinese friend doing Oracle DBA work in Shanghai. He's a good guy by the way.)

Some people use forum signature to automatically sign at the end to save typing. You can do so too.