Rock 'n Roll music in Chinese is 摇滚音乐 (yao gun yin yue), which literally means to rock and to roll music or rocking rolling music or something to that effect. How 'bout that! Of course when the teacher was trying to explain rocking and rolling, I thought she meant a cartwheel because she was like, "so yao means to rock, like side to side, and gun means to roll," so I thought, "what happens when you roll after rocking side to side? Sounds like a cartwheel to me." I don't think the teacher thought it was funny, but I wasn't trying to be funny anyway, I really thought it meant a cartwheel!
I learned that Hindi and English are in the same large language family, hence the name Indo-Europoean. We watched a movie in my Language in US Society class that talked all about the history of English. It was very fascinating to see how similar it was to German way back in the day before the French took over part of England and Frenchified it. The film made me want to hopo on a plane to England and go study all the different accents there. One thing I didn't understand is how the linguists know what English actually sounded like hundreds of years ago. I guess they can conjecture to a point based on regional dialects of English, but it still seems kind of fishy to me.
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6 comments:
Does the literalness of "rock and roll" influence how the Chinese dance to Rock and Roll?
if you mean, "do they do cartwheels when the rock and roll?" the answer is no. But they do seem to rock a little harder than we do, but I'm not sure that it has anything to do with the literalness of "rock and roll." Maybe I could make a masters thesis out of this question someday...
oh good... I was afraid this was leading to the, "Don't Drink and Cartwheel" story...
There are some cheap flights to London... alas, you can't use reward points to get there...
(perchance don't you think "alas" is a word that should be used more...)
I do indeed concur, alas people would think it odd were I to use it in this day in age.
Actually, I did see that there are some pretty cheap flights to London, and now that I've sold the Jag, I guess I'm not quite as broke as I was before, but I'm also thinking of trying to save up for a trip to Chile/Argentina for spring break...
Hey! I didn't know you sold the jag! Perchance could you give us a little insight into this? An entry into thy blog perchance?
Well, I did mention it in my Fall Break Wrap-up blog, but yes, as soon as the car has been shipped and the check has been deposited and the transaction is all said and done with, I will write about it
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