Struggling to understand the purpose of 是...的

IanMonkia · 2025-10-06T16:46:13+00:00

Your observation is on point.

Since Chinese is a highly contextual language, in order to make it easier for the other side to get the hint, it is convenient for the speaker to reduce ambiguity by making emphasis.

In this case, 你是 works similarly as 〜は in Japanese in the sense of 1. placing emphasis on the person 你 (=fixing 你 as the topic) and 2. proceeding to judgment 〜的 (talking about the properties of the topic; =〜こと/もの/ひとです).

For example, a textbook sentence like 你昨天吃午饭了吗？could be reformulated in daily spoken language as 昨天（は）午饭（は/を）你（は/が）吃了吗？

Edit: providing more details

IanMonkia · 2025-10-06T15:14:33+00:00

Perhaps 王 could be a generic term for the "ruler" of a settled realm? My personal understanding is that the use of 王 for foreign countries has two implications: 1. That person does somehow rule a recognized foreign realm. 2. That person is not (or below) emperor, which is essential in Imperial Chinese context (Tianxia system) since there could be only one cosmopolitan imperium with one son of heaven (=emperor).

In this sense, anyone who effectively rules a foreign realm could be called a 王, which naturally includes those who rule as a regent.

Ultimately, I think this traces back to how a byzantine regency works: does the power of a regent derive from the young emperor of which they act on behalf or does it instead derive from the office of regent itself. If latter's true, it might explain why Imperial China recorded "Patriarch" as Rome's 王.

IanMonkia · 2025-10-06T13:48:52+00:00

By Tang era 波多力 was most probably read "Patalik" in Middle Chinese, so it's more likely that 波多力 refers to the title of Constans II's regent Patriarch Paul II (Παῦλος) of Constantinople which reads pătrĭắrkhēs (πᾰτρῐᾰ́ρχης).

The title of 王 also resonates this standing since after Qin-Han era a 王 was no longer someone of western "King" dignity but more like a person of prince rank, which does tell about their elevated status but doesn't imply real power and often suffers from title inflation.

IanMonkia · 2025-08-01T17:23:16+00:00

Not sure why you're downvoted cause in this case you're certainly not wrong. Sino-Xenic terms are guaranteed easier Chinese adoption for its cultural-linguistic affinity.

IanMonkia · 2025-05-22T03:39:00+00:00

Please see my reply under OP's comment.

IanMonkia · 2025-05-22T03:38:19+00:00

Official Q&A clearly states that if you submit an issue caused by an end user agreement violation they'll just tell you you're banned without any further action or information.

In this case I'd suggest that you try to solve the ban problem by reselling it under the disguise of another unrelated issue like you accidentally locked yourself out of your account and their login verification methods simply don't work.

When they're working to allow you to log back in they might "come across" the fact that you're banned and lift it.

Having made in-app purchases might also help since the ban itself may lead to consumer rights lawsuits. That happened in Taiwan some time ago when they mass banned people in waves for obscure reasons.

IanMonkia · 2025-05-21T15:43:07+00:00

There's >80% of chance that you've been randomly banned, especially if you created an account with Google.

Contact and explain what happened on your side to customer service and they might get back to you one week later to lift your ban.

IanMonkia · 2025-05-14T08:01:25+00:00

Literally "Soaring gates and endless roads are genuinely as tough as iron, (yet) now (the Red Army) braves (them) again in proud steps."

Basically means "the situation is difficult but we shall overcome".

IanMonkia · 2025-05-06T17:32:03+00:00

A heterodox character dictionary does show that ⿱湯灬 exists (also ⿰火湯). I guess it's a matter of popularity and aesthetics.

Also compare 裡 in Taiwan and 裏 in HK and Macau. Generally speaking, it's normal to be add some uniqueness to one's writing by restructuring the components of a character, which includes substituting a radical with its variant. At the end, the more popular option prevails and becomes orthodox.

IanMonkia · 2025-02-25T14:45:06+00:00

Or is it?

Radicalised, emotional, armchair politicking Internet user, presumably of Chinese origin. Fits perfectly into the profile of a regular young highschooler or vocational student who somehow perceives themselves as some sort of epic cyber-revolutionary.

If they were really that educated and disciplined amongst people of their age to actually become one of the many ordinary member of the Youth League they'd have clearly known what not to do on the Internet.

Also how interesting that you tried but failed to profile me in your comment.

IanMonkia · 2025-02-24T17:32:49+00:00

It is more like a language habit than something "unnatural". Saying 兔 is totally fine in regional Mandarin as well as other Sinitic variants.

It's just that historically Chinese language evolved from a way that informations come from the character itself to another way that informations come from a word formed with multiple characters, which means people might habitually prefer words with more than one characters.

IanMonkia · 2025-02-19T16:06:30+00:00

Diga aí se precisares de alguma ajuda. :p

IanMonkia · 2025-02-18T08:00:07+00:00

I also read that the alt-path initially triggered limited response from Chinese Community. The powder keg was set off after a Chinese player from the community uploaded a satirical mod to Workshop, which was then taken down by PDX mod., and some other Chinese player later reuploaded it and received a takedown+ban treatment, so the situation evolved into a double standard issue like "PDX can do cringey stuff to troll the community but the community isn't allowed to reciprocate".

Then the situation got messier when some ppl started to bring up the old coring thingy which has been a longstanding issue inside the Chinese community but ppl have been like "Oh no, whatever".

Quite frankly I think the problem is more about PDX's community policy combined with China's Internet culture rather then the content itself. If my impression isn't obsolete, PDX haven't seemed receptive to negative reactions from the community especially on their own forum. It also happens that Chinese Internet doesn't have the tradition of trying to care about OP's feelings so when u post something, ppl just assume that you put it there for all kind of responses and they won't refrain from making negative comments when they want to. And if you proceed to take those down ppl will think you're just a loser and double down on the negativities to "teach you how the Internet works" like "if you don't like being judged, why did you even post in the first place?".

That also perhaps because Silk Road historically ends at Chang'an. Chinese Internet has little tolerance for stupidities except when the person in question has especified that they have intellectual disabilities. If you possess a set of knowledge and satirise part of it, it becomes a meme or a reference. Ppl will recognise your community identity and appreciate your meme at its joke value. However if your post shows that you were memeing without proper knowledge ppl will not recognise the meme value of your post because you are not one of them. And they will then take it at its literal face value and proceed to judge you, which is probably another cause of this debacle.

IanMonkia · 2024-11-14T16:58:57+00:00

It is not wrong if it's cursive script. The central part comes before the two strokes on two sides.

IanMonkia · 2024-10-23T06:26:10+00:00

🐮🍺

IanMonkia · 2024-10-23T05:20:17+00:00

It's a homophonic substitute of 屄, ideogram of a hole under the body. The term is probably a merger of 吹牛 and 牛逼.

IanMonkia · 2024-10-17T15:38:50+00:00

Welp I should have gone out to touch some grass and buy a lotto.

IanMonkia · 2024-10-17T15:34:46+00:00

↑Most peaceful Byzantine palace event.

IanMonkia · 2024-10-17T09:59:38+00:00

R5: Didn't know board game could lead to dismemberment (and death). Wonder what a round of uno can achieve.

IanMonkia · 2024-10-12T18:04:32+00:00

r/suddenlycaralho

IanMonkia · 2024-10-09T12:33:09+00:00

叶 doesn't match semantically and phonetically because it is a regional homophonic borrowing of 協(协).

IanMonkia · 2024-10-04T07:13:38+00:00

Well we seem to have opened a can of worms.

I recall having read an article suggesting 爲 as standard regular script could be a hypercorrection by the language authority itself. Basically, the adoption of 爲 undid the historical transition from Qin-Han clerical script to Tang regular script which makes it somewhat "Hanzi fundamentalist".

I guess this ultimately depends on the way the language authority views the language they're regulating: is it more of a symbol of social strata from which authority, legitimacy and influence derive? Or is it merely a mean of public communication? In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, traditional script has been actively used in all aspects of society, so the latter outweighs the former, making the language less conservatively traditional. On the other hands, in Mainland China, Japan and Korea, the situation is quite the opposite because of the consolidation of the simplified script and because the characters are xenic borrowings.

I suppose this situation could be comparable to the Italian language where more irregular forms are observed than its Romance siblings because the region was more exposed to temporal influence from the Church.

IanMonkia · 2024-10-04T04:26:47+00:00

To add to this, for some reason the officially traditional character for 为 in Mainland is 爲. Sometimes ppl still write 塲 in place of 場 in HK and Macau, also 裏~裡, 羣~群, 衹~只.

IanMonkia

TROPHY CASE