About the name
October 13th, 2005 by MarkWell, I must say I’m a bit bummed out that the address I wanted, daotingtushuo is taken by some Singaporean fellow who isn’t even posting on it. For those of you who don’t know Chinese, (道聽途說) means “street-hear, path-say” or “rumors/groundless talk”. And that pretty much sums up the kind of blog I want.
Since I couldn’t get , I just bastardized it into doubting to shuo. If the doubting to is taken as , the title means “hear speech on the street and just say it” as I wrote above. However, if only the to is converted to Chinese, we have doubting(途說). This would mean “doubting the rumors”, which is, nearly the opposite meaning.
:
October 27th, 2005 at 5:57 am
Nice play on words.
similar to my site http://www.hanzismatter.com
you can either read it as:
hanzi smatter
or
hanzi matter
October 28th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Wow… I’ve looked at that site about 10 times and never realized that. The I always read it as
hanzi smatter
The plural “s” on a Chinese word just never entered my mind. The second reading fits your site well though:
hanzis matter
May 11th, 2006 at 1:09 am
Hi,
I am so surprised that you visited my podcast!
It is our assignment to post responses to the class,
and I thought our teacher was the only who would
check on it…
Well, thank you for leaving a message.
About the name “dàotīngtúshuō,” I think it is really
interesting, and I like it!
I guess I would never have figured out
what it means without your explanation, and probably it would remain a mystery to me for the whole life.
Ha ha, thank you again for it!
October 21st, 2006 at 12:51 am
I thought it meant “afraid to speak (i.e., in one’s beginner’s Chinese)”
July 8th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
塗 should be 途. It means ‘way’. So, the phrase would be 道听途说, and it means literally something you heard from street/way/road/avenue. It implies that something without verification or foundation, and it’s just a baseless rumor.
‘Smear say’ is a stretch, which you can never find in a Chinese dictionary.
July 9th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Thanks for catching the typo, Nick. You found my first post! As long as I’m in Taiwan, though, I’ll be sticking with traditional characters.