Just a short question

[Kistitkos]

Hi! I don't speak any Chinese but I need to know, how do Chinese people say "scared eyes". I tried to find it out using Google Translator but I want to be sure about the thing. (Please, give your answer in Pinyin, too!)

[Daan]

What exactly do you mean by "scared eyes"?

[tooironic]

Yeah. A context - or even a complete sentence - would be helpful.

[Kenny同志]

Inspired by the phrase "scared eyes", I vision a situation in which someone is so scared that his fear can be seen from his eyes. The phrase can be interpreted or translated as in Chinese:

畏惧(恐惧depending on the context)的眼神

wei4ju4 de4 yan3shen2

The additon (恐惧) was inspired by Guoke's post.

Edited February 14, 2010 at 08:58 AM by kenny2006woo

[Guoke]

恐惧的双眼 or

一双恐惧的眼睛

[Kistitkos]

The situation is something like that:

There is a Chinese orphan girl with no name, but she always looks at the people as if she would fear from everything. That's why the others begin to call her "the girl with scared eyes" (maybe the "scared look" expresses better what I mean). And from this thing will be shortly a nickname ("scared eyes"). So it will work as the Native American people's names, for example Sitting Bull, Little Turtle etc.

I know it's a bit strange. I hope it can help at the translation, and thank you for your answers!

[pancake]

Or you could just not burden a poor orphan girl with a nickname that reflects what I am assuming will be a temporary phase in her development? Sounds a bit cruel to me.

[Kenny同志]

Or you could just not burden a poor orphan girl with a nickname that reflects what I am assuming will be a temporary phase in her development? Sounds a bit cruel to me.

Same here.

[tooironic]

Well, maybe s/he's writing a short story.

[Kistitkos]

Yes, it's cruel but like Tooironic said it will be a short roman, in which the little girl has such cruel surroundings. She must find a way out from the situation, find out how to be more determined, how to handle the insults and so on... And I thought the no-real-name thing but especially such a nickname could be one of the biggest insults which has quite an effect on the girl's life.

Oh, and I'm a "she" person My real name is Agnes and my nickname Kistitkos means "little secret" in my native language, Hungarian.

[pancake]

Oh, I understand.

Good luck with your story, maybe you can post some excerpts here when you're done? (Unless you plan to write it in Hungarian:))

[Daan]

So you're looking for a Chinese name then that means something like "scared eyes"? I'm assuming you want that in Hanyu pinyin (transcription using the Latin alphabet) rather than characters?

[Kistitkos]

@ pancake

Thank you! I write it in Hungarian, because so it's much easier for me, but I will try to translate some parts in English, too. I'm far from perfect which belongs to the past tenses, but practice makes perfect...

I have seen in your profile that you can speak also Swedish. How have you found the possibility to learn it? I'm really interested in the theme "Sweden", because I will learn scandinavistic at the university (if I will be able to get into that department).

@ Daan

Yes, for me it would be easier, if I become the answer in Pinyin!

[pancake]

Kistitkos: Cool, will be looking forward to the translated English bits then.

Swedish is my native language, but I am told it's not that difficult to learn as a second language either. Especially since you already know English: they are both in the same language family so there is a fair number of cognates and whatnot to help. Actually, I think Finnish is related to Hungarian somehow, so you're covered whichever Scandinavian language you choose to pick up.

Just out of interest, what makes you want to learn Swedish?

[Kistitkos]

Well, Lapland, The wonderful adventures of Nils Holgersson, ABBA, Friends and Lars Winnerbäck's music... And secondly, because I wanted to learn a foreign language which resembles the German. At first I thought that I'll choose Germanistic, but sincerely, German was a bit annoying for me (I learn it for eight years), then I've heard that in our capital it's possible to learn a Scandinavian language, too. So, this is how the idea came. After the university I could be an interpreter or work at a travel agency - both sound good for me

It's true, Finnish and Hungarian are related to each other, but they resemble only in the grammatical structure. Which belongs to the words, they are totally different, I just look goggle-eyed when I hear the Finnish speech. But I think it's also a great language!

So, did you learn Chinese as a foreign language? That's a great performance, for me it seems to be very complicated...

[chrix]

Here's a list of Finnish-Hungarian cognates: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/johanna.laakso/Hki/f-h-ety.html

[Kistitkos]

Thank you, this list is really interesting! As I see, you are also a fan of languages

[Daan]

I notice no one has put forward a suggestion for a name yet, but can't really think of anything decent myself. Perhaps a native speaker would have a good idea...kenny, skylee?