See what Chinese Astrology Says about your luck in 2007!

freakyqi

I mean the ONE character BEN, what is the character, I know the whole phrase and I know MING and NIAN, I don't know what BEN means by itself.

brianzhang

i can't send posts with any chinese charactors!
well. i will PM you something,hope that works!

ivy20025

I don't know what ben means either...

so who knows?

any astrologist here?

brianzhang

means that end of that special cycle,
or means just the birth year in that special cycle!

mira_mio

Originally posted by freakyqi at 2007-3-10 21:52
I mean the ONE character BEN, what is the character, I know the whole phrase and I know MING and NIAN, I don't know what BEN means by itself.

actualy "ben" and "ming" goes together, nian alone means "year", "ben ming" =本命, literal translation "self fate/life". My benmingnian will be 2010, tiger year!

freakyqi

Thanks for the PM brian!

Now for those who want a breakdown of BENMINGNIAN, here goes....
(please remember I am a mere child of chinese, and have no business teaching it )

BEN3  MING2  NIAN2

本        běn        
        roots or stems of plants / origin / source / this / the current / root / foundation / basis / (a measure word)

明        míng        
        clear / bright / to understand / next / the Ming dynasty

年        nián        
        year

Together, ming2nian2 means next year, or the coming year.
With ben3, it means that this coming year is your 'origin, root' year, or... the "year you were born" year.


I love chinese!

Below are two dictionaries. The first one is the best, easiest to use, and the thing I like is that... for example, do you see all the terms between the slashes in the definitions above? You can click on each of those to get MORE words that mean the same thing. So if I look up NIAN2 and it says "year", and I click on "year", it gives me a new list:
174 entries found
年        nián        
        year
载        zǎi        
        year
亗        suì        
        harvest; year; age
歳        suì        
        year; age; harvest
龝        qiū        
        autumn, fall; year
朞        jī        
        full year, anniversary

....AND MORE, MUCH MORE!!!
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/dictionary.html?dico
It has other language dictionaries too.

Another one, especially if you know or want to study hanzi, is this one:
http://zhongwen.com/
It links hanzi together in interesting and logical ways, but could be confusing if you're a beginner or if you only want a quick definition.

:D

[ Last edited by freakyqi at 2007-3-11 12:16 PM ]