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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 ] |
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