Okay, so, there's a word/phrase from "Safe" which they write out phoenetically in the captions I believe as as "luh-se" and translates, according to the script, as "garbage."

However, according to my dictionary, garbage is "lājī" and that isn't pronounced anything like the above.

So what I'm looking for is the Hanyu Pinyin for whatever word they thought they were using, if that makes sense... I've gone through the entire "L" section of my Mandarin dictionary, and come up blank.

help?

Found the HTML supported characters for vowels with macrons!

I am now going crazy, fixing all the Mandarin all over my sites, in my glossary, etc.

squeeeeeeeeeee!

Unicode Value	HTML Code	Letter	Letter with Macron in Your Browser
			Heading	Normal Text	Fixed Width
0100	Ā	A	Ā	Ā	Ā
0101	ā	a	ā	ā	ā
0112	Ē	E	Ē	Ē	Ē
0113	ē	e	ē	ē	ē
012A	Ī	I	Ī	Ī	Ī
012B	ī	i	ī	ī	ī
014C	Ō	O	Ō	Ō	Ō
014D	ō	o	ō	ō	ō
016A	Ū	U	Ū	Ū	Ū
016B	ū	u	ū	ū	ū

So, in celebration of the first draft of Lex Talionis being sent off to be whipped into shape by betas, I have updated my glossary of "Useful Mandarin for Firefly authors" and if anybody out there actually, you know, speaks Mandarin, and can point out all of the lovely fuck-ups, I would greatly appreciate it, as much of this was culled from the web, as well as from Insight Pocket Travel Dictionary: Chinese (ISBN 1-58573-200-1)

( glossary )

needless to say, I am still tracking down the hanyu pinyin for a lot of the Mandarin used on the show, and still annoyed at the fact that half the diacritical marks I need aren't supported in HTML *sigh*

I have found a phrase in Mandarin that I am now madly in love with, and plan to encorporate into every day speach. And my Chinese co-worker just cracked her ass up giving me the pinyin. So it must be good, right?

daì ruò mù ji   dumb as a wooden chicken

(in actuality, the first a and last i are long vowels with a whatchamacallit on top. I've just lost the noun, but straight line on top, you know what I'm talking about... Alas, as I've bewailed before in my LJ, HTML doesn't include those codes yet, so I can't add it. Feh.)

Dood. There are so many possibilities!

So, I finally got around to updating my glossary, which I've been keeping for my fic, and just general reference purposes. So, thought I'd share. Also, if you spot any errors, feel free to let me know! Most of it comes from Insight Pocket Travel Dictionary: Chinese (ISBN 1-58573-200-1), IMNSHO the best damn Chinese dictionary ever in the history of the 'verse ever as it has all the swear words, and entire sections of colloquial and derogatory and vulgar stuff. Woo!

( la la Mandarin la la )

ETA: I am also damned entertained by this web columnist whose work I'm going to have to mine for words/phrases as well...

I have discovered that there is a major problem with writing fanfic involving hanyu pinyin...

In the latest version of Word, I have extra character sets that allow me to make long vowels (a line on top the vowels). However, these character sets (with the diacritical marks I need, gorrammit--the macron and caron) don't appear to exist (yet) for use in HTML.

Grr. Bastards!

In any case, ( have some Mandarin that's way damn useful for Firefly! )