| Change log entry 36887 | |
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| Processed by: | richwarm (2011-07-16 03:32:07 GMT) |
| Comment: |
I'm sorry. On reflection, I think Alan was right to suggest the removal of the article "an" in "an acquaintance". 泛泛之交 is really the (casual) association or relationship (or 交) -- what one might term "acquaintanceship" -- rather than the people who have that sort of relationship. Otherwise 我跟两位编辑有泛泛之交。 might mean "I and the two editors have some acquaintances." rather than "I know the two editors slightly." In spite of the following quote, I was tempted to use "acquaintanceship" in the definition, so our definition would not be taken to mean "an acquaintance". "Your spell-checker won’t catch acquaintanceship, but the word serves no purpose in the language. The suffix -ship adds nothing, and acquaintanceship could always be replaced with the shorter acquaintance. " ---- http://www.grammarist.com/usage/acquaintanceship/ In a word-for-word translation, one could use "acquaintance" in the countable sense, and get a satisfactory result: 他俩只是泛泛之交。"The two of them are casual acaquaintances." but it really means "The two of them have a casual acquaintanceship." |
| Diff: |
- 泛泛之交 泛泛之交 [fan4 fan4 zhi1 jiao1] /an acquaintance/ + 泛泛之交 泛泛之交 [fan4 fan4 zhi1 jiao1] /nodding acquaintance/slight familiarity/ |