February 19, 2003

the weird words you learn from the news

in chinese class, we take most of our class materials from recent newspapers. i've done this before, but the chaotic state of current events is starting to permeate through to my chinese vocabulary. i now know more words describing disasters, accidents, explosions, fires, war, diplomacy, nuclear weapons, and terrorism than i ever thought i'd learn. i know the word for "arson," "melancholia" (the mental ailment the korean train arsonist suffered from), three different words for fleeing danger, and different words indicating the subtle difference between the terms for "looting" and "rioting", to simply "incite" or to "incite violence", and several modifiers on "attack" (surprise attack, counterattack, overwhelming attack). what a crazy world.

Posted by cce at February 19, 2003 08:16 PM | TrackBack
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