Could you please translate the following sentence from English to Traditional Chinese? "I am so sorry it has taken so long to reply to your letter" or "I am so sorry it has taken so long to write back" Something along the lines of those two - whatever someone would say if they were really sorry because they were so late in replying to a letter/email. Thanks!

Would someone be willing to record a short (a paragraph) speech for me in Mandarin Chinese? Hello, I have written a speech for me to say in Mandarin Chinese - it's about one paragraph long. If I give the Chinese characters, would someone be willing to say it out loud and record it (like on Audacity or some other program) for me? It would be really great if I could have a recording of it by a Native Mandarin Chinese speaker, with really good pronunciation, to listen to over and over, just to get it all in my head...Please let me know if you are willing, and I'll send it to you! Thank you so much!Hey everyone - thank you so much for the reply! Below I shall put my small speech. I don't want to waste people's time in recording something when other people have done it, but at the same time, it would be excellent to have a few different versions (like one or two by two different males and one or two by two different females)...but I'm not sure how to coordinate this... Would it work if, who ever wants to do it can comment again and say they are for sure doing it, and then, once 2-4 different people have commented, I think that will be enough - sound good? Also, I am going to be out of town from Thursday to Saturday, so if you comment/record and are hoping for a response, I will only be able to respond Saturday evening. Please send any recordings to: [email protected] with something in the subject line about it being a recording. You all are so friendly and helpful, 謝謝! 大家好，我的名字叫“亞當哈密爾頓”。我住在美國科羅拉多州，波德鎮。我和我的父母親和兩個哥哥住在一起。我的大哥現在在唸大學。二哥和我是雙胞胎，他目前在阿根廷，是國際扶輪社的交換學生。波德是一個大學城，西邊靠山，東邊是一片平原。夏天很暖和，冬天下很多雪。我不喜歡雪天。我甚至不喜歡談有關下雪的事；所以，我將談一些我喜歡的事。我喜歡心理學，我也喜歡打乒乓球和羽毛球。我愛喝茶，希望有機會在臺灣能嚐到新鮮的茶葉泡的茶。我愛學習不同的文化和語言，還有世界上各種不同的菜餚。我認為了解不同的文化是達到世界和平是很重要的方法。但是， 假如只是靠著教科書或是電腦來學習不同的文化和語言，是沒有辦法讓我們了解其它的文化和達到世界的和平。 非常謝謝 大家，讓我能分享你們的語言，文化和生活方式。

Learn Chinese Characters With Etymology/Genealogy?

I have been intrigued by the idea of learning Chinese characters by basing them all around simpler characters that build up to them. I don’t really care about the accuracy of the etymology of the characters, but what I really want is a systematic way to remember characters. I have tried “Remembering Traditional Hanzi 1” by  Heisig and Richardson (which I realize is not meant to be etymological, but mnemonic) , but I can’t say I like it too much. I like the philosophy of it, but I see a few major problems with it.

And so, I turned to “Chinese Characters A Genealogy and Dictionary”. The author claims that over 4,000 characters can be made with just 182 pictographs and ideographs, and that with these 182 fundamental characters, one can derive the meaning, or both the meaning and the pronunciation of a character. What I plan to do is just go though the book’s charts and make flashcards out of each of the characters in the charts with their meanings and mnemonics and such (it is available online at zhongwen.com). I honestly haven’t learned too much form this book so far, as I just got it, but I was wondering, can anyone who has used it, comment on it’s efficiency in using the base 182 pictographs/ideographs as mnemonics to help remember the characters? Also, could someone explain to me how one can infer the pronunciation from the pictographs/ideographs? For example, the character for “government department” (1,10) is pronounced “ya2” but says that it derives it’s phonetic pronunciation form the character “I, we” (1, 5) which is pronounced “wu2” ...I don’t see the connection, accept that they are both the second tone...Also, if you could comment on the accuracy of this book (as I think I have seen several mistakes in pinyin tone markings) that would be great also.

Anyways, then I came across the book “Chinese Etymology” by Tienzen (Jeh-Tween) Gong. The author claims that:

<ol> <li style="list-style-type: decimal; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">“Chinese written word system is an 100% root word system with only 220 root words, and it could be simpler than the high school geometry.”</li> <li style="list-style-type: decimal; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">“The original meaning of every Chinese word can be read out loud from its face, and any high school student who did not know a single Chinese character could master the Chinese word system within six months.” (<a href="http://www.chinese-word-roots.org/">http://www.chinese-word-roots.org/</a>)</li> </ol>

He goes on to talk about the system and how someone won a world record with it and such. The problem is that the book is quite (and when I say quite, I mean very, very) expensive - $700. So, I was wondering if anyone has used this book, what they think of it, if it works, if his claims are true, etc. I am willing to buy it if it actually works, but $700 is a lot to spend to find out it doesn’t work.

Thanks!

Adam