Why does Hong Kong use a different spoken and written language? In Hong Kong, Cantonese is used for speaking and Traditional Chinese is used for writing. However, Cantonese does indeed have it's own writing system (which I've seen in Whatsapp chats, lyrics of music videos, etc;). This tends to cause confusion, because the characters used are treated differently than standard written Chinese.

For example: 啲

My questions are:

I've always wondered, wouldn't it be simpler if Hong Kong adapted the written version of Cantonese in place of Traditional Chinese?

or:

Incorporate spoken Cantonese characters in the Master list of all Traditional Chinese characters?

or:

Eliminate the use of Cantonese characters and instead use just Jyuntping/ Yale Romanization (as in Mainland China, Pinyin input is used)

Hong Kong using Standard Written Chinese instead of Written Cantonese because  Standard Written Chinese (SWC) is the national standard. Most non-Cantonese speakers might not understand Written Cantonese
Some example:

English: "I hate him very much"
Standard Written Chinese: "我很討厭他"
Written Cantonese: "我好憎佢"

~

English: "who ate my apple?"
Standard Written Chinese: "誰吃了我的萍果?"
Written Cantonese: "邊個食咗我個萍果?"

I think Mandarin speaker would have hard time understanding the meaning of '邊個'
Actually, some less formal publications like comic and gossip column do allow  the use of written Cantonese
As for eliminate the use of Written Cantonese, it is a unreasonable suggestion. Spoken and written Cantonese are important parts of our heritage. They will not be abandoned as long as there are still Cantonese alive


When 少 is used in someone's name, is it always pronounced shào？ 少 can either be pronounced as shào or shǎo. But when used in names, is it always pronounced as shào?

Because shào and shǎo has different meaning. shǎo means few/little, and shào means young. When used in names, it is usually intended to address a young person respectfully.

As a given name or as a part of given name, shǎo is very uncommon, yet shào is not. 少 as surname is also uncommon.


Is there an authoritative reference for the stroke order of simplifed characters? It seems various people often have various ways to write the same characters. For instance, I have seen the radical "忄" being written in three different ways (left, middle, right; left, right, middle; and middle, left, right) which is a lot for such a small radical. Chinese teachers sometime don't even agree on what should be the correct stroke order.

So is there any authoritative source on what the correct stroke order for a character should be? Perhaps some book published by the government?

You can reference 《现代汉语通用字笔顺规范》 published by the Ministry of Education of PRC, which includes the stroke order of over 7000 daily used simplified Chinese characters.

If you want to find some traditional Chinese stroke order resources, check this


What's a 调警? (In a Command Center (指挥中心)) 指挥中心里头的调警是什么？

调警 in a Command Center is what kind of policeman?

What is its English equivalent?

Often seen like this: 指挥中心调警称....

Three possibilities:

1) 调警 as an internal police term

Examples:

... 指令通过光纤迅速传递到消防大队、派出所、交警中队等处警单位，提高了调警速度和准确性。
通过110快速调警处置，成功抓获现行违法犯罪嫌疑人91人、救助群众165人

In this context, it means "dispatch"(like 911 dispatch).

It is rarely used outside of police force. So civilians rarely heard of it and may consider it as a wrong word.

2） You split the sentence wrong

Examples:

哈尔滨调警用直升机搜捕三逃犯

It is short for 调用, meaning "make use of". Because 警用直升机(police helicopter) also has a 用 in it, omitting the 用 in 调用 would make the sentence less redundant.

3) Short for 调用警力(transfer police force)

Examples:

采用异地调警的方式分别从虹桥分局....


Special meanings applied to numbers 0 - 10 From what I understand:

4 or 四 means death
8 is similar to 发 as in 发财
9 is somehow related to the emporer or is the emporer's number

Can someone please provide the meanings (if they exist) for each of the different numbers 0 - 10?

There is a Wikipedia article dedicated to this, Numbers in Chinese culture; it states that numbers are divided in two categories, lucky and unlucky numbers.

Lucky Numbers:

二, the number 2: There is a saying that states "Good things come in pairs", for this reason many things in China seem to be "presented" in pairs of two, since this is considered a positive number;
三, the number 3: It's considered lucky because it's similar to the character for "birth", 生.
五, the number 5: This number is associated with the Five Elements (Earth, Water, Wind, Fire and Metal) and also with the Emperor of China; the Tianamen Gate has five arches;
六, the number 6: The number six pronounced as liù, is similar to the character 流 (liú) which means "to flow". This is considered lucky in business. Side-note: I've read elsewhere that objects with this number or with the string with three 6 in a row are considered very lucky, and people will try to buy such things (such as phone numbers). It's stated in this page, "Deciphering The Meaning Of Chinese Numbers";
七, the number 7: It's a lucky number for relationships.
八, the number 8: It sounds similar to the word for "prosper" or "wealth" 發 (fā), short for "發財".
九, the number 9: This number, like 五, was historically associated with the Emperor of China. As it's stated in that article, "before the establishment of the imperial examinations officials were organized in the nine-rank system, the nine bestowments were rewards the Emperor made for officials of extraordinary capacity and loyalty, while the nine familial exterminations was one of the harshest punishments the Emperor sentenced; the Emperor's robes often had nine dragons, and Chinese mythology held that the dragon has nine children."

Unlucky Numbers:

四, the number 4: As you said, this number is associated with death, 死 (sǐ). This happens in Japanese as well, by the way, both 四 and 死, can be read as "shi". Following the same logic for the number 6, objects/things with this number are avoided, such as floors... A similar attitude in westerner countries which miss the 13th floor, for example.

Some numbers that were considered as lucky, can be considered unlucky too:

五, the number 5: It's also associated to the character 無 (wú) "not". If associated with something bad, it can become positive, such as in the number 54, because it means "not + death". 528, instead might mean "no easy fortune for me".
六, the number 6: "Six in Cantonese which has a similar pronunciation to that of "lok6" (落, meaning, to drop, fall, or decline)"
七, the number 7: As stated in the article this number "is considered spiritist or ghostly". However, since the 7th day of the month, in the Chinese lunar calendar, is Valentine's Day, this number is not usually associated with bad luck.

I tried to summarize most of the content here, but check the page for more info and other meanings of complex numbers.


Is there any distinction between 二百 (èrbǎi) and 两百 (liǎng bǎi) which both mean "two hundred"? Both 二百 (èrbǎi) and 两百 (liǎng bǎi) mean "two hundred".  Baidu gives them 55.1 million and 31.5 million hits, respectively, indicating 二百 is somewhat more common.  I'm wondering if there's any difference between the two, or if they're identical.

Question: Is there any distinction between 二百 and 两百?

Baidu Zhidao suggest people in the south of China prefer 两百, but I'm not sure if this is accurate.

This question does not apply here: Number two in chinese: 二 vs 两. I'm aware both are acceptable for meaning "two hundred".

This is more idiolectal. I personally use more 两百, which are also the preference of the most people I met within so many years.

However, in some context, it should be fixed. For example, we say someone is 二百五 which  means someone is an idiot. In this context, 二百五 sounds idiomatic.


How to convert from hanyu pinyin to IPA? Where can I find a table showing the relation between Hanyu pinyin spelling and IPA for all phonemes in Mandarin?

Personally I think the IPA given in the Wikipedia page for Pinyin is organized well and the symbols don't change like other pages I've seen, i.e.  the browser changes to other symbols ruining the IPA scheme.

Like it has been said, the IPA transcription might change in some words endings when you transcribe real speech, so you must be aware of that and know what the different symbols mean.


Is it correct to use 首都 for capital of province? I am trying to do a cultural project on the city of Harbin. However, I'm not sure if it is correct to say this. I found out that Harbin was the capital of the province of Heilongjiang. If I said, 哈尔滨是黑龙江的首都, would it make sense since 首都 means capital.

No, you should use 省会 (provincial capital) instead, i.e. 哈尔滨是黑龙江的省会. You could also use 省城 (in a little old-style), or 首府 (especially for 自治区(autonomous region)).

首都 is only used for the capital of a country, e.g.北京是中国的首都.


What is the function of 一次 in "去一次"? I came across these translated examples:

[Talking about a place]:

明年夏天我打算去一次。
Mínɡnián xiàtiān wǒ dǎsuàn qù yí cì。
I plan to go there next summer.

三年以前我去过上海，去年我又去了一次，明年我想再去一次。
Sān nián yǐqián wǒ qùguò shànghǎi, qùnián wǒ yòu qùle yīcì, míngnián wǒ xiǎng zài qù yīcì.
I went to Shanghai three years ago, I went there again last year, and I want to go again next year.

In English (or Spanish), typically we would not say "you go one time to a place", one time is already implied in the verb to go and it feels weird to state it unless you want to emphasize for some reason "you are going just one time". Why 一次 is specified in these examples? Previously, I had understood the use of 一次 in the second example was required for 又 and 再, however the first example does not have any special structure.

Grammatically, 次 is a verbal classifier (a classifier proper), which expresses how many times the action indicated by the verb occurs. The origin of your confusion comes because classifiers are not used in English but they are natural in Chinese.
Classifiers (verbal or nominal) must come with a numeral phrase. In this sense, the numeral 一 (one) might be interpreted here having more a grammatical function than a semantic function (i.e., it doesn't carry enough meaning to be translated in the target language). Indeed, it is possible to omit the entire numeral phrase 一次 and just say 明年夏天我打算去, provided the place is clear from the context.
As an example, the sentence 我昨天买了一本书 presents a slight ambiguity, right? It could be "Yesterday I bought a book" ("one" has grammatical function, translated as indefinite article) or "Yesterday I bought one book" ("one" has semantic function, translated as "one"). Though without further context, you should favor the former, because of what I said above.
Finally, whereas the number "one" may or may not be semantically relevant, any other numeral is likely to be so.
As always, check the context:

老朱呢？我来叫他一声 = Where's Lao Zhu at? Let me call him ("one" is grammatical)
我叫了他两声，他还不听 = I called him twice, he still doesn't listen ("two" is semantic)
那本书我不太记得，我只看了一遍 = I don't quite remember that book, I only read it once ("one" is semantic)
请你来帮我一下忙 = please give me a hand ("one" is grammatical)
我被他骂了一堆 = He scolded me badly (literally, a pile) (verbal measure word (!), "one" is grammatical)


Strange pronunciations in Hakka song I have stumbled upon Zhang Shaolin's Hoi-nam kai-fan. I asked three translation questions about it: 1, 2 and 3. THere you find the lyrics and a link to a video, and my translation attempt. This question is to ask about the strange pronunciations that are present in some points of the song. Precisely:

来 should be pronounced loi, and is sometimes pronounced lei;
两 should be pronounced liong according to my reference, but here it is pronounced lioeng, with the same sound as Cantonese loeng (Jyutping being the used romanisation scheme, without tone), save for the extra i;
歌 should be pronounced ko, and is pronounced kuo once and fo (or rather with a sound like English hard th where I wrote f) shortly after;
张惠妹 sounds like it's pronounced the mandarin way (Hakka sounds Cong Fui-moi);
你, in its last occurrence in the last repetition of part three, sounds like it's actually a 系.

Can someone give reasons for these facts? Is the final 你 a typo perhaps? And also, can someone provide me with tone marks (or tone numbers, and naturally an explanation of the contours) for the whole lyrics?

I had a second (tenth?) listen, and extracted the sound to an mp3. Then I put this through Praat. I noticed something interesting:

This is the first occurrence of 來, around 72 seconds in:

齐家吃开晓来称赞

This is the second occurrence of 來, around 121 seconds in:

明星或歌星日日来帮衬

The first one is definitely [lɔi], whereas the second one is definitely [lei], and the sonogram confirms it. The second image, with the dense formation in the middle, trailing off into a lighter line is an [ei].

In this case it could be an influence from Cantonese -- Zhang is from Selangor -- where 嚟 is often pronounced lei.

Same around 2mn14 where 来 in 按好吃讲只只来帮衬 is [lei].
So it seems Zhang alternates freely loi and lei.

As for 歌 I had a look with Praat at only the first one (最近做歌星讲好难) -- it's getting late here :-) -- but this one is go1. I confirmed it by listening to it isolately, and looking at its sonogram -- it has the same profile as 近 and 讲). But listening to the full sentence it comes out a little weird, as if it were spirantized.

I'll have a deeper look tomorrow.

ADDENDUM 1

两 should be pronounced liong according to my reference, but here it is pronounced lioeng --> Seems like it indeed As you say, probable influence of Canto.
张惠妹 sounds like it's pronounced the mandarin way --> Yup.
你, in its last occurrence in the last repetition of part three, sounds like it's actually a 系.

That'd be at 4:41 thereabouts.

If you compare this sonogram with the second one, [lei], you see it's kind of similar -- the vowel is basically the same, except it doesn't weaken into [-i]. It's [e:].

Compare this with the 你 at 4:13:

No [e:] here. That's a nice [i:], quite long too. That's quite expected as 你 is ngi2.

As for the initial. In the suspicious 你, look at the initial in the sonogram, and compare it with the sonograms of [loi] and [lei], especially the latter. You have very similar patterns, albeit weaker for 你. I believe Zhang kind of reverted to Cantonese [lei]. The [l-] is there but devoiced (the lower dark line at the beginning of [lei] is barely there). I believe it's a voiceless [l], that can be heard as a [h].

ADDENDUM 2

Regarding Hakka tones, I used Dr Lau's PinFaa data to build a dictionary, which I added into my own little online tool. The tone contours are from [this page]:


When can 要 replace 需要? In an answer to the post 要 to indicate "will [verb]" vs "need", it is argued that

要；yào；want to, need to, going to

is actually the short form of either

需要；xūyào；to need, to want

or

将要；jiāngyào；going to.

However, in another answer it is said:

We cannot use 要 in place of 需要 here:

为什么人类需要氧气才能生存?
Why does mankind need oxygen to be able to survive?

Question: When can we use 要 to replace 需要? Is there a difference between 需要 and 要 in the sense of need to / want to?

要；yào；want, want to (想要), need to (須要), going to (將要).

需要；xūyào；need

We can use 要 instead of 須要 when we want to express need to + verb. However, we might not always want to replace 需要 with 要, because the meaning of 需要 is clearer: it always means 'need', while the meaning of 要 might cause confusion, as it can mean 'want to, need to or going to'.
On the other side, we shouldn't use 要 in place of 需要 when we want to express need + noun, such as in:

为什么人类需要氧气才能生存?
Why does mankind need oxygen to be able to survive?

氧气 is a noun; '需要氧气' (need oxygen) cannot be changed to 須要氧气 (need to oxygen), 想要氧气 (want to oxygen) or 將要氧气 (going to oxygen).
If the sentence was '須要有氧气' (need to have oxygen), then it can be changed to 要有氧气 because 有 is a verb.


How to translate "给力" in English? The word 给力 is often used on Chinese social networks. What is the correct meaning of it in English?

It means awesome. All English translations for 给力 at mdbg.net: cool, nifty, awesome, impressive, to put in extra effort
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=geili

The word has also found it's way into English slang in the form of geilivable
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=geilivable

Geilivable is not very common in western countries though, as far as I know.


Online, is there any equivalent to the Japanese web slang of ending a sentence with "w" or in English using "lol" just to indicate good-nature/humor? I was wondering because while I am decent at speaking Chinese, I've just recently started sending messages online using it (16 years late lol). I've ended one sentence with "笑" but even that was borrowed from my Japanese interactions and not Chinese. I've also ended a few with "w" like in Japanese, but that just feels weird and (rightfully) out of place. Is there any ending that's more common so I can become more undercover on Chinese language twitter? Thanks!

The best i can think of is 233.

  It is originated from Chinese popular forum side 猫扑, the 233 is the number of emoji. Then it started to get viral to other forum side, people often lengthen the 3 behind the 233. The longer the 3, the funnier it gets to.

No.233 emoji is a dog having the face expression of >_< , see below picture:

You would have something like this:

233333333333333333333333333333333


How to say "upregulate" in Mandarin My best scientific dictionaries have all crashed, and in any case they may not have this word either. I'm looking for a Chinese translation of the word "upregulate" or "up-regulate":

  the process of increasing the response to a stimulus; specifically : increase in a cellular response to a molecular stimulus due to increase in the number of receptors on the cell surface.

Another dictionary combined with some okay-ish judgement seems to think it's "上调" or possibly "上调作用" but I'd love some feedback to see if you guys think I'm on the right track.

上调 is the most common equivalent. In your description you are using the wrong character (凋, the radical is different).

EDIT: to add credibility to my answer and provide some examples, I have added some use cases.

Some usages in abstracts:

--

School of Life Sciences, Peking University:

上调巨噬细胞的一些信号分子

"upregulating some signaling molecules of macrophages" (text at the end of the article)

Chinese Journal of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology:

骨形态发生蛋白2通过Smad途径上调Osterix的表达

"Bone Morphogenetic Protein 2 Upregulates Osterix Expression Through Smad Pathway"

Same source:

BPH-1通过分泌PGE2上调前列腺间质细胞ERRα的表达

"Prostaglandin E2 Mediates the Upregulation of ERRα Expression with BPH-1 Condition Media in Prostatic Stromal Cells "
(You can find many other use cases in this journal.)

Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University (Medical Science Edition):

IL-21上调IL-17的表达在Graves病中的意义

"Significance of IL-17 upregulation by IL-21 in patients with Graves disease"

调 is the keyword that denotes regulation, thus:

regulatory mechanism is 调控机制 (see Chinese abstract on the linked page) in this context.

下调 (downregulation) denotes the opposite of 上调 (upregulation).

It also comes as 调节 which is to regulate in a general sense (whether up or down, not specified), used in the context of biochemistry.


Possessives in Chinese I used Google Translate for these sentences but I'm not sure they are correct:

Mom 's white dog     妈妈的白狗
My mom's white dog  我妈妈的白狗
And it is possible if I say
Mom 's white dog     妈妈的白色的狗
My mom's white dog  我的妈妈的白色的狗

I wonder whether I should use 的 or I can omit 的 sometimes.

Could you also provide me the correct sentences?

This is more of an aesthetic / rhythmic issue than a grammatical one. Technically you can keep adding 的 to make a chain as long as you like, but it won't be "nice". It's like saying "that" repeatedly in English, e.g. "the man that ate a dog that ate a fly that watched a cat that liked to browse stack exchange." Grammatically valid but not natural.

The general rule with multiple 的s is to only keep the last one, but sometimes you do have to use multiple 的s. It's usually worth looking at rephrasing the sentence if possible to avoid this (in writing), but in speech I would say just don't worry about it. Even native speakers say things that don't sound perfect, especially if they pause for thought in the middle of an utterance, e.g. "妈妈的那个白色的狗" isn't nice Chinese but people could easily end up saying it.

Also, there is a slight difference between 白狗 and 白色的狗. 白狗 sounds like a particular established category of thing, 'white dog', whereas 白色的狗 is modifying an existing category of thing, 'dog that is white' (although you would translate it into 'white dog'). This may seem obvious but there is a subtle but important difference.


The legend of the Chinese dragon I found a story about the origin of the Chinese dragon in English but can't find it anywhere in Chinese.

The characters' names are Chi Yu and Hieun Tse in the English version.

Does anyone know if this story exists in Chinese or was it created by an English speaker?

The accepted answer is simply wrong.

It is probably from a Chinese folk tale since it claims to be Chinese. I daresay I have read similar folktales, especially the swallow-the-bead-and-turn-into-a-dragon part, when I was a kid. I cannot figure out the exact one. But it is easy to search out folk stories with similar motifs.

e.g. https://book.douban.com/subject/11633147/

  一个叫阿宝的孩子拾到了一颗红色的宝珠，他把宝珠放进米缸，米缸里立刻盛满了白花花的大米；他把宝珠放进钱罐，钱罐里立刻填满金灿灿的钱币。阿宝用这颗宝珠帮助周围的邻居都过上了好日子。奇怪的是，自从阿宝捡到这颗宝珠后，天上就再也没有下过一滴雨，大地干涸、庄稼干枯，乡亲们愁眉不展。

  一天晚上，阿宝在梦中见到一条雨龙在空中喷雨，醒来后，他决定动身去寻找这条雨龙。一路上，阿宝帮助了巨蛇、梅花鹿、鲤鱼和苍鹰，每个动物朋友都赠送了他一样礼物，并警告他要当心一个叫红鬼的妖怪。随后，阿宝果然遇到了红鬼，并从红鬼口中知道了自己手中的珠子叫龙珠。为了保护龙珠，找到雨龙，阿宝果断决绝地吞下了珠子。最后，在动物朋友们赠送的礼物的帮助下，阿宝变成了一条会下雨的龙，把甘露洒向了人间。

沙县民间故事
This story lacks the part of the magical power of the dragon bead, but retains the part of swallowing the bead to become the dragon.

https://www.sohu.com/a/349852173_488223

This one is rather long, but the story is almost the same, which is easy to find if you can read Chinese.

A further question is whether this kind of folktale has a origin in Classical Chinese literature.

And I must say many Chinese folk tales have a style and sentiment that you won't find in classical Chinese literature. Not to say even China proper is a country that comprises several distinct territories, varied cultures, and peoples. It is always hard to say what is really "un-Chinese".


What character is 刄 + 丶? Here's a pic I took in HK today

What's the 刄 + 丶 char? In

堂飲2 xxxxxxx 28元

I'm guessing its similar to mainlands 两, for alcoholic drink sizes.
I tried zisea & zdic to no avail...
edit: is it this: ? http://www.zdic.net/z/84/wy/20090.htm
It's the closest thing I can find

Yes, it is indeed a variant of 两. You can see it listed here in the Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants 《異體字字典》:

http://dict2.variants.moe.edu.tw/variants/rbt/word_attribute.rbt?educode=A00284

As for why they've chosen to write it this way, I'm not sure.


Is "华彧" an acceptable name for males? Any other boy names with "华"? I have been learning Chinese for several months now, and I would love to have a Chinese name to facilitate conversing and learning, mainly for my own enjoyment.
I feel that whatever my name will be, it should include "华" since that character means so much to me.
To find the other part, I narrowed down my list to "彧" for aesthetic reasons, and it has nice meanings. But because I am not yet familiar with Chinese culture and history, could anyone tell me if I could use this name or not?
And if possible, could you guys suggest some of your favorite characters that could go well with "华"? Thank you so much and I wish you all health and happiness in life!
EIDT: I just did some more google search and found that my last name in Chinese is 黎.

The most famous person with 彧 in his name was 'Xun Yu (荀彧)' in the Three Kingdoms period, so 彧 was a legit name, but it is rarely used in modern time.
If you do decide to name yourself 华彧, people will inevitably associate your name with 荀彧 and get the impression that you are proclaiming yourself a wise and capable advisor ... Are you one?
Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) was the more famous advisor than 荀彧 in the Three Kingdoms period, but the character 亮 is a common character, so no one would associate it with 諸葛亮 specifically, but the character 彧 is so rare, everyone who read the novel Romance of Three Kingdoms would think of him immediately upon seeing 彧 in a name

彧 《广韵》有文章也,《广雅》文也

彧 means "literary talent" or "literary"

If you want a common character that has a similar meaning to 彧, 文 should be the best choice, but 华文 would mean "Chinese text" or "Chinese language"
黎文华 would be a decent name. Both 文 and 华 are popular characters in names
If you want a common character that sounds like 彧 /yù/ and goes well with 华, you can consider 黎华禹，黎华鈺，黎华裕


Why does 定 (dìng) disable the monsters' movement in the movie 捉妖记 (Monster Hunt)? In the movie 捉妖记 (zhuōyāojì), called Monster Hunt in English (Wikipedia, IMDB, Baidu, iQIYI), the movie's character 霍小岚 (Huòxiǎolán) attaches the Chinese hanzi

定 (dìng)

to the head of monsters, and this largely disables their movement.  It's used humorously in various scenes.

I'm wondering what is significant about the character 定 in particular.

Question: Why does 定 disable the monsters' movement in Monster Hunt?

Among the definitions at dict.cn for 定, we have "to set" and "to fix".  It's possible it's used as short for 固定, which has "immobilization" among its definitions.  Although, I'm just guessing here, and I feel like there is more to it, possibly even something historical.

I know the magic "定身法"(the body-immobilization magic) from the very famous TV show 《西游记》, in which the protagonist "孙悟空" uses it to immobilize monsters. The magic spell he uses is a single character "定". It went viral since then. Kids would joke around about it.

Nowadays, almost every native speaker knows this magic, given that 《西游记》 is such a popular TV show as well as its book.


How can I create Chinese webcomics? I'm wondering if there is a way to create webcomics in Chinese.  I made the following using Strip Generator but it doesn't seem to support Chinese.

Question: How can I create Chinese webcomics?

What do you mean by "not support Chinese"? You can't input Chinese characters into the generator, or Chinese characters become gibberish, or something else? I tried the website you mentioned, but it requires Flash, so I can't try myself.

Anyway, I typed "webcomics generator" in Google and found a lot of promising results. For instance, https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/ seems like a really good one. Easy to use, and supports Chinese. Here is a comic I made in one minute. Have fun!


Can somebody identify these characters? (Characters identified: 㸃㬹) Could somebody help me identify these two characters?

The meaning of the first one should be "point" or something similar, the second one looks to me like a combination of 月 and 爭, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

is 點 (point). It's just written in a special "font".

 is 㬹.

In 康熙字典, it is

   《集韻》《類篇》甾莖切，音爭。足跟筋也。
  又《集韻》側杏切。義同。

Which means 足跟筋也, i.e. tendon in the heel. It is pronounced as zhēng. Now it's seldom seen in Mandarin Chinese, but in spoken Cantonese, it's still widely and informally used (pronunciation zaang1). For example, 脚㬹(heel), 高㬹鞋(high-heeled shoes).


Airplane status - boarding delayed check in? Can someone please help me out? What do the following mean?

1) 过站登机
2) 正在值机

These are found at the airport regarding flight statuses. Does it mean boarding, delayed, check in etc? Thanks!

过站登机 transit boarding
The original passengers are boarding now.
过站 is the same as 经停 or 过境.

正在值机 checking in


Chinese input on Windows based on pinyin and tones What is the best way for me to type pinyin using a keyboard on Windows?

I've tried the built-in IMEs, but... they don't feel very intuitive to me. For example, if I want to get wǔ, I need to type wu, then select from a list of possible options.

Instead, I'd like to type something like wu3 to get wǔ

Is there anything built in to Windows to allow that? Or are there any suggestions for applications to let me input pinyin like this?

I like the pinyinput input method editor. Just type the letters for the syllable followed by a tone number, and it will combine them in the usual way.


How to differentiate "radical plus 0 strokes" characters? There are (at least) six characters that consist of radical 102 plus 0 strokes: 田 由 甲 申 甴 电

In each of the variants the middle vertical stroke is made shorter, longer or twisted at the end.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? I know radicals can look different depending on where they appear in a character and that is called variants, but this seems to be something different.

Is there a formal system to describe this? E.g. "radical 102 with middle stroke elongated at the top"?

Chinese native speakers don't treat 田 由 甲 申 甴 电 as related radicals. It is true that those radicals look very similar to each other, but we don't go further than that. We don't have any terms for this phenomenon, because we don't think it is something that needs special attention/study.

Here are more examples:  刀 vs 力, 土 vs 士, 己 vs 已 vs 巳,  冂 vs 几, etc.

In English, there are some words spelling almost same, for example: discreet vs discrete, complement vs compliment, calendar vs calender, etc. Are there any special terms for this phenomenon in English? Do you English native speakers treat them with special attention?

By the way, your question reminds me a character game I played when I was a  child: form as many characters as you can by adding another stroke to the character 日. All the characters appearing in your question are part of the answer. There are some more, like 旦, 白, etc.

Edited my answer as suggested by NS.X.

I went too extreme saying "Chinese native speakers don't treat 田 由 甲 申 甴 电 as related radicals." I admit that it was not true. Yes, they are related radicals, but only in the sense that they look very similar to each other, except for 由 and 甴 as pointed out by Stan, that they are variant forms of each other.

The way that those characters 田 由 甲 申 甴 电 are listed under 田 as "radical plus 0 strokes" only reflects what the author(s) / editor(s) thought was appropriate. Are there any fundamental rules behind that? I doubt it.

Alternatively, I believe it could've been done in another way:

list 由 as a new radical, and list the following characters under it: 甹, 畁, and 甴 as a variant form of 由.
list 甲 as a new radical, and list 畢 under it.
list 申 as a new radical, and list the following characters under it: 畅, 畃.
list 电 as a new radical, and list  under it.

See, characters can be classified in different ways.

I believe the author(s) / editor(s) of Kangxi Dictionary put 由 甲 申 甴 电 in the group of 田 for the sake of simplicity.


Self-Teaching and Methods of Practice I am trying to learn Chinese. I have no trouble with pronunciation; I lived in Taiwan when I was young. However, I can't seem to begin. I try to start learning, but I stop, only to try again a week or two later. I feel that I have no structure.

I have the Integrated Chinese materials, as well as all the materials from an older FSI Chinese course.

What are the best ways to practice:

Speaking
Listening
Writing
Reading

What should I consider when trying to develop and build a curriculum for myself? Should I use the Integrated Chinese materials or the FSI materials?

I admit that I have never used 'Integrated Chinese', so I do not know how useful it is. However, FSI Chinese is IMHO outdated. If it has not been updated in the last 10 years, I would not rely on it. I know it's public domain, free and it comes with plenty of audio material, etc. but it was made ages ago, and language & society has changed in China so much. I used a German text book back a few years ago to learn Chinese, which was originally published in the early/mid 90's and fellow Chinese students used to laugh about some of the expressions, because they are not used anymore. Occasionally you can use FSI's audio material to practice your hearing comprehension, but if you have something more up-to-date, use the latter one.

If the material in 'Integrated Chinese' is divided into fair amount of lessons, that you can cover within a few days (assuming you learn 1 or 2 hour every day), that's just fine, stick with the curriculum of the book, explore any supplementary material in the back of the book, if there is any (e.g. list of words, characters, table of radicals or pinyin syllables), to make the most out of it.

It's a good way actually to begin with the pinyin syllables and to learn what sounds the initials (b-, q-, t- etc.) and finals (-eng, -iang, ou, etc.) represent. As you write, you are already familiar with the pronunciation basics, so it shouldn't be an issue for you.

The next thing I would do is to start with a lesson in the text book and first take a look at all the items in the vocabulary list, make sure you understand them, you do not immediately need to learn them by heart, after having read the reader and done the exercises you will have no problem with them, most text books come with a number of exercises that will reinforce the lesson's core vocabulary and will also repeat the vocab of past lessons.  Occasionally, as you make progress and cover new lessons, you can brush up the vocabulary and grammar structures of earlier lessons, it is always a good idea to repeat, because the more you encounter with things, the more familiar you are with them.

Practicing speaking would require someone to have conversations with, so find someone who has the time to do this. If you don't have, you can still find a way to exercises yourself, though it's a bit boring. I used Audacity   to practice my pronunciation skills. I would load and mp3 file that came with my text book and select a few syllables of speech (you can see waves of the audio visualized in Audacity) and listen to them again and again, trying to make my pronunciation and intonation exactly like the speaker. I used to record myself and listen to it, to check how authentic (or actually bad) my Chinese sounded. It wasn't really exciting but I discovered many of the phonetic aspects of Chinese this way. In case if you have someone to chat with you in Chinese and can help you build experience, you don't need Audacity, it's just an idea for those who really have to learn on their own.

As for listening, reading and writing, actually if your text book is good enough, you don't really have to make thoughts about them, just work on the curriculum and do all the exercises. If your vocabulary is still not that comprehensive, it is hard to find audio material other than text book audio, because most of the radio plays, TV shows, movies require you to have at least intermediary level to be able to follow the dialogs. Actually learning materials commercially available are quite good and plenty these days, so if you have time and money you could invest in some other material than your text book. As soon as your vocab gets better, you could starting hunting for some real life audio, I used a course designed for Chinese people who wish to improve their Putonhua. Actually you can just search for 普通话 as a keyword and you will find plenty of audio to listen to.  Baidu's audio search is not so user-friendly and I doubt that everything uploaded here is public domain, but as long as you download it for personally use only, you don't need to make thoughts about copyright law. To this Putonghua course you will find the texts on several sites online. I need to search through my old bookmarks in order to find a link to post here.

Another interesting resource I used to practice hearing was a Taiwanese radio (教育之声） show about Chinese literature/culture, their pronunciation is a bit odd to me, but it's still OK.

I need to warn you to only start listening to these when you already have the core vocabulary, otherwise it's just a waste of time.

Writing: buy plenty of paper and good lead pencils to practice. The best paper is that has some lines on it to provide you some orientation, you can buy and print paper specially designed for exercising writing Chinese characters (boxes with diagonals or just boxes without diagonals) that Chinese school children also use to write their home assignments. If you can buy these, use them. If they are not available, use any kind of paper. Do not try to use pens, especially ball point pens, since many of those require you to push them onto the surface of the paper in order to mark the paper with ink. That's not particularly helpful for someone to who is about to learn the basic strokes (撇，横, etc.) to get these look beautifully, these will require you to have something that doesn't need to be pushed that hard, a soft graphite pencil, ideally.

If you can buy character practicing sheets (which come with characters pre-printed in light gray), buy them, they are very useful. Just make sure you know the stroke order. That's quite important. Your textbook should cover this, hopefully.


What these means in chinese language, during uninstallation of OSTOTO hotspot? Can anyone please tell me the meaning of this, during unistalling a program ?

It says "Please don't leave me. You said we'd always be together".

The left orange button means QQ support.

The right green button means official forum.

the left small grey button means "continue".

The right small green button means "give another chance".


When is it appropriate to use 在 with a time phrase? Can you use 在 when a time phrase appears in the usual place in front of a verb?  If so, how does it change the meaning?  When would I choose to use it?

他去年去了中国度假。
他在去年去了中国度假。

or is 在 only used with specific verbs that take time expressions after the verb:

他的中国度假发生在去年。

Yes, you can

他去年去了中国度假。= He went to China for a holiday last year.
他在去年去了中国度假。= He went to China for a holiday in last year.

The first sentence stated a fact '他去了中国度假', and '去年' is the time expression that add additional information on what time it took place
The second sentence '在' emphasize the time period '去年'; "去了中国度假" took place "in last year" along with other things.
The follow example may illustrate this emphasis better

"他去年死了" = "He died last year" ('he died' is the fact; 'last year' is a relative phrase that add additional information to it, "when did he die? Last year")
"他在去年死了" = "He died in last year" ('in last year' is an important fact, not two year ago, not three years ago)


Different types of rain in Chinese? Inspired by this question on the Spanish stack exchange
Things like drizzle, mist, or downpour?

There are many types of rain in Chinese vocabulary

雨: rain

煙雨: misty rain

微雨: drizzle

毛毛細雨/ 毛毛雨/ 微絲細雨: very light rain/ drizzle

細雨 : light rain

雨霧: rain and fog

過雲雨: brief rain

長命雨/ 長雨 long lasting rain

晴雨/ 晴天雨: sunny sky rain

夜雨: night rain

連夜雨: all night rain

分龍雨: narrow area rain (you can see clear sky few miles away)

大雨: heavy rain

傾盤大雨/ 滂沱大雨/ 豪雨:  heavy rain/ downpour

驟雨: sudden rain

局部地區性驟雨: regional sudden rain

全國性大雨: nation wide heavy rain

陣雨: intermittent rain

暴雨: severe rain/ heavy downpour

狂風暴雨: strong wind and severe rain

暴風雨/ 雨暴: rain storm

雷雨: thunder and rain

熱帶雨 : tropical rain

冷雨: cold rain

冰雨: icy rain

春雨: spring rain

夏雨: summer rain

秋雨: autumn rain

冬雨: winter rain

梅雨: plum season rain (of middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze in  late spring and early summer)

山雨: mountains rain

平原雨: rain over the plain

海上雨: rain over the sea

天降甘霖/ 甘霖: life giving rain from heaven (classical term)

及時雨: needed rain that falls in time (idiom for "help that comes in time)

黑雨 : black rain (highest level of warning in the rainstorm warning system in Hong Kong)


There's some blurry text I cant quite read, any ideas what it is/means? 準繫詞語 is my best guess as to what it says, what does this mean? I know it's some kind of word class description, but these jerks wrote it in 繁体字 in the smallest font possible... ( and/or Im an idiot)

Any ideas guys?

Here:

Yes, it says 準繫詞語 (准系词语), and according to Chinese Wikipedia, this means pseudo-copula.


What role does 很 play in A和B很像? A和B很像。

It sounds natural.
But if we delete 很 in the sentence, it looks like:

  A和B像。

Which sounds very unnatural.
So what role does 很 play in the original sentence?

A和B很像 and A跟B很像 mean the same thing, where you make a comparison between A and B. You can also say A像B.
A和B像 is like a incomplete phrase, where you put A and B together as one unit, but not to compare with each other. In order to make it complete, you might have to engage a third party to compare with A and B, like: A和B像C. A和B像C means both A and B are similar to C.
However, A和B像 can be natural in some context. E.g

Tom: A和B一点都不像！
Jim: 不！A和B像！

Basically, when we say A和B很像, our tone is natrually put a bit emphasis on 很. So, we are clear what the speaker is trying to convey. Without it, it could be interpreted as both. As you can see from above example, even A和B像 could be natural if you put more emphasis on the word 像. But with 很, you make it a lot easier.


In what kind of contexts should you use 处于/处在? I just read the article titled 睡眠时间男女不同 日本女性很难入睡, and in the article, I read the following sentence:

  据《读卖新闻》下属的网络媒体报道，在几乎所有主要国家中，女性睡眠都比较好，尤其是北欧国家的女性处在容易睡眠的环境中。

Then I learned that 处在 is a synonym of 处于, and the meaning of 处于 is "be".

However, there are also many similar words in Mandarin that mean "be" - 是，为，当, etc... (maybe 处在 includes the meaning of "in" in English but still, 是在 seems to work just like 处在). What is the difference of 处在/处于 from these words and in what kind of situation should these words be preferred?

UPDATE

Sorry if my question is obscure, but I would like to know the difference between 处于/处在 and other similar words (e.g. 是，为，当), not the difference between 处于 and 处在.

The different between 「处于」and 「处在」is answered well in @dan, and I prefer to explain why Pleco use "be".
Actually the mean of the two word can be explained to "be in", and it's used to in a condition or situation.That means it's usually used as 「处于/处在...... 中」，but it is not in this form absolutely. We can also use like this:

  「我们必须和一切爱好和平自由的国家和人民团结在一起……使我们的保障人民革命胜利成果和反对内外敌人复辟阴谋的斗争不致处于孤立地位。」 ————毛泽东 《中国人民站起来了》

And if you want more further explanation，you can visit http://www.hydcd.com/zidian/hz/10444.htm


How to ask "Is it because..." questions What is the general pattern for asking questions of the form

  Is it because ...?

My most naïve guess would be

  是为什么。。。？

In fact this is a sentence that enhances the reason why……? And now you can reguard it in English, something like:

It's because I saved a sick man that I was late for school……

To translate this into Chinese directly, this means：是因为AA，所以导致BB的后果。

(Change this to English in question：Is it because you saved a sick man that you were late for school?)

To translate this into Chinese directly, this means：是因为AA才导致BB吗？

In Chinese, we always ignore something according to the actual context, and such statement as this always happens when a teacher see that you are late for school, and maybe the student will make a dialog like this:

Teacher: Why are you late for school?

Student: It's beause I saved a sick man (that I was late for school).

Teacher: Really？Is it because you saved a sick man (that you were late for school)?

是真的吗？是因为你救了一个病人（以至于你上学迟到了？）


What does this line mean? 哦，您原来跟齐天大圣一个姓埃我爸差点晕倒。。
I found this on http://m.zol.com.cn/xiaohua/detail45/44743.html.

我爸是个医生。有一次，我爸给一个病人看玻那个病人问:请问您尊姓大名？我爸说:姓齐。那个病人说：哦，您原来跟齐天大圣一个姓埃我爸差点晕倒。

The real name of 齐天大圣 is 孙悟空 (one of the major characters in 西游记) so its family name is 孙, but the patient misinterpreted, he think his family name is齐.

Maybe I could translate it in EN:

  My father is a doctor. Once he met a patient.

  The patient: "What's your name, sir?"(very formal/serious tone)

  My father: "My family name is 齐(qi)" (We won't call one's first name
  if we're not familiar to him in general for regard)

  The patient: "Wow, your family name is the same as
  齐(qi)天(tian)大(da)圣(sheng)'s!"(surprised tone)

  My father nearly passed out at that time.


Writing "Please Recycle" in Mandarin How can one write "Please Recycle" in the context of an office paper room?
I have tried: 请回收利用 but my friend says this is only for recycling batteries.

I think 請回收利用/请回收利用 can apply to lots of stuff as well, for example, plastic bottles, tins, cans, glass and so on.

If you really want to be specific about recycling paper, you can try

請回收廢紙/请回收废纸 = Please recycle used/unwanted paper

or

請回收紙張/请回收纸张 = Please recycle paper

Note that the above Chinese examples are written in Traditional/Simplified.


Understandable names of the radicals I'm looking for names of radicals that are universally used and understandable. As far as I know, the official radical names, e.g. 水部 aren't really used. I know that, in this particular case, the name is 三點水. But how about other radicals?

For example, what is 厂 called? The official name is 厂部 hăn bù, but would people understand me if I said that? I know that 厂 is chăng in simplified Chinese, but what name would be understandable e.g. in Taiwan or Hong Kong? The traditional version of 厂 is 廠, which doesn't even have the same radical. This page calls it 偏廈, but it doesn't look like it's used in practice, is it? Or should I call it X字頭 or X字旁? But how exactly?

If found many different lists: one, two, three, four, but there are a lot of differences between them. Which one lists names of radicals that are really used? Even native Chinese speakers sometimes forget how to write some obscure character, so I assume there must be a simple way to say “you need to write it with the sloping roof radical”. And I guess there must be some standard naming that is used in schools...

I'm most interested in names that are used in Taiwan, but answers about other places are welcome as well.

厂, this radical has few frequently used characters and you might not find any good name of it in practice. 偏廈 is probably the best one. I call it 厓字頭 because it is the radical of 厓 (cliff, which has derivatives of 崖 and 涯).

I now go a little deeper on this radical.

This radical is actually a character of its own. Inherently it read hɔn in Cantonese and han in Mandarin. In the evolution of characters, it turns into 厈 and 岸. It originates from stone and rock, and extends to the rocky side of hills. Most of characters under 厂 radical follow the meaning of 厂, like 厚, 原, 厲. These are some other readings of 厂. You can look them up in some great dictionaries.

As you notice, 广 and 厂 is so similar and some characters under 广 mistakenly goes into 厂, for example, 廈, 廠, 廁, 廚. 广 is some simple house and you can imagine a wall on the left side and A-shaped root. Those characters in this radicals follows the meaning of house, say 廈, 廠, 廁, 廚, 府, 庫, 廊, 廬, 廟.  广 has its reading too. It is jim in Cantonese and yan in Mandarin. I call it 廣字頭 as it is the radical of 廣.

It is possible to make of some commonly known characters under a radical, like 厓字頭, 廣字頭. For characters under 艸, it is named 草花頭. They all just mean the "head" or "top" of one or two particular characters.

A little bit more. The simplification of 廣 to 广 and 廠 to 厂 causes too much confusion in the understanding of Chinese characters. It is not only the confusion with meaning described above. 黃 and 敞 indicates the pronunciation of 廣 and 廠, and now they are eradicated in simplified characters.


Meaning of 脏话 in 这里能说脏话吗 I just came across someone asking this in online chat:

这里能说脏话吗

I've taken that to mean, is there anyone here who can speak x?. It's the x bit I'm unsure of. If I look up 脏话 in a dictionary it says it means 'speaking rudely'. Does it have another meaning in 这里能说脏话吗?

From my point of view, 「这里能说脏话吗」may have several different meanings in different contexts.

Ask other people whether he can swear in the chatroom.
In this case, the person asking the question wants to talk rudely in the chatroom.
It serves as a rhetorical question.
This person may have seen some people talk rudely in the chatroom. So he said this to remind other people that it is not allowed to speak rudely in this chartroom.
「我能说脏话吗」"Can I speak X?"
This is most commonly seen online. It's widely used that in fact this phrase has become an online idiom among Chinese people.
It origins from a passer-by when asked by a journalist of his opinion about increasing gasoline price:
「我能说脏话吗？不能？那就没有可说的。」 "Can I speak X? No? Then there's nothing to say.."
Now Chinese people use this phrase to express dissatisfaction about something especially when under some kind of censorship.


What is the difference between 抓 and 捉? Can the word 抓 and 捉 be used interchangeably? The English translations seems similar.

抓 and 捉 can be used interchangeably when it means 'catch; capture; arrest'

For example:
抓老鼠 = 捉老鼠 = catch/capture mice
警察來抓人 = 警察來捉人 police come to arrest someone
In the context of 'catch; capture; arrest' , 抓 is more colloquial, 捉 is more literary

抓 contains the meanings of 'get hold of/grab; seize'
which it doesn't share with 捉

Example:
抓緊這個機會 (get hold of this opportunity) cannot be written as 捉緊這個機會 because  'get hold of' is different from 'capture/catch'
抓起武器 (grab weapon) cannot be written as 捉起武器 because 'grab' here refers to 'get hold of', not 'capture/catch'
抓權 (seize power) cannot be written as 捉權 because 'seize' here refers to ''get hold of', not 'capture/catch'

抓 also contains the meanings of 'to scratch'
which it doesn't share with 捉

Example:
抓癢 (scratch an itch)
抓眼珠 (scratch eyeball)
Also: 抓狅 (catch a madness = become crazy) cannot be written as 捉狅  because '抓狅' is a set phrase; 捉姦 (catch an affair in action) cannot be written as 抓姦 because '捉姦' is a set phrase


Is there an authoritative list of most frequent to most infrequent pronunciations for individual Chinese characters? I'm working on a dictionary tool that provides, as an auto-assist, transcription of Chinese characters into corresponding (Modern Standard Mandarin) pinyin+tones on a naive, character-per-character basis without lexical parsing (the tool is intended for indexing of new terms/phrases, lexical parsing is overkill).

In order to make the auto-assist feature as useful as possible, I would like the assisted-transcription operation to choose the most frequent reading [1] of any individual character as the preferred default in an effort to reduce the amount of time users will spend correcting the inevitable [2] mistakes.

Python's pinyin package, based on Mandarin.dat, seems to provide reasonably good performance in that regard; but I'm curious whether there's a standard (issued by a language authority in PRC or Taiwan) list of such frequencies available, and/or whether any list exists that includes the other possible readings, in decreasing order of frequency, by way of providing a helpful dropdown list of alternates in cases where the preferred reading doesn't happen to be correct.

[1] i.e., assuming a large and representative set of textual data, if a character has multiple possible readings, the pronunciation most often assigned the character based on more advanced lexical analysis of the function of the character within a larger semantic block. For example, if within the set there are three observed instances of 为[wei4]什么 and one observed instance of 作为[wei2], choose "wei4" as the default transcription option for 为.

[2] I'm aware of characters such as 调 for which alternate readings (in this case diao4/tiao2) are equally likely, so in these cases such "assistance" will likely never have an accuracy rate better than 50%.

Hope these would help.

《现代汉语常用字表》常用字(2500字)
《现代汉语常用字表》次常用字(1000字)
《现代汉语通用字表》(7000字) - including the above two (link available on those pages)


Is this funny way of saying things some dialect? 本身明明长患上丑还说[...]那鸣一个惨呀!

长患 should be 长相 and 鸣 should be 叫, but they appear too many times that the possibility of them being typos is close to nil.

  [...]以是在贬低他人的时辰就出格不留人情，以是咱们见到这类人时可以绝不夷由地上往打。

Again, normally we would say 于是 instead of 以是, 时候 instead of 时辰, 毫不犹豫 instead of 绝不夷由, and I think 格外 instead of 出格. I don't even understand what's 上往打: is 上往 上前?

  但是不管曩昔几多年

I know Cantonese makes extensive use of 几多, but other sentences don't look like they're Cantonese. And isn't 曩昔 archaic? The reason I find this article so funny and interesting is that it is so colloquial, yet at the same time so archaic or formal.

  最厌恶掉臂及男子体面的女人

What? 掉臂? As in 自在?

  眼望着本身岁数一点点年夜了

Can you really use 年夜 as a verb like that?

  碰着如许的人

This sounds rather formal and archaic.

Of course I am not endorsing these statements or anything, just saw them somewhere on the internet and find them amusing. Are these sentences written in some dialects/topolects or an unusual form of standard Chinese? Or are they internet slang?

我在网上找了一下，你提到的这篇文章标题是《死都没人爱的9种女人》，事实上它有“正常中文”版本的原文：

其实还可以搜索到一篇内容十分类似的文章《十种汉子该暴挨，你属于那一种？》，前者应该只是把后者内容当中的“男人”替换成了“女人”。而后者2006年左右就出现在网络上了，这种类型的文章作为段子实在是很过时。现在的大多数网民应该都不会觉得这篇文章有趣。

至于你提到的这种“奇怪的中文”的版本，确实网上可以搜索到：

这应当是通过某种类似于在线翻译的方式由电脑自动转换的，在网上还可以搜索到一些类似风格的文章。我不清楚这些网站在转载时进行这种转换的原因。不过显然这并不是为了有趣，也不是标准汉语的特殊形式，也不是所谓网络语言。应该说，就是网络上的一种信息垃圾。不用去深究，也不要把它作为学习中文的参考。


Writing critique request: the almost imperceptible effects of Zhou Ziwang's injection Continuing from parts 1, 2, 3, and 4:

  一周过去了但没有任何效果，我还是很胖。在做日常活动的过程中，我渐渐忘了那个神秘的医生和他的注射器。再一周过去了，我的行为几乎感觉不到任何变化，我还真想吃巧克力和其他的垃圾食品。其实当时那支注射器有意外甚至不易察觉的影响，不过到现在我还不知道如何清楚的解释这样的感觉。我想吃巧克时，身体似乎自动地反应，而连吃巧克力以前我都感觉到很满意。这是我现在的解释，可是肯定是不准确的。

Please critique my writing. New words for me are in links. I'm at an "almost mastered HSK4" level.

The narrative is from a person in the present (Zhou Ziwang 周子望) describing her unusual past.

I know I got 效果 wrong previously, but I think it's okay here.  I know I'm bad at 了ing, but I don't see any problems here (which probably means there's many).

Other than little wordy, and sometimes choosing less effective words, there's no major mistake in this piece.

Suggestions:

其实当时那支注射器有意外甚至不易察觉的影响 (ambiguous word: 意外 can also means "accidental". If you meant 'surprising' or "unexpected", it should be "意料之外" or "意想不到" ) --> 其实当时那支注射器(对我)有意想不到，甚至不易察觉的影响 ( add '对我' to identify the object that's being effected is 'me', or else we don't know if it is effecting the world or the future)
在做日常活动的过程中 (wordy) -->在日常活动的時候
我的行为几乎感觉不到任何变化 (wordy)-->我的行为几乎沒有任何变化
不过到现在我还不知道如何清楚的解释这样的感觉。 (used adjective when it should be an adverb) --> 但到现在，我还不知道如何清楚(地)解释这样的感觉
我想吃巧克时，身体似乎自动地反应 (missing the modal verb 'would'(會))--> 我想吃巧克时，身体似乎(會)自动地反应
而连吃巧克力以前我都感觉到很满意 (less effective word: '而连' (and even) should be replaced by a stand alone common word '甚至') ; (ambiguous word: '以前' can also mean 'previously' If you meant 'before' it should be 之前 or simply 前) and missing the modal verb 'would'(會)) --> (甚至在)吃巧克力前我都(會)感觉到很满意
这是我现在的解释，可是肯定是不准确的。(less effective word, '准确' mainly means accurate/ precise, for the meaning of 'correct' it is better to use '正确' ) --> 这是我现在的解释，可是肯定是不正确的。

Overall you've done a good job.

PS. Try to avoid run on sentence. You can break a long sentence up with commas, like in my suggestion here 不过到现在我还不知道如何清楚的解释这样的感觉 --> 但到现在，我还不知道如何清楚(地)解释这样的感觉 Just like taking a short pause in speech


What is the difference, if any, between 即使 and 無論？ Is there a big difference between 即使 and 無論?
I was working on a couple of fill-in-the-blanks exercises and the following sentence came up:

你的畫很有特色，_______ 是畫家也不一定能畫得比你好。

I think the right answer here is 即使, but I am not sure why 無論 would not be right. If I did use 無論 would that change the meaning of the sentence, or do the two words mean about the same?

They have different meanings.
即使 is the correct word in this case because it means "even if" or "in fact".
無論 means "regardless" (as does 不管) and would be used in a sentence like 無論是誰畫的，etc. (regardless of who painted it, etc.).


What semantic field underlies 涵 for it to mean 'soak, immerse' and 'tolerate, be lenient'? Fortunately I can guess a possible ratiocination of this etymology: 5 Houseplants You Can’t Kill by Overwatering. Because these plants won't die even if soaked, immersed, or wet, they can tolerate, forigve your over-watering. They are lenient to the wrongdoing of over-watering. Am I correct? I screenshot Yellowbridge.

涵 - Wiktionary

  涵

  to soak; to wet
  to tolerate; to forgive; to be lenient
  to immerse
  a culvert
  Alternative form of 含 (“to contain, to bear”).

The semantic extension is as follows:

To be soaked in water
To have a large capacity to hold water
To have a large capacity to tolerate bullshit
To be lenient (e.g. lenient on someone for their wrongdoings)

References:

《漢語大詞典》


Proper form for "I would like to..." I am in doubt about the meaning of "xiǎng" and "yào":

As per my research on the web, if I want to say "I would like to ... " I would write "Wǒ xiǎng yào...". However, if instead, I wanted to say "I would like to eat noodles." I would write "Wǒ xiǎng chī miàntiáo."

Why doesn't "yào" appear in the second sentence? I am a bit confused about this.

Of course, if you want to you can say '我想要一份面’ or even '请给我带来一份 ...‘
In 'I would like' 'would' is the imperfect subjunctive of 'will'. ‘I would like' is incomplete, because a subjunctive needs a condition 'if ...'. Out of a strange, twisted form of over-politeness, it became popular in English to say 'I would like' short for 'I would like, if it is not too much trouble, ....' or some other condition after 'if ...'.

Now, you are in a restaurant. The restaurant sells food to make money. It is definitely not too much trouble to bring you what you want to eat. That is their job and how they make their living.

Forget 'I would like', that is not Chinese. Try 'for me the ...' or  'I'm ordering ...'

Precede what you say with '请‘ and you are super polite.

Try ‘给我来一份面’ 或者 ‘我点一份拉面’ neither would be considered impolite.


Why is Russia translated to 俄罗斯(E Luo Si)? The Chinese Wikipedia article describes the name of Russia, and many of its historical Chinese exonyms.

  按照俄语发音“Россия”，其名称应翻译为“羅西亚”。元朝时根据蒙古语译为「斡羅思」[b]，到清朝初年许多文献中曾称为「羅剎」[c]，但在以国家相称时则多译为「鄂羅斯」[d]或「俄羅斯」。清乾隆年间官修《四库全书》时将其正式统一为“俄羅斯”或简称“俄国”，自此沿用至今。[12] 日本漢字與朝鮮漢字則將俄羅斯稱為「露西亞」（日语：ロシア roshia */?，韓語：노서아 noseoa */?[e]），此譯名較為接近俄語原始發音。

However, while the "罗斯" part corresponds to the "Rus" part of the name, the "俄" part seems to have no corresponding phoneme, either in Russian or any of the other language I have looked up.

the "俄" part seems to have no corresponding phoneme, either in Russian or any of the other language I have looked up.

Yes it's peculiar in Chinese. It's related to the Mongolian.

Reference: 郭文深.俄罗斯国家名称变迁考——从“罗刹”到“俄罗斯”

Summarize it in short:

From Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian translated 罗斯 as oros (but not ros) followed by the Mongolian pronunciation habit, and then translated into Chinese character as 斡罗斯. In Mongolian, there's no words started from [r], such words are usually borrowed words. Then for these words, in order to make it conform to Mongolian pronunciation rules and incarnate Mongolian vowel harmony, the strong vowel of the first syllable will be brought forward. Then 罗斯"ros" became oros, then 斡罗斯.

In Qing dynasty, the Manchu didn't have direct contact with the Russian, they used the translation (especially the transliteration) of the Mongolian which is the intermediary between them. For Chinese characters they used 鄂罗斯 and 俄罗斯, until the Emperor QianLong unified them into 俄罗斯.


Is the word “恶犬” trending IRL? I’m seeing pet shops around hanging up signs with:

  恶犬

in many places.

This is not something I’ve noticed on quite a large scale, like this, before.

It’s real world data, so harder to track online.

I’m not really sure how to go about searching something like this.

Any ideas?

Is the word “恶犬” trending?

If you want to track the trend of a word in real world, especially when this word may not be popular in a large area or on the Internet, you should do it yourself. Ask local residents living around, or these shop keepers who decided to use this word to find out the reason behind. Maybe looking up local newspaper also helps.

“恶犬” (fierce dog) is not a new word, I think it's mostly used around factories or private properties to warn irrelevant people to keep away. It’s seen in rural areas more often. I hardly saw it used by pet shops (and I think they should use "lovely dog" instead). Interesting if it can be confirmed as a new trend.


Glyph origin of 录. Is the original form 禄, 録, or 剥? Did 录 or 彔 look like some wooden object being carved? Was it originally a knife chipping something which became 録 as in recording events on a wooden object? It also seems to resemble a knife stripping and peeling away outer wooden layers like in 剥 (which btw does not sound anything like 录!).
However, I've seen sources like in http://qiyuan.chaziwang.com/etymology-3605.html say that it's a bag with water dripping below and ultimately became 禄, though I'm not even sure how does a dripping bag end up meaning as blessing. What is the story behind this character?

Is the original form 禄, 録, or 剥?

None of these - and I'm afraid that the chaziwang's description of glyph origins also doesn't look correct.
You have a minor interpretation issue in the question. The link actually says that 「彔」 is the original form of 「淥」 (to strain liquids), while it uses the character 「彔」 as a phonetic loan for 「祿」, not that 「彔」 becomes 「祿」.
The phonetic loan for 「祿」 explanation is plausible, while 「彔」 being the original form of 「淥」 is not supported in a graphical sense; oracle bones or Shāng bronzes did not have a component which is described as a bag that looked like the top of 「彔」.

時期字體
字形
參考資料

商甲

甲598合集28800

西周金

彔伯簋蓋集成4302

春秋金

□弔多父盤總8.4786

戰國・楚簡

28曾侯乙墓簡

戰國・楚簡

145反包山竹簡

戰國・楚璽印

214古璽彙編

Shape A

戰國・楚簡

魯穆公問7郭店楚簡

篆

彔部說文解字

楷

Shape B

東漢銅鏡銘文

吾作鏡

楷

「彔」 originally depicted a well-pulley with a container used for drawing water. The small dots around the bottom of the character represent drops of water, equivalent to 「氵」. The word that 「彔」 originally represented is now written as 「轆轤」 (Zhengzhang OC: /*roːɡ raː/). The meaning to carve wood for 「彔」 (/*b·roːɡ/) is a phonetic loan.

Later on, the well-pulley shape suffered egregious graphical corruption, eventually becoming the shape of 「彑」, while the drops of water turned into 「水・氺」.

References:

漢語多功能字庫
季旭昇《說文新證》
小學堂字形演變
中國哲學書電子化計劃

宋・徐鉉等奉敕校定　漢・許慎《說文解字》

國學大師

郭沫若《甲骨文合集》
中國社會科學院考古研究所《殷周金文集成》


What is the meaning of 愣了愣 I have：

格兰仕空调生产车间负责人走过生产线时，看到以为一位工人正在抬起手臂取零件，她愣了愣，想：“这个动作有没有可能改进一下呢？”

她愣了愣， 想  = 'she suddenly thought', 'she, with a start, thought'  Is that the meaning of '愣了愣‘？？ Or is it 'staring at him, she thought, '

愣 is used pretty common in Chinese in a couple of ways. In this situation, the lady 她 could be a little bit shocked, amazed, and surprised. That kind of feeling made her to stare at the scene for a moment.


How do I say that something is "negative"? I'm trying to explain to a Chinese penpal that certain word and phrases in English carry a negative connotation and so shouldn't be used in specific situations.

I want to say "that phrase is very negative" (as in lacking in optimism or positivity). Google translate gives the word negative as 消极, but looking 消极 up in a Chinese to English dictionary tells me it means "passive", which isn't at all what I'm going for.

What's the right word to use?

According to iCIBA:

If someone is a negative person, or has a negative attitude, then they are 消极 (xiāo jí), or  悲观 (bēi guān).

To say that a word has a negative connotation, you use 负面含义 (fùmiàn hányì), literally, "downside meaning".

Thanks to S.Rhee for pointing me to iCIBA, where I was able to find the answer to my own question.


I am particularly fascinated by the Chinese character that is pronounced SHIN & means faith or belief Can you add an illustration please and elaborate on the strokes, each one and the detailed meaning nehind it? Ie..I have held this character close to my heart and wear it on my sleeve so to speak. Tattooed on my shoulder on my 25th birthday as a landmark or signpost to commemorate it's beauty and poetic renaissance vibration in which it is for me, unbound by any dating of self or time. In this regard it is why I ask.

I understand that it also means a message as in a letter or mail and delivery method as well.  A doctor of medicine said this to me in a brief passing of kindred souls communication in an honest way.

I'm afraid that you are reading much too into this. There is no "meaning behind each stroke".

「信」(Baxter-Sagart OC: /*s-ni[ŋ]-s/, sincerity) is composed of semantic「言」(speech, here vaguely hinting at honest words) and phonetic「人・亻」(/*ni[ŋ]/).


What's the format of official "online" HSK tests? Some HSK test centres give the option of taking an online test (albeit supervised under exam conditions).

What format does this take?  Is the audio played on a CD player to the whole room or do you get headphones connected to the computer?

(The audio quality of some of the downloadable mock tests is very low — the ones I have are 11kHz MP3, and this makes comprehension unnecessarily harder.)

I took the computer version HSK4 test.
Audio was only played once as standard for levels 4-6.
You get some small headphones which did cut out the exam room background noise a bit. (If all the levels are being held in the same room then there can be chatter as the lower level test finish earlier.)

Pros:

Don't have to write characters (this is probably only a pro for levels 4-6 because the testable characters in HSK3 are usually very simple, 米， 大， 小， etc.).
Can mark reading questions you're not sure on and quickly click back to them when you have some time at the end. (You might be able to do this on paper anyway.)
Also if you can't remember the pinyin for a character but you know what it means this can be frustrating. But you can cycle through all of your guesses to try and find it in the entry system.

Cons:

Reading font was not the one I was used to and took a little longer than normal (for all parts).
You can not skip ahead on the listening part and read all of the questions if you answer one quickly, you must wait. This is especially annoying for the two part audio questions, as you have to remember the whole audio snippet and wait for the second question to come.
The writing entry system for typed pinyin was not the one I was used to and would struggle to automatically generate words.
There is a character limit on the written test which is not mentioned on the mocks for written exercises.

Extra:

The test centre I was in had a technical failure and the tests wouldn't start. When they did start the audio had already played for the first 2 questions and wouldn't replay, which wasted time and stressed me out for the 3rd question etc. The staff said they couldn't do anything to adjust the marks or retest the questions because it's a centralised test.


How comes the word 偶像 is related to worship? As I read the Bible, 偶像 means the idols made by man and being worshiped. As I know there are 3 meaning of the word 偶像:

木偶 & 雕像, used in different proposes such as decoration art performance
the items made and worshiped by man
the celebrities followed by fans

The 3rd meaning is definitely an extension of the 2nd meaning, but the 1st meaning seems to have no relation with the 2nd one: I don't see the direct causal relationship in art and worship. Because the 1st meaning is the closest to the literal meaning, I guess it is the original meaning.
The reason makes me more curious about this word is that the English word "idol" has exactly these 3 meanings. Is that coincident? But the English language is influenced a lot by the Bible, so I guess it makes sense the English word "idol" has these 3 meanings. However, I don't think the Chinese Language has such an influence.
My hypotheses:

There are some intrinsic relations between the 1st meaning and the 2nd meaning, so the English word and the Chinese evolved in the same way.
Some ancient Christian like 景教 in the Tang dynasty created the relation between statues and worship.
The English language directly influenced the Chinese language, so the result is the Chinese word 偶像 just copied all the meanings from the English word “idol”.

I think the key to this question is when the word 偶像 began to have worship related meaning. However, that is something I failed to find after searching online.

My understanding is, early people made wooden or stone figures/statues to represent the gods they worshiped.
The meaning of 偶像 (木偶 & 雕像) extended from [figures/ statues] --> [item for worshiping]  --> [individual to be worshiped]
The difference between '神像' and '雕像' is '雕像' is just a  statue but '神像' is a statue that represents a god (2.the items made and worshiped by man)


How to translate/use 一巧 All of a sudden in my course we've started using "一巧" everywhere, and I really do not understand it at all.

example:

尽管我很喜欢这张唱片，可是我一巧也开始喜欢它，想到以后可以跟一巧一起听音乐，我决定把这张唱片给他。

which I understand all of, except how to translate the 一巧

EDIT:
My apologies, there was a typo in the sentence. Fixed now. I had mistyped 也 as 页, and forgot the rest of the sentence.

The typo aside, there are a few grammatical issues with your sentence.

(Mis)use of the 尽管...可是... construction. This conjunctional
construction, like in English (even though/notwithstanding),
indicates a condition/status, preceded by 尽管 and a second condition
that indicates a contrast to the first, usually indicated by
adverbs like 却, 但还是, 也要, and very rarely, 可是. In your example, the
second condition seems to be a complementary/favourable condition to
the first or simply a statement, rather than a contrast.
The phrase 我一巧也开始喜欢它 makes no sense at all. My guess is that you
are simply trying to tell people that '一巧' (whoever that is) also
started to love the album. 开始喜欢 is grammatically sound in Mandarin
(assuming this is the flavour of Chinese you are learning), but it
does sound a little awkward to my ears. A better way to express this
would be 渐渐地喜欢上. I am not certain what you are trying to describe with 我一巧, but if you insist on using this structure, then might I suggest 我的一巧. 我的一巧 (my 一巧) is used to indicate a very intimate relationship between you and 一巧, to the extent of a romantic relationship. I can only assume that 一巧 is male, because you used the pronoun (他) in the second sentence (even though it sounds more female than male).
Lastly, this should really be split into two sentences

Here is my attempt at reconstructing the sentence and my take on its meaning:

  我很喜欢这张唱片，就连我的一巧也渐渐地在喜欢上它。 想到以后可以跟一巧一起听音乐，我决定把这张唱片给他。

  I really love this album; even my yiqiao is beginning to like it. Realizing that I can listen to music together with yiqiao from now on, I decide to give this album to him.


How would you translate the phrase "Concession Speech" in Chinese accurately? The following is the title of an article from NewYork Times:

  Highlights of Hillary Clinton’s Concession Speech and President Obama’s Remarks

How would you translate "concession speech" in Chinese accurately?

"Concession" means "让步，承让". But it seems rather weired to say "让步演讲，承让演讲". In this Chinese article, it seems  to suggest that one might translate it as "败选演讲". But "败选" seems to be rather inferior to "concession" in English.

I found these:

How about: 认输演说 or 认输演讲 or 败选演讲

Example of the latter:

麦凯恩在大选之夜的败选演讲中做手势让支持者冷静下来.


但是, 可是 and 不过 - how to know which one to use? According to my dictionary, 但是, 可是 and 不过 all mean "but/however"? However are there any differences between them? Are there some cases, where one can be used but not another?

Check out this page: 3 ways to say 'but' in Chinese - difference between 不过 bù guò - 可是 kě shì - 但是 dàn shì.

That page says that:

不过 is softer.
可是 is usually associated with something unfortunate.
但是 is more formal and stronger.


What does "被续了" mean? 我想这个穿着红色衣服的男孩已经被续了。

In this sentence, the word "续" means life-prolonging, and when people say this they usually mean that someone was being life-prolonged to somebody instead of someone was being life-prolonged by somebody. Why?

It's a Chinese (political) joke. It has been told that a boy is killed to lengthen the former (×2) chairman, Zemin Jiang. But it's not proven to be true yet. It's alright to used chatting with people of new generations in China. And it has somehow become a meme among them.

When people say 续命、续一秒、+1s , they are also talking about that.


What is the meaning of 两条腿走路？ 要用两条腿走路

I think this saying comes from 周恩来 or is it older? I presume it means 'do 2 things at the same time'. I just think, it's hard to walk anywhere on 1 leg! Maybe it had a deeper meaning in the time of the 大跃进?

Edit: More context: the subject is 剪纸的发展： 我以为可以两条腿走路：一面抓好继承，一面去抓发展。

要用两条腿走路

Metaphorically, it means we should be developing with two aspects and only focusing on one could not go very far. This sentence is used when the developing can be identified as two key aspects. And it won't be used if there are many aspects, because one only has two legs. For example,  我们要用两条腿走路，生产和质量都要做好，...


黑 and 乌 talking about colours When talking about colours both 乌 and 黑 seem to mean "black", what is the difference between them?
ex. there is 乌龙茶 but there is also 黑龙江, both 乌龙 and 黑龙 mean "black dragon".

http://www.zdic.net/z/1d/sw/70CF.htm

  孝鳥也。象形

  乌 was a pictograph of a crow (烏鴉) . Since crow is black, the character 乌 was sometimes used as an adjective for 'dark' , 'black', or a verb for 'to blacken'  in classical text.

~

  火所熏之色也

  黑 was a pictograph that depicted  'object being burned by fire' . It was used to represent the color 'black'.  This meaning remain unchanged today.

In modern Chinese, 黑 is the primary word for 'black'(noun or adjective); 乌 is used for 'black' or 'dark'  only in some set phrases , idioms and names

Examples:

烏煙瘴氣- black smoke and miasma

烏雲 - dark cloud

烏衣 - classical version of 黑衣 (black clothes)


How do Chinese call the sound "i" In the Chinese language, we have a "clean i" sound (for example, when linked to "ji", "li", "pi") and a "dirty i" sound (for example, when linked to "zhi", "chi", "zi", "ci").
How do Chinese people call these two types of "i" sounds?
I'm using "clean" and "dirty" here, because that's how we call it in my language.
Thank you!

In phonology, the "clean i" sound, IPA /i/, is called "close front unrounded vowel", which, in Chinese is called:

闭前不圆唇元音

The "dirty i" instead, as I learned it, should be the IPA /ɨ/, which is called "close central unrounded vowel", in Chinese:

闭央不圆唇元音

Those are the terms used in phonology, which are (more or less) scientifically validated.
For the "dirty i", the IPA /ɿ/ has also been used, especially by sinologists, to describe the -i sound with the retroflex initials "zh"/"ch"/"sh", but it's now considered obsolete:

Other characters have been added in for specific phonemes which do not possess a specific symbol in the IPA. Those studying modern Chinese phonology have used ⟨ɿ⟩ to represent the sound of -i in Pinyin hanzi which has been variously described as [ɨ], [ɹ̩], [z̩] or [ɯ].

As for colloquial terms, I'm not aware of any, because the pinyin syllables "zhi", "chi", "shi", "zi", "ci", "si", "ri" are said to be pronounced just as their respective initials (声母）“zh", "ch", "sh", "z", "c", "s", "r", except they are a little bit more loud and clear (响亮). Therefore the addition of the grapheme "i" after them is a romanization convention.
If you need to describe the term to someone who isn't familiar with phonology, or pinyin romanization, you can say it in your own words (or mine), but that's subjective. Example:

更响亮的舌面「衣」音 (衣 is simply used to represent the vowel sound)
A louder and clearer "i" sound, (pronounced with) the blade of the tongue (lateral sound).

更细弱的舌尖「衣」音
A thinner and weaker "i" sound, (pronounced with) the tip of the tongue (apical sound)


Do people say "使用 。。 表达” or "通过。。。 表达“》 I'm Trying to figure out what is the proper was to say
"Use something in order to express something else"
Is it
通过。。。 表达。。
or
使用。。。。 表达。。。

If it is actually a third option let me know!

Cheers,

Theoretically, both of them might be appropriate in specific situation. But most of the time, that can be translated as "用...来表达..."
For example, “use wine to express romance” can be translated as "用（以）酒来表达（表现）浪漫"


What's the difference between 雕像 and 雕塑? I've read the two sentences that used the word 雕像 and 雕塑, respectively. However, I don't see what's the difference between the two words. When you look it up in a dictionary, both say "it is statue".

So is there anything that makes the one different from the other? I'm learning about Mandarin Chinese.

The 像 character indicates that the sculpture is supposed to resemble a person, it's an "alike" or depiction of someone, 雕塑 may take more vague shapes, abstract sculptures, especially larger ones, etc., including persons of course.

Try using Google image search.

First term: 雕像
Second term: 雕塑


Characters to pinyin for names? I am aware that there are some difficulties in automatic conversion of characters to pinyin, because the same character can be pronounced in different ways depending on the context.  Do these problems still exist if you just want to convert personal names?  Are there any good software tools for that job?

Names are still tricky. There was even a heated discussion recently about the correct pronunciation of a very famous person called 甄嬛.

Some characters are neither wrong nor right, e.g.: 茜 some people pronounce it xi1 other pronounce it qian4 ... it just depends on their parents

Haven't tired any of these but there's a bunch of different software that will do this:

中英文姓名批量转换器

韦氏港台拼音姓名批量转换器

etc etc

but any software will still need people to proofread it & maybe even confirm it with the people themselves...


Why is Húnán pronounced with an F? I traveled to Hunan province and stumbled across something interesting.

I was speaking to a taxi driver and asked him, 'where are you from'? He responded, 'Funan'. I then realized he actually meant 'Hunan' (湖南). I thought, perhaps he had a lisp or accent.

Upon conversing with a hotel receptionist and a porter, they both referred to Hunan as Funan.

That's not all, there is a city in Hunan called Huaihua (怀化). They referred to it as Fuaihua.

Do Hunanese (?) pronounce cities beginning with 'H' with an 'F'?  Why is this? Does this pronunciation rule apply only for cities inside Hunan (including the Hunan province?). Does this only apply to place names?

It's topolect.

Here's page 27 of《长沙方言词典》:

As you can see 湖 is consistently pronounced: fu (rising tone).
It doesn't have anything to do with being a proper noun or anything else, this is the Xiang language.
If we look at this table, also from《长沙方言词典》

you can see that Changsha has absolutely zero hu pronunciations.

This has been commented on before on Chinese SE: here:

h merges with f (conditioned on following vowel):
Some Sichuan?, Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing


What is the difference in usage between 以后 and 之后？ Today John Pasden linked to an old Sinosplice post in which he discussed how Chinese grammatical categories cannot be mapped neatly onto those of Indo-European languages.

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2006/03/20/chinese-parts-of-speech

Near the end there is a neat chart that illustrates how simple “nouns of locality” combine to form compounds. My Zhongwen Popup Chinese Dictionary plugin for Chrome gives me essentially the same translation for 以后 and 之后, but I have seen them in different environments and don't think they're completely interchangeable. What is the difference in usage between 以后 and 之后？

之后 means after that (something said earlier) which requires a context as the reference point of time. 以后 can be used with or without context. When standalone, 以后 means from now on, in future.
In general, 之后 refers to a shorter time period than 以后. The difference is akin to that between after vs. since but weaker. In imperative sentences you may want to use 以后.
之后 can also mean geographically behind though this usage is not common. 以后 cannot be used in that way. Example: 围墙之后是一排小树。
In colloquial language they are pretty much interchangeable. People don't pay much attention to the differences in #1 and #2. In other word, 之后 can also be used without a context and means from now on, etc. In writing and formal speech, however, they should be used with precision.


„Incognito” in mandarin I.e. a person trying to hide his/her true identity? I asked Chinese friends but they are providing different options and I’m not sure if there is a direct equivalent of the English word. I’d like to have a traditional characters for this, thanks!

Browsing incognito is the phrase we often see on the internet . according to  this context, we use incognito to anonymously surf the internet and hence no trace is left

So we say 無痕上網。 痕in this Chinese phrase means trace . This Chinese phrase means surfing the website without trace


Parsing “你如此特别，如此与众不同，是那样的特别。” into words 你如此特别，如此与众不同，是那样的特别。

I have no idea how to properly separate this sentence into words.
I want to understand it word by word.

你 / 如此 / 特别， // 如此 / 与众不同， // 是 / 那样的 / 特别。
你 / 如此 / 特别， // 如此 / 与众不同， // 是 / 那样 / 的 / 特别。
你 / 如 / 此 / 特别， // 如 / 此 / 与众不同， // 是 / 那样的 / 特别。
你 / 如 / 此 / 特别， // 如 / 此 / 与众不同， // 是 / 那样 / 的 / 特别。
My tries... :(

"你(是)如此(的)特别，如此(的)与众不同。" = "You are so special (or 'special like this'), so extraordinary"
(的) is optional

The third part "是那样的特别" = "is so special (or 'is special like that' )" is redundant. It should be removed and be a separate sentence.


我住宅在一座橋樑 的 附近。Does this sound idiomatic and natural, or stilted and artificial? I want to convey the idea: My residence is in the neighborhood of a bridge.

Initially I got:
我住宅在附近的一座橋樑。

Wǒ zhùzhái zài fùjìn de yīzuò qiáoliáng.

But after listening to myself saying that, I think I got the "de" out of place.

X de Y is the Y of the X.  So the neighborhood of the bridge is the qiáoliáng de fùjìn.

So I think I should say:

我住宅在一座橋樑 的 附近。

Wǒ zhùzhái zài yīzuò qiáoliáng de fùjìn .

I welcome any corrections of obvious mistakes, but I think the second version of the basic grammar and syntax is correct.  However, I am not sure whether this sounds natural and idiomatically correct.

Does this sound like a native Mandarin speaker would say it?

Thanks.

住宅、桥梁
这两个词语太书面化了。

The more natural way is to say:

我家附近有座桥。/我家边上有座桥。/我家在桥边。


中国人 vs 华人 which should I use? I think 中国人 only refers to people having Chinese nationality while 华人 can be referred to any Chinese-descent people.

If one person is China-born and has Chinese nationality, should I always use 中国人? Is 华人 less common, or in the worst case, rude?

中国人: usally it refers to people who have PRC nationality. In Mainland China, this may also refer to citizens of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
华人: Chinese (race) people with the nationality of another country.
华侨: 中国人 living abroad.
华裔: the decendants of 华人 or 华侨.


Idiomatic expressions for attitude (agreement or disagreement) I have recently seen two phrases which, in my understanding, looked very similar to each other:

  再看吧  [zài kàn ba]
  考虑考虑 [kǎo lǜ kǎo lǜ]

However, I've been told that the first one means almost certain disagreement, while the other is similar to "maybe".

I'm aware that Chinese culture is very polite; at least, more than many Western cultures. However, I'm still wondering how to correctly (and politely!) express my attitude if I:

tentatively agree;
tend to disagree;
or certainly disagree;

Related: "If you say so": Dismissive agreement

tentatively agree: 没问题，我试试看
tend to disagree: 应该可以
certainly disagree: 再看吧

Native Chinese here, at least for me when I heard 考虑考虑 I won't take it as "maybe", rather it sounds a disagreement to me.


How do I make complex comparison structures with 比? I'm trying to understand how a complex 比 structure would be like. Specially when it comes to comparing actions I get quite lost. Could anyone check if I got the patterns right?

  A 比 B + adjective

我比你高。
(I am taller than you)

  A 比 B + adjective + quantity

我比你高5厘米
(I am 5 centimeters taller than you)

  A 比 B + adjective + intensity

我比你高多了 / 我比你高一点儿
(I am a lot taller than you / I am a bit taller than you)

  A 比 B V 得 + adjective + intensity

我比你来得早多了
(I come a lot earlier than you)

  A 比 B V 得 + adjective + quantity

我比你来得早5分钟
(I come 5 minutes earlier than you)

  A (V) O 比 B V 得 + adjective or A (V) O V 得 比 B + adjective

我(学)中文比你学得多 / 我(学)中文学得比你多
(I study Chinese more than you)

  A （V） O 比 B V 得 + adjective + intensity or A （V） O V 得 比 B + adjective + intensity

我(学)中文比你学得多多了 / 我学中文比你学得多一点儿 / 我(学)中文学得比你多多了 / 我学中文学得比你多一点儿
(I study Chinese a lot more than you / I study Chinese a bit more than you)

  A （V） O 比 B V 得 + adjective + quantity or A （V） O V 得 比 B + adjective + quantity

我(学)中文比你学得多四个小时 / 我(学)中文学得比你多四个小时
(I study Chinese 4 hours more than you)

Thanks a lot!

我说汉语比你说汉语说得更好

(A V O) 比 (B V O) (V 得 adv intensity)

Complex enough?


Any rule(s) about combining nouns with other words to form new nouns? I came across the sentence "行进路线上的生物早早就避开了" and I interpret "行进路线" to mean marching path. 行进 means marching/advancing and 路线 means route/path so marching path seems to make sense, but this is my first time seeing this manner of speech. Are you generally allowed to combine a verb and a noun together to form a new noun or is this a special case?

Edit: I just came across another example, "骷髅兵". Skeleton + Solider... .so... skeleton soldier? Is it truly that simple? This is how it works in English but I don't expect such a behavior to carry into Chinese. I apologize if this is a very noobie question but I'm just now encountering this.

Of course you can. It's much simpler in Chinese actually, because the etymology of Chinese words is pure Chinese, instead of various languages like of English words.

Yes, you need to know that "word" is not a clear concept in Chinese. Basically, a sentence is composed of character combinations, among which some combinations (sometimes just a character by itself) are frequently used or have clear definition (e.g. scientific terms) thus regarded as words. What I want to say is that whenever the combination is meaningful, you are fine to use it.

And interestingly, this feature contributes to the extensive phenomenon that a combination of characters (word if you want) can be read as different things according to  its context.

E.g.

如临深渊，相机行事。
（像在深潭边走路一样谨慎，观察时机灵活办事）

买了一台新相机
（照相的机器）

未详其实，不敢妄言。
（没有清楚地知道那个事实，不敢随便发表议论）

其实他昨天没有回来。
（确实，作连词）

生啖鹿肉，颜色不变
（生吃鹿肉，面容表情不改变）

冷暖彰益，颜色调和。
（冷色和暖色相配凸现各自的好处，多种色彩和谐相容）

木石错置，纷呈杂然。
（树木山石交错设置，混杂地纷纷展现）

错置于此，其得宜乎？
（安排（措置）在这里，难道合适吗？）


How to say "Throw something at someone" Particularly, I was wondering how to say "She threw cards at us" (as in playing cards). Is “她掷卡片对我们“ correct？

Throw something at somebody:把(东西)扔向（某人）。
She threw cards at us:
她把卡片扔向我们/她把卡片扔给我们/她朝我们扔卡片/她向我们扔来卡片

However, If playing cards, We don't say it like above. I think we just say "她向我们打出xx牌".
Playing cards: 打牌/打扑克Playing poker


What is the difference of use between 没空 and 没(有)时间? As far as I can tell, they both have the same meaning: have no time, i.e.:

  对不起，今天我没空帮你

  对不起，今天我没（有）时间帮你

But the first one looks like a quasi-idiomatic expression (have no air?); is there a difference in register, perhaps?

Another thing that bugs me: 没 is mostly used for past negation, with the notable exception of 没有. Can I use both of those expressions when referring to the future?

「時間」means time, but「空」means free/leisure/spare time. Correspondingly,「沒（有）時間」means don't have time, but「沒空」means don't have free/leisure/spare time.

While「時間」works in all situations,「空」does not; there are situations where using「空」gives a strange impression or makes little sense, such as

  我沒空打工賺錢 - I don't have the free time to go to work to earn money
  我的孩子沒空上學 - My children don't have the free time to go to school

In the above, by using「空」, there's a feeling that the task described is trivial or unimportant, which comes across as abnormal if the people around you would consider otherwise.

「沒空」is otherwise more colloquial than「沒時間」, which means that you should use the latter when presenting written work.

Further notes:

「空」here means spare or vacant, and by extension spare time, pronounced in the fourth tone. Air is not the correct interpretation (and is pronounced in the first tone), although it would be related to vacant in meaning.
For「沒」vs.「沒有」, see  What is the difference between 没有+V. and 没+V.?


What is the meaning of 零一年? Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
In:

他们荡桨向前，船划了一年零一天,

零一天 means "and a day"
but I suspect, spoken in the 21st century, in

"零一年，我去内蒙古的桦木沟拍摄，"

零一年 means 2001. Or does it somehow mean "a year ago"??

As you can see '零一天' means 'and a day' is because there is a '一年' before it.

一年零一天 = one year and a day

二千零一年 = two thousand and one years

二零零一年 = the year 2001

'零一年' is shot for '二零零一年' (the year 2001),
You cannot reduce '二千零一年'  to '零一年', but you can reduce '二零零一年' to '零一年'. Just like we can shorten 1997 (the year) to 97, but can't shorten 1,997 (the number) to 97


How to say financial trader in Mandarin? How does one say "trader" in Mandarin. I am meaning a financial trader who invests in the stock market. Would it be 股民？
谢谢

'Stock trader' as a job title is '股票交易员' They buy and sell stocks in the stock market for clients for short-term returns or long term investment
股民 (stockholder) refers to people who trade stocks themselves or through their agents on a part-time basis. There are stockholders who hold stocks for long term investment and they are called 股票投资者 (stock investors). There are stockholders who speculate the stock market like a gambler, and they are called 股票炒家 (stock speculators)
A financial consultant is a 财务顾问


How to say "damage control" (to minimize damage to reputation) Damage control means:

"action taken to limit the damaging effects of an accident or error." (Lexico)
"measures taken to offset or minimize damage to reputation, credibility, or public image caused by a controversial act, remark, or revelation" (Merriam-Webster)

How can we translate "damage control" and "do damage control" into Chinese, especially when the actions are done primarily to minimize damage to reputation?
Do Mandarin people use 補鑊 as slang to represent fence-mending or damage control? suggests 補救 (bǔjiù, to remedy), which is more general, and "remedy" doesn't have the connotation of wanting to preserve reputation.

In the navies and the maritime industry, damage control is the emergency control of situations that may cause the sinking of a watercraft. It is translated as 损害控制 (damage control).
损害控制 can also be used metaphorically for "preventing damages to become more severe"
Example:
The White House staffers have to do damage control for the president's deranged tweets almost every day --> 白宫人员几乎每天都要对总统失控的推文进行损害控制. Metaphorically compare the damage caused by the president's tweets to ship-sinking damage (the damage is done, all you can do is not letting the ship sinks).
It would be easier in Cantonese -- 白宫人员几乎日日都要帮总统失控嘅推文补镬.

(to minimize damage to reputation)

The term 公关补救 (PR remedy) seems to fit
We can use a Cantonese slang 解畫 for that -- a metaphor for "to spin; to explain away the problem" I am not sure it is used in Mandarin or not


袖手旁观 generalizations I am looking for Chinese 成语 that generalize 袖手旁观, but indicate complacency with regards to something that could happen, rather than to something that has already happened, or is happening.

Thanks.

EDIT:

Current answers to my post mention war...

May be a strange distinction to make, but I was not talking about war. I was thinking about the occurrence of an undetected natural phenomenon, such as a flood, earthquake, meteorite, volcano eruption, or anything elder of the sort that one could not have accounted for, because there were no signs, and nobody thought about it. So I am looking for a saying imploring to think about a possible calamity when everyone else did not think it was obvious or coming. These things have all happened in history, unaccounted for, until someone was wise enough to think about them and get others to do so as well, and 成语 correct millennia of wisdom, so it seems strange that no-one would exist to describe what I am looking for, with all the 成语 out there.

洞燭先機／／／／／／未雨綢繆／／／／／／防微杜漸／／／／／／防患未然


Difference between 製作 and 製造? Both 製作 and 製造 mean "to make" according to this dictionary:

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/2913/
http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/6021/

It seems like 製造 might refer to physical items like a shirt or shoes, but not digital items like software or music.

Is this true, or are they interchangeable?

Is there any difference in usage between Mandarin and Cantonese?

The character 作 contains the meaning of 'create'

製作 refers to crafting, creating or making something that require skilled hands or creative mind (usually a single piece or in modest quantity)

For "making jewelry"  you should say  "製作首飾" instead of "製造首飾" because jewelry making is a fine craft.

A 'big movies' is a '大製作' (big production) - making movies is a creative art.

'製作' can be a noun for 'production'; 製造 is strictly a verb

製造 refers to manufacturing, producing or making something with or without skilled hands (from single piece to industrial scale)

For "iPhone is made by Apple" You should say "iPhone 是由蘋果製造的" instead of "iPhone 是由蘋果製作的" because the production of iPhone is certainly in industrial scale

There are no difference in usage between Mandarin and Cantonese


Why is 两十万 (liǎng shí wàn) okay when it contains 两十 (liǎng shí) which is incorrect? The accepted answer to Number two in chinese: 二 vs 两 writes:

  Numbers that are larger than 100, e.g. 两百, 两千三百六十二. 百, 千, and 万 can be seen as a sort of measure word.

Now, 十万 (shí wàn) means "hundred thousand" in Chinese.  So the above sentence implies 两十万 (liǎng shí wàn) is correct and means "two hundred thousand".

On Baidu 二十万 gets 19.4 million hits, whereas 两十万 gets 6.2 million, so while it looks like 二十万 is more frequently used, it also indicates that 两十万 is indeed valid.

However, I'm curious about how 两十 is incorrect, yet 两十万 (which contains the incorrect 两十) is okay.

Question: Why is 两十万 okay when it contains 两十 which is incorrect?

I guess it's because 两十万 means "两 of 十万" rather than the incorrect "两十 of 万"; I don't really see why it's parsed this way though.

「兩」didn't originally mean two. The character was first used for what is now written「輛」, the unit of measure for vehicles, being differentiated from「丙」and composed of two「丙」side-by-side:

The mark「一」was a decorative stroke added on top later to produce「兩」(note, a similar process occurred with the character「雨」).

The etymology of liǎng is ultimately not known, but very early on,「兩」was used as a phonetic loan for several meanings. The relevant ones to the modern language are:

Comparing and contrasting, or describing, two objects/people/situations.

《詩・齊風・還》： “並驅從兩肩兮， 揖我謂我儇兮。”
《莊子・人間世》： “吾未至乎事之情， 而既有陰陽之患矣；事若不成， 必有人道之患。 是兩也， 為人臣者不足以任之， 子其有以語我來。”

Unit of measurement of weight or objects.

《詩・齊風・南山》： “葛屨五兩， 冠緌雙止。”
《禮記・雜記下》： “納幣一束， 束五兩， 兩五尋。”

From traditional usage,「兩」(1) first of all refers to one or several units of something, then by extension (2) refers to a comparison or description of several/some/a small number of or two units/things. This is not the same usage as the abstract number「二」, and is why you never say abstract numbers with「兩」(e.g. when talking about telephone numbers, decimal numbers, etc.), and never use「兩」when counting objects which use「兩」as a measure word (e.g. for taels).

It is this differential usage which also precludes「兩十」from being a clear expression; 「十」is homophonous with too many other words, unlike「百」,「千」,「萬」.

To answer the question directly,

「兩十」also turns up Baidu hits; it is just as valid or invalid as「兩十萬」
Some of the Baidu hits are actually using「兩」as「輛」
The other ones may be regional colloquialisms; from a discussion here:

  我們老家還眞有，兩個，一十兩，兩十，兩百零兩，都是50歲以上的人，現在已經不怎麽能聽到這種數字了，方言被普通話漸漸消滅了。。。

Finally, note that

In formal currency numerals, there is only the alternative character「貳」, and none corresponding for「兩」. This is related to「兩」being invalid for use as a number in traditional currency systems.
It is exceedingly rare to use「兩」for the meaning two in the Sinoxenic languages (Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese), indicating that using it this way freely is a rather recent colloquial Chinese invention


What is the line “大势一去水东流” from? I came across this line from 第一章 6 载昆 夫人 古老夫子:

  “你们，莫冒火，听我来唱戏，”古老夫子真的唱起来。“事其所以观其所由，大势一去水东流。夫人呀，莫生气，请饮酒！”

I'm curious where the line:

  事其所以观其所由，大势一去水东流

originates from.

事其所以观其所由 should probably be: 视其所以 观其所由. I can't find any information for “大势一去水东流” apart from the article linked above.

Any idea where it originates from?

“大势一去水东流” seemingly means "大势一去 就如長江水东流" (when defeat becomes inevitable, it is like the water of Yangtze River flow East, --It can't be turned back)
Using "River water run East" metaphorically for the meaning of  "irreversible situation" is very common in Chinese poetry, the following are some examples:

《念奴娇 赤壁怀古》宋·苏轼："大江东去  ....." (The water of Yangtze River flow East and won't return...)

~

《臨江仙》楊慎:
"滚滚长江东逝水...." (The water of the rolling Yangtze River disappear to the East...)

~

《虞美人》 南唐后主李煜:
"....一江春水向東流" (....The water of a river flow East in Spring)

“事其所以观其所由， came from 论语 “视其所以，观其所由，察其所安，人焉廋哉！"

大势一去  is referring to the idiom 大势已去 宋·朱熹《朱子谏类》卷五十一：“.... 莫是大势已去。”

The phrase 水东流 appeared in the first line of 满江红·"汉水东流...."

The '戏'(opera) that 古老夫子 '唱'(sung) was a mix and match from different sources -- an original creation from the author of 《普提山下》陈果卿


产业 vs 企业 vs 商业. What's the difference? 产业 vs 企业 vs 商业. I think the 3 of them means enterprise. What's the difference between them?

企业: enterprise/corporation; business(only the organization, not the activity it engages in)

产业: industry; business(the activity but not the company/organization).

eg. 软件产业=software industry/business, 房地产(业)=real estate (business)

商业: commerce/commercial

eg. 商业(的)银行=commercial bank, 商业(的)软件=commercial software


Can 知道 be used in the sense of "to know someone"? While watching a video with Chinese subtitles on a Chinese website, I came across this dialogue:

Approximate English gloss (leaving out unnecessary details):

  A: You're XXX, right?

  B: So you know who I am?

The line said by B is (no punctuation in the original):

  哦 你知道我啊

In my experience (at least as a Cantonese speaker and as someone who has studied Mandarin formally for years), I would normally use 识 (e.g. in 认识, 熟识) to state that I know someone - e.g. 我识了他妹妹十几年 － and would use 知道 in the sense of "to know [some information]".

Is using 知道 in the sense in the dialogue correct? I can imagine "你知道我是谁" to be correct, but without the last two characters, I would normally see using 识 to be better usage. But it's completely possible that my usage is wrong.

知道 someone is usually to mean "heard of" someone, probably because of his or her fame, but not personally acquainted with whom.

认识 would be a better one to mean personally "know" someone.