Could you please explain what these words mean and transcribe them in Chinese script? I need to insert the "typed-in" version of these words into my Word document (at work), but I know nothing about the Chinese language, and cannot type in Chinese.

What do these words mean? Please type them in, so I can copy and paste them.

I tried an online OCR service, but it failed..

The word 欢迎 means welcome and is typed as huan ying. This is a pretty basic word in Chinese so you can easily look it up even via a quick Google search.

In case you encounter a similar case down the road...

If you use macOS or iOS, you can add a handwritten Chinese keyboard, and write the character in the screen by handwriting it. Then tap on the correct character on the pop-up and search it via Google, or paste it on the dictionary (macOS has a default Chinese dictionary, for your information).

If you use iOS and download an app called Pleco (which is available in Android as well), you can use the handwritten feature and dictionary together via an In-App Purchase.


How to say "it is actually something that does something"? I'm just wondering how to say "it is actually (insert noun) that really (insert verb).

The context is this: 有些人说，梦想点亮未来。我不同意。

Then I want to say: 其实我觉得是注意点亮未来。

Is my use of 是 correct?

Thanks very much in advance!

The usage of 是 is correct.

  是 ( shì ㄕˋ )
  〈动〉
  (5) 表示肯定判断之词 [be]

I think it is actually the idea that can really light up the future.
其实我觉得是主意点亮未来。
我觉得其实是主意点亮未来。
我觉得其实是主意才能真正点亮未来。

To emphasize it, you can add 应该. (contrast to 梦想)
其实我觉得应该是主意点亮未来。
我觉得其实应该是主意点亮未来。
我觉得其实应该是主意才能真正点亮未来。

You can also use 想法 or 点子 for 主意.


每个人都...... Why the 都 is compulsory in the sentence. 花市里人山人海，热闹非凡，每个人都带着甜蜜的笑容。

Is the sentence wrong without the 都？

Why the sentence is only correct / better with the 都？

Thank you!

都 is an adverb for 'All' ; 'without exception'

"每个人带着甜蜜的笑容。" is not grammatically wrong, However, having the adverb 都 before the verb 带着 (carry), add emphasis to the fact-  'All of them/ without exception'

'人人带着愉快的笑容' = 'everyone carry pleasant smile on their faces'
'人人(都)带着愉快的笑容' = 'everyone, (without exception), carry pleasant smile on their faces'

It would be easier to see the difference if you replace 每个人(each person) or 人人 (everyone) with a term that hasn't already indicated the meaning of 'all'

For example:

'外面的人们带着愉快的笑容' = 'the people outside, carry pleasant smile' (we don't know it is some of them or all of them)

'外面的人们都带着愉快的笑容 = the people outside, all carry pleasant smile' (now we know all of them are smiling)

Side note:

甜蜜的笑容 = 'sweet smile' , more suitable for describing smile of beautiful or cute girl


The usage of 有 in comparisons The verb 有 can be used to form a sentence in a way of comparisons of equality as follows. (as ~ as)

今天有昨天热。Today is as hot as yesterday.
他没有你细心。He is not as careful as you.

From looking at them, it seems to me that Mandarin uses a phrase (noun+adjective) as one word, for example in the above two sentences:

昨天-热 (hot as yesterday)
你-细心(careful as you)

Am I getting it correct? If yes, can I do the make-up-new-word thing when I speak English in Mandarin too as long as it fits well?
or this is not a good catch at all?
Thank you all in advance.

When use 有 in comparison:

In positive way you can use 今天和昨天一样热(Today is as hot as yesterday) or 今天有昨天那么热 instead of 今天有昨天热.Because it's more normal expression.

In negative way you can use 他没(有)你(那么)细心 which will omit character 有 or 今天没(有)昨天(那么)热.

It's better to add 那么 in comparison to emphasize comparison.


Are both 回了 and 回来了 correct responses to 你回天津了吗 (have you returned to Tianjin)? Someone asked me:

  你回天津了吗？ (nǐ huí tiānjīn le ma = have you returned to Tianjin)

I replied 回了 (huí le = returned), but I'm wondering if I should have said 回来了 (huílái le = returned) instead, or if both are acceptable.

Question: Are both 回了 and 回来了 correct responses to 你回天津了吗 (have you returned to Tianjin)?

回 = back; 来 = come; 去 = go
回来 = come back; 回去 = go back
回天津去了 = "have gone back to Tianjin"
回天津来了 = "have came back to Tianjin"

  你回天津了吗？

If the question is asked in 天津, that would mean it is actually asking "你回天津(来)了吗？ (have you came back to Tianjin?), then you can answer "回来了" (yes, I have came back) or simply "回了" [yes, I have (came back)]

If the question is asked anywhere else, that would mean it is actually asking "你回天津(去)了吗？ (have you gone back to Tianjin?) then you can answer "回去了" (yes, I have gone back) or simply "回了" [yes, I have (gone  back)]

In conclusion:

Depend on either you are in Tianjin or not,  "回了" could means "I had came back"(if you are in Tianjin)  or "I had gone back".(if you are not in Tianjin)


How well-known is the expression 杯弓蛇影? I like this 成语 and brought it up in a conversation, but the person I was speaking with (an expat Chinese) didn't know it. So I would like to know how well-known it is. Would a 10 year old in Beijing be likely to know it, for instance? Or, a primary school teacher, or a 20 year old science student?

In my mind, most well-educated individuals in China know the meaning of '杯弓蛇影' ，at least they heard about it (even do not fully understand the meaning.)

'杯弓蛇影' appears in our textbook of elementary school.


Why does 喜欢 go before 跟 in 他喜欢跟她在一起? I am somewhat new to Chinese and was learning “跟”. One of the sentences is "he likes to be with her" and 我的老师 says the correct form is

他喜欢跟她在一起。

Would anyone be capable of breaking down the structure of this sentence?

他喜欢跟她在一起.

Grammatically, we understand it as 他/喜欢/[跟她][在一起].
他: Subject(主语)
喜欢: Predicate(谓语)
跟她在一起: Object(宾语)
跟她 is a prepositional phrase modifying the verbal phrase 在一起.
Semantically, the sentence means he likes being together with her.
跟她: with her
在一起: being together
他喜欢: he likes


How common is the phrase “同乡”? I recently read the word “同乡” (i.e. person who lives in the same village as you). I'm trying to figure out if it is something that people say.
Could I say
在飞机上我竟然认识一位同乡？

If not, how is it used today? (If at all)

同乡 is common in formal language. In spoken language, 老乡 is the preferred word especially in Northern China and it is an informal word. People from Southern China may choose 乡亲 or 乡里. (Reference on this regional difference: wikipedia)

Colloquial:

  On the airplane I met someone who came from the same hometown. 在飞机上我遇见一个老乡/乡里/乡亲。

Formal:

  There is a Shanxi Townsmen Association in Beijing. 在北京有个山西同乡会。

Because it's the name of an association, which should be formal, 同乡 is used.


What is the purpose of using 成语接龙 to learn 成语? My son attends Chinese classes and one of the techniques they focus on is teaching the children to learn 成语接龙.

From my observation this allows someone to learn a large number of 成语 as it prompts you with the first character and the brain is quite adaptive in remembering sequences like this. However, what it doesn't seem to allow you to remember is meaning or meaning in context and how the 成语 is used in conversation.

In most cases if you search for 成语接龙 online you will be provided downloaded pages or sets that you can use to learn, but not the meaning of the individual 成语.

In Western countries idioms and sayings are usually learnt from reading, conversation and popular culture.

Is there a difference in the way that 成语 are learnt in Chinese that makes it important to learn in this way? What are the stated aims of using the 成语接龙 technique as I am aware that this also taught in (some) schools in China?

The purpose is to force one to recite idioms without explaining what they mean.

I believe this kind of recitation is a good way to learn language. Recite it first when we are young; ponder about its meaning later when we have a sound background of related skills, such as logic, critical thinking. This belief is well backed by him, who learned English, German, French, Latin and Greek by recitation, allegedly. Recitation is also an important method to learn in classic Chinese schools.


What is the difference in use between 完 and 了? If I understood correctly, both 完 and 了 can be used to indicate a completed action, so what is the difference in use? How do we properly use 完 in a sentence? Which contexts would be valid?

You can use 完 and 了 together or separately.

了 is usually used to indicate the completion of an action. E.g. 你买了好多东西 (You purchased a lot of stuff). See the question "Tense and use of 了" to learn more.
完 is used to indicate the action of completing/finishing something. E.g. "說話沒完的人" (a motormouth, someone who talks to no end). Usually it's verb + 完.

完了 can have 3 different meanings/uses.

Verb + 完了 can indicate that the (verb) action has come to an end.
Noun + 完了 indicate the feeling of despair or the end of something . E.g., 哎呀，我完了！ (On no, I'm finished/done for!) or 那個車完了(That car is finished/done for!).
完了 by itself (usually at the beginning of a sentence) is usually an exclamation of despair. E.g., 完了, 车没油了！回不了家了！ (We're/I'm done [for], the car's out of gas. We/I can't go [back] home [now]).

没完 can be used to describe things left undone, or something never-ending/eternal. E.g., 活儿还没完 (Work is not done/finished yet) or "說話沒完的人" (a motormouth, someone who talks to no end).


What exactly does 阅兵 mean/translate as? The word 阅兵 has been used a lot the last couple of days, for obvious reasons, mostly for one specific activity. Dictionaries define as follows:

CC-CEDICT

  to review troops

KEY

  ◊ review troops

zdic

  [military review;review troops] 即检阅车马兵员装备等

but these don't really fit...

BBC Asia

calls it a

  parade

and a

  war show

What exactly does 阅兵 mean/translate as?

[we're talking about the "parade"/"show" here]

Generally I think BBC is a good place to learn English. As "阅兵" is a pretty big event recently, you can see it on news in most English speaking countries. So, just take a look of a news title from BBC: China military parade commemorates WW2 victory over Japan.

"Military parade" looks good to me. However, if you are one of the officials, then you are in a different position. You would call it "review troops". But for outsiders like us, it's an event, a "military parade".


Is the '之' in '要之何用' also regarded as a possessive article? I'm confused. Does this '要之何用' mean 'Is there any use?', or could the '之' in this phrase be regarded as a possessive article and therefore the phrase would mean 'What is the use (for someone)'? Or did I get both of them wrong?

之 following a noun is a possessive marker
之 following a verb  '要'(have) here is a pronoun for 'it'

More examples of 之 as a pronoun when it follows a verb:

叫他进来然后杀(之) - ask him to come in and then kill (him)

没有酒就以水代(之) - If there's no wine, use water to substitute (it)

要(钱)何用? = having (money) for what use?
要(之)何用? = having (it) for what use?
'之' is the pronoun for 'money'


Does describing a woman as 帅 (shuài; handsome) imply she is mannish? The other day, someone sent me a WeChat sticker which implied I was 帅 (shuài; handsome).  I wasn't exactly thrilled by this, since being called "handsome" in English implies you're kind of mannish.  However, they insisted that women can be called 帅, possibly in an effort to save face.

Question: Does describing a woman as 帅 imply she is mannish?

Judging from Baidu Images, it seems to be a very masculine word.

Mannish: (of a woman) having or displaying qualities regarded as typical of a man.

帅 can also mean cool.

Even when referring to men it doesn’t necessarily equate 100% to handsome because it could also mean cool as well based on the context.

Phrases like: 太帅了 also mean cool not handsome.

Most likely when used with a woman it just means she’s pretty cool.

If people were going to be mean and say a girl looked like a man they’d probably say something like 男人婆.


What is the purpose of "到" in 他在行窃时被当场抓到 I'm confused about 到 which means to arrive, or up until. How does it fit into the sentence "He was(is) caught in the act of stealing. " Also, how is past tense indicated here?

Your two questions answer each other! When 到 follows a verb, it indicates that the action has successfully completed. In linguistic terminology, it's sometimes referred to as indicating "completive aspect".

However, when you ask "how is past tense indicated here?", you should be aware that Mandarin doesn't always indicate past tense.  There are a number of aspect markers (including 了、到、过), but none of these directly correspond to English past tense.


Is the Chinese character "蒙" being associated with Mongolia and ignorance coincidence? In the translingual section, Wiktionary mentions that the Chinese character 蒙 has a variety of meanings:

to cover
ignorant
suffer
fourth hexagram of the I Ching
Mongolia - radical composition becomes 'grass(land) family'
a surname

Are meanings 2 (or any other meanings) and 5 considered related?

I suspect that meaning 5 having a radical composition of grassland family would suggest not, but I don't know.

I also once read in a discussion on so-called "Mongolian beef" someone claim (without any references) that in Chinese, "Mongolian" can mean stupid, or just used as a derogatory term:

  First no offense to anyone, esp. people from Mongolia.

  Mongolian in Chinese can either mean  a. people from Mongolia b. not
  smart, retarded

  If someone is called a "mongolian doctor" it means that his medical
  practice is sub-par at best.

  I believe in the case of mongolian beef, it simply means untasty beef
  - in a twisted sense of chinese humor. Although as a Chinese, I find mongolian beef actually not tasty.

Is this true?

Also, would I be correct in concluding any association between Mongolia and stupidity isn't because of Down Syndrome? The Chinese edition of Wikipedia has an article on Down Syndrome, and it mentions 「蒙古症」and「蒙古痴呆症」, but says that "国际人" is more common (though that doesn't sound particularly politically correct to me).

亚 means inferior, hence Asia is an inferior continent? No, it has to do with approximating sounds with characters, and of the six available for ”meng”, 蒙 was perhaps considered most appropriate, for the reason you hint (home of grassland). Note that it was the invading Mongol Yuan dynasty who created the Mongol empire from nomadic tribes such as Xianbei and Xiongnu, and the character is if not coined by the dynasty at least propagated and established by it.

The association between Mongolia and Down’s syndrome has nothing to do with character, but is all about similarity in appearance. Chance had likely everything to do with choosing Mongolian features rather than any of the others in the region.

A Mongolian doctor is a barefoot doctor, unskilled people who practiced basic medicine in the early People’s republic, not just in Mongolia but in all of China, althugh they were more common in the more undeveloped regions.

For the same reason, people can use Mongolian as derogatory term, pointing to the more unsophisticated rural habits on the countryside.


How to translate "passionate"? How do I translate the "passionate"? Synonyms would be hot, romantic, fiery, and so forth.

The two of them are passionate lovers
They are very passionate in bed
She gave him a passionate kiss

I've come across 热情 and 多情，but I'm not entirely sure if those are correct.

热情：enthusiastic, warm
多情：affectionate, loving
热情 is fine, but 热恋 (fiery love) is better for your sentences. An alternative is 激情 which literally means passionate with a sense of excitement.

The two of them are passionate lovers. 他们是热恋中的情人。
They are very passionate in bed. 他们在床上充满激情。
She gave him a passionate kiss. 她给了他一个热情的吻。


Can 再说 be used in a written context? Such as in an essay. Considering 再说 (moreover) won't be referring to something that was actually spoken (说).

"再说" is more like a spoken language, and in spoken language, "再说" does not really mean "moreover", "besides", etc, and it means "I will consider that later (and usually it is a polite way to say no or refuse)".

If you would like to use words to express "moreover", and something like this, better to use "另外"，"其次",etc.


Under what circumstances can you use 又...又...? Can you only use 又 with adjectives, or can you also use it with verbs, verb phrases, and nouns？ I want to say, "Summer this year is rainy and cloudy.", so I wrote, “今年夏天是又雨天又云天。”  Is this correct, or should it be something else, such as “今年夏天又是雨天又是云天。”?

"Summer this year is rainy and cloudy."

Your English sentence denotes that "rainy and cloudy" are the attributes in this summer, implying the weather in a given day of this summer could either be rainy or cloudy.

So, if that's what you want to express, then you can use 要么...要么.... 要么...要么... expresses a logic OR, while 又...又... expresses an logic AND. You can put:

  今年(这个)夏天，要么下雨，要么（就）阴天。

You can also interpret "rainy and cloudy" (as a whole) to 阴雨天. Rainy is 雨天 and cloudy is 阴天. Combine together: 阴雨天. 阴雨天 means that the day is cloudy and it can possibly rain at anytime. If you say this summer is all 阴雨天, it can mean that cloudy or rainy had gone throughout this whole summer. If this is what you meant, you can put:

  今年夏天都是阴雨天 or 今年夏天尽是阴雨天

Your Chinese sentence "今年夏天又是雨天又是云天。" is grammatically correct, but it's logically incorrect. If you said it in practice, I would have asked 那今年夏天到底是阴天还是雨天呢？ （whether this summer are rainy or cloudy）.

Hope this can help.


What is this translation of "Journey To The West"? I found this English translation of: Journey To The West on Inner Journey To The West dot com.

I can't see any information about the translation though.

Who did it?

Was it published?

Is it in the public domain?

Their main page doesn't say anything (that I can see) as regard to the translation itself.

edit: is it just Walther Sell himself?

the copyright at the bottom writes:

  © copyright 2009 - 2017 Walther Sell

and there is a new abridged version

  edited by Walther Sell

On Good Reads, the book's authorship is listed as:

  by Wu Cheng'en, W.J.F. Jenner (Translator), Walther Sell (Editor)

W.J.F. Jenner is William John Francis Jenner. His translation is one of three notable English translations done on the work.


见马克思 ("to meet Marx"): is it used today? I am writing a paper about machine translation and I am looking for a phrase in Chinese that is ambiguous and cannot possibly be translated correctly without knowing the correct context.
I found this article about euphemisms in Chinese which mentions the phrase "见马克思" in the sense "to die".
Is this phrase really known/recognizable by an average Chinese person? If not, are there any better phrases with ambiguous meanings?

Sohu has a news article dated from 2020-07-26, with a sentence that reads:

腮部中弹，离大脑很近了，稍有不慎，杨勇恐怕就提前去见马克思了。

Here “见马克思” is used to mean “to die,” like what was mentioned in the question above.
The phrase in question is featured in a recent write-up by a large company that services the Chinese speaking world. I think it is fair to say that it is well known enough for the editors to leave it in without thinking that it would cause confusion for their audience.

The bigger problem I see with your question, though, is the fact that many machine translations use dictionaries and the phrase in question can be found in quite a few resources.
见马克思 can quickly be found in five Chinese-English dictionaries:

ABC
Pleco C-E
KEY
CC-CEDICT
Wiktionary

One Chinese-French dictionary:

KEY French

And one Chinese-Chinese dictionary:

现代汉语大词典

The longer term 去见马克思 can also ben found in one Chinese-German dictionary:

HanDeDict

As far as I can tell they all contain the euphemistic definition, “to die.” It shouldn't be too hard for a well trained machine translation to be able to translate the phrase correctly with the right tools.
There are a lot of bad Chinese translations, seemingly curated by machine translators, online, i.e.: Bubbles | 20 of the Best (Worst?) Chinese Sign Translation Errors & 干 has always been an issue. You might find a more appropriate example in some of these resources.


Three Chinese characters (?) on the entrance of the History Museum of Ho Chi Minh city (Characters identified: 寶藏院) Since visiting the museum, I've been very curious about these three characters (shown below). I've unsuccessfully tried to search it on the Internet. Their pretty calligraphic style is one of the reasons why I failed. Also, there is a possibility that these characters are Chữ Nôm.

Now I'm here to seek help. What are these characters?

it's 寶藏院, roughly "the courtyard (院) of treasure (寶藏)"
the right one is 寶:
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=%E5%AF%B6
middle one is 藏:
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=%E8%97%8F
left one is 院:
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=%E9%99%A2


Where does 别间 ("other") as in 别间大学 come from? As a follow up to this question What does 别间 in 别间大学的男生都土里土气的 means? I was trying to figure out where the term 别间 comes from.
Judging by the context, it appears having the same meaning as 别的 (other, another).
Googling 别间大学 in quotes yields around 5k results (fair), enough to validate my intuition that it's essentially used just like 别的.
Even replacing 大学 with some other term that indicates a venue, still yields results.

别间房子 ~30k results
别间饭店 ~20k results
别间店铺 ~1.5k results

However I can't find this term listed in dictionaries. Mdgb doesn't have it, Zdic doesn't have it. What's even funnier is that searching on Baidu with or without quotes gives almost no meaningful results at all.
But that's not entirely surprising. As I commented in the other thread, 别间 doesn't look like Mandarin. But I can find plenty of examples where it's used in Mandarin sentences, so I guess it's a transposition from a topolect.
But which one?
I'm pretty sure it's not Wu / Shanghainese. It doesn't seem to be Cantonese either. Though in Cantonese 间 gaan1 can classify shops. But I'm not aware of any 别 + Classifier construction. It doesn't seem Taiwanese, since searching 別間 in traditional yields almost nothing.
It might be 东北话, though I don't recall such a thing from my time in the cold North-East.
So where does 别间 come from?

It's not a standard term, but it's understandable.  I don't know if it's a dialect.  It's not common in any areas I have lived in.
I'd understand it as its literal meaning:
别: other
间 is a measure word for room (房间).
You can compare its usage to 这间, so as a demonstrative. E.g. 这间酒店.  I suppose you could say 别间酒店. Basically, it should have something to do with "house or room".
Some might frown at the term.  However, I think it could be a good name for a hotel, restaurant, etc.  E. g. 别间酒店, 别间饭店. Compare to 有间客栈(which appears in a book I've read before).


The Chinese equivalent phrase of 恋の予感 I saw the phrase Koi no yokan described on the website: High Tower Flashes.

The Japanese phrase means a feeling that you will fall in love with someone, which is different from love at first sight. I don't know if there is an exact equivalent in English ("premonition of love"?), but I would be a bit surprised if there was no Chinese equivalent. Any suggestions?

I will explain this in another view point :-) And I think it's better to put my conclusion first:

  恋爱的预感 or just 恋之预感 is a perfect translation in Chinese.

Now, let's consider this interesting question:

Why is it said to be untranslatable in English?

  Koi No Yokan (Japanese): Koi No Yokan is a truly beautiful concept. It can defined the sense can have upon first meeting another person that the two of them are going to fall in love. In other words, it is the knowledge one has that he/she is going to fall in love with another person. This differs from the idea “love at first sight” in that it does not imply that the feeling of love exists, rather it refers to the knowledge that a future love is inevitable.

I think the essentials of the concept of 恋の予感 are

It should be a subjective sense, or, intuitive knowledge, about the future. So the word or phrase for 予感 should be neutral -- it implies neither good future nor bad future.
It should precisely describe the delicate situation that you know the love happens in the future but not at present.
Furthermore, in both Japanese and Chinese, 恋 is not equal to 愛. In Japanese, 恋 is

  特定の異性に強くひかれること。また、切ないまでに深く思いを寄せること。恋愛。

Which means a thing that one is attracted by another special person of the opposite sex, and thinking of him/her very deeply. And in Chinese, it is

  慕也。

Which means feeling attached to, or being reluctant to part. So, the meaning of 恋 can be considered the same in Japanese and Chinese. Intuitively speaking, 恋 is an immature kind of love, green but beautiful. For example, 恋人(こいびと) is not lover (愛人) but rather boy/girl friend (see goo辞書). It reflects one aspect of the eastern culture: being veiled to the emotion of love.

Thus, for Chinese, there isn't any culture barrier in the meanings of 恋 or 予感, besides, 恋爱的预感/恋之预感 makes sense in Chinese. So I said, 恋爱的预感/恋之预感 is a perfect translation.

For English, I found one translation on Weblio英語表現辞典:

  presentiment of a romance

This would be better than "premonition of love" because it takes Point 3 into consideration. But still, I find presentiment/premonition is often associated to unpleasant future. Maybe sixth sense is a better phrase, though it's informal.

EDIT

I check through the Roget's International Thesaurus for premonition, and find these entries:

premonition, presentiment; hunch, feeling in one's bones ... [generally implying something unpleasant, or being informal]
foreboding, apprehension, misgiving ... [implying something bad]
omen, portent, augury, symptom ... [they are not subjective sense]
harbinger, forerunner, precursor, herald ... [not subjective sense either]
ominousness, portentousness, portent ... [something bad]
inauspiciousness, unpropitiousness, unfavorableness ... [something bad]
auspiciousness, propitiousness, favorableness ... [something good]

It seems difficult to find a neutral and subjective and formal word to state 予感/预感 :(


What is the difference between 还是 and 还? What is the difference between 还是 and 还? Is 还 the short of 还是 and, consequently, they are interchangeable in every situation, only in some cases or never?

For reference, I will list the different situations I have seen them. Can any be expressed both with 还 and 还是？
还:

means still / despite the situation in a negative sentence： Subj + 还 + 不 / 没 + [Verb Phrase]. E.g.:

我解释了这么多遍，你还不懂 ？
Wǒ jiěshì le zhème duō biàn, nǐ hái bù dǒng?
I've explained it so many times, and you still don't get it?

means also: Subj + Verb， 还 + Verb. E.g.:

她有一个弟弟，还有一个妹妹.
Tā yǒu yī gè dìdi, hái yǒu yī gè mèimei.
She has a younger brother and also has a younger sister.

means again: 还 + Verb. E.g.:

这个电影很好，我看过，还想看.
Zhège diànyǐng hěn hǎo, wǒ kànguò, hái xiǎng kàn.
This movie is very good, I watched it before and want to watch it again.

means pretty/fairly: Subj + 还 + Adj. E.g.:

我还好。
Wǒ hái hǎo.
I'm pretty/fairly good.

expresses a strong tone of surprise: Subj + 还 + Predicate + 呢 . E.g.:

还留过学呢，英语这么差 。
Hái liúguò xué ne, Yīngyǔ zhème chà.
You have studied abroad, yet your English is so bad.

marks a rhetorical question: Subj + 还 + [Verb Phrase] + 吗 ? . E.g.:

他说的话，你还听吗？
Tā shuō dehuà, nǐ hái tīng ma?
Did you listen to what he said?

means even more: Noun 1 + 比 + Noun 2 + 更 / 还 + Adj. E.g.:

他比姚明还高 。
Tā bǐ Yáo Míng hái gāo.
He is even taller than Yao Ming.

还是:

means still / despite the situation in an affirmative sentence: ⋯⋯ ，(但是 / 可是 +) Subj + 还是 + [Verb Phrase] . E.g.:

父母不同意他去，可是他还是去了。
Fùmǔ bù tóngyì tā qù, kěshì tā háishì qù le.
His parents didn't agree to it, but he still went.

provides choices in a question: Option A + 还是 + Option B ? . E.g.:

你喝茶还是喝咖啡 ？
Nǐ hē chá háishì hē kāfēi?
Do you drink tea or coffee?

means had better: Subj + 还是 + [Verb Phrase] + 吧 . E.g.:

你还是快点走吧 。
Nǐ háishì kuài diǎn zǒu ba.
You'd better leave now.

OP already listed their different definitions. They don't seem to be interchangeable at all.
The meaning of 'still' may be the only one where either word-choices can be used in the same sentence, but there's still some subtle differences between them:

Fact 1 + 还 + Fact 2 describes the facts without emphasizing any.
Fact 1 + 还是 + Fact 2  emphasizes the seriousness of Fact 1: despite Fact 1, Fact 2 still occurs .

Examples:

水浸眼眉了他还不逃命.
His eyebrows are flooded and he won't run away.

Describes a situation without emphasizing any part: Fact 1. 水浸眼眉了 and Fact 2. 他还不逃命.

水浸眼眉了他还是不逃命.
His eyebrows are flooded, he still won't run for his life.

Emphasizes the seriousness of 水浸眼眉: despite 水浸眼眉了, 他还是不逃命.

天黑了还不回家.
Not going home when it gets dark.

Describes a situation without emphasizing any part: Fact 1. 天黑了 and Fact 2. 还不回家.

天黑了还是不回家.
Still not going home after dark.

Emphasizes the importance of 天黑了: despite 天黑了, he still 不回家.


The difference between 和谐，和睦 and 融洽？ Anyone can tell me the difference between 和谐，和睦 and 融洽？

和谐(adj): harmonious; balanced (between elements) | e.g. 氣氛和谐 (harmonious atmosphere); 和谐景象 (harmonious scene)
和谐(n): harmony | e.g. 達致和谐 (achieve harmony)
和谐(adv): harmoniously/ in harmony | e.g. 和谐共處 (harmoniously stay/live together; harmoniously co-exist)

~

和睦(adj): friendly; harmonious (between people) | e.g. 關係和睦 (friendly relationship)
和睦(adv): harmoniously | e.g. 和睦共處 (harmoniously stay/live together); 待人和睦 (treat people with friendliness)

~

融洽 (adj) harmonious (between people or element)| e.g. 關係融洽 (friendly relationship); 氣氛融洽 (harmonious atmosphere)
融洽 (adv): on friendly terms; on good relationship with | e.g. 相處融洽 (harmoniously interact/ live together)

Main difference is when they are in adjective role, 和谐 apply to elements, 和睦 apply to people and 融洽 apply to either people or elements
The difference between 和睦 and 融洽 is in the construction of the term. [和(peaceful/ in harmony) + 睦(befriend) = 和睦 (friendly/ harmonious) ]; [融(melt) + 洽 (arrange) = 融洽 (harmonious)


Does the word '铬' have other meaning besides chromium/chrome? 那遍布的伤疤铬的她手指生疼

I don't think '铬' in this sentence means chromium, but I couldn't find other meaning except chromium in dictionary.

Is it a typo?

It is a typo, it should be 硌.
If you sit on a rock, you would feel the rock 硌 your butt.
If your hand hold a wooden stick that is not smooth, you feel 硌手.


Synonyms of (不会)少块肉? I'm quite fond of the phrase 少块肉, as in 又不会少块肉 or 能少块肉吗？.

What synonyms of 少块肉 exist in Chinese?

sometimes we use "死不了" in similar situations. For example:

1 别抽烟了，忍一忍，死不了。
2 不用担心，死不了。

Hope this can be of some help.


It's been a week since the middle exam is over How to turn this sentence into chinese?

It's been a week since the middle exam is over

What do you mean by "middle exam"? If you mean the second of three, then I'd say 第二个考试以后已经过了一个星期的时间


Grammar: verb + 的 + verb What is the meaning of this form?

Example:

  因为商纣王已失尽人心，军队也多不愿为他送命，于是逃的逃、降的降，起义的起义，朝歌很快就被攻克。纣王自杀，商朝就此灭亡。

I found many articles about simple reduplication of verbs in Chinese, like verb + verb or verb + 一 + verb (看看，看一看） but this one looks different (the way it's used).

I think  the structure {verb + 的 + verb} connotes that people do things without any constrains or scruple. It describes a disordered situation.

Compared to

  老师不在的时候，同学们玩的玩，闹的闹。// completely disordered there.

玩的玩 implied that if one wants to play, they just play (without any constrains or scruple).

In your sentence, 因为商纣王已失尽人心, therefore people just did whatever they thought right to them,  逃的逃、降的降，起义的起义(fled if one felt like flee, surrender if one felt like surrender, ...) The army was disordered or uncontrolled.

Stretch a bit: 逃的逃 -> 想逃的人逃了

P.S. the structure {verb + 的 + verb} is usually used to express a feeling and the feeling can be negative ones such as annoyed, sad, angry, etc or positive ones such as happy, joy, exciting, etc.

Those examples above are negative. Here is a positive one:

  操场上，同学们跳绳的跳绳，做操的做操，踢毽子的踢毽子，好开心啊！

Basically, the structure {verb + 的 + verb} is used to describe a situation and how you feel that situation. If you want to express a generic situation, you can just use other structure like 有的...有的, 有些...有些, etc.


How to translate 武大郎开店 into English? 武大郎 is a legendary short man. He runs a shop; and all of his employees are shorter than him. It characterizes an orgnizational phenomenon. I wonder if there is an English saying that means the same thing.

武大郎 is a single personal sesame cake maker and vender, he had no shop, and he had no employees. He died of murder by his wife, and revenged by his younger brother 武松， this is a famous story written in book 水浒. And 武大郎 is famous for his characteristic of short.
And 武大郎开店 in the allegorical saying has the explanation ( you can see it as answer for this riddle) of 长子免进（or 高我者不用）, which means He will not hire who is taller than him.
So this is a metaphore of describe someone being jealous of man of talent.


"曲折的学习经历" in English? How will you say "曲折的学习经历" without negative connotation? "torturous experience" is one that involves pain, suffering, or discomfort, and does it indicate some negativity?

For example, a graduate student who had to change his study focus twice, and hoped that he could eventually switch to the research area he loved.

  Because of his 曲折的学习经历, he more treasures the opportunity that he can have.

How about"坎坷的学习经历"? Will it be more appropriate and easier to translate into English, than "曲折的学习经历"?

If if were you, how would you say the above in English?

Thanks!

曲折的学习经历= step-by-step experiences of learning/(properly) gradual advancing in learning.

坎坷的学习经历= troublesome experiences of learning

Since 经历 is equivalent to experience's'   in English, it must be step-like. Thus we shall focus on the secondary meaning of the adjectives.


What is a better translation of 箱子 in the following context? The phrase 这辆铲车正在把箱子装上卡车 seems at first glance to say "This truck is loading a box onto the truck", but in fact this is used along with the below photo. Is it right to say that 箱子 in this context means "pallet" or even "pallet of goods"? Or possibly "shipment", or as I've seen on Google Translate, "casing"? Or is there an even better translation available?

A few possibilities come to mind:
First, given that there is often no indication of plurality in Chinese, 箱子 may actually be indicating "boxes", rather than "box". That is, each pallet does contain many boxes and so the fork lift is loading many boxes into the truck.
Second, depending on where you saw this picture and caption, it is possible it is just a simplified translation for learners. That is, for materials used for English language learners, we may say that "the forklift is loading several boxes into the truck", rather than "the forklift is loading a pallet into the truck". The reason is that "pallet" is relatively advanced and relatively rare vocabulary, while "box" is lower level and more commonly encountered in (most people's) daily life. Though, admittedly, "forklift" (and 铲车) is also pretty advanced/specific.
Thirdly, from Pleco, I am seeing several possible translations of pallet as 托盘，栈板，货盘. I am not sure which is most commonly used for a commercial pallet such as this, but I guess it is 托盘 as the word for pallet jack is given as 托盘车.
Ultimately, it may come down to regional preferences and/or what 箱子 is commonly thought to encompass by native speakers. Because of how different Chinese and English are, it is very difficult to take the intuition about a particular word from one language and transition it to the other language. That is, what Chinese think of the word 箱子 may be much broader than what an English native speaker may think it would be. For English natives, we would think of a suitcase and a box as being rather different things and probably would never, or only very rarely, call a suitcase a "box", but one of the definitions for 箱子 is suitcase.
As another example in the other direction, the English word "mask" seems to be rather broadly defined from a Chinese perspective. That is, the word "mask" in English encompasses both a surgical mask that covers only mouth and nose and a decorative/performance mask that covers the whole face, but a surgical mask in Chinese is 口罩 and a decorative/performance mask is 面具, which seem to be rather different words when looking at the characters and their individual meanings. I also recall a Chinese native expressing how they found it weird that we call both of those things a "mask" in English. To them, they are rather different things as one is just for nose and mouth, while the other covers the whole face. We care less about this distinction in English, using adjectives to modify the general concept of "mask" instead of thinking of those two kinds of mask as being in different categories.
I realize that this is not a definitive answer, but it hopefully gives some insight and possible ways of thinking about word choice (in both Chinese and English) in these kind of contexts.


Open Software Two-Line Add Pinyin To Characters Is there any open software that adds a second line of pinyin to a line of characters?
i.e.: converting “你好” to:

nǐhǎo
你好

Converting to ni3hao3 would be fine to.
Open, namely, so that I can tinker with the pinyin to fit my needs.

I think it's needless to point out that you do realize that [hanzi --> pinyin] is not a straightforward function, because of the ambiguous relation of characters and pronunciation (多音字).

Character by character rendering is a very simple way, but will leave you with many false pinyin syllables and/or multiple options.This site gives all the different pinyins of a character in parentheses, e.g.

INPUT: 你好
OUTPUT: nǐ[hǎo hāo hào]

So any decent approach would require a lookup in a  multi-character word dictionary. If there is nothing online that comes close to this, you could download the latest CEDICT file, remove all but the Traditional, Simplified and the Pinyin fields and use Python/awk, grep to write a script to bulk lookup Chinese words and output the results to a file or similar. Would not be that complex, although you would still need an 'algorithm' to identify word boundaries, otherwise just use 'brute force' to look up all the different matching entries in CEDICT.

What is the application context or purpose of what you would like to do?

(I am adding this as an answer because it's too long for a comment and also because of the URLs)

UPDATE

Some users have recommended the pypinyin module which claims to support 多音字. I have run a test of pypinyin against the CEDICT dictionary file, which is human compiled by many users and is the largest open source Chinese dictionary and is used by many apps (including Pleco).

Test results:
The CEDICT file contains over 113k entries (compiled over many years and continuously updated). For each entry in the CEDICT file I have compared the pinyin transcription against the output for the Simplified character expression of the pypinyin module.

I have accounted for:

differences in pinyin transcription, like 'ü' vs. 'v'
transcriptin of 儿 ('er' vs. 'r') in erhua expressions
upper- and lowercase pinyin transcriptions
some obvious errors in the CEDICT file (missing pinyin) or whitespace and · (middle dot) and comma usage

To be fair, I have also excluded all the single character CEDICT entries from the test, because it's impossible to give the correct pinyin for a 多音字 without any context.

In the first round, with excluding the single character entries, I run the test for 100.169 entries with 9471 mismatching pairs (CEDICT <--> pypinyin).

Next, I analysed the the results and realized that pypinyin has a somewhat contradictory policy on tone sandhis, it accounts for the change of 不 and 一 (e.g. in 不在) but not for 3rd tone + 3rd tone words, like 小姐. So I decided to exclude 不 and 一 to drill further deeper (and thus also excluded some cases where pypinyin was incorrect for some other reason than the tone sandhi notation). In the case of 不 and 一, marking tone change is a matter of opinion (but should be done consequently, not as in pypinyin).

In the 2nd round, I had 97.196 entries to test and got 8968 mismatching pairs.
After scrolling through the list of mismatching results, I came to the conclusion that pypinyin has no support for the neutral tone (5), e.g. 什么 (shén me) is *shén mé for pypinyin. Final 子, like in  位子, are given as 3rd tone. Similarly, 儿 is always incorrectly er2, etc.

The other most common error is incorrect tone, other than those neutral syllables. These include (among others):

们 *men2
发 in 黑发 *hei1 fa1
禁伐 is incorrectly *jin1 fa2
近几年 *jin4 ji1 nian2, etc.

Incorrect initials make up another large group:

调 tiao vs. diao
朝 chao vs. zhao
重 chong vs. zhong,
传 chuan vs. zhuan, etc.
弹琴 *dan qin
厦门 *sha men
社长 *she chang, etc.

Also many elementary words are given with incorrect pinyin:

音乐 is *yin le in pypinyin (my "favorite")
鱼露 is incorrectly *yu luo
卡 as *qia in almost all cases, like 卡拉OK * qia la OK
柏林  as *bai lin
落下 *la xia

I have noticed in some cases that the Taiwan Mandarin pronunciation is favored by pypinyin, but the doc pages do not comment on this, which is obviously another issue, since users do have to know what to expect as output.

With all this, pypinyin has obvious shortcomings that make it unsuitable for professional use (you have to manually check every word to eliminate hard to spot errors) and also for building dictionaries or other material targeted at beginners. Even HSK level 2 or 3 expect most of the examples noted above to be used correctly.

UPDATE2:

I am considering to create a Python lib that uses the CEDICT file to transcribe Chinese characters to pinyin. My only concern is that the CEDICT file also contains inaccurate pinyins, so first I would need a reliable source to update incorrect pinyins in CEDICT. If anyone knows about such a file or API, please leave a comment.


What does 好 mean in this context? In the following phrase, what does 好 mean in this context?

Traditional:

  我們人人天生都不完美，每逢想做對的事，內心往往要經歷好一番掙扎，而且都會說錯話做錯事

Simplified:

  我们人人天生都不完美，每逢想做对的事，内心往往要经历好一番挣扎，而且都会说错话做错事

The correct word boundary should be 好一番, which means a lot of. In your sentence, "we have to go through a lot of struggles."


When is it appropriate to address someone as 老板 [laoban]? I've heard laoban being used multiple times when addressing shopkeepers. But who exactly do you refer as laoban?

For example, I suppose it's safe to address your boss as laoban regardless of where you work, but if you're a costumer should laoban be used only for the boss/owner, or can one safely refer to any employee like that?

In a school setting, for example, if the director is the owner can you call them laoban? What if it's the receptionist and you don't know who the boss/owner is? What if you work at that place?

As far as ways of addressing go, are there more than one laoban in a given shop?

In these scenarios, what would be some other forms of addressing if there are better ones?

Laoban is often used in daily speaking language.

People working in shop or restaurant often use this to address their customer to show some "respect" or to make you feel good. Like in the car washing shop, they often call you "Boss".

The beginning uses the word was from late 80's, start from the south part of China, maybe GuangDong.

If you are working in a high-tech or similar place normally don't directly use this word to call your boss. But it's absolute normal use it when chatting with your colleague.

For University, graduate school students often use laoban to address their director teacher.

Normally in daily life, you can use laoban to call anyone is in the manager place. Like you can call your partner laoban.


What is the difference between 投诉 and 抱怨? is there a difference between 投诉 and 抱怨? All I know is that they both mean "complain".

投诉=complain (to a department)

抱怨=grumble (usually talking to a friend)

If you look at the character, 诉=suit, 怨=grudge


Grammar structure for "which do you like more?" questions This page explains how to state simple comparisons, but doesn't address how to ask about more complex comparisons.

For instance, what's the right Mandarin equivalent of the English question structure: "Do you like A more than B?"

1) Do you like Chinese food more than Japanese food?

2) Do you like planes more than trains?

How do you deal with the verb?

Do you duplicate it like this: 妳喜歡中國菜比喜歡日本菜多嗎？

Is there a "cleaner", more concise grammatical form where you don't duplicate the verb? For instance, could you do this: 妳喜歡中國菜比日本菜多嗎？

Grammar structure for [like A more than B]

insert "多過" (more than) between object A and object B:

[妳喜歡中國菜][多過][日本菜] = [you like Chinese food] [more than ][Japanese food]

I think it is the "cleanest" grammar structure you are looking for, to express "[(verb)(object A) (more than) (object B)]"
The verb act on both object A  and object B.  Therefore, we don't need to repeat the verb for object B. As in "[妳喜歡中國菜][多過][(喜歡  )日本菜]"
~

Topic and opinion structure:

[Compare to object B] as a topic
[like object A more] as the opinion
[比起日本菜], [我][更喜歡中國菜]= [compare to  Japanese food] [I] [like Chinese food more]

更 short for 更為. You can replace 更 with 較, which in term is short for 較為


How does 真有你的 mean "you really are something"? If you look at each individual character, the definitions don't add up. Can someone explain it to me? Also, is this word used often?

真 - really

有 - have

你的 - your/ yours

"真有你的" = "(you) really have your (object implied)"

The object can be 本事，本領，手段 or even 膽色 (ability, skill, means or even balls)
"真有你的" is a common phrase (exclamation) for expressing you are impressed by some's ability, skill, etc.
For example. It is almost impossible to find the first issue of Superman, yet someone managed to find it for you, in this instance, you can say  "真有你的，這麽罕見的絕版漫畫你也找得到" (To be able to find such a rare out-of-print comic, You really have yours (ability))"
Example 2: "真有你的，老闆的老闆你也敢約" (Dare to ask your boss's boss out on a date, you really have yours (balls))
Similar to 你真行 (You are great) which also doesn't say great in what aspect


the meaning of 算什么 in 《我爱台妹》 I have recently been listening to MC Hotdog's seminal 2006 hit 《我爱台妹》 I am a little confused by the second and fourth lines of the chorus

我爱台妹，台妹爱我
对我来说，林志玲算什么
我爱台妹，台妹爱我
对我来说，侯佩岑算什么

I understand 对我来说 as "as far as I'm concerned" but I'm not sure about 算什么. Hotdog loves Taiwanese girls and Taiwanese girls love him, 林志玲 and 侯佩岑 are both "beautiful" Taiwanese celebrities. So what does 算什么 mean here? The idea I had was "As far as I'm concerned, 林志玲 can do what she wants" （because she's a Taiwanese girl) but I'm not sure this is correct.

Please help! Thanks.

I am a Taiwanese, this song is really famous when I was a child. :)

In here 算什么 is a phrase to disparage something. The complete usage of 算什么 is 算是什么.
(算=>算是)

算是 can represent is (a member of) something.(but not so sure or you're telling someone who may not know this.) in English.

For example,

不要這樣捉弄他，這算是一種霸凌 => Don't make fun of him like that, it could be a kind of bully.

A: 王八蛋算是一種髒話嗎? => Is dickhead a swear?
B: 當然算! => Of course, it is!

As I said before, this phrase is going to disparage someone. The main idea of disparaging came from "什么"

Generally, 什么 can treat as "What". But 什么 also have a negative meaning when you use 什么 to describe a person, which represents nothing. So never use 什么 to a person.(Unless he/she is a d-word in above example.)

Example for negative meaning of 什么,

你以為你算什麼東西? => Who do you thing you are?
(English is more rational when blaming someone, at least calling that one as a human. In Chinese, they don't even treat you as a human kind)

Since 林志玲 and 侯佩岑 are beautiful. And MC Hotdog wants to emphasis that how he loves 台妹, so he says that all he loves is 台妹 despite there comes a real beauty.

So, all this sentence(对我来说，林志玲算什么) is saying is To me, 林志玲 is nothing.(compare with 台妹)


How to say "a quarter past nine" in Chinese? I just found this question, on which the OP asked the meaning of 差一刻九点. The answer is "a quarter to nine".

Now I wonder how you can express "a quarter past nine" in Chinese? The first thing I came up with is 过一刻九点, but is it correct?

Also, is there any variations by region?

九点一刻 is 9:15 - but more often you'd just heard/use 九点十五分.

差一刻九点 is okay, but again more likely you'd just heard/use 八点四十五。


Colour code characters according to tone on iPhone/Android I use wechat to talk with Chinese friends, and try to type Chinese to help me learn. I would like Chinese characters to appear colour coded according to tone.

How could I go about this? Assuming it's not possible with any current product, how could one build an app or similar to achieve this? My phone is an iPhone 7 but also interested in Android.

This is not possible with existing products. You'd need a special input method, like the Multiling Keyboard, that would specifically format the input. There are a few difficulties with this:

Many hanzi have multiple tones. Which one to pick? To be (possibly, but never 100%) accurate, you'd need a dictionary. Which means the input method would have to backtrack when the tone of the first character changes tone.
WeChat doesn't allow colour formatting. So your new input method won't be able to colour the text anyway.

In WeChat's web interface, one might be able to develop a Chrome extension that reads all messages, and colours them. That wouldn't be that hard, but I expect it would be time consuming, and resource hungry.

EDIT

After giving it some thought, here is what I think would required:

The CEDICT dictionary. Probably edited to fit a database.
Alternatively, if you only care about character tones, a database based on Unihan.
Some Javascript and jQuery to lookup the messages and color them.

Something like this [I am using Cantonese tones as I am much more comfortable with them]:

VERY COARSE CODE

var db={};
db["行"]=4;
db["有"]=5;
db["人"]=4;
db["嗎"]=3;

var myColors= new Array("nil", "#FF0000", "#00FF00", "#0000FF", "#FFFF00", "#00FFFF", "#FF00FF");

for (n in x) {
  myString="";
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Does 波傲蟀 sound like a natural name? Since I am a westerner and I study Chinese, I am currently undergoing the hard task of choosing a Chinese name for myself. The last thing I want to do is to simply translate my Italian name in Chinese... instead, I want to pick up a name that really sounds Chinese.

My passion for Chinese culture led me to buy an old book that aims at leading the reader to choose an auspicious Chinese name based on zodiac, yin/yang, binomials, stroke numbers etc. I was born on May 27, 1988 (year of the dragon), around 8:30 a.m., and after some study and attempts, I came up to what sounds to me like a fair name, but I would really like to hear from any Chinese native speaker or experts among you if, to your ears, this sounds like a good name for a male.

So, here we go: the surname is 波 (Bo1), given name 傲蟀 (Ao2 Shuai4) - I  really liked the idea of having both a character that reminds of the cricket, with its fighting spirit and good fortune meaning, and a character that conveys the meaning of being proud.
Does this sound like a nice/good/fair/natural name to you? Any possible suggestions?
I really appreciate any feedback you may give me.

Thank you!

I insert the answer to your comment/question also here: I have chosen 白+鷺振. I like the idea that the 白鷺 bird (and the sound of my actual Italian surname) is suggested by the surname 白 and by the first character of the given name. According to my little understanding of Chinese traditional beliefs regarding names (based on the little book I mentioned at the very beginning), it seems to me that 白+鷺振 works fairly well also in terms of ying/yang, being an auspicious combination of Yang+yin+yin. Moreover, it seems that the zongge of the name (total strokes of the three characters) amounts to 39, related to happiness and blessing.

I hope this works!

no, "波傲蟀" is not a natural chinese name.
the answer below is extremely superstitious, read with cautions.
there're many sects of fortune telling; here, i convert your birthday to "eight characters" (八字), with our any adjustment.

was born on May 27, 1988 (year of the dragon), around 8:30 a.m.

your eight characters would be:

甲 壬 丁 戊
辰 午 巳 辰

in terms of five elements (五行):

木 水 火 土
土 火 火 土

a simple saying of it is: 五行欠金 (lack of the metal element)
for such case, people would choose a baby name with the component 金 (radical 167), might be 木 (radical 75) & 水 (radical 85). meanwhile, they would avoid any character with the component 火 (radical 86) & 土 (radical 32).
edited.
i see. ok, without yin & yang, my first suggestion is:
白鷺, 振
your surname "ballo", it sounds identical to 白 (u+767d) & 鷺 (u+9dfa) according to cantonese.  these two characters together, means "little egret"
it's a double characters surname. little egret (白鷺) is a good symbol in chinese culture.
from 禽經:

鷺．白鷺也．小不踰大．飛有次序．百官縉紳之象

about the given name 振 (u+632f), it roughly means flap. when a little egret flaps its wings, it determines to fly, upwards into the sky.
this character is chosen according to a poem (indeed, there're countless poems talked about little egret).in the book of poetry (詩經　周頌　臣工之什　振鷺):

振鷺于飛．于彼西雝
我客戾止．亦有斯容
在彼無惡．在此無斁
庶幾夙夜．以永終譽

more about 鷺:
御定駢字類編　卷二百五　p134-144
御定分類字錦　卷五十六 鷗鷺第十七　p65-78
these two are cheat-sheets, most, if not all related texts / poems are recorded. need some level of competency to read it.
my second suggestion, considering yin & yang, is:
巴, 鑫
again, the first syllable of "ballo" in italian, is quite similar to 巴 (u+5df4) in cantonese.
it's a "common" han chinese surname.
back to five elements, your birthday is considered as having one wood (木), one water (水), three fire (火), three earth (土), and without any metal (金).
then, the compensation is choosing a name with component 金, in order to "feel / think" that name plus birthday together, all five elements are included.
that why the character 鑫 (u+946b) is chosen. it means "prospering or good profit".
if you examine the character closely, 鑫 is composed by three 金, which matches three fire and three earth in your birthday.
the name "巴鑫" would be a ordinary, common one.
the above show a basic method only, different sects of fortune telling would have different considerations or compensations.
have fun :)


How to identify 使動用法 in Classical Chinese? How do you identify phrases using 使動用法 in Classical Chinese?
Take this excerpt for example (Baidu article here):

  然以其鄉之未嘗有也，舟載以歸而誇諸人。（明·方孝孺《遜志齋集》）

My initial interpretation of 誇諸人 was 誇贊衆人 (praise everyone/the audience).
However, I was later taught that the correct interpretation should be 使衆人誇贊[游者] (cause everyone to praise [the traveller]).

Is there a way or rule of thumb to identify where 使動用法 is present to avoid misinterpretations, or is it more down to yourself to guess which is more plausible? The example I used isn't the best, there surely are cases where both interpretations make sense in context.

the correct interpretation should be 使衆人誇贊[游者] (cause everyone to praise [the traveller]).

imo, such interpretation is incorrect.

  越無車﹒有游者得車於晉楚之郊﹒輻朽而輪敗﹒輗折而轅毀﹒無所可用﹒然以其鄉之未嘗有也﹒舟載以歸而誇諸人﹒觀者聞其誇而信之﹒以為車固若是﹒效而為之者相屬

the text, in brief, should be interpreted as:

a wanderer (游者) brought [a broken carriage] by boat, back to his village (舟載以歸); and (而) exaggerate (誇) [the goodness of the carriage] to his villagers (諸人). onlookers (觀者) heard (聞) his exaggeration (其誇) and (而) believed it (信之)

classical / literary chinese is another paradigm. using grammar to analyse is, imo, unachievable. it’s like using newton physic to solve the “schrödinger's cat” case.

have fun :)


How informal can 为 someone 服务 be？ Recently, I've heard the phrase " 为你们服务 “  used in a number of contexts. It seems like a relatively formal phrase, but I'm wondering how widely it could be used. Could I say, for example,
"我们一下车就有两个人为我们服务“
(the example would be at a sporting event with volunteers).
Is this colloquial? Or would it only work in written, very formal language?

This totally works colloquially.

One of the most famous slogans in Chinese is: 为人民服务 (Serve the people!) - there is not a single Chinese person who doesn't know this.

Likewise you can always 为 XXX 服务, this should be very easily understood by almost anyone.

edit: maybe it would just sound a little pedantic...you wouldn't exactly say that there's two people serving you in English, though, would you...


Classifiers for rooms What is the best classifier to use for rooms?

  一 _____ 卧室

  两 _____客厅

  三 _____洗衣房

What about houses or buildings?

I know there is 一层楼 for a floor / level / story of a building, what about the building itself?

How about classifiers for collections of buildings like in English "a block of houses"?

Are there any other classifiers for building / rooms I should be aware of?

Technically, you would use 间 for all rooms: 一间卧室 (a bedroom), 一间书房 (a study).

间 can refer to larger spaces as well in Mandarin spoken in Taiwan and Cantonese: 一间学校 (a school), 一间饭店 (a restaurant), 一间房子 (a house/apartment). Note that mainland China accepts this usage now and you can hear 一间饭店/学校 in the news.

There is also the trend to simplify all classifiers to 个 where possible. 一个卧室, 两个客厅, 三个洗衣房, 四个房子 all sound right to me, and are perhaps more common than 间.

To avoid repeating "间", the classifier for 房间 (room) is often 个: 一个房间, 两个房间. (You hear 一间房间 as well.)

A house: 一间房子/一个房子; a building: 一个大楼 (Note that the Chinese live in apartments, so 房子 usually refers to apartments.)

Block is 街区. 时尚街区 and 高品质街区 are seen in the ads nowadays. But again, we don't live in houses, so 小区 (neighborhood/community) is more common.


Is the non-literal interpretation of 浪漫是她想要月亮时，你不会给她星星 that young romance is selfish, particularly of women? This dialogue is from the book Standard Course 标准教程 HSK4 上, page 8 (JD.com):

I'm interested in this part:

  ... 年轻人说：浪漫是她想要月亮时，你不会给她星星 ...

I (literally) translate this to:

  Young people [年轻人] say [说]: romance [浪漫] is [是] when [...时] she [她] wants [想要] the moon [月亮], you [你] cannot [不会] give [给] her [她] a star [星星].

My feeling is that this sentence implies that young romance is about selfish women: she's unwilling to accept a star (in place of the moon), and may even get angry should her partner give her something other than the moon (despite it being as amazing as a star).  Her partner must strive to follow her wishes, even if they are unreasonable.  Thus, my impression is that this sentence is belittling of young love, and particularly of young women.

Basically my question is: is this the intended interpretation?

Question: Is the non-literal interpretation of this sentence that young romance is selfish, particularly of women?

I found the original section:

  很多女孩子羡慕浪漫的爱情。那什么是浪漫呢？年轻人说：浪漫是她想要月亮时，你不会给她星星；中年人说：浪漫是即使晚上加班到零点，到家时，自己家里也还亮着灯；老年人说：浪漫其实就像歌中唱的那样，“我能想到最浪漫的事，就是和你一起慢慢变老。”其实，让我们感动的，就是生活中简单的爱情。有时候，简单就是最大的幸福。

We may find the author's main idea from context. After reading the whole paragraph, I think the author just want to show the different definitions from people with different life experience. We may learn that the definition of romance is becoming simpler and more realized when people get more experiences. The things 年轻人 believed is just with higher demands which may be idealized and irreplaceable. But their ideas may change when they become 中年人 and 老年人。 So, nothing to do with men or women here. The author is not complaining anyone but just let you know the definition of romance and love may change to simpler one. The last sentence actually makes the conclusion that "Simplicity is the best happiness."

EDIT:

Another skill to judge the author's idea is to feel his mood and emotion in the context. There are full of pauses and commas in this paragraph, which make it peaceful and soothing without any blame and implication. But this is technically. After all, there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes...


What is the difference between 好多 vs. 很多? I'm an ABC and I find myself often using 好多. I was talking to my dad yesterday and I noticed that I said it, but something just didn't seem right. Is this correct or does it not make any sense? I'm used to saying this and I'm not sure if I picked it up from my parents. Could it pertain to a certain dialect/region? My parents are from Sichuan and I know some things are said differently there.

I've been taking Chinese courses for a college requirement and I know 很多 is definitely correct. I'm just curious if they are similar/interchangeable or if 好多 isn't correct Chinese.

好 may be used with the meaning of 很. The difference is that it's more colloquial.

Source: myself =P


Which organization defines CJK Unified Ideographs? CJK means Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Well, which organization defines the standard?

On the Frequently Asked Questions page for Chinese and Japanese on Unicode there is a question that asks:

Q: Who is responsible for future CJK characters?

The answer reads:

A: The development and extension of the CJK characters is being done by the Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG), which includes official representatives of China, Hong Kong (SAR), Macao (SAR), Singapore, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, plus a representative from the Unicode consortium. For more information, see the IRG home page.
The IRG is very carefully cataloging, reviewing, and assessing CJK characters for inclusion into the standard. The only real limitation on the number of CJK characters in the standard is the ability of this group to process them, because the characters are increasingly obscure (no person knows more than a fraction of the set already encoded).

Each region has their own official representatives who helps in maintaining standards in connection with IRG.

Your titled also asks about unified standards. The same FAQ above has a separate question:

Q: What is the process for proposing new CJK unified ideographs?

which is answered:

A: Newly proposed CJK unified ideographs are first submitted to the IRG through national bodies or liaison organizations, and are then assembled into a new "IRG Working Set" that goes through several rounds of detailed review and scrutiny before being approved for standardization as a new CJK unified ideographs extension. Individuals who wish to propose the encoding of new CJK unified ideographs are encouraged to work with their respective country's national body.

The answer is more or less the same: regional organizations work with IRG on these issues.


Expressing knowledge or skill: 认识 vs 会 vs 知道 I came across several verbs meaning knowledge or skill about something.
I guess that 会 (simplified) / 會 (traditional) is used specifically to imply a skill, as in "他会说中文" - He can speak Chinese.
Whereas 认识 (認識) and 知道 imply knowledge of facts.
So far I found expressions such as "我不知道!" (I don't know!), "我认识他" (I know him), "他不认识路" (He doesn't know the way).
But, what's exactly the difference between 认识 and 知道? Are they synonyms?

會 indicates ability. 認識 emphasises recognition (exposure). 知道 emphasises the possession of knowledge. Let us look at the following unfortunately similar examples:

i. 你會這首歌嗎？
ii. 你認識這首歌嗎？
iii. 你知道這首歌嗎？

Sentence i.: this inclines to mean 'Can you sing this song?' (There is understandably the omitted verb 'to sing') Of course by being able to sing you possess the knowledge (知道) about the song, but this sentence emphasises whether you have the ability to sing it.
Sentence ii.: this inclines to mean 'Do you recognise this song?' That is to say, the asker expects the recipient to have already been exposed to this song elsewhere.
Sentence iii.: this inclines to mean 'Do you have knowledge about this song?' There is no emphasis on prior exposure (of course by being knowledgeable on something, logically, one has to be exposed to it, but this is not the emphasis of the verb 知道 per se), the asker is simply interested to know if the recipient knows or understands the existence of the song (in this case, it functions similarly to 認識), or the content of the song. Or even the knowledge of the singer / composer / lyricist. That is to say, 知道 has the broadest and most general sense and is expectedly used most frequently in modern Chinese.

In the case of people (Dr Sun Yat-sen in the following examples):

i. *你會孫中山嗎？ / *你會認識/知道孫中山嗎？
ii. 你認識孫中山嗎？
iii. 你知道孫中山嗎？

會 functions best when prefixing a skill (游泳 'swimming', 唱歌 'singing', 寫作 'writing'). There is no possible verb candidate (not even 認識 or 知道 because they are not exactly skills) in sentence i.
The word 認識 has also developed to mean 'to know each other' (相識) over time. So unless you are a contemporary of Dr Sun or a time traveller, sentence ii. usually does not make any sense. That is to say, it is nonsensical but not ungrammatical. (Of course, you may argue there is some sense in a pedagogical setting – when asking if students recognise this historical figure based on the assumption of prior learning exposure. But in general, this sentence is slightly odd.)
Sentence iii. merely asks if you are knowledgeable about Dr Sun Yat-sen (not the other way around, the asker is not interested in that). His existence, his life etc. That is why it emphasises unilateral knowledge, as mentioned in this answer.

Finally,

i. 你們認識嗎？
ii. 你們知道嗎？

Sentence i. means 'Do you two know each other?'. The omitted object is ‘each other’ (對方/彼此). Because of expected mutuality, you can only use sentence i.
Because of unilaterality of 知道, sentence ii. cannot be used to say 'Do you two know each other?'. It only means rhetorically 'Did you two know?', the omitted object being something else.


Why are the new law students being welcomed with 允公允能 日新月异 (yǔngōngyǔnnéng rìxīnyuèyì)? The School of Law at Nankai Uni are welcoming new students with this banner:

  允公允能 日新月异 法学院欢迎各位新同学
  yǔngōngyǔnnéng rìxīnyuèyì fǎxuéyuàn huānyíng gèwèi xīn tóngxué

I think I understand the last part: 法学院欢迎各位新同学 = School of Law welcomes all new students.  But for the first part (允公允能 日新月异), I don't have much of an idea.

This is what I've found out:

允 (yǔn) = just (in the sense of justice), to permit
公 (gōng) = public
允公 (yǔngōng) = ???
能 (néng) = capable of
允能 (yǔnnéng) = ???

and

日 (rì) = day; sun
新 (xīn) = new
日新 (rìxīn) = renew
月 (yuè) = month
异 (yì) = unusual
月异 (yuèyì) = ???

(Note: the hanzi 异 looks different on the computer vs. on the banner, but this seems to be the same hanzi, see: 异 at Chinese-Tools.com)

This appears to be a poetic-style welcoming, which would explain why I can't just look it up piece by piece.

Question: Why are the new law students being welcomed with 允公允能 日新日异 (yǔngōngyǔnnéng rìxīnyuèyì)?

Google Translate gives:

  允公允能 = Allow fairness
  日新月异 = With each passing day

which doesn't mean much to me.

First of all, the welcoming sentence is 允公允能 日新月異instead of 日薪日異.
This sentence is their school motto.

允公 means that one should make himself/ herself capable of (允) thinking about the whole welfare of people (公,) and to avoid being selfish.
允能 means that one should apply (允) what he/she learns to what he/she do (能.) 能 usually means capability.

日新月異 is a Chinese proverb meaning that to learn something more everyday and to keep up with the times.

In general, the motto is to encourage their students to keep learning, and use what they have learnt to help the society become a better place.


Does this conversation/exchange of words make sense? Person A: 你快乐吗? - Are you happy?

Person B: 我常常是。-I often am.

Person A: 有意思。- Interesting.

Person B: 你没有不对。- You are not wrong.

Would this exchange make sense to a 中国人？ Does it sound natural and are the translations correct?

"你快乐吗?" sounds normal enough

"我常常是" sounds too 'English' . Native Chinese would reply: "我常常都很快乐"

"有意思" sounds normal enough, but it implies the answer is somewhat unexpected

The last line has the most problem:

  "你没有不对" means "you didn't do anything wrong"

For "you are not wrong" in this context, native Chinese would say: " 你说得对" or "你说得没错". Both mean "you are right"


What is the difference between 省 and 省份? Two sentences "他也算是我省的名人" and "他也算是我省份的名人", is the second sentence wrong? If it is wrong, why?

IMO, it's OK.

PS: 省份 means province, but it can't be used with specific names. For example we can say 山东省, but not 山东省份.

Some examples: (from http://www.fantizi5.com/ciyuzaoju/zj23292.html)

1、辽宁是中国的一个省份。
2、有些工作地点遥远，在另一个省份。
3、并不奇怪的是，这些省份都位于中国较富裕的东部。
4、开始的时候，我向其他省份的亲戚朋友们询问，或者向他们传达我的信息。
5、但是，瓶颈已经出现了，一些省份报告说电力短缺，并且煤的库存量很低。
6、有些省份报道了用电短缺和煤炭低库存的现象。
7、在2004年总统选举中，该家族帮助她赢得了在这一省份的绝大多数选票。
8、在荷兰的12个省份中，每个省都会有一双特别设计的木屐鞋。
9、有报道说今年在沿海省份中因为劳动力短缺和工人要求提高工资，工资也大幅上升。
10、在中国的一些省份，其比例史无前例的达到了130比100。
11、我和妻子住在不同的省份。
12、中国政府压低了煤油和其他自然资源的价格，牺牲了内地出产这些资源的省份的利益，造福了使用这些资源的沿海出口商。
13、在收到卫生部的进一步信息之前，世卫组织将发布详情，以表格显示所有24例的发病日期、结果和省份。
14、在2007年，中国最北部的省份黑龙江报告了夏季干旱，这几乎是闻所未闻的事情，通常这时候是汛期。
15、其中许多城市位于远离北京和上海的欠发达的内陆省份。
16、在接下来的四天时间里我们要穿越五个省份，游历其中的三个。
17、在改革税制中，你们和下面的省份没有遇到任何比较强烈的对抗吗？
18、我们已呼吁其他省份的人们加入进来。
19、但是俄罗斯方面没有作出回应，并且一直在轰炸格鲁吉亚这个要求分离的省份周边的一些地区。


译成 To translate from... into 大家好，

我想知道怎么说
I translate from English into Chinese.
I interpret from English into Chinese.

My attempts：
我从英文笔译成汉语。
我从英文口译成汉语。

However, I'm unaware of whether it is better to use cong...dao...从。。。到
I saw the use of 成 （and 译成） many times （but not 笔译成）so I think it must be in use. A confirmation would be welcome though.
So should I add 笔译成 biyi, or 口译成 kouyi ? In english it's very important to specify that I don't 翻译 only because it's too vague. Translations are always written and interpretations always oral. Please keep that in mind when giving me your answers.

you should use a dispositive marker like 将

我将英文译成中文。 我将英文译成中文
汉语 refers to spoken Chinese; for written Chinese, use 中文

you can use preposition [由 ~ 成] or [从 ~ 成] (they both mean "from ~ to")

我将哈利波特由英文译成中文 or simply "我將哈利波特译成中文"
you can omit '由英文' because we all know Harry Potter is originally an English novel

翻译 is the standard term for both written translation(笔译) and spoken translation (口译) -- the terms you cited. In practice, no Chinese would use those terms.
Native Chinese would not replace 翻译/译 with either 笔译 or 口译 . We can tell it is a written translation or spoken one by looking into the context. If you say a book is translated into Chinese, you don't need to say it is written; When you say the translators in a meeting translate for the heads of state, we know they are translating orally.
Interpreter is called 传译員; to interpret someone's speech in real time is called 传译 or 即时传译


Can 谢谢 be abbreviated to a single syllable 谢? Is it meaningful to say "谢" only? Google Translate implies that it may also mean "wither". I want to use it to say "thanks" instead of both characters.

I am looking for single characters that I can use for some mandarin emojis, one of which is to mean "thankyou".


Origin of 乎 as a bound morpheme in words such as 热乎 Here are a couple compound words that end with 乎:

热乎, 温乎, 確乎, 玄乎, 忙乎, 晕乎, 近乎, 热乎乎, 傻乎乎.

Is there an understanding of how 乎 became used in these words? Does it have any relation to the classical usage of 乎 as an interrogative marker?

In Classical Chinese, the word 乎has several other uses besides as an interrogative marker.  In Ch 27 of ‘Classical Chinese, A Basic Reader’ by Yuan, Tang and Geiss, it occurs with an adjective:  巍巍乎若泰山  ‘solemn and majestic like Mount Tai’ (referring to lute playing).  They describe 乎 here as ‘an enclitic particle attached to an adjective to intensify or emphasize its meaning.’ (Glossary, p. 110.)

The 漢語大字典 (p. 19) gives a similar example from the 論語:  郁郁乎文哉!  ‘What elegant words!’ There might be a link here with another use of 乎 as an exclamatory particle.

Yet another (maybe more prominent) use of 乎 is as a variant of the coverb 於, which marks locative complements and can basically be translated as an English preposition like at, in, to or from, depending on the main verb.  (See Pulleyblank, ‘Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar’, p. 53 f.)  One modern item on the list seems to work this way.  With 近, we find both 近乎 and 近於 with the meaning ‘close to, bordering on’. The FLTRP Chinese-English dictionary gives these examples: 近乎荒謬 ‘bordering on the absurd’ and 近於荒唐 (same gloss).

So, here are two possible classical sources for 乎 as an adjectival suffix.  Probably in the majority of cases it is emphatic, but with 近 it functions as the head of a complement clause. In modern Mandarin it may well have taken on additional meanings or connotations.


What is the difference between 七夕节 and 情人节? First off... 七夕节快乐! For those who are wondering, today is the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar meaning it is Chinese Valentine's Day!

Actually something that I have been wondering though is there a difference between 情人节 and 七夕节？ I know 七夕节 literally means something like the Seventh Evening but are both phrases interchangeable? Thanks.

Though they are similar in significance they happen on two different dates, and therefore are not interchangeable.

七夕节 is a festival based on a very old myth. The story has many variations but simply put it tells of a young cow herder who is separated from his true love, a weaver maiden by a silver river. On the 7th day of the 7th lunar month they are rejoined when magpies form a bridge to allow the lovers be reunited.

情人节 is a festival that started around the 18th century and used the name of a christian saint for the handwritten notes of love they would exchange.

They are very different in background but have given way to the commercial ideals of consumerism. The malls seem to treat both as the same type and I often see it referred to in print as "Chinese Valetines Day"


Are Chinese language equivalent of English /p/ and /b/ sounds the same? As per my knowledge, both these sounds are considered the same in Mandarin. Do Chinese speakers them have difficulty in distinguishing between say Paul and Ball? How do they deal with it?

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, for stop consonants, the three following categories are distinguished:

(Truly) voiced stops. The vocalization begins before the release of the stop. Examples would be [b], [d], and [g]
Voiceless, unaspirated stops. The vocalization begins simultaneously with the release of the stop. Examples: [p], [t], [k].
Voiceless, aspirated stops. The vocalization begins shortly after the release of the stop. This is often perceived as a "puff of air". Examples: [pʰ], [tʰ], [kʰ].

The true situation is a little more complicated, but for any given language, we really only need to distinguish 2 or 3 of these in order to explain the phonological structure. To give some examples:

In English, our voiced stops (e.g., spelled "b", "d", and "g") are pronounced as voiced consonants; that is, [b], [d], and [g]. Our unvoiced stops are pronounced as either aspirated or unaspirated depending on context: "pop" = [pʰap], "stop" = [stap], and so forth.
In Mandarin, the distinction is between aspirated and unaspirated. There are no voiced stops at all: 白 = [pai], 拍 = [pʰai].
In many languages (including, say French), the distinction is between voiced and unvoiced, and there is no aspiration. So, you have "tout" = [tu], "deux" = [dœ].

The mismatch between different 2-way distinctions can either be unnoticable or a huge communication barrier. My experience is that English speakers have no problem communicating with either the aspiration-distinguishers or the voicing-distinguishers. If I say "to"/"do" (= [tʰu]/[du]), an aspiration distinguisher will perceive it as [tʰu]/[tu], and a voicing distinguisher will perceive it as [tu]/[du] (and vice versa).

The real problem is when aspiration-distinguishers attempt to communicate with voicing-distinguishers. This can be hard. A Chinese friend of mine complained about an Indian person who asked for "the [t]ime", and she had no idea what the "dime" he was asking about! Similarly, I've heard Europeans complain that Pinyin "makes no sense" because pinyin 'p' and 'b' "sound the same".

To address the OP's question, Mandarin speakers do distinguish a "p" and "b", but they do so on the basis of aspiration. This works fine for communicating with native English speakers, but works poorly for communicating with other non-native speakers who only make voicing distinctions (e.g., many Europeans).


不比 vs 没有 comparison usage If my understanding is correct, then:

他没有我高。= he's not as tall as me, i.e. he is shorter.
他不比我高。= he's either as tall as me or shorter, i.e. he's at most as tall as me.

Is that correct? If so, in what situations would one use 不比? Is it when one is sure that a certain thing is no more than the compared one, but not sure if it is the same or less? Or do people just use it without thinking about it -- e.g. someone says 不比, but may mean 没有?

Your understanding is correct.

1. 他没有我高。-> he <  me
2. 他不比我高。-> he <= me

Comparing with the 1st one, the 2nd one is usually used for the situation to explain sb/sth is not bad relatively. Such as:

他不比我高。
-> I'm as tall as him at least, he's not taller than me, connote that I'm not bad comparing with him.
本公司的技术水平已经不比国际上的一流水平差。
-> Our technology level is not worse than international advanced level, connote that we're at the same level at least.


What are some examples of stative -le and iterative aspect in Mandarin? I'm a graduate student studying how bilinguals interpret certain aspectual expressions in Mandarin. I'm currently preparing all of my stimuli, but I'm hoping for some help from native speakers since I'm sadly a monolingual English speaker. Basically, I'm looking for constructions that use bounded (with an adverbial or CL) and unbounded states with verbal suffix -le. I've accumulated some from studies I've read, but that's my only reference. Here are a couple of examples:
Bounded state + -le: Wo xihuan danxin-le ni liang nian (intended meaning: I liked you for two years (and no longer do))
Because my native speaker friend and a comment below say the weather phrase was sentence final le, which I am NOT testing, I changed the unbounded state + -le example:
Unbounded state + -le: Ta-de pengyou zhidao-le zhe-jian shi (intended: His friend has learned this matter (and still knows))
Here are some English examples as suggested below. I don't want to assign an English tense translation that might be inaccurate, so I've just paired some stative predicates with temporal adverbials for bounded states or direct objects for unbounded states. As long as the translation would include -le and not -guo or sentence final le, it should be alright.
bounded states with -le => no longer hold in present:
disappointed for two years
busy last week
unbounded states with -le => still hold in present:
believe the truth
resembles his mom
I actually just realized something that I could use some clarification on. Would any unbounded state with -le no longer hold in present if I added a bounding adverbial? So like with the example above, if I added liang niang, would it then no longer hold and imply that he learned the matter and no longer knows it? If that's the case, then I can actually collapse two conditions into one.
I would deeply appreciate examples, interpretations, or related ideas. Typically, I would be able to pay a native consultant, but because of COVID I'm not actually doing the experiment and so, have no money. Mandarin is fantastically complex and even just in the realm of aspect and its interactions, I could spend 15 years writing this thesis. I've been working on this for about a year now and the only aspectual marker I'm even writing about is -le.

I recommend you look for the book Charles N. Li, Sandra A. Thompson. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. I found it to be currently one of the best references in English that explain in depth Chinese grammar and that also has a lot of examples. It uses only pinyin, which from your question I think could be an advantage for you. There, they separate 了 in two types:

Perfective 了 (this is your bounded state + 了 and I think also the example you gave for Semelfactive + -le + adverbial). This is the chapter 6.1 of the book. I gave a summary of the different types and examples in this answer.

Sentence-final particle 了 or Current Relevant State (CRS) 了 (this refer to the example you gave for Unbounded state + -le). This is chapter 7.1 of the book. I have also written a summary here.


What is the difference: "和小猫一样可爱" and "像小猫一样可爱" There are two sentences:

她的宝宝和小猫一样可爱 (I never ran into a sentence like the one until recently.)
她的宝宝像小猫一样可爱

Question: Are these two sentences exchangeable? Or, what is the difference between "和...一样" and "像...一样"?

Modifying my question:
When comparing two unlike things, "像一样" is used.

Is it also semantically and grammatically correct to use "跟/和/同 一样" when comparing two unlike things? (My gut feeling tells it is not correct. But I cannot find any explicit explanations of the difference between these two patterns in all my textbooks.)

In daily spoken language, these two sentences express the same thing (lovely). But there is some tiny difference. 和…一样 emphasizes the comparison, it's something like the expression as ... in English or tan...como... in Spanish. 像…一样 emphasizes the trope, it says A is similar to B so that A shares the feature "lovely" with B.


Correct way to say "when I was young..." What is the usual way to say something along the lines of "when I was young, petrol was cheap" or "when I was a kid, my family lived in Mexico".

You can say:

  当我年轻的时候，...
  我年轻的时候，...
  年轻的时候，...
  年轻时，...

In these cases, you are talking about the time when you were a young man (note: not a kid nor a teenager). Perhaps you are now in your 40s/50s/60s etc, and you are talking about your 20s/30s.

You could also say:

  当我年幼的时候，...
  当我还小的时候,...
  我年幼的时候，...
  我还小的时候，...
  我小时候，...
  小时候，...

In these cases, you are talking about the time when you were a kid or teenager.


兹 as a phonetic component Wiktionary explains the two glyph origins of 「兹」 as the following:

  Unorthodox variant simplified from 茲 with 䒑 as the top component instead of 艹 found in the Ming dynasty orthographic dictionary 《俗書刊誤》.
  Variant form of 玆 with 䒑 instead of doubled 亠 as the top component. Found in the Tang dynasty orthographic dictionary Ganlu Zishu 《干祿字書》, which lists both 兹 and 茲 as unorthodox forms of 玆.

For characters in the phonetic series 「兹」, most sources (from my experience) explain the characters as semantic 「X」 + phonetic 「茲」. To illustrate, here is a part of the entry for 「滋」 from Chinese Linguipedia:

  從水，表示與水相關；茲聲，表示音讀。

And below is the entry for 「滋」 in 說文解字:

  益也。从水茲聲。

However, it seems that there are two seal script forms; one that matches the structure 「水」 + 「茲」 (left), and the other matches the structure 「水」 + 「玆」 (right).

Compare the seal script forms of 「茲」 and 「玆」 respectively:

It also appears that abbreviated 「絲」 was the original phonetic component in older forms like oracle bone script, and was later replaced with 「茲」 or 「玆」. Both of these characters have the Fanqie spelling of 子之切, but seem to have different origins.

As a phonetic component, were both 「茲」 and 「玆」 used, and later converged into 「兹」? Or is there a different story behind it?

商甲鐵178.2合集11606西周金沈子它簋蓋集成4330篆部・說文解字隸定

The character was originally「」, largely used as a phonetic loan for Zhengzhang OC: /*ʔsɯ/, meaning this (now written as「茲」).「」came from a variant way of writing「絲」(/*slɯ/, silk).

Later on,  horizontal lines or「Ｕ」shapes as differentiating marks were added to the top portion of「」, just below the notches, possibly to differentiate the original character from a myriad of other uses in the Zhou period (proper nouns and other phonetic loans). These additions ambiguously formed what is now written as「玆」or「茲」, which are really just variant shapes of each other:

東周・秦石鼓　篆玄部・玆說文解字隸定

戰國・楚簡・帛緇衣・13郭店楚簡篆艸部・茲說文解字隸定

Some other readings associated with「」or「玆」to note:

Reading「」as「幽」(concealed > dark) is either an erroneous interpretation of「」as the phonetic component of「幽」, or saying that originally「」had another pronunciation.
Reading「玆」as black should be a phonetic loan for「緇」(/*ʔsrɯ/, black silk).
Reading「玆」as「玄」(/*ɡʷeːn/, black, dark) is the association of「玄」with「玆」. In this sense,「玆」can be viewed as another character, formed by reduplicating「玄」to also represent /*ɡʷeːn/, and unrelated in sound etymology to /*ʔsrɯ/.

Continuing on for the morpheme /*ʔsɯ/ (this), the two「亠」on top of「玆」were sometimes joined to form「䒑」:

秦簡為吏之道51睡虎地秦簡隸定

  Alternatively,「䒑」is also a brush calligraphy variation of「艹」. Today, several character variations are due to swapping「艹」with「䒑」or vice-versa, the most prominent being「著」and「着」which were both originally corrupted from「箸」.

The character development timeline should then be「」,「玆・茲」,「兹」. Although this cannot directly answer the question as to why sometimes「茲」is preferred over「玆」or vice-versa as a phonetic component, from the historical development it is possible to see that the facts behind character structure and development was very concealed to later writers, influencing the muddled choices.

If you really had to choose one component or the other out of「茲」or「玆」, then pending on the character, that choice is sometimes quite easy.「茲」is defined in Shuowen as

  艸木多益

while「玆」is defined as

  黑也

So, for a character like「滋」which is defined as

  益也

The obvious choice is「茲」.

References:

季旭昇《說文新證》
黃德寬《古文字譜系疏證》
小學堂
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》

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》


Word for banana blossoms in Chinese This Web Page shows that banana blossoms correspond to what a Chinese friend of mine from Beijing used to call "tall skinny Chinese person" or "long skinny Chinese person". Upon stumbling upon this stack exchange article my curiosity struck and I now want to know how to say/write this ingredient in Chinese as well as how to say these expressions of my friend's in Chinese.

There might has been some misconception here.

Banana blossoms (香蕉花) is a food ingredient, it has nothing to do with the nickname for the American born Chinese- 'banana'(香蕉) (which is white inside, yellow on the outside. Meaning they might look Chinese, but they think and act like white people )

Another nickname for American born Chinese is 'bamboo stick' (竹昇), (which is empty inside, meaning they don't have any Chinese character inside them)

  "tall skinny Chinese person" or "long skinny Chinese person"

The misconception might have came from your Chinese friend thought 香蕉 = 竹昇, and 竹昇 in other context, can be used metaphorically to describe 'tall skinny person'.

Example:

'他像竹昇一般又高又廋' (he is tall and thin like a bamboo stick)

'他七呎高卻只得一百二十磅重, 那不就是活脫脫一條竹昇麼？(He is seven feet tall, but only weight 120 pounds, is that not virtually a bamboo stick?)

The fact is, 香蕉 and 竹昇 might mean the same thing, but they obviously are not the same phrase, and the nickname '竹昇' doesn't contain the metaphorical meaning of 'tall and thin person'


How to use 者 as "... one who is ..."? I have read that 者 can be used as "... one who ...", for example

I met a X, one who is a Y.

Is that right? If yes, what would be the translation of "I met a X, one who is a Y"?

者

  英文翻譯: that which; he who; those who

  《禮記·檀弓上》
  遂命子貢為之主，曰：「為爾哭也來者，拜之。」

  Accordingly he ordered Zi-gong to act as presiding mourner on the occasion, saying to him, 'Bow to those who come because you have a wailing in your house.'

之 in 拜之 is a pronoun which represents 來者.

I think it is usually used in the classical Chinese (文言文).


How Does One Pronounce/Define the *Chinese* Character For browsers unable to display that code point (U+26A3B) as anything other than a box, the question concerns this character:

Per http://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=gb&char=%F0%A6%A8%BB - there are quite a few instances of the character's use in poetry since the Yuan Dynasty, and it occurs at least as late as the early Qing Dynasty in the lyrics of Gu Zhenguan (how I got started with it):

縱閒愁吹墜，不到船。

The character is not included in the Kangxi Dictionary, and I wonder whether any definition is available beyond "a kind of boat".  In some of the examples (e.g. 银夜酌凉蒲萄，琵琶嘈嘈急如泻) it doesn't seem to be a boat at all, perhaps an obscure variant of some other character meaning "drinking vessel"?

I don't know much about scansion of Chinese poetry but am guessing at least it is going to be 3rd/4th tone given its location in the phrases of the cited poetry. A Japanese site (http://jigen.net/kanji/158267) suggests the rather dubious reading of "mò" (I'm assuming that's Pinyin and not some transcription system specific to Japanese) while apparently it is read "khoang" in Vietnamese (http://www.cojak.org/index.php?function=code_lookup&term=26A3B).  It seems odd for the character to have such a vague existence: does anyone know how it was pronounced  classically (i.e. what is the 反切) and/or have a reasonably informative gloss?

I believe that  is a mistake in transcription for 觥 (gong1) because they could look very similar in cursive script. 觥 means drinking vessel and 觥船 means a big drinking vessel, see, e.g., http://www.zdic.net/c/5/f0/248556.htm .


Are these all correct ways of explaining I'm from Australia? There seems to be a large number of ways of saying "I'm from Australia" or similar.
I'm an Australian

我是澳大利亚人
我是澳大利亚的
我是个澳大利亚人
我是个澳大利亚的人
我是一个澳大利亚人
我是一个澳大利亚的人

I'm from Australia

我来自澳大利亚
我是来自澳大利亚的
我从澳大利亚来
我是从澳大利亚来的

And also I was born in Australia 我生在澳大利亚, along with variants such as 我在澳大利亚生了.
And basically all of the above with 澳大利亚 replaced with 澳洲.
Question: Are these all correct ways of explaining I'm from Australia?

all correct except 我在澳大利亚生了, which means I gave birth in Australia


Can "东西" refer to a person instead of thing? "我找到了我一直渴望的东西"

"I have found what I've been longing for"
"I have found who I've been longing for"

Which translation would be appropriate? Can 东西 refer to a person instead of thing in this sentence?

don't use 東西 for a person, it is for angry only and negative assessment. 他也不是個什么好東西。(he is not a good man). when you translate such statement into Chinese, you can just make sure appending a '的' at end. In Chinese '的' following a verb can be used for 'what xxx (a pronoun) yyyy (a verb)'. so 我找到了梦寐以求的。


Why is there a 零 after 块 when you pronounce 1000.20元? It's 一千块零二毛， but why? Recently I came across a lesson in a textbook that was about money, numerals, and quantities in general. There was a puzzling entry claiming that 1000.20元 should be pronounced as 一千块零二毛。 Honestly, I don't get how is there a 零 after 块？ I mean, shouldn't 一千块 already mean that we're done with the integer part, in a way, and we're about to tell the fraction? Or do I get it wrong completely?

This has nothing to do with counters but the numerating system.
Whenever there is a jump in the place values - in your case, a jump from 1 thousand dollars (千塊) to 2 0.1 dollars (毛) - 零 must be inserted in between for the sake of completeness. (You may think of $1000.2 as having 0 百塊, 十塊, and 塊, hence the jump.)
So you would expect the same goes for 1050 as 一千零五十, not 一千五十, because 十 does not immediately follow 千, or equivalently, 百 is missing.
Conversely, for 1500, no 零 is needed between 一千 and 五百, because the 百 counter immediately follows 千. Some may argue both are fine, but frankly 一千五百 is more concise and understandable.


How to interpret 开始起步 in IT企业的电子商务也在1999年开始起步? In this sentence,

  IT企业的电子商务也在1999年开始起步。

How would you translate '开始起步'?

Oxford English to Chinese

Start Out

  1 (begin to do sth.) 开始起步

起步 if we look at it literally it means "pick up" + "feet" (steps really but that doesn't sound as good).

So it usually gets translated as

• start

• begin

• In French it's translated as débuter, which also means start or begin but looks like the English debut.

So here's where you're confused it looks like we have 开始 + 起步 as start + start, right?

But if we take the literal translation of 起步 from uptop we could translate it like "began to pick up its feet".

Going off of the French inspiration I would love to translate it as "made its debut", which sounds a lot better.

Dunno if I'm cutting too much out but I would translate the entire sentence IT企业的电子商务也在1999年开始起步 as eCommerce also made its debut in 1999.


Differences Between Classes of ＊过 Verbs ( 通过, 经过, 透过, 穿过, etc. ) Original Question

Although 通过 is the goto expression for passage through or across a space in informal, spoken Mandarin, there are specific alternatives used in more formal, spoken Mandarin as well as in writing.  This question serves to provide the community with a comprehensive list.  EDIT: As "comprehensive list" questions are frowned upon on the StackExchange network, this question's purpose shall be to illustrate the classes of ＊过 verbs.

Examples

通过 to go through something in a general or abstract sense
经过 to go past something; EDIT: or to pass something
透过 through, via, or by way of something
穿过 to go through a structure such as a tunnel or hallway
Consider the sense of piercing or penetration that comes from 穿

What additional situation-specific alternatives to 通过 exist?
EDIT: What classes of ＊过 verbs exist?

2 alternatives in an abstract sense: iciba： 以（介）：例句：他～自学完成了大学全部课程，

征求（动）：（有关的人或组织的同意或核准）：这问题要～群众，才能做出决定。


Pronunciation Of 佛 in 四川话 The 1986 edition of《四川方言词典》has the following entry:

乐山的大佛——老石人
Lo2 san1 ni1 da4 fu3——nao3 si2 ren2
乐山大佛距今已有一千多年历史, 所以是“老石人”。谐“老实人”。 ▷你以为他是～嗦? 他才阴倒不老实。

佛 is given the pronunciation of fu3
The 2014 edition of the same dictionary gives 佛 the pronunciation fu2
/note: this dictionary is riddled with errors(!)/
Logically I would have assumed the pinyin to have been written fo2 - which is pretty much how it is pronounced, as far as I can tell.
《四川方言词典》has fu3 and fu2

Are Either fu3 or fu2 correct pronunciations for 佛 in 四川话?

I tried the 漢語方言大辭典, and there are many places with the fu pronunciation in the southwest mandarin area, for example 佛豆 (= 蠶豆, fava bean) is pronounced fu tou in 畢節; 佛瓜 (瓠瓜 gourd) is pronounced fu gua in 自貢, etc. Not really surprising; 弗 is fu in Mandarin.


How do you say "allowance" in mandarin? Google Translate says it is 津贴, but my mom says it is 零用钱. Apparently 津贴 doesn't mean allowance, so what does each character mean? My book and google translate say 零用钱 is pocket money. How does that mean allowance? Also what is 零花钱?

Pocket money is a synonym of allowance and it is translated: 零用钱 or 零花钱.

Allowance, akin to subsidy, can be translated as 津贴 or 补贴.

Disability allowance for instance would be translated: 残疾补贴.


Can someone please explain this: 都没吃饭吗 I was watching a drama and in the scene, the coach was speaking to her team:

Coach: 希望每个队员都能拿出最好的状态。能不能做到 (I know all of you can do your best。 Can you do that?)
Team: 能！(Yes!)
Coach: 都没吃饭吗 (Not loud enough!)

Can someone please explain to me why "都没吃饭吗" can mean this? Would you ever use that to ask if your friends have eaten?
Thank you!!

It means the coach thinks the players are not energetic enough as if they were hungry.
This sentence can only be used in some situations:

a coach blames the players being not energetic enough
an officer blames the soldiers being not powerful enough
fighter ridicule the opponent being so weak

or similar. Always considered as a blaming or ridiculing.
If you ask a friend about eating, it would be “吃饭了吗？” instead of “没吃饭吗？”.


Combining sentences: use of conjunctions, omission of subject and verb In some languages, like English, sometimes, it is possible to combine sentences by using commas, conjunctions and omitting subjects and verbs to avoid repetitions. In some languages, avoiding repetitions is considered a good practice.

Is it also a good practice in Chinese? Or it is better to repeat subjects and verbs, instead?

How should sentences be combined? Should also subjects and verbs been omitted?

Here's an example:

She is 25 years old.
She is American.
She is very pretty.

We can combine these three sentences like this:

She is 25 years old, American and very pretty.

Is it possible/good to do something similar with:

她是25岁。
她是美国人。
她很漂亮。

?

Thanks!

Chinese, the language, itself doesn't ALWAYS use conjunctions together to link different kinds of splitted words, phrases……ect together. However, sometimes what we should notice is that we Chinese prefer other ways instead of using conjunctions, the common ways are:

1) Using punctuations to link short words together to describe things:

小王，25岁，上海人，喜欢吃零食。

Notice that we usually shorten the splitted words by the commas liking them together.

If words of the same type (used as nones, adjectives……ect), and if they are of small unit in a sentence itself, maybe “顿号” is a good choice:

我喜欢看书、写作、旅游。(I like reading, writing and travelling.)

In this situation, we don't need to use "and", compared with this, the English prefer using "and" in front of the last parallel splitted word.

2) Most cases "and" functions to link sentences together in English or western languages in syntax, however in Chinese we don't do that, we still use punctuations like commas, this means Chinese language perfers "showing meaning" to "pure syntax" itself：

Eg: You are a student, and I'm also a student.
你是学生，我也是。

Notice in English we must add "and" here to link the parallel sentences together in a normal syntax, but in Chinese we CANNOT add "和", A comma is ENOUGH here.

3) For some fixed characters, we don't use any punctuations but just write them one by one:

我喜欢吃喝玩乐（We don't prefer saying：We love 吃、喝、玩、乐，because "吃喝玩乐" is a fixed pharse. Others such as "爸爸妈妈"、“上上下下”……. In English we have to use commas+"and" to link them to meet the right syntax.）

4）In some special pharses like "both……and……", if we use nagative, this means "half negative":

Both you and me don't like sports （= Either you or me like sports.）

However in Chinese we are of "fully negative" in meaning:

你和我不喜欢体育。(= Neither you or I like sports.)

5）We prefer make nones or shortened phrases "adjectivable" to modify a none directly.

E.g: She is a 25-year-old girl, from ShangHai and like singing.

In Chinese, we usually say:

她是一个25岁，来自上海且喜欢歌唱的女孩子。(translated in English, this should be something like "She is a 25-year-old,singing-like girl from ShangHai" or through the adjective clause like "She is a 25-year-old girl from ShangHai, who likes singing.).

6）In some “成语” (idoms or pharses), we also have conjunctions or meanings:

宁缺毋滥 (We prefer lacking if nothing meets).
三思而行（Decision after a deep thought）


What does the lady in this video say? I am watching a small advertising video for chinese radio station (here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL6hj3ocYZM), and cannot quite catch what the lady is saying from 00:12 to "96.3好歌好FM". Can someone please help me with this one?
Thanks!

She says:

又是全新的一天，963好歌好FM。你好吗？
Yòu shì quánxīn de yītiān, 963 hǎo gē hǎo FM. Nǐ hǎo ma?

It's something like:

It's another totally new day, 963 good songs, good FM.  How are you?