What is the meaning of ㄝ? From wikipedia:

  ㄝ是注音符号中的韵母之一，字形取自“世”字，发音则取“世”字之韵。

But I am not seeing how it should be used, and what is the meaning of this. Anyone knows what is the meaning of this, and when it should be used?

注音符號 are symbols invented to help kids understand how to pronounce a Chinese word in Taiwan.

Before 注音符號 was invented and PingYin were imported, students learn the pronunciation by repeat the teacher's pronounce. 注音符號 has been used for almost 100 year.

In Taiwan, the words in Chinese textbooks for elementary school student are remarked by 注音符號. So students can understand how a new word pronounce without parent or teacher. Each symbol represents a pronunciation, with combinations of these symbols(maybe 1 to 3) students can easily pronounce any Chinese word.

Like this

In most cases, 注音符號 are not be used in formal article. But several years ago, there are a new usage of 注音符號 invented by youth. This sub-culture are called 注音文(which means article mixed with 注音符號.)

With 注音文, people use a single symbol to represents a real word which pronounce alike or similarly.

The most general example is

我ㄉ背包 => 我的背包 => my bag
拜託你ㄌ => 拜託你了 => I beg you.

Back to @Graviton's question, ㄝ read(not pronounce, each symbol have its own read and pronunciation, just like alphabets) similar( or you can say just in the same way) to 耶. 耶 is an interjection pronounce Yé, which is used to represent a happy emotion.

Example

今晚老闆請大家吃晚餐ㄝ => 今晚老闆請大家吃晚餐耶 => Boss buy everyone a dinner tonight.

Using 注音文 is not very popular now in Taiwan. Since it's not really professional, and makes you looks like a kid in a social network.

Hope these can help you. :)


What is the difference between 受 and 收? They both can mean "to receive". It seems as if 受 has a more negative connotation than 收 but I'm 100% sure about the exact usage differences.

Considering 受 and 收 as the translation of the English verb "to receive" is confusing, as it really depends on how they are used (a lot of expressions use those two words). I think the difference is easier to see with examples.

受 seems to be used for immaterial things (such as feelings, influence, etc.) Its passive connotation really depends on the context or other words in the sentence/expression.

ex:

他很受欢迎。 - He is very popular.
他受到你的影响。- He is influenced by you. (which can be good or bad).

Even when the character 受 is used in words, it is for abstract things:
感受 (a feeling)

收 seems to be used for material things (a letter, a document, a SMS).
ex:

我收到你的短信。 - I received your SMS.
别忘记收垃圾。- Don't forget to collect the trash.

Same things here, when 收 is used in words, it describes material things:
收音机 - Radio (set). Literally the device receiving sounds.

I hope this answer your question.
I wish you pleasure and success in your studies!


How were Chinese characters taught to Chinese children before the introduction of pinyin? Before schools started to use pinyin for teaching characters to Chinese children, how and/or what was used to teach it instead? And what about how dictionaries showed the pronunciation of characters?

In the (very) old days, there was a system called 反切 (in English) where two characters were used, one for initial, one for the rhyme (vowel[s] + final), followed by 切 to indicate it was a phonetic notation. For instance, 東 could be represented as 德紅切.
Edit #2
I thought I should insert an example from the canon of Chinese dictionaries, 康熙字典. Here's page 1 -- might as well start at the beginning...

I highlighted the two definitions for 一: 於悉 for 唐韻 and 韻會, 益悉 for 集韻 and 正韻. Which is interesting, as these won't match the modern pronunciation in most dialects (strangely enough 於悉切 works perfectly in Hakka for 一 but that's probably more likely an accident...).


Is there an etymological connection between 只得 (zhǐdé) = "be obliged to" and 得 (děi) = "to have to"? I'm not sure if this is just a coincidence, but there's two related words:

只得 (zhǐdé) = "be obliged to"
得 (děi) = "to have to"

They have similar meanings, and share the character 得 (although with different pronunciation).  It seems like they may be etymologically related.

Question: Is there an etymological connection between 只得 (zhǐdé) and 得 (děi)?

I wouldn't know where to begin investigating this, but Googling 只得 得 didn't help.

The pronounciation of "得 (děi)" is not a formal usuage, which is from a dialect.

"只得 (zhǐdé)" has two kinds of meanings in this pronouciation.
1, Meaning "only have": "我只得这么一个弟弟” - “I only have this one little brother”;
2, Meaning similar as "不得不” (have to), usually connect with a Verb, and indicating there is limitaiton from objective circumstance. While "只得 (zhǐdé)" usually follow by actions out of personal choice / decision,  "不得不” usually follow by actions with no choice.
e.g. "由于下雨，我只得取消徒步计划” - “I have to cancel my hiking plan since it is raining” (I can still go out for hiking but I decided not to)


Meaning of 自己被收拾得乾淨漂亮 in context and significance of passive voice I am reading a novel linked below and there is a phrase the meaning of which is not entirely clear to me. To provide a little context, the phrase refers to the 12 year old girl Xiaofu, who has just confessed she is in love with her brother and her brother has replied "me too". The phrase itself reads:

  知道那天自己被收拾得干净漂亮，便大胆地回过头来，让他看。

Does it mean she knew that she was neatly dressed that day, or does it mean that she put her love life neatly in order? I think the second can't be correct, but for the first one I also don't understand, why passive voice was used. The protagonist is 12. Surely she wasn't dressed by someone else! My best guess at a translation would be:

  knowing that she was neatly groomed that day, she turned around more emboldened for him to behold.

For context, the rest of the passage, which I think I understand, reads:

  小芙撇了撇嘴，突然柔声说道：“炯，我很喜欢你呀！”
   炯害羞地低着头。半晌，他抬头看妹妹，点了点头，用轻微得连他自己都难以听到的声音说：“我也是。”
   小芙快乐得一下子跳了起来，沿着山坡疯跑。跑到山谷底下站住了，知道那天自己被收拾得干净漂亮，便大胆地回过头来，让他看。

If anyone wants even more context, here's a link to the relevant section of the novel, the entire work can be read there.

知道那天自己被收拾得干净漂亮

The author left out the subjects because they are very obvious.  The sentence
will be easy to be understood if we add them back as follows.

(她)知道那天(她)自己被收拾得干净漂亮。

她 she
知道 know
那天 that day
她 she
自己 herself (not another girl)
被收拾得 be put in order
干净 clean
漂亮 beautiful

(她)(知道)(那天)(她)(自己)(被收拾得干净漂亮)
(She) (knows that) (that day) (she) (herself) (was neatened clean and beautiful)

She knows that she herself was neatened clean and beautiful that day.
She knows that she was neatened clean and beautiful that day.

收拾 means 整理 - to put things in order; to order; to tidy; to neaten.
For example, to clean the face, to comb the hair, to sort the clothes, etc.
It does not necessarily mean to apply cosmetics or to put on another more beautiful clothes.


Meaning of 道生一,一生二,二生三,三生万物 During one class we talk about how Chinese families give name to their children, however the conclusion is a little bit confusing for me.

Context: they give to a child the following name -> 冯一

Can someone explain it to me?

The meaning I would present is

  With the principles of nature, the fundamentals were produced. Everything else are then produced from the fundamentals.

The explanation of the principle and the fundamentals differs from people to people, it depends on your belief, the major you study and other backgrounds.

I, as a physics student, would regard the principle as the physics rules and the fundamentals as particles that make up the universe.


Unusual Seal reading (Characters identified: 胸有方心身無媚骨) Can someone help me to read this seal?

Your character identification is correct. The sentence can be translated as “With a right consciousness, without any sycophancy.”


Help with Lishu character recognition (Character identified: 幾) I am practicing some Lishu characters from Deng Shiru's "Master Cheng's Admonition on Seeing, Hearing, Words, and Deeds". There is one character I'm having trouble deciphering and can't find what might be it in the Lishu dictionary I have.

The prior character is:

The following character is:

This part of the total calligraphy seems to be focused on the "Acting" of the man of wisdom or goodwill.
I'm grateful for any help in deciphering the one character.
Craig
Here is the context of the complete scroll, the fourth of four:

It seems 幾
The full quote being:

哲人知幾，誠之於思

The preceding and following characters also match.
Reference: http://shufa.guoxuedashi.com/5E7E/3500.html


What is the difference between 秀才, 进士, 举人, and 甲第? 秀才、进士、举人、甲第那些单词有什么区别？好像它们都是指在中国古代科举制度下成绩特高的考生。准确的区别是什么？哪些至今还在使用？

(麻烦大家帮忙改正中文错误！)

What is the difference between 秀才, 进士, 举人, and 甲第? They all seem to refer to students who did particularly well under the ancient Chinese imperial examination system. What's the precise difference? Which ones are still used today?

It's just like you attend the exam held in small village, then you passed it and became one of the top students. We call you  秀才 at that time.

After that, you are going to atten the exam held in a province scale, if you passed it also, then you became 举人.

Only those 举人 can attend the national exam, you passed it so you became 贡士.

Only then, you can attend the exam held by the emperor and if you succeed, you became 进士. And the top one is called 状元, the second one is called 榜眼, and the thrid one is called 探花.

甲第 means the　[top successful candidate in an examination].


Help identifying characters on a memorial coin I recently got my hands into this coin

No idea how it got here, nor where it came from, I've tried to identify the text with some chinese speaking friends but we are unable to fully comprehend.
So far we guess that top left character is likely 畢
And bottom right character is likely 余
The other side of the coin:

As you can see there's definitely no "value" on the coin which we guess together with the fact that doesn't look like a chinese old coin, it's more like a memorial coin for some kind of finished study.
Thanks everyone!
Edit: Seeing as after over two years we still havent figured out much and this question still drives some attention I've decided to take a high resolution scan of the coin. I'm not fully satisfied with the quality so I'll leave the old images aswell.

I can only recognize two of them.
？砉
换？

砉 might be
换 definitely


How does 你的健康都难得到保证，就更别说幸福了 work? From 标准教程HSK4上(p.124; nearly finished this book!):

  当你生病了，如果由于缺钱而不能及时去看医生，你的健康都难得到保证，就更别说幸福了。

I translate this to:

  When you're sick, if because of lack of money [you] cannot promptly visit the doctor, your health is not easily ensured, it's best not to say happiness.

I'm uncomfortable with my understanding of the last part of this sentence, which seems quite different to English.

Question: How does 你的健康都难得到保证，就更别说幸福了 work?

To highlight my particular issues:

Is 难得到 a set phrase?
It seems like 保证 ("guarantee") is being used as an intransitive verb, meaning something different ("ensure") than what I'm accustomed to (e.g. the guarantee of a shopkeeper).  I just want to check that I'm reading this correctly.
I don't know what 更 is doing in this sentence.
别说 does not seem to mean "don't speak" here.  Is it metaphorical?

I think the intended meaning is something like

  If you fall sick and don't have money to see a doctor, you can't ensure your health, so you cannot claim to have 幸福.

Where I'll just leave 幸福 untranslated as this nebulous notion of "happiness" and "good fortune".

"难得到" is short for "难以得到" (hard to get). It is not a standard phrase

(連)*你的健康都难得到保证，(就)*更别说幸福了

There is a common grammar structure here:

[連 (X) 都 (+ statement) , 更别说 (Y)了]
[even (X) (+ statement) , let alone/ not to mention (Y)]
[even (your health) (cannot be guaranteed/ ensured), let alone/ not to mention (your happiness)]
If your health cannot be guaranteed/ ensured , then it is even less likely that your happiness can be guaranteed

連 is omitted in your sentence
就 can be omitted in your sentence
More example of [連 (X) 都 (+ statement) , 更别说 (Y)了] structure:

連(我)都打不過他, 更别说(你)了
even (I) can't defeat him, let alone (you)
If I can't defeat him, it is even less likely that you can defeat him


Is the official radical for 巨 “工” or “匚”? In this question, we can clearly see the origin of 巨 is 矩, which is originally formed from 工 + 大 (corrupted into 矢). However, nowadays 巨 has lost the left hand side of 工, and so naturally the radical appears to be "匚".
Some dictionaries list 巨 as having 工, and some as 匚 radical. For example, Hanping (using CC-EDICT) says it's 工, but Baidu (obviously not authoritative) and Pleco say it's 匚. Even some native speakers I talked to cannot agree whether it's 工 or 匚, and some say they were taught that it is 匚 very early in education.
Is there a fairly authoritative, widely accepted source on which radical 巨 falls under?

Since radicals are dictionary headers, "what is the radical of X" is dependent on the dictionary you're looking at.
The most internationally-agreed-upon dictionary radicals for Chinese characters would be the Kangxi Dictionary, which lists it under 「工」. Thankfully, most dictionaries have sets of radicals which are derived from the Kangxi list, and most dictionaries are in agreement with Kangxi's classification.

My edition of Pleco doesn't list the radical as 「匚」.


Are there differences in writing between Chinese languages, such as Mandarin and Shanghainese There are already many questions about the different spoken languages that can be called Chinese. This question on the other hand asks about the written one(s?).

Well, to start, is the written language different at all?

If not - is it because Mandarin is used for writing, or why?

The background of my question: I got told a while ago, that even if the different languages are not mutually understandable when spoken, they are when written.

Is that even true after all? And, well, understandable to what degree? Completeley, mostly, almost?

Let me answer the most general question first:

"even if the different languages are not mutually understandable when spoken, they are when written."

To a large extent, this is true - but for two different reasons. Before the modern era, this is true because "written Chinese" was based on classical Chinese; whereas the spoken languages were highly divergent from the written form. This is similar to the situation in pre-Renaissance Italy, where scholars wrote in Latin but spoke in highly divergent (mutually unintelligible) Italian dialects.

During the 1910s-1930s, when China was beginning to modernize, there was an influential literary movement to use "Vernacular Chinese" in place of "Classical Chinese" in writing, because the former was easier to understand for the vast majority of people, who were learning how to write and read for the first time. Of course, this created a problem - there are so many languages/dialects in Vernacular Chinese, so which one do we choose as the standard one? It was agreed, after about 20 years of (often bitter) debates, spanning across different regimes, that the Mandarin (Guanhua) dialect based in Beijing would be the standard form of written Vernacular Chinese. Today this is simply referred to as "Chinese" or "Standard Chinese".

So, yes - a person living in Shanghai, who only speaks Shanghainese, is generally able to write and read in a "written form" of Beijing Mandarin. You can see how this makes things difficult for speakers of non-Mandarin dialects - they speak with a particular grammatical structure and vocabulary, but have to write and read in a completely different way. Often, to make things easier, most non-Mandarin (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi etc.) regions of China have adopted non-standardized ways of putting their native vernacular languages into writing. This usually happens when using Mandarin Chinese would create confusion or ambiguity, or when the vocabulary and grammar they used is significantly different from Mandarin vocabulary. For example, the Shanghainese would write "再會" for "Goodbye", instead of "再見". In Cantonese, in particular, the written form of Cantonese is highly developed (partially because of Hong Kong's unique history) and widely used in place of Mandarin writing in non-official settings.

For the younger generation, regardless of whether they uses local vocabulary in writing, they usually understand Standard Chinese very well, since they learn it in school. So the mutual intelligibility goes one way - the non-Mandarin speakers can read Mandarin, but the Mandarin speakers usually cannot read local dialects. Summary:

Historical:

Spoken languages: Many

Written language: Classical Chinese

Modern:

Spoken languages: Many

Written language: Mandarin is understood by all; local varieties used by some

It may also be of interest to you that there are two different scripts for written Chinese - traditional and simplified. Traditional Chinese is used by people outside of mainland China (Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, overseas communities) whereas Simplified Chinese is used by those within.


Difference between 这个 and 本 There are two words in Chinese that are both translated as “This” in English (这个 and 本). What is the difference between them and how to use them correctly ?

When 本 is used with an identity (person, company) it is exclusively referring to the first-person, and  这 is mostly referring to the third-person (some people do refer to oneself in the third-person)

Example:
这个人 (this person - the third-person)
这位法官 = this judge (the third-person)
这間公司 = this company (the third-person)
本人 = this person (the first-person) -->  this person (I myself)
本官 = this judge (the first-person) -->  this judge, (I myself)
本公司 = this company (the first-person) --> this company (our company)
Notice:
[本 + identity] is not always a "humbling word" for example 本大少爺 means 'This young master (I)'

本 means 'this/ current' when it is used with time. The difference between [这个星期六，今個世紀 ，今年] and [本週六，本世紀，本年度] is the former is more colloquial and the latter is more literary

'本地' is a compound word meaning 'local/ domestic' (adj) e.g. '本地品牌' or  'this land'; 本土 is a compound word meaning 'native' e.g. 本土品牌 or 'mainland' e.g. 日本本土


Does Chinese distinguish between (western) pole dancing and Chinese pole dancing? If so, how? How does Chinese distinguish between western pole dancing and what English calls Chinese pole dancing, if at all?

The Chinese edition of Wikipedia has an article on pole dancing, using the word 钢管舞. However, it doesn't seem to have an article on Chinese pole dancing - only English, Arabic and French editions of Wikipedia have articles on it. (By the way, is Chinese pole dancing really of Chinese origin, or is it made up by non-Chinese?)

The Wiktionary entry on 鋼管舞 translates it as only (western) pole dancing, though the etymology could apply to either type, with 鋼管 meaning pole and 舞 meaning dancing. I couldn't find "Chinese pole" in Wiktionary.

Background: I came across a native speaker of Chinese saying that their hobbies include pole dancing, and their native language version included the simplified Chinese "钢管舞", and I wanted to know whether they had made a mistake in their English.

What's the Chinese for the dance or acrobatics described in the English edition Wikipedia article "Chinese pole"?

杂技马戏。Circus & Juggling

According to pics from Wikiwand page for "Chinese pole", the person who performs the act is clearly not dancing but performing climb, slide down.

Check Wikiwand page if you wonder. You can tell them from the pics.


Does 令人惊讶 require that someone actually be surprised? 令人惊讶 is a curious and fairly common phrase, e.g.:

  关于人体令人惊讶的事实 (source)
  About [关于] human body [人体] surprising [令人惊讶] facts [事实]

I'm wondering if using 令人惊讶 requires that people have actually been surprised by whatever is being referred to.

Question: Does 令人惊讶 require that someone actually be surprised?

As opposed to hypothetically making someone surprised were they to be made aware (based on the author's judgement).

Does 令人惊讶 require that someone actually be surprised?

No. Just like "surprising", it is used to describe unexpected or unusual things/facts, which may have a potential to make someone surprised.


How do I pronounce 用勿着 in Shanghainese? There isn't a pronunciation for it on Wiktionary, and I don't know whether it is a fossilised or an analysable phrase, so therefore I don't know whether or not right-prominent tone sandhi applies. My guess would be:

/ɦi̯ʊŋ²² v̻əʔ⁵⁵ t͡sa̱ʔ²¹/

if it is a fossilised expression and thus right-prominent tone sandhi doesn't apply. Please tell me if I am correct. Thanks

Here is the entry for 用勿着 in《上海方言词典》on p. 304:

Text:

【用勿着】
ɦyoŋ˨˧꜖ uə?˥꜒ za?˨˧꜒꜔
⇨ ⟦得⟧ ßiɔ˥꜒ tə?˥꜒꜕

Tone letter to number translation:

ɦyoŋ²³⁻¹¹ uə?⁵⁵⁻⁵⁵ za?²³⁻⁵³

Tone sandhi is usually represented by back-to-back tone letters. So it looks like the corrected tones are:

ɦyoŋ¹¹ uə?⁵⁵ za?⁵³

Correct me if I'm wrong, because I have no idea about Shanghainese tones.

Here's an entry from a second dictionary 上海话大辞典 p. 274

Text:

用勿着 ɦioŋ²² vo?⁵⁵ zᴀ?²¹


What does 狗吃连帮 mean? I heard people say this phrase once or twice, in derogatory tone. It sounds like 狗吃连帮 or 狗吃粮帮. Internet search gives no result, but it didn't sound like some local dialect to me.

I heard people say things like 他们这些人就是狗吃连帮 or　我们得提防着他们点狗吃连帮．Something like these．

@Semaphore,@NS.X.,I heard both people from Tianjin and Shandong say it. Maybe it's a saying that goes in Huabei area, like sayings like 不招人待见 go only in some parts of northern China (but which is now more generally known). I asked those people what they meant by this 狗吃连帮. One says it means 一帮人勾结起来做坏事, but he's not sure how to write "lian bang". Another says it means 一撮人私底下谋划陷害别人, written as 狗吃连邦. But she's not sure how to interpret 连邦 literally, preferring to view it as a slang that's oral in nature.

I guess it's origin is 勾持连帮，maybe it's a local phrase that only be used in a small  district.
勾持 may means 勾搭，and be sounded to 狗, 连帮 means to be a group, that's why it's means 勾结起来做坏事.
Realy never heard of this word.


How should I understand XYZ姑娘? I saw these two expressions in a book (with fairytales):

春天到了，春姑娘把大地披上了绿衣裳

花姑娘们都热情地欢迎它去家里作客 (in a fairytale about a bee)

I have a feeling it means "Miss Spring" and "Miss Flower", i.e. it's a personification of spring and a flower respectively. Am I right?
Google Translate says it's "spring girl" and "flower girl", so a person who is connected with spring or flowers, but I don't really think so, seeing the context.
If I'm correct, what's the male version? Is it 先生? For example, if I wanted to translate Father Frost into Chinese, would 霜先生 make sense?

Yes, you are right. It's a personification of spring and flowers respectively. With a little bit correction, "們" indicates that 花姑娘 is in plural form in Mandarin.
姑娘 usually means young lady in Mandarin. It is also a kind of addresses to Catholic nuns, female nurses, or female social workers in Hong Kong.
By the context of two sentences, it is personification of spring and flowers to some young ladies. This kind of personification is very common in Mainland China. It is acceptable to translate it in "Miss" as it is more common usage in English although "Miss" refers to wider age range. "Lady" is also acceptable, says "Lady Spring" and "Ladies of Flowers".
For the context in mainland China, the male version is probably "大哥". 霜大哥 means Elder Brother Frost. It is a bit younger. For Father Frost, it is presumably a senior male character and you might translate it to 霜伯伯.
先生 is quite formal. It depends on the context. Anyway, it is not the male version of 姑娘.
By the way, "花姑娘" means a prostitute who is working in brothel although it refers to China in the past.


What's the difference between 星期X and 周X? When accepting an answer, I noticed that the example used the word 周三 for Wednesday,  but in my grammar, the days of the week are 星期一, 星期二, etc...

They seem both correct but, what's the difference? Is one more common, or are they simply used in difference situations?

You have 3 methods when talking about the seven days of the week.

星期[X]

礼拜[X]

周[X]

Here, "X" represents "一，二，三,四，五，六" for "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday". For case 1 and 2, X could be "日" or "天" for Sunday,for case 3, X should be "日" for Sunday.
What' the difference?
Well, I think the 星期 and 周 are common to see, while 礼拜 is less but still common(I think it's the personal or regional perference. Thanks for fefe's suggestion). 礼拜 originates from Christianity, and in ordinary life, each type is accepatble.
Why did I use "周三" in that example?
Because I used "本周二" in that example, then why I used "本周二"? When you want to express "this Tuesday", you could say

本周二
这个星期二
这周星期二
本周星期二

Each of them is interchangeable. You see, "本周二" is the shortest form, so I used that. When you are talking about the days for a specific week, I think 周 is more common(please note that 周 means week).


Which is correct:了 or 过 in 我去。。。他家，知道他住在哪里 我去。。。他家，知道他住在哪里.

I do not know what to choose in this sentence: 了 or 过. In my opinion:
(1) 我去了他家，知道他住在哪里. (I had been to his house)
(2) 我去过他家，知道他住在哪里. (I had had the experience of being in his house)
Question: Is what I think correct? If wrong, please explain it to me.

了 indicates the verb is 'completed action'
过 indicates the verb is 'experienced action'
我去过 他家，知道他住在哪里.  (I had gone to his house before,  so I know where he lives) is the correct one
去过 = had gone before
去了 = have gone to


Chinese use of abstract "saw?" I'm trying to accurately translate an abstract use of "saw."

Example: the Korean War saw fighting between America and the PRC.

朝鲜战争看到了美国与中华人民共和国之间的战斗。

Now, I have no idea if that sentence is correct or not, but it demonstrates what I'm trying to get at. Is this an acceptable use of "saw" in Chinese? Is there another word to demonstrate this abstract use? Or do I need to find a more concrete way to say this?

Thanks.

I think you need 'witness' = ‘见证’

朝鲜战争见证了美国与中国之间的战斗。


how to say It's a deal When you make an agreement with someone, how do you say, both formally and informally, "it's a deal."?

Like, formally "Do you agree to the contract?" "Yes. It's a deal."

Informally, "I'll make you food if you teach me Chinese." "Fine. It's a deal!"

Thanks

Oops, just remembered.

一言为定。 Yī yán wéi dìng


Is this a proverb: "Food comes first for the people"? In the book Far and Away page 369, the author (Andrew Salomon) cite a Chineese proverb

  Food comes first for the people

I could not find trace of this proverb online but I don't speak Chineese and could not translate it.

Is it a real proverb?
Is it used often?
What does the proverb mean?

Here's the prargraph from the book:

“Food comes first for the people,” says an ancient Chinese proverb, and foodie culture has blossomed in China as hedonism has grown less stigmatized. The average Chinese citizen spent more money on food in 2015 than at any time in the past, and food TV shows such as A Bite of China have soaring ratings. Nearly two-thirds of Chinese mobile-phone users consistently photograph their food before eating, then share these photos through food-oriented apps and social media; fluency in food culture is deemed a mark of sophistication. The China Cuisine Association has asked UNESCO to place the country’s cuisine on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Demand for premium and organic foods keeps increasing. Recent research has found that people who eat spicy food all the time live substantially longer; though the exact causality is unclear, the study has been warmly received. Torrents of fabulous new restaurants have opened for wealthy Chinese and Westerners; in Shanghai alone, five recently made the list of Asia’s Best Restaurants.

Obviously referring to this real proverb:
民以食为天
It is a very well-known, common proverb or idiom; verbatim search on Google, alone, gives:

1,120,000 results

and Baidu gives:

12,000,000 results

ABC defines it as:

The masses regard food as their prime want.

and CC-CEDICT defines it as:

Food is the God of the people. (idiom); People view food as the primary need.
Food first, ethical niceties second

There's a whole question about it over here:
What does 民以食为天 mean?
@Huang's answer is also a good source for more information:
https://chinese.stackexchange.com/a/630/4136

ABC Proverbs also has the following:
国以民为本；民以食为天。

Lit  A country depends on [its] people as [its] base, [just as] the people depend on food [to survive].

Other examples of this usage:
english4tw's artle:  Hsinchu City God Temple, where food comes first for the people/新竹城隍廟:民以食為天

There is a saying in the Chinese-speaking community, "Food comes first for the people";
華人社會常說，民以食為天;

labbrand's article China’s Digital Powered Foodie Revolution

Through the best of times and the worst of times, food is always on the mind of Chinese people. As a famous Chinese proverb goes, “Food comes first for the people” (民以食为天). Today, Chinese people’s relationship to food and food products is changing. Every week new trends and behaviors emerge that present new challenges but also new opportunities for brands in the F&B industry. In this article, we look at how digital channels have changed the way modern Chinese consumers purchase and use food products along with how food has become one of the most important elements of contemporary Chinese pop culture.


What's the general word for cheese? What's the general word for "cheese"? I've tryed to look it up in the dictionary but there are so many options!! What's the most general, the word that native speaker would use to say "I want a piece of cheese"?

The general term in mainland China is 奶酪. 乳酪 is seen as well. 干酪 seems the standard term in Taiwan, where the phonetic translation 起司 is also seen. Hongkongese have a phonetic translation 芝士.


What is the difference between 因为 and 应为? They are pronounced similarly and are both translated into "because". What is the difference in their meaning? When should I use one over the other?

"应为" does not mean "because". If it is used as because, then it is an error, maybe a typo.

"应为" used together, it is usually two separate words, and can mean "should(应) be(为)".


What is the meaning of 水 in this text? Someone was asking about this in a German Chinese forum. Now I too would really like to know what 水 is here! The author is from 重庆， maybe it is dialect.

他一向说话算话，没有水过我，起码在这之前，他没有过，一定是他明白自己做的丑事——用那么一本诲淫的书，公然引诱一个处女，现在不好意思了，被我逮住了。

Source: 《饥饿的女儿》，作者：虹影，出版年1997，第九章（3）。

The situation is: the main character of the book is meeting her history teacher for the first time outside a hospital, he doesn't show.

So maybe 没有水过我 is 放鸽子 but how does 水 come to mean that??

In German it was translated as cheat = verschaukeln. The original questioner also mentioned 过水 www.zdic.net/c/7/1d/44699.htm 2， which I would loosely translate as 'he never fucked me about before'.

English from Howard Goldblatt: Always a man of his word, he'd never said one thing to me when he meant the other, at least not till now. He must have been ashamed of what he'd done - giving a virgin a dirty book like that - and knew that I'd seen through his little game.

It is dialect:

  　　水最大的特点是没有根基，喜流动。好个重庆城，山高地不平。水就更容易流动。天上一下雨，地上流成河。雨过天晴，刚才还流得像河一样的雨水，便不见了踪影。那雨水流到长江嘉陵江中，也不会停止脚步，继续流动，浩浩荡荡，汹涌澎湃，汇于朝天门外，奔向朝阳升起的东方。在重庆方言中，“水”的这种特性得到引申，得到凸现。

  　　“水”就是说话不算数，就是办事不牢靠。这事“水”了，就是说这事没有办好。


Male equivalent of 小三? What's the male equivalent of 小三、二奶, etc.?

The closest thing I can think of is 小白脸 but it seems to be missing that certain something...

A proper term would be 情夫:

  男女两人,一方或双方已有配偶,他们之间发生性爱的行为,男方是女方的情夫

小三 can also be applied to a male as it means the third party in an affair or 第三者.

二公 and 二爺 are informal terms opposite to 二奶.

小白脸 does not necessarily refers to a man who has committed adultery with a married woman. It can also mean the the guy is living off the woman or that the guy has a fair complexion.


Handwritten shape of 「舟」 when it appears like 「月」 and the component form of 「肉」 The shape of 「肉」 in its component form is differentiated from 「月」 in Taiwan and sometimes in Hong Kong's table of standard character forms, but appear the same in other regions' standards and in traditional print. Conversely, 「舟」 in its component form seems to be differentiated from 「月」 in traditional print. Take the entry for 「服」 from the Kangxi Dictionary for instance (notice the two "dots" in 「舟」 versus the two horizontal strokes in 「月」 in the characters above and below):

Interestingly enough, it seems that a large chunk of characters with 「舟」 in its component form is a result of being corrupted from 「凡」 (e.g. 「服」, 「前」, etc.), but traditional print shapes still differentiate it from 「月」.

In modern times, this distinction is not found in any regions' standard with the exception of South Korea I believe, which is largely similar to Kangxi dictionary's character forms (although I don't know if Koreans are taught to write that way as well, or if their handwritten forms are different). I'd like to understand:

Was the component form of 「舟」 ever differentianted from 「月」 in handwriting (from 楷書 onwards)? It seems that there were efforts to differentiate the various origins of 「月」 in a character, but were those efforts ever widespread?
Would it be seen as strange for someone make that distinction in their handwriting today (although the usefulness of actually doing this can be debated)?

Edit: Reworded the questions after reading a very informative answer here: Is there any character with radical 月 that has a meaning of 月 (not 肉)?

(Part 1) Was the component form of 「舟」 ever differentianted from 「月」 in handwriting (from 楷書 onwards)?

If you count handwritten dictionaries or volumes, then yes, they're usually recorded as variant characters. See a 國學大師 record:

  (Part 2) It seems that there were efforts to differentiate the various origins of 「月」 in a character, but were those efforts ever widespread?

If you're talking about handwriting, I don't believe that this is true in a mass-scale sense:

Excerpt from a Song Dynasty version of Shuowen

If you're talking about the print styles in the Kangxi dictionary, I'll draw your attention to the layout first:

As you can probably infer, Kangxi print styles made a conscious effort to incorporate Shuowen small seal script features. General print shapes before or even after Kangxi did not really do this.

Excerpt of 《論語主疏》 printed in the fourth year of Qianlong, from ctext

  Would it be seen as strange for someone make that distinction in their handwriting today (although the usefulness of actually doing this can be debated)?

We can take the ROC standard as an example, because we know that they differentiate between「月」and「⺼・肉」...

...but not with「舟」!

However, the effort in distinguishing them results in such a small change in the print shape that, if you carry this on in handwriting, I doubt that it'll be seen as weird. It'll be kind of weird if you fully wrote「舟」though, I'd imagine that someone not familiar with paleography might not even recognise the character.


Can someone translate me this to english? I have an image that is something wrote in chinese I think. Can someone translate it please? Thank you.

Probably the transliteration of a name like Micheala， Mikela
迈 mai
克 ke
拉 la

克拉 kela is the transliteration of carat, which for gold represents the purity of the gold. Maybe its the name of a store, or a joke "this is my gold bracelet".


Is Chinese really that ambigous in oral communication? "I still am super grateful that all TV shows in China have subtitles (in Chinese) because even Chinese people will get a bit confused as to what's being said without the characters specifying which of the many homophones are being pronounced" from https://www.duolingo.com/comment/7272741

I read lots of comments like this suggesting that characters are necessary, as opposed to pinyin (or kana for Japanese) only, because of ambiguity due to homophones.

Suggesting that Chinese and Japanese are "crippled" in speech, since speech and pinyin (or kana) transcriptions are equivalent! So if one is insufficient than so is the other!

I find that hard to believe. I expect that speakers adapt the language to avoid ambiguity, for example by extending words (e.g. 2-syllable words in madarin e.g. adding "zi" to some nouns) or adding more context through more sentences.

In that case however the ambiguity argument for characters falls short. Not to mention Korean supposedly has many homophones aswell, and they are just fine with hangul.

I also saw the "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" poem mentioned as an argument for characters, even though that was written to promote the use of modern vernacular in which homophones are disambiguated as needed, as opposed to old/literary Chinese.

The "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" (施氏食狮史) is an anormality or a very "perverse" case. Characters will often have the same pronunciation (see Does xiang (third tone) mean "want" or "echo"?). However, with some context, in the form of either a "term" or a phrase that the character forms, it is possible to distinguish between characters. If someone says sha1 si3, I can probably safely assume that they mean 杀死 (unless there's some other parsing of their speech that makes more sense). If someone says hua1 yuan2 zhong1, I can safely guess that they mean 花园中.

This is possible even if the tones are missing: for example, I could guess the characters for ru guo quan shi jie wo ye ke yi fang qi (i.e. 如果全世界我也可以放弃) even though I had only had heard this phrase in a song. (Singing will obscure the tones used for characters.)

Consequently, issues of ambiguity in oral communication are, to the best of my knowledge, limited to cases where context cannot be provided, such as with identifying the component characters of people's names. These can be rectified if the speaker provides example usage of each character (e.g. 元朝的元, 责任的任).


What does 这是 ～ 更是 mean? Quoting another question here:

  现在，中国网民总数已经超过美国人口总数，但美国网购人数占其全部人口的75%，中国则只有25%左右，而且，中国网购消费者年均消费额仅为美国消费者的1/5。于刚认为，这是差距， 更是中国电子商务的潜力。

In one of the comment there:

  Also: 这是...更是... could be seen as a pattern.

However, my Pleco dictionary doesn't have an entry for the idiom.

So what does the 这是 ～ 更是 mean, and what is the meaning of the bold sentence?

Why are you digging up such old questions? That was nearly 4 years ago! What a pity my Chinese has not improved in all that time! Pleco is none too good. My advice: first, ask your Chinese friends. Also try Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro.

这是 ....， 更是 .... this is ..... , but it is also .....

现在，
Nowadays
中国网民总数已经超过美国人口总数，
China's total number of Internet users is more than the population of America,
但美国网购人数占其全部人口的75%，
but America's online shopping users make up 75% of America's population,
中国则只有25%左右，
whereas China's online shopping users only make up about 25% (of China's population)
而且，
moreover,
中国网购消费者年均消费额仅为美国消费者的1/5。
China's online consumers' annual average spending only represents about one fifth of America's online consumer spending.
于刚认为，这是差距， 更是中国电子商务的潜力。
Yu Gang believes, this is a (big) disparity, but it is also China's e-commerce (development) potential.


Is there a distinction between 怎样 (zěnyàng) and 怎么样 (zěnmeyàng)? Question: Is there a distinction between 怎样 (zěnyàng) and 怎么样 (zěnmeyàng)?
At first, 怎样 seems like a shortened version of 怎么样.  However, let's look at some Jukuu.com examples for 怎样:

你知道怎样处理这个问题吗？
Do you know how to deal with this problem?
(Nǐ zhīdào zěnyàng chǔlǐ zhège wèntí ma?)
你们今年是怎样庆祝五一节的？
How did you celebrate May Day this year?
(Nǐmen jīnnián shì zěnyàng qìngzhù wǔyī jié de?)

And for 怎么样：

这些日子你怎么样？
How are you doing these days?
(Zhèxiē rìzi nǐ zěnme yàng?)
他法语学得怎么样了？
How is he coming on with his study of French?
(Tā fǎyǔ xué dé zěnme yàngle?)

It seems the usage is different between the two.  I asked a Chinese friend about it and he indicated they're mostly similar, but there's a difference in usage.  I didn't fully understand though.

(PS. This is not a duplicate of What is the difference between 怎么 and 怎么样 ？ because that question asks about 怎么, not 怎样.)

They are completely interchangeable.

I would probably say their effects are a very little bit different, (which people indeed wouldn't care most of time).

怎样做 vs 怎么样做， the longer version(the latter) sounds like it might engage a bit more procedures or processes than the shorter version(the former).

Again, that's just an effect, which couldn't be even a matter in practice.


Why 回 is used in 回事 instead of 件事? In this dialogue:

A: 昨天他开车的时候，头撞了一下。
B: 怎么一回事?

Why is the classifier 回 used instead of 件?

There are only a few phrases made up from 回事:

怎么(一)回事: what the matter with ..., why ..., what is the reason for ..., what happened

这回事: The matter you just mentioned (E.g 没这回事。 There was no such thing)

一回事: The same. (E.g. A和B是一回事。 A and B are the same (matter).)

In the above situations, "件" cannot be used.


Chinese Poem Verses About Weapons, Advice, and Israel? This is an excerpt from the end of a poem I'm working to translate:
以前之前
如风如迷的人与神
温润良言
亦如戈鋋铿锵然
让以色列都复了国
要我度过这长夜
又有何难
And this is my current translation draft.
"Long, long ago/
Like the wind, or like bewildered men and gods/
given kind, gentle words of advice/
or like the clashing and clanging of weapons/
helped restore Israel to nationhood./
How hard could it be
For me to toil away these long nights?/"
I'm not the most confident in this translation, mainly because there doesn't seem to be a strong connection between the thoughts I've tried to express in each verse. Is my interpretation of "如风如迷的人与神" correct?

The "迷" looks more like an interchangeable character of "谜" here according to the context. So I personally see the sentence better translates into "Human and gods, like winds, like enigmas".


What is the meaning of 捅破 the serial of 寒夜? E.g. 被我们的学生捅破 The following text is taken from the serial of 寒夜:

  一直到有一天 一个偶然的机会
  我的心事 或者说是我们的心事
  被我们的学生捅破
  感情是不能被捅破的
  一旦捅破 就如同大坝破堤
  汹涌而出

He's talking about his love for the heroine of the series, then explains how the ice was broken.

捅破 is the problem word here.  None of the dictionary definitions seem to fit.

Actually, the following line referring to dams and dykes is also a bit cryptic.  I thought a dam and a dyke are pretty similar but that doesn't fit if you want to understand the text.

By the way, I'm in the process of transcribing both 新结婚时代 and 寒夜 with the aim of learning all the vocab and using the audio/video to get a feel for it all in context.

Are the transcribed subtitles of any of these two already available somewhere?

捅破 comes from 捅破窗户纸 (poke the window paper). Try googling "捅破窗户纸".

In the past, Chinese used paper instead of glass on their windows until the technology of making glass is imported to China. Window paper can stop the wind, but is much more fragile than glass and can be easily poked. Window paper is not transparent. If you poke a hole on it, you can see the other side.

The two people loved each other, but they are too shy to tell each other. That's like there is a thin piece of paper hiding them from each other. Once it is poked, they can see each other. That is, they know how the other person feels.

捅破窗户纸 is also similar to "break the ice" in English.


How do you say "Cafeteria Workers"? I've been trying to figure what is the best way to describe school cafeteria workers without sounded too formal or too rude (just a normal way of saying cafeteria worker)

Would you say

  "食堂员工” “工人”？

Or is there a less formal way to imply “worker” in this instance？

You can use 食堂师傅 as an informal way to refer to those cafeteria workers. Actually, you can use 师傅 every time you want to refer to someone with a skill, e.g.修车师傅(bike/car reparation worker). But here 师傅 has nothing to do with Master Shifu in Kungfu Panda. It is not like that Shifu :D


Difference between 关 and 管 in the context of caring? I had always known 关 to be for close and 管 to be for caring

关门 and 不管他

But then I saw a translation for care into 关照.  Which confused me, because it sounded like the wrong Guan.  But after looking it up, it turns out a lot of phrases use 关 for care

And the first definition for 管 is actually tube.

So here are the phrases where I'm confused at:

我不关心
我不管
我不在乎

Are all three of these interchangeable at any point?

Or are there subtle differences in scenarios in which you'd use each?

While all three can be translated as "I don't care" from time to time, there are still subtle differences.

"我不关心" typically means "I am less/no interested in something". For example, "我不关心政治" ("I don't care about politics").

"我不管" is typically used in the case where you insist on something despite the constraints and/or the potential consequence. You acknowledge the presence of the constraints/consequences, but you care less about them. For example, "我不管老闆怎麼想，我下週就是要請假" ("I don't care how my boss thinks. I will take vacation next week.").

You can also reguard “我不管” as “No matter what happens, I must do something……”. And this is usually used in some senarios that is bad or not very good for you, and you have something mood of 破罐子破摔 (Bad as it is). So this is something in the extreme situation.

Please see this dialog：

妈妈：天冷了，别出去了。

我：我想看外婆，外婆病着呢。

妈妈：那你打一个电话问候一声吧。再说你这几天自己也不舒服呢。

我：不管了，外婆病重得很，我一定要去看！

For the 2nd meaning：我不管Something（This means I'm not reponsible for something, it has nothing to do with me.）

"我不在乎" is similar to "我不管", but in the cases you care far less about the constraints and/or the potential consequence. For example, "我不在乎花多少錢, 請醫好我兒子" ("I don't care how much it costs. Please save my son."). This is much less in mood, compared with 我不管, a neutral word used to mean that you are trying your best to do something with any possible solution.

For the 2nd meaning：我不在乎 sometimes also means “我不介意，不关心某事” (This usually means something happening doesn't effect on me seriously or in faulty).

You can understand this in the senario：

爸爸：你为何政治考试不及格？

学生：反正政治是副科，无所谓的，我不在乎。(I don't care about whether I could pass the exam of politics or not because the lesson isn't a major one for me, and on the other hand, it cannot make me repeat my course again).


What is the Chinese lady in this 5-second video clip saying? https://streamable.com/e/n5fhft?autoplay=1

I finally cut it out, uploaded and asked about it after wondering about it for years. What is she saying?

"We weren't able to buy the firework and firecracker"

我们没有买到那个firework and firecracker


srs deck testing intonations/pronunciations of words with multiple characters I've recently started studying Chinese, and I'm having trouble hearing the tones for words with multiple characters.  For instance, I have trouble hearing the difference between 汉语 (hànyǔ) and 韩语 (hányǔ), or 哪里 (nǎlǐ) and 那里 (nàli).

Is there an SRS deck available for learning tones for multi-character words?

Ideally the front of the card would just be the audio for a single multi-character word, and then the back of the card would be what the characters/tones are.

edit: I should add that I am mostly fine with hearing individual characters in isolation.  So when hearing 汉 (hàn) and 韩 (hán), or 哪 (nǎ) and 那 (nà), I can almost always tell the correct intonation.  My only problem is when hearing multiple characters together.

The website

https://www.archchinese.com/mandarin_chinese_tone_drill.html

was useful for me for learning to recognize the tones. You can practice your listening skills doing the following exercise. You have to press Play and you will hear a word (you can repeat as many times you want) and you have to choose which tone you heard. Then, it will show in the bottom if you were right or wrong and the actual word you heard. I think if you create an account you can also use it for multiple syllable words. I believe after some days of practicing, your skills for recognizing the tones will improve quickly.


Is phrase 他活说得好快 grammatical? I've been collecting memo sentences to distinguish between 活 and 话. The root  phrase is 他话说得好快 and I know it's grammatical, because it's given in a courpus.

What interests me is the grammaticality of another phrase, which we can get by changing (occasionally or intentionally) 话 into 活.

So my question will be, do native speakers understand the phrase 他活说得好快 as a grammatical utterance and, if yes, what would it mean in English?

[活] and [话] are completely different word and cannot be used interchangeably. "他活说得好快" is not a correct sentence.

I think the reason you thought these 2 word can interchange is because of some common typos.


Sentence using 是……的 vs sentence using 很 This might seem a duplicate question, since beginers have a lot of doubt about not using 是 instead of 很 as in 我很好, but there's nothing related to what I'm asking here. At least I haven't found anything.

What does a native speaker think about the difference between a sentence using 是...的 and the same one using 很? For example:

这本书是新的。
这本书很新。

商店的衣服是贵的。
商店的衣服很贵。

Thank you.

是…的 is used for emphasis. In this case, it is used for contrasting.

这本书是新的: This book is new (contrasting old).

这本书很新: This book is new (neutral or normal case).


Chinese frequency counter text analyser Can you recommend tool where I can import text and get result list with words according their frequency in text.
Aim to import Chinese subtitles learn most frequent words and then watch movie.

Boris, try this one: http://www.zhongguosou.com/zonghe/cipintongji.aspx

The UI is in Chinese, you may have to figure out how to use it.  I tried it myself. It is not user friendly. But this is the only one I found so far.


Transliteration of Sanskrit I'm looking for resources on transliterating Sanskrit into Mandarin Chinese. Not necessarily just Buddhist terms, but a greater variety of Vedanta philosophy terms.
(I have seen online, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms by Soothill.)
I'm guessing that there is not a standardized system, but that certain terms have become standardized throughout history.

For example:
ब्रह्मन् (Brahman (/brəhmən/)

Google translate gives: 婆罗门 (Póluómén) when attempting to translate the "Brahman", but I'm sure that is incorrect. I'm uncertain whether this particular term/concept is used in Buddhism (I know it's a Hindu concept), therefor I don't know if it would have been transliterated into 汉语.

The term, 婆羅門, has been used in China for at least 1500 years.

OLDict lists a few dictionaries. All of them transliterate "Brahman" as "婆羅門".

resources:

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism

漢藏梵英佛學術語 (pdf format)

梵漢辭典 Digital Dictionary of Buddhism

There are some Sanskrit-Chinese translations in 《大正藏》54, which can be downloaded in the pdf format. The script of Sanskrit is the Siddham (悉曇體), not the Devanagari (天城體).

《梵語千字文》(1卷)【唐 義淨撰】
《唐梵文字》(1卷)【唐 全真集】
《梵語雜名》(1卷)【唐 禮言集】
《唐梵兩語雙對集》(1卷)【唐 僧怛多蘗多．波羅瞿那彌捨沙集】

～～～～～

《梵漢大辭典》 嘉豐出版社
《漢譯對照梵和大辭典》長春樹出版公司
《梵漢對譯佛教辭典：翻譯名義大集》 新文豐出版公司
《簡明佛教梵英辭典》 長春樹出版社
《基本漢藏梵英佛學術語》 慧炬出版社
《佛學名詞中英巴梵彙集》 慧炬出版社
Language：TC (正體中文)


What is the English translation for this picture I am trying to translate this

I tried to Google Translate it :
三屰戈巳市

But it didn't give me any satisfying translation.
I don't know if I typed it wrong or if Google Translate simply doesn't know what it means.

Thank you.

You typed it wrong.

It's 三戦呂布， means fight with 呂布 for three times.

It's a story also called as 三英戰呂布, comes from the famous historical novel named 三国演义(Romance of the Three Kingdoms).


Confusion about the ice radical 冫 As far as I know, the character for "ice" is 冰, and the radical derived from it is 冫 . I find it a bit weird that the ice radical 冫 is the radical for the ice character 冰 itself (ice + water = ice again?), but I am happy to just accept that. I know a few characters with the ice radical, e.g. 次, 习 or 冷, and that seems perfectly fine to me.

However, there are a few things that confuse me.

(1) The Wiktionary list of characters with the 冫 radical contains the following two characters: 冬, 冭. Where in these characters is the 冫? Are the two lines at the bottom supposed to be the ice radical?

(2) When I look at the entry for 永 in the Chinese dictionary app on my phone (Pleco), then it says that it's radical is 水 and that it has 冫 as a component. This makes no sense to me. If 水 was the radical, shouldn't it be written as 氵? And where is the 冫? I see that 永 differs from 水 by two lines at the top, but is this really supposed to be the ice "radical" 冫? (I it's the 冫 radical, how can 水 be a radical of 永 at the same time?)

(3) In the Wiktionary entry for 冫 , it says that 冫 is a radical that has been simplified from 氷. What character is 氷? It doesn't seem to be a Chinese character. Is this some ancient form of 冰?

Brief Answer

Q1. The Wiktionary list of characters with the 冫 radical contains the following two characters: 冬, 冭. Where in these characters is the 冫? Are the two lines at the bottom supposed to be the ice radical?

Answer: You're right. That's true.

Q2. When I look at the entry for 永 in the Chinese dictionary app on my phone (Pleco), then it says that it's radical is 水 and that it has 冫 as a component. This makes no sense to me. If 水 was the radical, shouldn't it be written as 氵? And where is the 冫? I see that 永 differs from 水 by two lines at the top, but is this really supposed to be the ice "radical" 冫?

Answer: The radical of 永 is 水, but it doesn't have the radical 冫. The top of 永 has nothing to do with 冫.

Q3. In the Wiktionary entry for 冫 , it says that 冫 is a radical that has been simplified from 氷. What character is 氷? It doesn't seem to be a Chinese character. Is this some ancient form of 冰?

Answer: 氷 was the vulgar form of 冰 in ancient China. It's obsolete in China but adopted in Japan nowadays. As @AngelLeliel has pointed out,  冫 is not a radical simplified from 氷, but 仌.

Detailed Answer
This is a very good question, yet, as a native speaker I understand some of the "truth" are controversial. Anyway the facts will be listed here, but you don't have to agree with my subjective opinion :)

Fact 1. 次, 习 have the "ice radical"? No, it's not fine with experts in mainland China or people who use traditional Chinese.

In 现代汉语词典 (Modern Chinese Dictionary, which is considered as one of the most popular authoritative dictionary in mainland China), 次 is indexed under the radical 冫 and the radical 欠. However in 中華民國教育部重編國語辭典修訂本 (Chinese Dictionary Revised Edition, the authoritative one in Taiwan), it is indexed only under 欠.
The reason for Chinese Dictionary Revised Edition not listing 次 under radical 冫 is 次 has nothing to do with 冰. The ancient character forms of 次 are
from Shuowen, from bamboo scripts of Qin, from oracle scripts. It is clear that after later oracle scripts, 二 defines the main meaning of 次 as "the second". 说文段注 Duan's Annotation to Shuowen in Qing Dynasty said "當作从二，从欠。从二故爲次。" (次 should have radicals 二 and 欠. Having the radical 二 thus it's the second.) It is interesting that all major dictionaries haven't put 次 under the 二 radical. Personally I think that's because they all follow the convention of Shuowen.
The simplified character 习 is under the radicals  (乙) and 冫 in the Modern Chinese Dictionary. However the corresponding traditional character 習 has the radical 羽 (feather of birds). It's clear:
from Shuowen, from oracle scripts, from bamboo scripts of Chu. However note that Shuowen's "从羽从白" (having the radicals 羽 and 白) theory is not true -- there're material evidence from oracle and bamboo scripts proving the bottom part is not 白 but 日. The character just illustrated "birds study flying on a sunny day", so it meant "study" (opinion from Guo Moruo's 卜辭通纂考釋).
Now you may feel dissatisfied for the way that dictionaries of simplified Chinese classify 次 and 习. However, if you forget the whole story above, it may be the only way you can find it in a dictionary for the simplified character forms. 二 in 次 or feather in 习 have been written as 冫 for a long history as it's more convenient (OK I think some experts may insist my referring to Taiwan's standard glyphs 國字標準字體 here but let's not go so far if you're not learning traditional Chinese). So if you don't care about the etymology, keep considering 冫 is the radical of 次 and 习 can be a self-consistent theory in your mind. I guess that's what the experts think when they compile the dictionaries for simplified Chinese.

Fact 2. A not-so-exact-but-easy theory "两点冰，三点水，四点火" -- two points denote "ice"; three points denote "water"; four points denote "fire".

Let's see the original character 仌 for 冰:
from bronze scripts, from Shuowen.
It illustrated the texture on ice, and became two horizontal strokes when coming to clerical scripts:
 => ,  => .
Thus when it came to regular scripts, the "two points" under 冬 and 冭 were written as two "down point", and the "two points" on the left of 冰 were written as 冫, possibly for the aesthetic reason.
Similarly, 氵 came from what 水 was written in bamboo scripts of Qin:
河注沙
It is a rarely known fact that 氵 appeared in Qin state before the seal scripts became the standard in the early Qin Dynasty:
河注沙, the left component is 水 in seal scripts.
Thus, as 氵 and 水 stand for the same thing, water, they often shared the same entry of indices in ancient Chinese dictionaries like Kangxi Dictionary.
Similarly again, 灬 often stands for 火, fire. 灬 and 火 shared the same entry of indices in Kangxi Dictionary.

Fact 3. 永 has several versions of explanation, but none of them is related to "冫ice".

《說文》：“永，長也，象水巠理之長。《詩》曰：‘江之永矣’。”高鴻縉《中國字例》：“按：此‘永’字，即潛行水中之‘泳’字之初文。原从人在水中行，由文人彳生意，故託以寄游泳之意……後人借用為長永，久而為借意所專，乃加水旁作‘泳’以還其原。”《說文新證》：“从｀彳’表示水行，｀卜’形象水巠理，全字象河水流行，巠理衍長之貌。｀卜’形或訛為人形，於是其旁又增象水形的曲筆。＂
Shuowen: "永, long, illustrates the length of a river. Classic of Poetry says 'The length of the Jiang (river), cannot be navigated with a raft'"
Gao Hongjin's 中國字例 Examples of Chinese Characters: "Note: this character 永 is the original character of 泳 that denotes diving and swimming in the water. In the beginning its semantic element is people swimming in the water, the 人 and 彳 parts, so it's borrowed to mean swimming ... later it's borrowed to mean 長永 (permanent, with the same sound), and stuck to this meaning for a long time, so 水 was added making it 泳 to denote the original meaning swimming."
說文新證: "彳 denotes moving, 卜 illustrates a river. The whole character illustrates a running river, meaning the view of a long river. The shape of 卜 might be wrongly written as the shape of people 人, so curves are added to illustrate the shape of water."


Why is 土著人 used for Aboriginal people in Australia? In Australia it is quite common to talk about Aboriginal people as they feature quite often when talking about sports, Olympics or politics.

The word that is used to describe Aboriginal people by native Chinese speakers is 土著人. I have had someone tell me (and I can't remember if it was a native Chinese person or not) that the word wasn't very flattering.

What does 土著 mean, why was it chosen to mean an Aboriginal person and does it have negative connotations?

Here are some definitions for "土著":

<现代汉语词典>(商务印书馆,1992年):"世代居住本地的人."
<辞源>(商务印书馆,2004年):(1)"世代定居于一地";(2)"后也称世代居住在本地的人为土著".
<辞海>(上海古籍出版社,1999年):(1)"古代游牧民族定居某地后,不再迁徙的称为‘土著";(2)"后指世居本地的人".

In classical Chinese, "土", when used as an adjective, means "local" or "original" (source):

<形>本地的；当地的。《柳敬亭传》：“且五方～音，乡俗好尚习见习闻。”

"著" has the meaning of "resident" or "stay" (source):

<动>居于；处在。

So basically, "土著" means the original residents of some area. It does not have negative connotations. We use this word in daily conversations when referring to aboriginal people. However, in written articles, people may sometimes use "原住民" alternatively.


If 冬 in itself means winter, why add 天? If 冬 in itself means winter, do adding 天 Impact the meaning, or perhaps refer to winter time instead of the season itself? Or is it because 冬 is monosyllabic and 冬天 has two syllables?

In short, for disambiguation, at least oral disambiguation.

Most of the words in Old Chinese are monosyllabic words. However, when it comes to oral speech, it is too ambiguous to use. As time went by, we developed Modern Chinese, which encourages the usage of disyllabic words, for oral disambiguation.
In oral speech, the monosyllabic word "dōng" can mean 冬 (winter), 东 (east), 鸫 (thrush), 氡 (radon), etc, so it is too ambiguous to pronounce "dōng" only. Therefore, in Modern Chinese, we use the disyllabic word "dōng tiān", written as 冬天, literally "winter days", for disambiguation. You can also use the disyllabic word "dōng jì", written as 冬季, literally "winter season", for oral disambiguation.
Similarly, there is a monosyllabic word 锋 (fēng) and a monosyllabic word 利 (lì) in Old Chinese. Both of them means "sharp". However, in oral speech, "fēng" can mean 锋 (sharp), 风 (wind), 疯 (mad, crazy), etc, and "lì" can mean 利 (sharp, benefit), 力 (force), 粒 (grain), etc, so it is too ambiguous to pronounce either "fēng" or "lì". Therefore, in Modern Chinese, we use the disyllabic word 锋利 (fēng lì) for "sharp", for oral disambiguation.

Can I just write monosyllabic words but speak disyllabic words? No. They look too archaic. Nowadays, native Chinese speakers are familiar with Modern Chinese, but unfamiliar with Old Chinese. If you write monosyllabic words, native Chinese speakers may feel like "have you just time-travelled from thousands of years ago?" Actually, it is almost similar to the feeling if you speak Classical Latin in Europe.


Are simplified Chinese characters used for handwriting in places using traditional Chinese characters? I'm curious if people living in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the official characters are the traditional Chinese characters, do use them also in handwriting, or if they use the simplified Chinese characters in handwriting.

The traditional Chinese characters seem aesthetically more beautiful, but I think they are harder to write (requiring more attention, and more time to fully write them, I suppose...).

They can understand and will occasionally use simplified Chinese

  1、台湾老的文化人都认识简体字。过去，台湾像大陆一样流行简体字。只是在中华人民共和国政府宣布实行简化字方案后，台湾当局才不许公共场合出现简体字，以表示不承认共党政府。但是，老人手写字依然有用简体字。我曾在回答关于“煎体字”问体中附一张照片，是1958年蒋介石写给郝伯村的信，信中就有几十个与我们完全一样的简体字。
  2、书法爱好者认识简体字。简体字大量是行书、草书规范化。经常看古人书帖自然会认识简体字。
  3、经常与大陆往来的人会认识简体字。要说台湾与大陆往来密切，哪里也比不上厦门。厦门一切公共场合，包括与台湾的经济、学术交流，都是规范字，台商工厂中也如是。看多了自然就认识了。
  4、这几年，台湾从大陆购买上百万册简体版图书，说明有很多人认识；原来不认识的，看这些书自然也就认识了。

Taiwan people know Simplified Chinese but in opposition to the Communist Government     of Mainland China, they refused to allow Simplified Chinese to be officially used. (This is more for political reasons)
People who study classical Chinese literature will know simplified Chinese because Simplified Chinese evolved from XingShu and CaoShu styles.
People who frequently go between Taiwan and Mainland obviously will know Simplified Chinese.
Importation of Mainland Literature definitely helps others to learn simplified Chinese.


What's the difference between etymology and glyph origin? Askers, including me, often seem to confuse the two terms, and understanding the distinction between the two is so critical to advanced study of Chinese characters and words.
The question can probably be answered to a satisfactory extent by just checking the relevant Wikipedia articles, and some other on-site resources. In particular I have read:

Etymology
Chinese Characters
The tag wiki of glyph-origin, which was synthesized from some great answers throughout the site
On-site answers that point to relevant resources, as — What's a good place to look up the etymology of certain Chinese words that aren't immediately obvious?, — Where to look for history and etymology of Chinese characters? For example 工, — What etymology dictionaries are available?

From the above, one could conclude that, roughly:

etymology is about words
glyph origin is about, well... glyphs, i.e. the graphical element(s) used to represent a particular word

However, there are a few aspects that complicate the matter for Chinese:

words and glyphs often overlap
knowing which one to ask for depends on already having knowledge about it.

For example, my understanding is that asking about etymology of loan characters is moot, since they are loans. In general, the distinction, and how to talk about one or the other, isn't completely clear to me, maybe because I lack formal education in this area.
So I would like to ask:
what's the difference between etymology and glyph origin?
Thank you.

Tl;dr: A possible rule of thumb is by gauging whether the query is of the nature of a word, or a character. But the correct use of tags indeed depends on the knowledge of the asker. The dependence of correct tagging on knowledge is sometimes unavoidable.

I think it is very important to understand how the tags etymology and glyph-origin interact with established concepts such as 形音義 (lit. form, sound, and meaning) and 六書 (liushu, lit. six scripts). To me, in summary:

etymology
glyph-origin

Unit of query
A word, i.e. ≥1 character(s)
A character

Emphasis of query
Evolution of meaning
Relation between form, (sound), and meaning

Liushu involved
Rebus characters, derived cognates
All

I will use the term 'sense' interchangeably with 'meaning' below.

Idioms (e.g. 老驥伏櫪), loan words (e.g. 幽默), and binomes (or lianmian, e.g. 逍遙) go well with etymology. The asker is interested to know why the word means such, usually implying they tried to parse the word with the knowledge of individual characters, but failed. Now this may be due to classical Chinese, or the simple fact that the word is unparsable. That is to say, the threshold for successful understanding is high in these words. Conversely, even if the word is easily parsable to the average learner of Chinese, they may still be interested in understanding the history of the word, particularly polysemous words.
Of course, an elementary learner of Chinese may fail to grasp the meaning of 快樂 due to incorrect parsing, compared to say a more advanced learner who already knows 快 does not mean 'fast' here (perhaps after exposure to words e.g. 快意 and 快感). I think it does not hurt to use etymology, where answerers will then expound on the various meanings of the classical 快 (perhaps their relationship too, and which sense came about first, if evidence exists). Of course, using meaning concurrently is preferred.

Frequently, when using glyph-origin, askers are motivated by wanting to understand how the form of a character they see relates to the meaning they presumably already looked up. How is the form of 果 related to its meaning 'fruit'? Answerers will then explain the character is a pictograph of a tree bearing plentiful fruits. For other characters, the liushu involved may be different.
Of course, if the asker incorrectly thinks there is a direct
relationship between the derived sense (引伸義) 'result' (as in 果然,
結果) with the character form and applies only glyph-origin,
then editors should add etymology to the question too, because
this is a complex question that asks

What is the relationship between the senses 'result' and 'fruit' in 果? (etymology); and
What is the relationship between the sense 'fruit' (not 'result') and the form 果? (glyph-origin)

To the first half of the question, Buddhist application of 果 can be cited (the translation of phala 'fruit' in Sanskrit into Chinese, itself meaning 'fruition' or 'effect'). The historicity therefore inclines to etymology.

There are words that comprise only one character, which defeats the rule of thumb. They are usually polysemous too. Let us use the fairly classical 鬻 yù meaning '(v.) to sell' or '(n.) gruel' as example. One may ask:

What is the relationship between the senses '(v.) to sell' and '(n.) gruel' in 鬻?

and tag it under etymology, incorrectly thinking there is perhaps a somewhat obscure relationship between the two senses. Or

For the form 鬻, how did it develop its meaning?

They do meet superficially the criterion of the tag, but in actuality, glyphic knowledge, specifically rebus in liushu (假借), is required.
'(n.) gruel' is the only sense that is explainable from the glyph. Paleographers believe the form 鬻 is borrowed to mean '(v.) to sell' out of phonological similarity (yù) to a (perhaps characterless) entity that means '(v.) to sell'. Gradually the sense '(n.) gruel' faded and '(v.) to sell' became dominant.
In that case, editors should add glyph-origin to the question.

Sound is often not the concern of askers, but when asked, questions like

Why is the form 鬻 pronounced like yù?
Is 粥 the phonetic component of 鬻?
How is the sound of 鬻 reconstructed in Old and Middle Chinese?

should be tagged under glyph-origin, perhaps alongside with other tags. That is because reconstructors educatedly compare characters related by sound, e.g. 粥 and 育, and make reference to liushu as well, alongside other phonological references e.g. rhyme books.


Why is there an 'ear' component in the character for smell? 闻 聞 Why is there an 'ear' radical in the character for smell? 闻 聞

I find this pretty confusing. Perhaps there is a fun story behind it?

「聞」(Baxter-Sagart OC: /*mu[n]/) is comprised of semantic「耳」(ear) and phonetic「門」(/*mˤə[r]/), indicating the meaning to hear. For example,「新聞」means news (literally meaning new information passed on by hearing/reading/etc.)

  「門」does not play a meaning role in「聞」. For that matter, it does not play a meaning role in「問」, either.

To smell is a semantic extension. For example, in English, there's something fishy going on is used to describe a situation which is not quite right, literally referring to the smell of fish, but metaphorically referring to someone picking up information about their surroundings and deducing that something feels off.


Can you help identify the artist for these Taizong horse rubbings? (Characters identified: 長安市隱李月溪手搨金石章) Can you help identify the artist?  The art was framed back in 1952 by the Jean Bohem Gallery in New York City.  These are on scroll paper which is attached to something (cloth/ linen?) Beautiful Chinese rubbing of two of the Emperor's horses.  I matched up the calligraphy and I believe that portions identifies the horses, Baitiwu (白蹄烏) and Shifachi 什伐赤.  I am not able to identify the artist mark in red?  Can anyone translate that or do you recognize what it says? enter image description here

the characters of the picture are 长安市隐李月溪手搨金石章.it is a seal or stamp of a person whose name is 李月溪 Li Yuexi.you can google him if you want to know more.I think the two horses you mentioned are from a tomb of a chinese emperor name 李世民 Li Shimin.I heard the relievoes were sold from china since early last century.It is not good.As a chinese I think you should return the paper to my country.I am not good at english.if you can speak chinese and want to know more about this please contact me.


Difference between 什么，什么呢，什么吗 and 什么了? What is the difference between 什么，什么呢，什么吗 and 什么了?

For instance:

你要什么？
你要什么呢？
你在做什么吗？
你做什么了？

你要什么？

What do you want?

你要什么呢？

And, as for you, what do you want?  (might be used, for example, after saying what you yourself want and then asking into the other person's desires.)

你在做什么吗？

This looks ungrammatical to me.  Without the 吗 it would be: What are you doing?

你做什么了？

What are you doing now?

The differences between these sentences, however, lie in the verb and the presence of the final particle (呢 or 了) in these cases, or not.  There are no special combinations at work with 什么, except in the case of #3, which has a problem because 什么 already signals a question in this case.  你什么也不要吗？ might work (= You don't want anything?), but I am not a native speaker, so I can't say for sure if it would sound natural (请教).  Or, for another example: 你知道什么吗？ (= Do you know something?).


请问您这个职位缺了多久了？Can I lose one 了 Actually 2 questions:

1) Are these sentences all good Chinese?
2) If they are acceptable Chinese, is there any difference in meaning between them?

请问您这个职位缺了多久了？
请问您这个职位缺多久了？
请问您这个职位缺了多久？

They are almost the same, but the first and second sentences keep the last 了, so they are more colloquial. And the third one omits the last 了，so it sounds more serious.

In Chinese, 了 sometimes can express a kind of state, for example, 自行车修好了，the bicycle has been fixed. 吃过了，I have already eaten.

Here, the second 了 is a modal particle.


Difference between 尽管 and 虽然 In this sentence should I use both 尽管/虽然 or not?

I really like doing sports. Although I have many lessons every day, after four o'clock I'll be in the gym running and swimming. My friend Maria even likes to practice taijiquan with the master.

我很多喜欢运动。尽管/虽然我每天都有很多上课，但是下午四点以后去体育馆跑步，游泳。连我朋友玛丽也喜欢跟老师打太极拳。

The hotter it is, the better I feel. But even though it's very hot these days, I think I got a flu and my head hurts more and more.
天侯越热身体越好
尽管/虽然 这些天很热但是我感冒了头越来越疼

Grammatically ,尽管 and 虽然 two words are no essential difference.

Both 尽管 and 虽然 are right to place in XX.

  我真的很喜欢运动。 XX我每天都有很多的课，但四点以后，我還是會在体育馆跑步和游泳。 我的朋友玛丽亚甚至喜欢跟大师练习太极拳。

  天气越热，我感觉更好。 但是，XX这几天天气很热，我还是觉得自己得了流感，而且头部越来越痛。

The emotion of 尽管 is stronger than 虽然.So it is often to see us use 虽然.


Does 听说你去丽江玩儿了 imply they are still in 丽江? From 标准教程HSK4上 (page 88):

  A:听说你去丽江玩儿了？那儿怎么样？
  B:那里特别美，空气也很新鲜。

If I'm not mistaken, the 了 is the change-of-state 了.  But this gives two possibilities:

The change of state is B going from B's former location to 丽江.
The change of state is B going from 丽江 to B's present location.

My impression is that since the 了 is not directly after 去 (completion 了), we can deduce B is still in 丽江, and maybe A and B are talking on the phone.  However, 玩儿 is also a verb, so maybe 了 implies its completion (instead of 去).

Question: Does 听说你去丽江玩儿了 imply they are still in 丽江?

A:听说你去丽江玩儿了？那儿怎么样？
B:那里特别美，空气也很新鲜。

From the context, we can deduce that B is currently not in 丽江 because B replies 那里特别美. If B is still there, he/she would say 这里特别美.
However, 听说你去丽江玩儿了 could be interpreted either way you suggested. The sentence only tells you have gone to/arrived 丽江, but it doesn't tell you are currently out or not. Additional information must be required to determine whether you are still in 丽江 or not.
It's clear, in your context, B is already out of the town.
PS. It's also possible that B is still on the train to 丽江, when A is talking to B on the phone saying 听说你去丽江玩儿了. But this is not the case in OP's context.


Does 再见 work for "goodbye forever"? As a learner, when I see 再见 I see the literal "see you again" in the meaning of the characters.  French has a similar expression for goodbye, "au revior", which also literally means "until (I) see you again".  French also has "adieu" (lit: "to God") which is more of a final goodbye.  Does 再见 imply you will meet again, as the literal meaning suggests?

(Context that inspired the question: In a reader telling the story of 荆轲, it says ...荆轲正在和朋友们说再见。“风很大啊水很冷，勇敢的人去了，永不再回！” Which literally says, "He was saying "see you again".  He said, "...[I'm] never coming back again!")

Does 再见 imply you will meet again, as the literal meaning suggests?

Yes 再 = again; 见= see; 再见 = (see again) goodbye

  荆轲正在和朋友们说再见。“风很大啊水很冷，勇敢的人去了，永不再回！” Which literally says, "He was saying "see you again".

In this third person narrative, the narrator translated the classical term '告别'(announce departure = say goodbye) to a modern term '说再见'

It is not too big a problem, because even 荆轲 really said 再见了 instead of 别了, that just meant he didn't want to state the obvious and pretended it was a normal goodbye

永不(never) + 再回 (return again) = 永不再回 (never return again)

  Does 再见 work for “goodbye forever”?

No, if you say 再见 to someone, it means you are expecting to see that person again. Although you can always pretend it is not a final goodbye and say 再见 like it is a normal goodbye.

To say 'goodbye forever' you have to state it clearly, like: "我们永远不会再见了" (we will never meet again)
You can also use '永别了' (apart forever = goodbye forever)

'永别' means '永远分别' (forever apart)


Dictionary for different dialects I am in search for a dictionary that have the most common Chinese words mapped with a one-to-one relationship for different dialects. To be specific, I am looking for a entries mapped for Taiwan (Chinese), Standard Mainland (Chinese), and what seems to be Beijing (Chinese). But more dialects would be appreciated.
For instance, when looking up the word "不客气" (and with traditional: 不客氣), I receive the following alternatives (notice the pinyin tones differences):

Dialect
Pinyin
Reference

Taiwan
bú kè qì (bu2 ke4 qi4)
moedict.tw

Standard Mainland
bù kè qì (bu4 ke4 qi4)
moedict.tw

Beijing?
bù kè qi (bu4 ke4 qi5)
youdao.com

I have found a dictionary that can map out the Taiwan and Beijing(?) dialect as the example above (moedict). However, moedict only have the Taiwan and Standard Mainland. If I had either a Standard Mainland<>Beijing or Taiwan<>Beijing then I could merge. But I have not found such a dictionary yet.
I also would like to find a dictionary that have the word changes, like 这里 (zhe4 li3) <> 这儿 (zhe4 er5).
Is there any dictionary online that consists of such entries and relationships?

You may try Chinese Wiktionary and English Wiktionary, each has its own merits.
https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8D%E5%AE%A2%E6%B0%94
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8D%E5%AE%A2%E6%B0%A3#Chinese
When searching for the pronunciation of a specific dialect word (since it may not be listed in Wiktionary) you can try 现代汉语方言大词典 of 古音小镜:
http://www.guguolin.com/book_fangyandacidian.php
The standard dictionary of Mainland Mandarin, 现代汉语词典 has mobile Apps (Can I use 现代汉语词典 outside of the paper dictionary?). You can use it to check standard Mainland pronunciation. However it is not free to wield its full strength.
In fact, Mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin differ little in pronunciation. The main pronunciation differences are in certain characters, for example the conjunction  和 hé/hàn. In your case, it is only that the tone sandhi is not marked in the dictionary that makes 不 of 不客气 seem to be bù in Mainland Mandarin. The actual pronunciation of 不客气 is bú kè qi (气 here is 5th tone according to 现代汉语词典, the 客气 entry). You can learn the tone sandhi rules, especially the 一不七八 rules here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Tone_sandhi.
The terminological differences are more evident. 中华语文知识库 is a dictionary compiled by experts from both Mainland China and Taiwan, aimed at collecting such differences in Chinese words. You can get access to it here : http://www.chinese-linguipedia.org/.


Is it possible to know what 都 means in "Subj + 都 + Predicate + 了"? In my lessons, I came across two different meanings for the adverb 都 dōu:

"Already" with the structure: Subj. + 都 + Predicate + 了, where 了 stands for completion of the predicate (see Expressing "already" with "dou" in resources.allsetlearning).
"All" or "both" with the structure: Subj. + 都 + Predicate (see The "all" adverb "dou" in resources.allsetlearning).

I wonder if it is possible in some sentences to distinguish between these meanings without more context. In particular, I'm thinking about the situation when the sentence has a final particle 了, such as:

她们都吃饭了。
1: They have already eaten.
2: All of them ate.

Maybe there is not much difference, but I believe in English there is a difference in the emphasis: in 1., the emphasis is on the time (they ate before expected); while in 2., the emphasis is on the number of people. For example, if this was a sentence said in a restaurant by a waiter on the phone, interpretation 1. could mean a particular table just finished eating then, while interpretation 2. could mean all tables finished eating.

It expresses "already" with the structure: Subj. + 都 + Predicate + 了

Only '了' indicates 'completion of a verb' in this structure

'都' in [Subj. + 都 + Predicate + 了]  mean 'even'.  Try write a sentence in this structure without 了, and you wouldn't say 都 expresses "already".

Example:

"他(都)说 不知道" = "(even) he said he didn't know"
"他(都)说 不知道 (了)" = "He (has already) said he didn't know" or "(Even) he said he didn't know"

  It is used for "all" or "both" with the structure: Subj. + 都 + [Verb Phrase]

The 'all' and 'both' meanings can only apply with multiple objects

Example:

[A and B (都) + Verb Phrase] = [A and B (both) + Verb Phrase]
[subjects (都) + Verb Phrase] = [subjects (All) + Verb Phrase]

For a singular subject, 都 cannot expresses the meaning of 'all' or 'both' . It can only expresses 'Even' or 'too/ also' (Cantonese)


Is 我很对不起你 a unique sentence structure? I'd never seen or heard this before until I recently watched a TV series and had to ask my wife to explain.

My initial guess was that it meant "I feel sorry for you" when in fact it means something like "I'm very sorry" (in the direction of the listener).

"I dislike you" which is I ...verb... you is correct English

But 我对不起你 seems like "I sorry you" which is I ...adjective... you which is incorrect English

So, have I got the wrong meaning of 对不起 (in this context), is there a verb meaning which I am missing or is this a sentence structure unique to Chinese?

Wiktionary has a listed under verb the following meanings:

  To cause someone embarrassment; to screw someone over; to do something
  to a person that would demand an apology later on

But I don't think "I caused you embarrassment" or "I screwed you over" is a very adequate translation of 我很对不起你.

I think the Chinese language has always been very consistent here. Consider the following:

我很对不起你。
我很讨厌你。
我很爱你。

The subject-verb-object sentence structure is very consistent. In English, the last two sentences can be translated directly with:

I hate you very much.
I love you very much.

The reason why the first sentence could not be translated directly is due to the lack of such a verb in English and not due to the peculiarity of the Chinese language.

The third meaning in the Wikitionary article you quoted captures more of the essence of this verb "对不起" than the first two:

  to do something to a person that would demand an apology later on

To elaborate, "我很对不起你" is not a statement of apology but a statement that you owe someone more than just an apology. This is logically so, because the subject would have easily apologised with a simple sorry (对不起) when speaking directly to the other party.

To extend this further, "你很对不起她" is another valid statement to mean you owe her more than just an apology. Example:

  她为了你付出了这么多，你却这样糟蹋她。你真的很对不起她。

  She has done so much for you, yet you treated her so badly. You really
  owe her more than just an apology.


Where can I find sample Simplified Chinese mailing address data? I need to populate a database with Simplified Chinese mailing addresses. Where can I find some test data?
Edit
Since I'm trying to work with these addresses in a computer program, it would be nice to know how Chinese mailing addresses are put together. What is the format? Are they like US postal addresses?
Knowing something about the format of mailing addresses--both in theory and as they appear in practice on, in speech and on the internet--would be greatly helpful to someone trying to:

Generate plausible entries in a database of mailing addresses.

Parse or scrape addresses in automated way.

Communicate in Chinese where you live to a taxi driver.

Mail a letter to someone in China.

Learn about how the administration of geographical regions works in China.

Understanding Addresses
If you want to understand the structure of addresses, this Phonemica post is a good place to start. Turns out it's complicated.
Roughly speaking, it's a hierarchical system working from the top down, from left to right. So, country (optional), province, prefecture level city, small town, district, etc. Unfortunately the levels are not consistent across the board. Some cities are 直辖市 (directly-administered-cities) like Beijing and Shanghai, and as such, they do not belong to a province. Some provinces are called 自治区 (autonomous regions), and their internal structure is different from a 省 (province).
Getting Data
Manually
This is a rather slow process, but go to Google maps (China) or Baidu maps, zoom in or search and drill down to individual addresses.
From Baidu [Note, missing the province and city, which are obvious from the map]:

河东区津塘路互助南里18号楼底商(近二宫公园)
武侯区通祠路39号一江城花2楼（春江花月夜对面）

From Google [Full mailing addresses]:

上海市徐汇区零陵路899号
浙江省绍兴市越城区鲁迅中路237号

Automation
If you want to get a lot of addresses, you're going to need to automate. One approach you could try would be to scrape a website that does reviews, like Dianping.
From Dianping [Same format as Baidu. You have to select a city first, and then all results are restricted to that area, and addresses are relative to it.]:

成华区双庆路8号万象城1楼
江汉区解放大道557号中山广场5楼

Cheers, and happy data-ing!


General rule for when 一 is yi1 and when it's yi2/yi4 The tone that 一 is pronounced with is sometimes hard to predict. Is there a good general rule for when to use yi1 and when to use yi2/yi4?

The 不 tone change rule is fairly straightforward and easy to remember. 不 is underlyingly bu4 but changes to bu2 before another fourth tone, within a phrase. Maybe the 不-change rule can be blocked by a phrase boundary; I am not sure.
The 一 tone change rule (YTC) is much more confusing. 一 can be pronounced as yi1 or yi2 or yi4 according to both the surrounding environment and how 一 is being used.
For explaining the YTC, it almost seems like there are two separate words: one of which is always pronounced yi1 and the other is pronounced as yi4 or yi2 using the same rules as 不.
Wiktionary lists a bunch of terms with 一 pronounced as yi1, as yi2 and as yi4.
The yi2 and yi4 pronunciation appear to be in complementary distribution and never appear phrase-finally.
yi1 seems to appear in contexts where the corresponding two-related lexeme would use 二 instead of 两.

一来
二来

I am not sure that the distribution of 两 versus 二 is the exactly the same as yi2/yi4 versus yi1. Is there a better rule of thumb?

The rule of thumb is the following.
When indexing it is yi1. For example

一楼 (first floor)
一声 (first tone)
第一 (the first)
一次世界大战 (World War I)
一来 (firstly)

When counting （the same rule as 不）

it is yi4 when followed by 1, 2, 3 tone

一呼百应
一毛不拔
一百
一扫而光

it is yi2 when followed by 4 tone

一蹴而就
一气呵成

For others, mostly yi1. For example

统一
均一
敬一丹（name）

As a comparison, 二 can be indexing or counting, but 两 is only counting.
PS: Most of the words in the Wikipedia list are right, but there are clear errors. For example "一yi4夫一yi4妻" appeared in 2 lists. And, it should be "一yi4朝一yi4夕". Don't fully trust it.


Is there a proverb that means "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? Is there a Chinese (Mandarin or Classical Chinese) proverb equivalent to the American proverb "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"?

I looked it up in the Cambridge English-Traditional Chinese dictionary, and it says:

  嘎吱響的輪子先上油；最明顯的問題先得到關注

That's a direct translation of the proverb. I'm wondering if there are any equivalent proverbs of Chinese origin.

ABC Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs

哭夜的孩子多吃奶
Lit Babies [who] cry [at] night get more milk.
Fig Those who speak out or complain get more help. "The squeaky wheel gets the oil."

The Wikipedia page for The squeaky wheel gets the grease also mentions:

Cultural differences
Similarly, one of the Chinese proverbs goes "会哭的孩子有奶吃", which means "The crying baby gets the milk"


Does Chinese have a gender-neutral term for "homemaker"? I've looked up homemaker, a generic and gender neutral term for house husband, house wife, or a person who stays at home and looks after the family and does house chores, in the Pleco dictionary, but couldn't find such a word. I wonder whether any such word exists in Chinese.

持家者 = 主持家中事務的人

The homemaker = the person who does most of the housework in the family

In my opinion, it doesn't matter it is the wife or the husband or anyone else-- who ever does most of the cleaning and cooking is the homemaker of the family-- If both husband and wife share the housework evenly, they are both 持家者

持家有道 - (good at taking care of the household) is a praise for a good wife

The term 持家 literally means "maintain/ holding the household" which also mean all the responsibility within the household belong to that person including taking care the children.


Which word means 'log in'? Are there any differences between 登陆,登入,and 登录 ?
Which is the correct words to represent 'log in'?

登陆 means landing. It may also be a typo of 登录.
登录 means login, used in mainland. ref
登入 means login, used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. ref


The correct way to parse "就打赢了" in 是个很普通就打赢了的对手哦? I was reading an excerpt from a story, and I'm having a discussion with my friend over the correct way to parse this line said by a certain character, let's call him 1, about character 2.

是个很普通就打赢了的对手哦

2 overhears this and reacts angrily.
The difficulty stems from the target of 打赢了.
I believe the line would translate to something like this:

It was very common to win against this opponent.

My friend tells me it's more like:

It's very common for this opponent to win.

But if character 2 reacts angrily, isn't that a provocation? Which would mean mine makes sense in the context.
Any help with understanding the correct parsing will be awesome!

"是个很普通就打赢了的" is an adjectival phrase for "对手"

是 - is (verb)
个 - a (classifier for the noun 对手)
很普通就 (just easily) 打赢了(defeated)
的 (adjectival phrase marker)
对手- opponent [noun]

就 here means "just"
"打赢了的对手" = "defeated opponent"
"是个很普通(就)打赢了的对手" = "is (just) an easily defeated opponent"

'普通就' is short for '普通地打就' (just fight normally)
Other example of '就' functions as 'just':
一美元(就)卖了 = sold (just) for one dollar


Are 总是, 平常, 通常, and 经常 all interchangeable? I've recently started using Glossika to learn Chinese and have noticed that these words are defined differently in their sentences.

总是 - always
经常 - usually
通常 - often

From what I understand, they are interchangeable. Am I correct in my understanding?

Thanks,

Nicholas

总是 is just plainly always.

平常 is usually, as in being part of normal life. For example, 我平常有运动 would literally be "I do exercise as part of my life", interpreted as "I exercise often". If you want to say "Fast food is usually unhealthy", the usually would not be in the sense above, so 快餐平常都不健康 would be incorrect. Rather, that would have a weird meaning like "Fast food is unhealthy most of the time (but it is healthy today)".

通常 is also usually, but in the sense of being the more common/likely/normal/general case. For example, 叶子通常是绿色的 would literally be "Leaves are normally/generally green", and translates to "Leaves are usually green". The same fast food example would work for 通常: 快餐通常都不健康 would be "Fast food is usually unhealthy".

经常 means often. 我经常运动 would, like 我平常有运动, be interpreted as "I exercise often". However, the former directly states “I exercise often", while the latter states "I do exercise as part of my life", so note the difference.

An extra example, 我经常跌倒 means "I fall often", and the average person would not say 我平常跌倒 as it would be like "I usually fall". 我平常走路都会跌倒 "I would fall when I walk in the usual manner" would be more legit. 我走路通常会跌倒 would be "When I walk I usually fall".


How to learn to read Chinese calligraphic paintings (and Chinese handwriting)? I am able to read quite a few Chinese characters and can recognize most
of the elements (combinations of radicals and other stroke sequences) which
make up the 3500 or so or more characters found in Chinese dictionaries, even
in those cases where I find myself not knowing the pronunciation or meaning of
the character itself. I am also familiar with some traditional character variants
for some of such simplified characters. I have acquired such knowledge by going
through a couple of dictionaries while memorizing some patterns, characters,
words, and idioms.

However, whenever I come across Chinese calligraphic paintings or any sequence
of characters which happen to be displayed as though composed with a traditional
brush I have a hard time reading such artistic compositions. I was wondering whether
there is an easy way to learn how to read and master these as well.

Also, when Chinese people write characters written with a normal pen or pencil carry
some differences when compared to those same characters as they appear in a dictionary.
I would like to be able to read these as well. Where can I learn how to read and write
these latter characters (as written with a pen or pencil as opposed to with a brush).
I have once seen a dictionary which lists these alongside the printed versions of
such characters but I cannot recall the name of the publishing company that printed
such dictionary.

As an example of a calligraphic writing which I struggle reading, take the following
brush handwriting on a box of medicinal Chinese tea:

Quite clearly the last character is 茶 (cha2). However, I cannot figure out from
the picture what the first two characters are. What are they may I ask?
Thanks!

It really boils down to the very point: your knowledge of characters and especially how familiar you are with them. I have a hard time reading a lot of things handwritten in Chinese, while at other times I notice that I can just spell out all the characters, even if I have never seen a single character from that person.

Some people have easy to read handwriting, some don't. Obviously that's something subjective, but you cannot do anything about it. What you can do is to practice handwriting a lot yourself and notice how your handwriting shifts from the school kids' stroke-by-stroke pattern to a more sophisticated, mature handwriting, where things start to become more fluid and less accurate. Probably you have a nice handwriting in your own language, whether it be Latin or any other script. And probably your handwriting has matured from a school kids letters to a more elegant and fluent script. This process has subconsciously helped you not only to read your own handwriting but to have a grasp of other people's handwriting, too.

There are three things you can do to make progress:

Write Chinese by hand. Write a lot. Try to write faster and faster and observe how your handwriting evolves into something more sophisticated and "calligraphic". It will not necessarily look "talented" at first, but that doesn't matter. What really matters that you see how your strokes change and become more fluid, until they eventually get "simplified" and even merge.

Install some calligraphic looking Chinese fonts on your computer and play around with them. Fire up MS Word or any word processor, set the font size to something larger than 36pts, set the typeface to the installed font and type something. This way you will know what you are typing, since you type it, but you will also see how the characters actually look like in that specific font, sometimes you will feel like "what-the-hecko", at other times you will immediately recognized the strokes of that specific character. Here is a site to look for some fonts: font.chinaz.com (although I think most fonts here are copyrighted protected but uploaded by anyway, be sure to only use fonts for study, you should be on the safe side)

Improve and expand your vocabulary. Many multi-character words have at least one character that is easier to recognize and your vocabulary will help you to make a guess, what the other character(s) could be. Also, the more characters you know, the more likely that you will recognize parts of characters, since character components pretty much repeat all the time.

EDIT: the characters on the package are 降脂茶. If you don't recognize a character, try to recognize at least a part of it. E.g. in the second character it is obvious that the left side is 月 (肉) while the bottom-right part of it 日. You can assume that any part of it you can recognize could be the radical, with which you should be familiar, of course. Now try to give an estimate for the unrecognizable part, how many strokes that could be. Add or take one stroke and you can look it up in a character dictionary, it takes a while but it's not that hard.

As for 降 the tricky parts here are probably the left side and the top-right part, eventually to me it is a recognition process based on the characters and character parts I already now. If you have seen 夅 as a right-side component of any other character (e.g. 逄）then you should be able to recognize it just by observing its shape or if you are advanced by the composing strokes.


When to use a complement? I recently said to a native Chinese speaker: "你跑步跑得很快“ ,and then asked him if that sentence was grammatically correct. He said he understood what I was saying, but that he would have said: ”你跑步很快“.

I thought you had to use a complement in such a situation. Which is correct, and why?

你跑步跑得很快, grammarly correct and common.

你跑步很快 common but odd a little.

你跑得很快 grammarly correct and most common saying.


Why is 足 both "foot" and "enough"? 足 is an ancient character meaning "foot". However, it also means "enough" or "sufficient", and this second definition is also very old. Consider this excerpt:

  兵甲已足。——诸葛亮《出师表》

This is from 《出师表》, dating from 227-228 AD.

So why does 足 have these two very different meanings? Its oracle bone origin definitely suggests it means foot, so how did the "enough" definition come about?

Let the "foot" meaning of 足 be A, the "plenty, enough" meaning be B. Will discuss about this topic in the following two sections.
Different Root
First, 現代漢語規範詞典 第二版 ("Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary" 2nd Edition) suggests that meaning A and meaning B come from different origin, though they share the same character currently.
Figure 1. Meanings of 足 in 現代漢語規範詞典 第二版, page 1758.

It places the "foot" meaning as 足 entry with a superscript 1, 足1, the "enough" meaning with superscript 2, 足2.
Figure 2. Explanation of the superscript.

The English translation of the above description can be:"Those whose form or pronunciation are the same but no relation between their meaning, basically will be in given different entries, with superscripts on their upper right corner. For example, '耳1' and '耳2', '安1', '安2' and '安3' "
Chances are their ancient version characters bear the similar form and later merged together. Seven known variants (i.e. 異體字) of 足 are found here.
Figure 3. The variants of 足.

The hint is given by this blog:
「另有充足、足夠、滿足等的意義。《現漢規範》認為充足等意義的“足”和下肢意義的“足”没有意義上的聯繫，只是形同而已。換句話說，“足”的充足意義並不是下肢意義的引伸。」which in English can be:"足 has another meaning: plenty of, enough, satisfied. 現代漢語規範詞典 treats this meaning as independent from the foot meaning, except that they happen to be the same in form. In other words, the 'enough' meaning does not stem from the 'foot' meaning." (Source)
Ancient Sound
Among many opinions, even the ancient sound is believed to be something similar to modern ju4 instead of zu2, which is also backed by 說文解字: 卽玉切, roughly ji + yu = ju.
Figure 4. The Scan of 說文解字 段玉裁注本 足部 足.

and 王力古漢語字典 (Wang Li's Classical Chinese Dictionary (page 1350), (王力 is the name of a late renowned Chinese linguist, who advocated a categorized set of meanings for each Chinese characters in the dictionary, and suggested students to learn classical Chinese with the knowledge of Chinese history.) In the following three-piece scan of explanation, the "foot" meaning is put at first, next the "enough" meaning, third the "qualified" meaning. We can see that the "enough" meaning appears in some really ancient work 「詩經」, dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC.
Figures 5-7. The Scans of Explanation for 足 in page 1350, 王力古漢語字典.