How to use 弄 in a sentence? On some of my Chinese school worksheets, we're supposed to use "弄" in the following sentences:

Don't make the child cry.
Loosen the belt.
There is one more problem that has yet to be clarified.

I've researched it and I understand it means 做, but I don't know how to use it in the sentences above.

My impression as a learner is that 弄 functions as a unspecified verb.  Basically, we take a sentence and replace a specific verb (or multiple verbs) by the unspecific 弄.

弄 is typically used within a result complement such as 弄到, 弄坏, 弄丢, 弄清楚, and so on.  I'll focus on this common usage.  In this way 弄 offers a short-cut to the result without specifying the verb which caused it.  (It's also used in 弄得怎么样 and 怎么弄.)

In English, an unspecified verb would normally be phrased "to do", which is sometimes an appropriate translation.  We'd use it in English in the phrase "get my hair done" in place of "get my hair cut", "get my hair dyed", etc.

Why do this?  This is probably an incomplete list but here's some reasons...

1. Ignorance of which verb is correct

Let's start with this example:

  客人打坏电视机[src]
  The guest broke [by bashing] the TV

In Chinese, the verb is 打 = "hit" and the result is 坏 = "break".

Now suppose we didn't know how the guest broke the TV, only that they broke the TV.  Maybe they spilled a drink on the TV.  Maybe they installed some software on it that broke it.  Since we don't know what verb to use, we might use the unspecific 弄:

  version 1: 客人弄坏了电视机
  version 2: 客人把电视机弄坏了[src]
  The guest broke [in some unknown way] the TV

Note: It's common to use 把 in conjunction with 弄 as above (see: Using "ba" sentences).

Other examples:

  男子弄丢共享单车被索赔2.55万[src]
  Boy lost [in some unknown way] a public bike; asked for 25,500 yuan in compensation

  小孩不慎弄瞎他人眼睛[src]
  Kid inattentively blinded [in some unknown way] another person's eyes

2. Multiple ways of doing something

This is similar to how "done" is used in "get your hair done" in English.  If you go to a hairdresser, they don't immediately know what verb is appropriate for your hair.  Maybe "dye" or "cut" or some other verb applies.  Maybe multiple verbs are needed (e.g. the customer wants their hair both cut and dyed).  For example:

  怎么弄头发好看又简单图片[src]
  How to do hair, both good looking and simple: photos

  破案了!韦世豪为何要弄这样的新发型?[src]
  Solved! Why Wei Shihao wants to do this kind of new hairstyle.

Other examples are:

  怎么才能弄清楚自己想要什么?[src]
  How to be able to make clear [in some way] what you want?

  离职时,一定要弄明白这四点,不然只会越跳槽越糟糕[src]
  When leaving office, [you] must understand [in some way] these four points, or else it will result in more job-hopping and more bad luck

We "make something clear" or "understand" = "make something understood (to yourself)", but there's not a singly way of achieving this.

3. To encompass all possibly ways of doing something

Let's start here:

  别把衣服洗坏了
  Don't damage your clothes by washing them.

  别把衣服穿坏了
  Don't damage your clothes by wearing them out.

  别把衣服剪坏了
  Don't damage your clothes by cutting them.

We can say all of these (and more) at once using:

  别把衣服弄坏了
  Don't damage [in any way] your clothes.

Other examples:

  在这个球馆打我的最后一场比赛，你们别把我弄哭，因为我现在很高兴。[src]
  In this stadium, I played my last match, don't make me cry [in any way], because I am now happy

4. To withhold this information

  沙溢把郭敬明弄哭了！[src]
  Sha Yi made [in some unspecified way] Guo Jingmeng cry

You need to read the article to understand how Sha Yi made Guo Jingmeng cry.

  你已经弄乱我的心，什么时候弄乱我的床[src]
  You've already messed up [in some unspecified way] my heart, when will you mess up [in some unspecified way] my bed?

Cheeky!

So let's try it on the given examples:

  Don't make the child cry.
  别把孩子弄哭了

I found this used here.

  Loosen the belt.
  把腰带弄宽松一些

The closest I found online is:

  新买的t恤袖子有点紧怎么弄宽松一点[src]
  Newly-bought T-shirt sleeves are a little tight, how to loosen them?

  There is one more problem that has yet to be clarified.
  还有一个问题没有弄清楚

I found this used here.


Anyone know why cellphones are called 大哥大 in Taiwan? I was looking at Singapore Mandarin from the question here on Hong Kong Mandarin and came across the word for cellphone. I know it's popular now to refer to cellphones as 手机 but I remember in Taiwan they used to call it 大哥大. (I don't know if they still use this term).

I have never thought about it until now but does anyone know why it was called 大哥大? It's a very strange use of characters.

According to one of the rumors, the first cellphone was used and introduced by Sammo Hung, which is the elder kung-fu brother of Jackie Chan. Since at that time Hong Kong entertainment was fairly respected in nearly the whole East and Southeast Asia, most people showed their respect to call Jackie Chan as 大哥 and his elder kung-fu brother Sammo Hung as 大哥大.

Then, clearly the cellphone being used by 大哥大 is 大哥大電話. However, after a while, most people simplified the usage and just used 大哥大 only.


What does this character from PUBG mean in Chinese? (Character identified: 魂) I saw it in PUBG game. Thanks!

It is "魂", and there are several meanings of it.
Probably the most common one is soul, but usually the meaning is some kind of phantom things related with one's soul or one's characters.


What's the difference between 生态环境观 and 生态伦理观？ I think that "生态环境观" refers to ecology and that "生态伦理观" refers to environmental ethics. Can anybody confirm this or correct me?

In my opinion,  "生态环境观" is more objective, it include ecological and environmental sciences. Whereas "生态伦理观" is "生态环境观" plus ethics. Specifically, "生态伦理观" is a branch of ethics, and is relative to the moral connection between human and nature, the research object is the moral connection between person and person affected by the relationship between human and nature, such as Good, evil, morality and immorality.


Is my sentence 如果我没去上班就一起朋友去玩 grammatially correct? I have written the following sentence

  如果我没去上班就一起朋友去玩

But, I am not sure if it is grammatically correct or not. Please give me some guidance.

如果我没去上班就一起朋友去玩

From my answer to this question Meaning in context

  it is a very common grammar structure

  [如果 X 就 Y] = [If X then Y]

[1: 如果] [X: 我没去上班] [2: 就] [Y: 一起朋友去玩]

[1: if ] [X: I don't go to work] [2: then ] [Y: together friend to go play]

The major problem is  "一起朋友去玩" (together friends to go play)

It should be "和朋友一起去玩" (go to play with friends together)

[和 + (noun) 一起] = [with + (noun)  together] is also a common grammar structure. And you can drop "一起" and write: "如果我没去上班就和朋友(一起)去玩" because it is strongly implied with the present of 和


What character is this? (yu2) The book "A First Course in Literature" from Shaddick uses this character:

In the vocabulary section it is explained as "TV to cross; to exceed". But I can't seem to find this character anywhere else (e.g. pinyin input). The closest matches are 逾 and 踰, the latter is also what we use at our university course instead. However, does anyone know anything about the original? Or is it just a mistake Shaddick made?

Yes, it is 踰 (yú): exceed, transgress, cross over. It is a variant of 逾.

Characters are sometimes rendered differently. In this case, the phonetic is 俞 (yú), meaning "boat", and the bottom part is written similar to seal script style.

Originally, the 月 and 刂 in 俞 were 舟 (zhōu, boat) and 巛 (chuān, water), and the seal character is a transition in progress. Another evolutionary bastard is  (containing 舟 and 刂), with the same meaning.


How would I say 'what ...' in Mandarin I think the French ce qui/que says it better. This is what I mean:

  I do what I want. (Je fais ce que je veux, in French)

How would the 'what' be translated?

You can say 我做我想做的. Here I use 我想做的 to represent things that I want to do. Since I use I use 我做, I use 做 after 想。 If I want to say that I drink what I want. I would say 我喝我想喝的。 Here I use 我喝 so I use 喝 after 想 too.

If you want to simplify it, you can say 我做我想要的(I do what I want).


how to say ”(尤为)难得“ in English? How would you say "难得“ and ”尤为难得“ in English?

For example,

  他在自己生活困难的情况下，资助老弱病残，尤为难得。

"难“ means hard or difficult
"得“ means to obtain

Combining the two, ”难得“ means something that is hard to come by.

"尤为" (formal) means especially or particularly

Putting all together, "尤为难得" means especially hard to come by or a rarity.


How do I get the enumeration comma (、) in Google input tools? I'm using the 漢語拼音 input metod in Google input tools. How do I get the enumeration comma (、)?


Fonts for Unicode CJK extensions C, D, E Does anyone know of a font that supports the unicode CJK extensions c, d, e? If you have such a font, do you know if it works with the MySQL utf8mb4 character set?

The Hanazono fonts (HanaMinA, HanaMinB) have full support for all 3 extensions and include 96k+ glyphs. Here is the glyph list (.pdf, 500 pages).

Babelstone Han claims to support all glyphs in Extension D, but only has partial support for C (37.1%) and E (19.5%).

EDIT:

Here's the download link (25.7MB) for HanaMinB (which supports these extensions). And here's a screenshot of a word processor with HanaMinB.ttf installed, displaying random glyphs from CJK Ext. E.


Does the chengyu 话不投机 (huà bù tóu jī) mean "uncongenial speech"? I'm looking at creating a CC-EDICT entry for 话不投机 (huà bù tóu jī).  This will need to go through their review process:

All submitted entries will be queued for reviewing by the CC-CEDICT editors team.

(See examples in their Change Log to see the evidence required for "submitted" entries.)
I've never done this before, but I thought I'd give it a try.  Here's a start:

Traditional: 話不投機
Simplified: 话不投机
Pinyin: hua4 bu4 tou2 ji1
English: /???/

My best attempt at an English translation is "uncongenial speech", where 不 = "not", 投机 = "congenial", and 话 = "speech".
Question: Does the chengyu 话不投机 mean "uncongenial speech"?
Some online examples (with my partial translations):

想有段亲密恋情，却发现话不投机，好好聊天才是捷径[src]
Want a period of time of intimate romance, but encountered 话不投机, nicely chatting is the only shortcut
话不投机比不相爱更可怕[src]
话不投机 is scarier than unrequited love
婚姻生活许多话不投机，不愿意曲意逢迎那就掩耳不听[src]
Married life [has] lots of 话不投机, [be] unwilling to bow down to everything [and] refuse to listen

These all seem consistent with 话不投机 = "uncongenial speech".  It's surely also related to the CC-CEDIT entry:

话不投机半句多
when words get sour, adding words is useless (idiom)

This translation is in Tales of Herding Gods (牧神记).  This is consistent with 话不投机 = "uncongenial speech".

Wayne Cheah's comment let me to this Song Dynasty poem which contains the longer version:

酒逢知己千杯少，话不投机半句多。

CC-EDICT also has an entry for the first part:

酒逢知己千杯少
a thousand cups of wine is not too much when best friends meet (idiom); when you're with close friends, you can let your hair down

Update: What I currently have in mind now (which seems more accurate):

/unagreeable or unenjoyable talk (idiom)/when words go sour/

It looks like it'd be worth updating 话不投机半句多 to:

/when words go sour, adding words is useless (idiom)/fig. in an unagreeable conversation, half a sentence is too much/

Update:  It was added/amended here with major changes:

話不投機半句多 话不投机半句多 [hua4 bu4 tou2 ji1 ban4 ju4 duo1] /when views are irreconcilable, it's a waste of breath to continue discussion (idiom)/
話不投機 话不投机 [hua4 bu4 tou2 ji1] /the conversation is disagreeable (idiom)/

話不投機 means you don't share similar interesting or thoughts to chat with people or people don't like what you talk about, think it is not interesting.

Regardless the sentences of example you give is true or not, I just consider the semantic since I am not psychological professional.

发现话不投机，好好聊天才是捷径 show that people have the property of 话不投机 so on the latter part of sentence it encourage people to 好好聊天.

话不投机比不相爱更可怕 shows that 话不投机 is more horror then 不相爱.

许多话不投机 shows that the couple have a lot of different belief.

话不投机半句多 shows that you feel that 半句 is enough if the chat is 话不投机(you feel 半句 is a large amount since it is undesirable).

.


Difference between 你能看完这本书吗？ vs 你看得完这本书吗？ I just happened to randomly come across this question.

What's the difference between 你能看完这本书吗？and 你看得完这本书吗?

To me, they all mean can you finish reading the book, but the former uses result complement and the latter uses potential complement. I am not trying to completely revoke the idea of using potential complement, but still in some cases it just seems replaceable to me.

How do Chinese people distinguish when to use either of the two?

I think basically what you wrote in your question is right.

As for:

  What's the difference between 你能看完这本书吗？and 你看得完这本书吗?

Let's remove 这本书. 你能看完吗？vs 你看得完吗?, I can't seize any difference in meaning between them. It's just different syntax being used to express the same semantics. In practice, you can probably replace one with the other without any problems.


What does "酒" mean in "扮家家酒"？ I know “酒” usually means wine in Chinese, but what does "酒" mean in "扮家家酒"？ I could not see how the word for wine is referring to in this children's game.

喝喜酒 = 赴喜宴
設/擺酒席 = 設宴
The 扮家家酒 game is to pretend to have a lively family gathering.
酒 should refer to a 酒席 (banquet) -->喜宴 -->聚會

扮家家酒
Also called 过家家

小朋友一起各自扮演不同的角色，往往是模仿家里成员，做一些小孩子们眼中大人应做的事情。
Children play different roles together, often imitating family members and doing things that children think adults should do.

Banquet, party, socializing, and drink are adult things.


Asking Chinese mother-in-law to learn pinyin? I thought about asking this on parenting.se but it seemed specialized enough that this site made more sense.

I'm a white man married to a Chinese woman, living in the US. Her parents live in China and are retired (they're about 65yo), and my wife is an only child. Her mother has come over to stay with us twice for long periods to be with and help take care of our son (currently 3yo). She has been immensely helpful both times. Both her parents only speak Mandarin and their regional dialect.

Although there are some (ahem) advantages to not being able to communicate with my in-laws, I've spent considerable time trying to learn Mandarin. It's been frustrating: sometimes I should be able to understand something she's saying (i.e. I know the vocabulary) but can't because her regional accent makes some sounds different from standard. E.g. 'n' and 'l' are the same in her dialect. She can't hear or pronounce the difference between 'snow' and 'slow'. This goes both ways: my pronunciation often isn't good enough for her to distinguish what I'm saying... even though when she finally does get it and repeats it for me, it sounds exactly the same to me (ugh!). So when my wife isn't around (or just as often, gets tired of acting as translator) it would be nice for either of us to be able to write out what we're saying, phonetically.

My mother-in-law's generation didn't learn pinyin. To me it seems fairly easy to learn but that's probably because the Latin alphabet is second-nature to me as a native English speaker. She can associate Chinese characters with phonemes of course, but not with Latin letters (although she can actually identify and say all the letters in the English alphabet).

I've asked my wife about teaching her mom pinyin, but my wife was dismissive and annoyed at the suggestion: usually something like "they're too old to learn". So before I ask my mother-in-law myself if she's interested in learning pinyin so we can communicate better, I wanted to get advice from strangers on the internet. Is it reasonable to try to get her to learn pinyin? Anybody else been in a similar situation?

If your mother-in-law confuses n and l, it's unlikely that knowing pinyin would be enough for her distinguish those words like in standard Chinese. Just because she knows what an n or l is doesn't mean that she'll know which words are supposed to begin with what consonant. If you want her to distinguish n/l in her speech (not sure from your question whether you are), you're not just teaching her pinyin; you'd have to teach her the pinyin of all the n/l words, and then have her speak it that way.

For instance, my parents merge s/sh, z/zh, c/ch, and n/ng. They know pinyin, and they know they confuse those sounds, but they don't necessarily know how those words are supposed to be spelled.  Plus, I've told my mom that 弄 (nòng) should not be pronounced lòng, but she does it anyway, even though she distinguishes n/l in almost all other circumstances. Old habits die hard.

For an another analogy, let's say you are a speaker of American English and have a British friend who can't understand it when all those pesky Americans who keep pronouncing "caught" like "cot". Would you really know whether "not", "naught", or "nought" is the one with the /ɑː/ or the /ɔː/?

If you want to understand her better, I'd recommend just getting used to the n/l merger or whatever idiosyncratic pronunciation your mother-in-law uses. When she says n, consider if it could've been an l word, and vice versa. Have her write out the characters on a piece of paper instead of in the air. Perhaps even just have her dictate into Google Translate or Bing Translator.

As for how she can understand you better, consider pulling out your phone and using an IME instead of writing out the pinyin. Even if she learns pinyin, it's probably going to be a lot slower for her to read it than hanzi. When I was first learning hangeul, it took me a few months to get comfortable enough to not mix up some letters. Something with haphazardly designed letters like Latin, and something with quirky spelling conventions like pinyin, are probably going to be pretty hard to read for an elderly person. With regional dialects, she might be getting the tones or other phonemes of the word wrong too, so she might have trouble decoding what you wrote.

Also, maybe ask your wife why she thinks her mother has trouble understanding you. Are you subtly mispronouncing the words somehow (maybe in terms of tone), or does your mother only understand a certain nonstandard pronunciation?


What is the meaning of 及 in the compound word 危及? I know 及 as a conjungtion for words or phrases with the meaning "and".
What meaning does 及 bear here that makes semantically sense?

及 means to reach. Some examples:

及格: to pass a test. Literally 'to reach the bar'.
长发及腰: 'long hair reaching waistline'.
涉及: to involve. Literally 'intervention reaches to'.
提及: to mention. Literally '(the scope of) mentioning reaches to'.
力所能及: within grasp. Literally 'capability that (one) can reach'.


Different names for each of the fingers In English we have different names for each of the fingers:

Thumb, index, middle, ring and pinky fingers.

Are there special names for each of these in Chinese and if necessary what are the associated meanings or origins.

Thumb: 拇(mŭ)指(zhĭ) or 大拇指 or 大拇哥.
The first two words are common while the last one is less common. You would hear it more in oral speaking, in some regions(I heard of it from one of my relatives in HeBei province).

Watch the shape of "拇". The left part refers to "hand", and the right part is "母“， meaning "mother". I think it gets this name because of the importance of the thumb. I consult it in the dictionary of 《康熙字典》. It cites "【說文】將指也。" I believe "將指" is an analogy that a thumb is like a general among fingers :)

Index Finger:食指(shí zhĭ)

I think we call it because we would dip this finger to the food(soup, etc) to taste the flavour(食 means to eat). There is a famous story from 《左传》 related the index finger and we coin a word "染指" from it(here, 染 means "to dip"). I won't tell you the story here, because it's a little bit long and complicated, sorry. You can search an idiom we get from it "食指大动" to find more info about this story.

Middle Finger: 中指(zhōng  zhĭ).  "中" means "middle"
Ring Finger: 无名指(wú míng zhĭ). Interesting, "无名" means "without a name, anonymous"
Pinky Finger:小指(xiăo zhĭ) or  小拇指(xiăo mŭ zhĭ). "小" means "little, small"


Why does Chinese lack some level of abstraction in some idioms? (e.g. 兄弟姐妹) Example: in Chinese, you can't* speak of siblings in a general term, and in turn you have to enumerate all 4 combinations of sex and age: 兄弟姐妹 ( older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister )

Can you name other examples like this, and do anyone have any clues or explanations about why is this?

I think it might be in part due to Chinese being a very old language and carrying some aspects of more primitive ways of speech from long ago, but it's just speculation.

* as far as I know

Your question is a bit hard to answer because you can't say a word doesn't exist just because it's a combination of several related characters. This is how most words are made in Chinese. It would be like saying that you can't speak of psychology in a general term in English because you have to describe what it is every time (psychology = psyche + logia (study)).

Basically, 兄弟姐妹 is not really an enumeration, it's a word, just like 同学 is not a description but also a word. How these words are composed is mostly incidental (although it's often relatively logical and consistent).

To go back to your question, other examples of "enumeration-based" words I can think of are 夫妇 (couple), 父母 (parents)


Can someone please translate these characters for me? (Characters identified: 柔道) Could someone please–p l e a s e–translate this text on this piece of jewelry for me. I've tried so many places and apps to figure it out but I can't get the answers.

It is 柔道 Judo.

柔 means 'soft, gentle'

道 means 'way, method'

some stokes are missing, may be omitted for style


Boundary-shifting wordplay (or mishearing) in Chinese? In English, ambiguity (mishearing, or intentional wordplay) can be created by
boundary shifting.  Do you have anything like this in Chinese?  Thank you.  HH

(written space -shifting)

notable -- no table -- not able

AMIABLE TOGETHER = AM I ABLE TO GET HER? (by Dmitri Borgmann)
              is a perfect longer example.

(aural (spoken?) "juncture" -shifting) -- (moving of perceptual grouping?)

grade A    ---   gray day
night-rate   ---  nitrate
I scream     ---   ice cream
a nice man   ---   an ice man
home-acre    ---   hoe-maker

Intended tags:  Wordplay, Speech-error, Humor

喜欢上 一个人

to get to like someone or to get to like being alone

  喜欢 上一个 人

to like the previous man/woman

  喜欢 上 一个人

to like to f-word someone


What does 叫 mean in 你家的门真难叫? From my grade-3 语文 textbook, we find:

每天早晨，敲门的声音总把哥什提亚和娃丽吵醒。这是邮递员送报纸来了。有一次，邮递员对爸爸说：“同志，你家的门真难叫，最好挂一个信箱。”
My translation: Every early morning, a knocking sound noisily awakens Gostia and Wali.  This is the postal worker delivering the newspaper.  One time, the postal worker told my father: "Comrade, your house's door is really 难叫, it'd be best to hang a letter box."

I don't understand what 叫 means in the last sentence.  The context suggests something along the lines of the door makes an unpleasant noise, although I would write 难听 rather than 难叫.

叫 (jiào)
CC-CEDICT: to shout / to call / to order / to ask / to be called / by (indicates agent in the passive mood)

This definition doesn't seem to fit into the context.
Question: What does 叫 mean in 你家的门真难叫?
Google Translate translates 你家的门真难叫 to "your door is really hard to call", but "calling" a door doesn't make sense to me.

叫门means knock the door or using other method to tell the people in room to open the door.


How did 贼 come to mean "extremely"? While watching a tv show, I heard the presenter, a Beijinger, say 贼好. In that particular context, the only possible meaning was 很好.
Later I did some research and, as a matter of fact, it turns out 贼 zei2 does mean "very", "extremely" in north-eastern dialects (东北话), and the usage has been popularized to some extent in internet speak.
However in Mandarin this character mainly translates as "thief", "evildoer". The meaning "extremely", though mentioned by dictionaries, appears to be a regionalism, but how come it uses the same character for "thief"?
A simple explanation might be that the sound "zei" with 阳平 tone (second tone) in 东北话 can be represented in Standard Written Chinese only with this character 贼 (...and 鲗 cuttlefish?).
But I wonder if there's something else going on, or a more ancient relation between these two meanings of 贼。

Short answer:
Just for the convenience of writing, it has nothing relationship with "Thief".

Detailed explaination:
Keep in mind: Some word in Chinese is just a pronounciation, it has no official word.
So, in your case, how did 贼 come to mean: extremely:
The answer is: for the convenience of writing.
Originally, people would say this orally:

这部电影zéi好看
我们家乡冬天zéi冷
那个人zéi有钱

When putting these word to paper, people would write the zéi with the commonly used character 贼.
also another examples:

我们那嘎达贼冷.
我们那疙瘩贼冷

here, 嘎达 = 疙瘩 , they don't have the meaning, just have the same pronunciation with the 东北方言. (north-Eastern Chinese dialect)  .
also:

bo leng gai, means 膝盖. (knee)

我昨天打球受伤了, 波棱盖疼
我昨天打球受伤了, 拨了盖疼

ga3 ji1 wo1: means 腋下 (underarm)

天气热, 我嘎鸡窝有点痒
天气热, 我鸽子窝有点痒
天气热, 我嘎子窝有点痒

nen4:  means very

你咋嫩好看呢?
你咋恁好看呢?

for more information, see also this.


Mandarin equivalent of 轉行 (zyun3 hong4), which means to switch industries? In Cantonese, you often say 轉行 (zyun3 hong4) to say "switch industries". What's the Mandarin equivalent?

First: 《广州话-普通话》 indicates that 转行 is

  粤

Cantonese. This has probably changed since it was published but they also give the Mandarin equivalents:

  改行；转业

《广州话方言词典》 also gives the same two Mandarin equivalent words, in opposite order:

  转业；改行

改行 is probably the most colloquial option.


How would you say: "But only X years ago, in month Z of Year Y ..." in Taiwan In Mandarin, how would you say:

But only X years ago, in month Z of Year Y ...

For example.

Now, they say the sun is red.
But only two years ago, in September 2015, they said the sun was blue.

Please note that I would like to convey the meaning of "on the contrary (of the situation earlier), now the opposite situation ...". If possible, I am looking to say so as one would say it in Taiwan, not as one would say it in China.

Please answer using traditional characters.

In Chinese, we use 'Y-M-D' format for stating date.

  "But only two years ago" - "祗不過兩年前"

~

  "in September 2015" - "在二零一五年九月" (In Chinese, we state year before month)

or

"在 2015 年 的九月" - "in September of 2015

Emphasize the month if it is an important information. For example, September is the end of summer holiday


What is the name of this traditional Chinese character font? The image below is from a book I bought while in Hong Kong (ISBN 957-14-4160-0. It's an edition of a work in classical Chinese, with an ancient commentary in classical Chinese, and a modern commentary in mandarin. The book is published in Taiwan.

I have looked all through the book for any mention of the typefaces used to typeset the book, and have not found one.

I am basically in love with the typeface used for the mandarin commentary. I have never seen anything quite like it. The characters are rectangular, and usually 'top-heavy'. Since some of them are quite similar to handwritten forms I have developed over time, I would like to be able to use the font on my computer.

Can anyone help identify it?


What's the actual difference between 文 and 语? Both mean "language" with some other related meanings.

A friend of mine told me that while 文 refers more to the written language, 语 is more related to the spoken one.

Is this a difference and is it the only one?

Yes, that is the main difference between 文 and 语. And you're right to say they refer more to written/spoken language rather than having that exclusive meaning - when someone talks about 中文, for example, they often mean the spoken language as well as just the written form, while 书面语 refers to literary words usually found in books. The other differences are explained by Fefe's post.

Here is a post (in Chinese) on Baidu Zhidao asking the same question, which comes to the same conclusion: http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/86849931.html


Why was I told 在什么情况下……吗？ is wrong? Under what circumstances can police use tear gas?

I translate it as

在什么情况下警察可以使用电击枪吗？

Someone told me this is not correct because it shouldn't end with 吗. But I don't understand, if can police use tear gas can be translated as 警察可以使用电击枪吗? then why can't the given example?
Should the statement "Under what circumstances", when featured in a question, also include 吗 ?

“吗” is used in "Yes-no questions", which are question that can be answered by "yes" or "no".
With "Under what circumstances"/"在什么情况下", the question cannot be answered by "yes" nor "no". So "吗" should not be used.


Is 我的中文水平还是挺有限的 a suitable translation of "My Chinese is still quite limited"? 我的中文水平还是挺有限的。
My Chinese is still quite limited.

Anything wrong with this translation?
Or is there a better way of expressing this?

我的中文水平还是挺有限的。 (My Chinese level is still quite limited)

Nothing wrong with 水平有限 (level is limited) in which '有限' suggests 'not advanced', 'cannot be considered good'
Any adjective that can describe 水平 (level) would do. You can say:
我的中文水平还是挺低的。 (My Chinese level is still quite low)
我的中文水平还是挺一般的。  (My Chinese level is still quite ordinary)
Notice: while 差 (inferior) can describe level, (as in 水平很差),  不好 (not good) or 壞 (bad) cannot. We don't say 水平不好 or 水平壞 because they are not a measurement of level
Side note:
In Cantonese, we have common expressions like 好人有限 (is not that good a person = is a bad person); 好打有限 (is not that good at fighting = bad at fighting - a metaphor for 'not very capable' which can be applied in any area)


synonyms/phrases/poems related to: 情深恭敬少 ABC Proverbs

情深恭敬少 ,知己谈笑多
Lit [When] friendship [is] deep, formalities are few; [for] close confidants, chats [and] laughter are many.
Fig Intimate friends don't stand on ceremony.

What synonyms/phrases/poems are related to 情深恭敬少?
Online material mostly just explains the phrase itself.

The so call " poem" itself is not very polished. I suppose the person who wrote "情深恭敬少 " was thinking an idea along the line of " 熟不拘禮 " ( being so close, there's no need for formalities" )

For 知己談笑多 which is not a convincing statement because 酒肉朋友 談笑 more. Anyway, a phrase "酒逢知己千杯少" (It is such a joy to drink with good friends, one can forget how much he has drunken.) is from a famous poem that depict heartfelt interaction between good friends.


How to ask a native speaker's preferred input system (pinyin, bpmf, etc) What is an appropriate verb for asking native speakers which writing system(s) they are familiar with?

I have presented the following questions to natives before, all without issues pertaining to clarity. However, I would like to know whether any sound "off" and what instead would be a standard way to ask such an inquiry.

你用汉语拼音吗？

你知道汉语拼音吗？

你认识拼音吗？

你懂汉语拼音码？

你看的懂拼音码？

你学了哪个写作系统？

The clearest way I could ask, as a native speaker, is

  你都是用什么输入法来打字的？

输入法 refers to “input system”, and “打字” means type.


Why is 的 used in 你是哪一天出生的 and 我们什么时候开始的 and 前天你什么时候来的这里? I have the following sentences:

你是哪一天出生的？ (sentence 1)

I'm trying to understand why 的 is being used in this sentence. I know it is used to express possession, but I'm not sure that's the case is this example.

我们什么时候开始的？ (sentence 2)

In this case, the 的 seems to be functioning an aspect particle to indicate a past event. Is this correct? Can 的 be used like 了?

前天你什么时候来的这里？ (sentence 3)

Is 的 functioning like an aspect particle in this case?

的 at the end of sentences can be seen in really a lot of cases. Here are just two cases I can think of at the moment:

case 1. 你(是)哪一天出生的？

This question asks about an event which happened in the past. Note it often comes with 是.
If we omit both 是 and 的, it will become 你哪一天出生？This sounds a little weird, because generally the new version means an event to happen in the future, but in the context people understand this is asking about an event in the past.
Compare:

A. 他(是)哪天来的？- asking about an event in the past.
B. 他哪天来？- asking about an event to happen in the future.

Another example:

他在20年前出生。

There isn't 是 or 的, but people understand it without a problem and this is used a lot. It's also very common to see 他(是)(在)20年前出生的。

case 2. 树叶是绿的。 - The leaves are green.

This sentence describes the current status, or the general case.
Generally people don't say 树叶绿 as a standalone sentence, because it is incomplete. However this fragment can be used in poems or nursery rhymes(儿歌，童谣), for example:

黄瓜绿，番茄红，辣椒秧上挂灯笼。

If people say 树叶绿了, this means "the leaves turned green" or "the leaves have turned green".
Note: in Chinese, there are a lot phrasal patterns, like 在 ... 以后, 从 ... 中, 虽然 ... 但是, 不是 ... 而是, and a lot others.
是...的 is one of the most used phrasal patterns. Its structure is

Subject + 是...的 (是 sometimes can be omitted)

This structure can be used to give general descriptions, or to describe events which happened in the past, or to express possibility of something to happen in the future.
Examples:
他(是)前天来的。- describe past event
我(是)坐车来的。- describe past event
我们(是)一起来的。- describe past event
我(是)喝着草原的羊奶长大的。- describe past event
我的一个朋友是被他的女友杀害的。- describe past event. 是 not omitted before 被
我(是)不会弃我的目标的。- express willingness
我看，他(是)不会来的。- express possibility of future event

Although we can sometimes omit 是 from the 是...的 pattern, but we don't ommit 的。We can say, 树叶是绿色的。But we can't say 树叶是绿色。 Because 绿色 is the name of the color (green), and 树叶 is not a type of color. Just like in English, we say "the leaves are green", where green is an adj. But we don't say "the leaves are green color", while we can say "the leaves are of green color". Here the word "of" servers a very similar function as 的 in 树叶是绿色的。
The 是-omitted variation is used in poems a lot. In the following examples, 是 is omitted:
树叶绿绿的。
她的脸红红的。
时间的脚步轻轻的，走过了我的窗前，也走过了我的心田；走过了我的留恋，走过了我的思念。


I have a tattoo, i wish to find the meaning What is the meaning of these letters, and is it somehow connected to eachother?

武安 Wu'an is a city
武安君 was a title of a noble in Tang Dynasty -  張守節: 舊注史記三大家之一 (one of the three great historians of old Chinese history)

武安 means 以武安邦

以- with; use

武 - military; force

安 - maintain peace; keep safe; steady

邦 - nation

(steady the nation with military might or keep the nation safe with military power)


What is the Chinese for "Harbin salad" There is a dish from Northern China called Harbin salad in English as well as in Russian. I want to find out what it is called in Chinese.

Here is a link that describes the dish.

From the description, it contains glass noodle (a.k.a. clear noodle, noodle made of bean or potato starch), in that case the glass noodle is the main and other food materials are just sides, though in the picture the side overwhelmed the main. It is called 东北大拉皮, 哈尔滨大拉皮 or 五彩拉皮. 大拉皮 literally means 'grand (dish of) glass noodles'. 五彩 means 'colorful' referring to the sides.

A dish that looks similar but without glass noodle in it is called 东北大拌菜 or 哈尔滨大拌菜. 大拌菜 literally means 'grand mix of food'.

The recipe of both dishes can vary from home to home, restaurant to restaurant. They usually contain Chinese cabbage, carrots, cucumber. Other common materials you may see include beancurd sticks (strips of tofu skin), Chinese cilantro (a.k.a. coriander), turnip. After 1990's people start to put lettuce and cherry tomato in them.

The main difference between the two dishes, other than having glass noodle or not, is the seasoning. Usually 大拉皮 is salty and dressed with chili or mustard, 大拌菜 is sweet and sour.

东北大拉皮/哈尔滨大拉皮 'Grand dish of glass noodles'：

五彩拉皮 'Colorful glass noodles'：

东北大拌菜/哈尔滨大拌菜 'Grand mix of food'：


Trying to think of creative name for beginner Chinese class I'm creating a beginner level curriculum to teach middle school students the foundations of Chinese language and culture. I do not have a solid foundation in the culture, but wanted to impart what I know to inner-city kids in the effort of expanding their minds to East Asia.

I watched/read 西游记 (Journey to the West) a while back and thoroughly enjoyed the story. Since this class is attempting to bridge students here to East Asia, I thought a clever name could be 东亚游记 （Journey to the East) to represent the beginning of these students' journeys on their way to learn more about East Asia.

With my limited cultural background, would this misconstrue the point of the course? Is this actually capturing what I'm looking for? Or is there a better way/more concise way to translate "The beginning/foundations to learning about Chinese language and culture"?

If you are travelling ONLY in China (or mainly in China), you can name your class "中国行" (Tranvel in China).

  Or is there a better way/more concise way to translate "The beginning/foundations to learning about Chinese language and culture"?

For a beginning as a Chinese's thinking, I think you need to give such a name as "中国行", because it's of too deep meaning and many students will think you have a lot of things to talk about. To be very honest, I think you can translate it as "初识中国","认识中国"or"汉语语言文化基础"


What is the Correct Sense of 隔空喊话 in English? Baidu defines it literally as "not directly engaging with [someone/thing] when talking, rather talking with no person in mind."  I'm curious whether it can be close to how we say in English, "[two parties] are talking past each other" and or simply "talking to yourself".

Here are some examples I've dredged up that illustrates some different usages:

Two sides - "not directly engaging with each other": 张馨予在微博大发感慨...15分钟后，前男友李晨也发了条微博：“What should I do？”(我该怎么办？)两条微博一前一后，不免让网友浮想联翩，纷纷猜测：“这是隔空喊话吗？...”
Two sides - "talking past each other"?:  中越海上问题高度复杂敏感，隔空喊话只会引发民意波动,双方应全力避免...要靠协商对话管控分歧和矛盾。（fairly significant omissions here, but I don't think it violates the logic)
One side  - "talking to thin air"?: 日本首相安倍晋三自上台以来，一直在隔空喊话：“日本对话的门从来都是敞开着的，我们盼望与中国、与韩国举行首脑会谈，哪怕是在国际场合的走廊见一面也行”。乍听起来，真有一股非见不可的感觉。可细一琢磨，却如同嚼蜡，根本不是那么一回事。

(1) Seems to be the usage explained in Baidu. I can't think of a pat-ter way to translate "not directly engaging with each other" though.

In (2), the Baidu sense seems collapse, since they're not really talking to each other at all. So it almost seems as if it could be translated "China and Vietnam should stop talking past each other in [their independent] efforts to stir up public opinion" - is this the correct interpretation, or if not, what does the phrase mean there? I'm not even sure that's the right way for me to be using "talking past each other"!

In (3), what exactly is Prime Minister Abe doing?  This sort of sounds like the whole "talking to thin air" thing from the Baidu definition, but it doesn't make sense to translate this way into English, and you can't say Abe is "talking to himself" like a crazy person, either.

According to the examples you provided:

Two parties seem to respond and talk to each other but actually not. They say something one after another which looks as if it's on topic, but in fact the things are attached to the same topic literally.
Express some opinion that can lead the consensus, or just talk to the public related to one party itself, without condisering the other and the two-party conversation.
Pretend to express something but actually not have that in mind, not sincere. Or 说空话.

I think it's not easy to find an accurate English counterpart. It's something like only seemingly talk to the other party but with some purpose (involved in other topics, or even be malicious) in mind.


Difference between 洞 and 口 for holes in things From what I see, there are examples where both 洞 and 口 can be used to describe holes in things. For example from samples in Pleco:
衣服撕了个口 (A hole was torn in the jacket)
衬衫破了一个洞 (Have a hole in one's shirt)
This being the case, what are the differences in usage between these two characters? Do these relate to different types of holes? Is one character more common than the other one for this use case?

In my opinion, this is a "口":

This is a "洞":

口/口子 means "(人体或物体的表层)破损的地方[the place where it is damaged(on the surface of a human body or an object)]", 洞 means "物体中间的穿通的或凹入较深的部分(The penetrating or deep recessed part of the object)". You can say "我的手破了一道口子", but absolutely cannot say "我的手破了一个洞"! Or I can't imagine how panic the person who hears it will be.
Some other examples:

日子久了，水滴竟在石头上滴出一个洞来。(水滴石穿)

他的手被小刀划了一道口子。


Are phrases of the form 我[something]去 informal or slang (or just plain incorrect)? I've started using phrases with the structure 我[something]去 (wǒ [something] qù) with the meaning I'm going to do [something].

I've picked this up while in China because other people seem to say these things.  We don't have this sentence structure in English, and I'm not sure it's legitimate in Chinese.

Some examples I've used are:

我跑步去 (wǒ pǎobù qù) = I'm going to run. (Baidu 97,200 hits)
我上厕所去 (wǒ shàng cèsuǒ qù) = I'm going to use the toilet (Baidu 506,000 hits)
我睡觉去 (wǒ shuìjiào qù) = I'm going to sleep. (Baidu. 4,910,000 hits)
我换衣服去 (wǒ huàn yīfú qù) = I'm going to change clothes. (Baidu 1,460,000 hits)
我礼拜去 (wǒ lǐbài qù) = I'm going to pray. (Baidu 240,000 hits)

It seems common enough.  All of these examples could be rephrased 我去[something] and I think that would be legitimate.  But...

Question: Are phrases of the form 我[something]去 informal or slang (or just plain incorrect)?

It's a correct usage of 我...去. It's usually used when asked "你干什么去？"

It would be like:

A: "你干什么去？"

B: "我跑步去"；“我上厕所去”；“我睡觉去”；“我换衣服去”；“我做礼拜去” （more clear than 我礼拜去）

When asked with "你（要）去干什么？"， one usually uses 我（要）去...

It would be like:

A: "你（要）去干什么？"

B: "我（要）去跑步"；“我（要）去上厕所”；“我（要）去睡觉”；“我（要）去换衣服”；“我（要）去做礼拜”

Those colloquial terms are commonly used in daily dialogues.


What does the use of 'verb 了 verb' indicate? This text is 囊萤照读。 In this short text I found 5 'verb 了 verb' repetitions:

擦了擦汗，晃了晃头，揉了揉脖子，挪了挪屁股，灯在耳边摇了摇

Do these just indicate repeated action?

Or is it 'verb 了 noun':
擦了擦: wipe a wipe
晃了晃: shake a shake
揉了揉: rub a rub
挪了挪: move a move
摇了摇: shake a shake

[verb]+[verb]

Repeat a same verb once, is called 'redoubling'. A redoubled verb indicates the action happens in a slight degree and a short duration.

Example:

點頭 ( nod head); 點點頭 ( nod head slightly)

試 (try); 試試 (try a little )

看 (look); 看看 (look briefly)

  [verb]+[counting word]+ [ verb]

In the cases of a verb following by a counting word and then the same verb again, the repeated verb is actually a [verb classifier]

Example:

點頭 (nod head); 點一點頭 (nod one nod/ nod head once)

試 (try); 試一試 (try one try / try once )

看 (look); 看一看 (look one look / look once )

  The particle 了  following a verb indicate 'completion'

Example:

點了一點頭 (nodded one nod/ nodded head once)

試了一試 (tried one try / tried once )

看了一看 (looked one look / looked once  )

  Now come to your question: what [verb]+了+[verb] indicate?

It is similar to point (3) with the counting word omitted.

點了點頭 = 點了(一)點頭

試了試 = 試了(一)試

看了看 = 看了(一)看


Similar pronunciations of tea/茶 across languages The Cantonese (Yale cha4), Mandarin (pinyin chá) and Kan’yōon (cha) pronounciations of 茶 are similar to the Russian чай (IPA t͡ɕaj) word for tea. Do these have a common origin?

Yep, they do
As you can find on the great and all knowing wiki, the word for tea in most languages comes from the Chinese:
Cognate to Min tê:

English tea
Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish te
Finnish and Estonian tee
French thé
German Tee
Greek τέϊον
Hebrew תה
Indonesian and Malay teh
A great many others

Cognate to Mandarin chá:

Greek τσάι
Japanese ちゃ and さ
Korean 차
Kurdish ça
Punjabi چا / ਚਾਹ
Portuguese chá
Turkish çay
And others

Cognate to Mandarin chá via Persian:

Arabic شاي
Czech čaj
Georgian ჩაი
Greek τσάι
Hindi चाय
Pashto چای
Persian چای
Romanian ceai
Russian чай
Turkish and Turkmen çay
Ukrainian чай
Urdu چائے
Others

There's some double counting going on here, but I'm just copying from their list.
Here's an interesting map showing the etymology of various words for "tea" in Europe.


Double (overlapping) separable verbs? I have recently come across this sentence:
她惊讶得说不出话来
Which I couldn't understand for a while, but now it seems like 说话 and 出来 overlap:

说    话
   出    来

Is this a normal thing to happen in Chinese, or am I misinterpreting whats going on here?

I might be conflating two problems here, but when I asked my friend, he suggested to say this as:
她惊讶得话都说不出来
But this only confused me further, as to why it's 话……说, and not 说……话. He proceeded to give me examples of a “can’t even …” structure, but they didn't follow the same pattern:

  她惊讶得话都说不出来 → 话……说[!]

  手机都放不下来 → 放……来

  猫都拿不上来 → 拿……上

So how does this work?

What I can tell you is that this kind of structure is to express emphasis.

'她惊讶得说不出话来' has the same meaning as '她惊讶得话都说不出来'.
But the latter uses the inverted pattern, which is always used as for emphasis.

'说话' and '出来' in this kind of situation do not overlap. What's more, '出来' stresses the act of speaking.
It may be translated as 'I even can't work this simple question out.'

If you still don't understand, don't hesitate to ask.


What is the meaning of 能者多劳? I've seen this word 能者多劳 being used in multiple senses on the Internet:

One can interpret 劳 as a verb that means working, as in 劳动. Then it gives us able people (should) do more work, or loosely translates to "from each according to his ability".

Google translate has this translation verified by Translate Community.

Or one can interpret 劳 as an adjective that means tired, as in 劳累. Then it gives us able men are always busy.

Wiktionary defines it in this way.

Which interpretation is correct? Is there an authoritative answer, or is both interpretation acceptable?

I would say both interpretations are acceptable.

The more works(劳动) you have to do, the busier (劳累) you would get.

A good example in real life.

My sister can't cook, so my brother in law cooks all the meals for the family.

My sister can't drive long distance, so my brother in law has to drive when they need to go to far away place.

My sister's English is poor, so my brother in law does all the talking when they have to deal with English speakers.

He has to do more works because he has more abilities; he is also busier because he has to do more works.

IMO 多劳 means "work more" and "work more" make you "busier".

You can say 能者多劳 means "the more able man get more works and get busier".


The usage of 该 in sentences I still do not get how to use 该 in a sentence. For example,

就该吃饭了, you can just say 就吃饭了, can't you?
How do you use 该 properly in a sentence because I don't get its purpose.

就该吃饭了 is missing a subject for example 你
=> 你 (現在就) 该吃饭了 You should be eating now

就吃饭了 is not grammatically correct, it's missing 要 and a subject
=> 我 (就) 要 吃饭了 I 'm going to eat

该吃饭了 is proper because it implies the subject to be I/You
该吃饭了 means I/You should be eating now, or Time to eat.


When did 像 become the 'proper' form for "to be like"/"to resemble"? A book I have from 1987 uses 象 to mean "to be like"/"to resemble." For instance it defines 粗沙沙 as:

  形容感觉不细腻，象沙一样粗糙

Nowadays this would be considered a wrong 错别字. The book, though, is only thirty years old.

When did 像 become the 'proper' form for "to be like"/"to resemble"?

From 1986/10.

“像”字有这么多含义，但在《现代汉语词典》中只有第一个“画像、雕像”的意思，这是因为《现代汉语词典》是在1964—1968年期间出版的。 1964年，经中国国务院批准，公布了《简化汉字总表》。在这个总表中，“像”是作为“象”的繁体字出现的，但注明“象和像意义可能混淆时，仍用‘像’ 字”。所以在此之后出版的词典仍保留了“像”字，但是只有第一个含义，也就是说，只有在涉及到“人像、画像、塑像”等情况时，才用“像”，其余都用 “象”。
所以后来经专家学者研究讨论，在1986年重新公布《简化汉字总表》时，对个别字作了调整，其中就包括恢复“象、像”的原状，“象”不再作“像”的简化字。

According to the 《简化汉字总表》 published in 1964, 像 is treated as the traditional character of 象, only used for the meaning of appearance;looks;statue;picture. For other cases 象 should be used.
From 1986 it's repealed, 像 was not treated as the traditional character of 象 again, and regained its meaning of "resemble;be like;take after;similar;alike".
Even it has benn corrected but the confusion still continues. That might be why the book in 1987 still used 象.
像和象的用法有什么区别
像和象的区别


What are the radicals that make up 地? What are the radicals that make up the character "地"?

Just from looking at it, it looks like "土" and "也" but "也" is a word not a radical.

MDBG also has this  break down, and in turn breaks "也" down to the "line" radical ("丨") and "乜" but as far as I can tell and also according to MDBG, "乜" isn't a radical or made up of radicals.

To return to my question: What are the radicals that make up the character "地"?

The context to this is that I have just started using mnemonic stories to help me learn new words and their characters. This question has come up with 地球, which means "Earth".

My current mnenomic story uses:

地: soil, "also"
球: king, demand

And so I have, "the soil was also the king's demand". But I'd rather use the canonical radicals and learn things properly!

地, the radical is 土.

It is made up of two parts, 土 and 也.

It is 形声字（Phono-semantic compound characters）, which means it is made up of two parts, one shows it meaning, the other shows its sound. According to 说文解字 tab in zdic, 也 is the sound part, though 也 and 地 sound very differently now:

  元气初分，輕清陽爲天，重濁陰爲地。萬物所陳也。从土也聲。墬，籒文地从■。徒内切〖注〗埊、■、嶳、埅，亦古文地。

■ is a character that cannot be displayed here. Please check the site of zdic

球 is also a 形声字. The 王 part (which is the radical) carries the meaning, which was originally 玉 (jade), and the 求 part carries the sound.


Resource for quality translations of famous American English speech/writing into Chinese? I want to keep my study of Mandarin fun and engaging. One way I thought might be helpful is if there was a resource that held quality translations of famous American speeches or writing. By studying and practicing the Chinese version of famous passages, I think I could learn the language at a more lyrical level, while still working from an (english) base I can easily comprehend. This would be as opposed to studying the speeches e.g. of Mao Zedong, where I would need to learn both the English and the Chinese version.

For example, if there were a resource that took the Top 100 Speeches from American Rhetoric, and translated them into Mandarin (ideally with commentary!) that would be exactly what I'm looking for.

It seems that you wanna learn Chinese by listening to its voice and let the video show English words?

Well……A pure Chinese film or TV, video CANNOT do that at all and you should involve yourself in Chinese environment to learn the language well.

However (of course)——If you insist doing so, you can see this:

ICS Channel——This channel is playing Chinese things but translated into English version for foreign people.


快别说了 vs 别说了: tone changed? I understand what is the meaning of 别说了.  What is 快 doing?  According to Google Translate:  快别说了 as “Stop talking”.  别说了 as “do not talk”.
Does the 快 change the tone of 别说了?  If so, how do you translate differently from Google?

快 (quick; hurry) here is a [command/ demand exclamation] We use it in front of a verb or verb phrase to stress the urgency, demands immediate compliance.

(a request) 别说了 = "you've said enough" or "stop talking" (no tone indicated)

(a demand) 快别说了 = shut up (快住口) or 'Stop talking! Now!'

It is similar to 'Now!' in English
Example:
Drop your weapon. (no tone indicated)
Drop your weapon! Now! (commanding/ urgent tone)
Edit:

快住手 = hurry and stop = Stop! Now!

快去救人 = hurry and go save people = Go save people! Now

Note:
快 can also be used as the short form of '就快' (soon) or '快要' (almost)
Example:
(就)快沒彈藥了 - out of ammunition soon
(就)快餓死了 - starving to death soon
快(要)沒彈藥了 - almost out of ammunition
快(要)餓死了 - almost (about to) starve to death


Does 没有办法 have the same idiomatic meaning in Chinese that "No way" does in English? "No way" in English has a couple of meanings.
Like, it can be used to express surprise. Does 没有办法 also carry some idiomatic meanings?

In short, no. Except a selected few idioms such as 'killing two birds with one stone', where it is directly translated from English to Chinese (一石二鳥) and means exactly the same, literal translations usually do not carry any idiomatic meaning with them.

Shaw provided accurate translations to the three listed definitions of 'no way'. To supplement, 沒(有)辦法 (lit. 'no means/method') as a stand-alone phrase is used when you can't help with or do anything about something. 沒(辦)法 as a preceding adverbial phrase, however, is synonymous to 不能 (cannot; incapable of), as in you are unable to perform a certain act.

我把功課弄丟了。沒辦法之下，只好重新寫一遍。I lost my homework. There was nothing I could do but to rewrite it once more.
鄰居昨晚開派對，我沒法睡。My neighbours threw a party last night; I was unable to sleep.


What is the meaning of 变现？ I have this sentence, but I'm not sure what '变现‘ means. I think it's 'assets', but baidu has 'realize' and 'liqidate'. Is '变现‘ an abbreviation for a longer phrase?

三是租赁行业，利用虚假身份证明，骗取汽车租赁公司汽车进行倒卖变现;

三是租赁行业，
The third kind is the rental car industry,

利用虚假身份证明
(they) use fake IDs,

骗取汽车租赁公司
(to) cheat rent-a-car companies

汽车进行倒卖变现;
car carry out resell at profit, realize cash/profit

they then sell the car to get cash.

变现 is a word by itself, not abbreviation, but it literally means 变成现金 (convert (assets) into cash), usually for the purpose of liquidation or realization, so commonly translated into 'liquidate' or 'realize'. The translation for the sentence in your question is correct.


Is the visual similarity of the simplifications 華→华 and 畢→毕 a coincidence? 華 and 畢 are very similar, the bottom is the same, and only the top 4/5 of their strokes differ.

Their simplifications 华 and 毕 are also similar, the bottom and the top rights are the same and, and the top lefts have the same number of strokes. Both tops now serve as phonetic components, but still look very similar.

Is this a coincidence or was there a strategy?

I think they just, by coincidence, happen to look similar, (to some people I suppose) In any case they sound completely different from each other with no similarity in meaning.

Just like 友 & 发.


Can somebody translate this seal script, please? I am researching about a Chinese poet who wrote in Spanish as "A. Kuan Veng". This is surely an approximation of his name in Spanish, however, in his seal appear four characters: I am pretty sure three of them are: 關, 景 and 南
I would be deeply thankful if you give me the last character, and also a possible dialect for the writer, since Mandarin 關 /guān/ is almost a perfect phonological match with the Spanish pronunciation of "Kuan", but Mandarin 景 /jǐng/ and /nán/ do not start with a /a/ vowel sound nor are similar to "Veng".
Thanks a lot.

The last character is 印

The seal read 關景南印 (Guan Jingnan's seal). 關景南 is the author's name
(originally I thought it was '色'  in "景色" which means "scenery" (they do look similar to me)


Question about complement of frequency? (Using 过 and 次) I know that it is grammatical to say "我游了三次泳."

If I wanted to say, "I saw you three times," could I say it as "我看过你三次见"?

Thank you,
Rachel

No, you can't.

The first sentence: 游 is a verb. 泳 is a noun.

The second sentence: 看 is a verb. 見 is an adverb. It is not the same structure as the first one.

You should just say 我看過你三次 or 我見過你三次.


Is there a kanji tattoo meaning e.g. "live your life" or "love your life" or "be yourself"? I'm thinking of getting a tattoo on my wrist, one saying: "Live your life" or  "love your life" or "be yourself" in kanji.  (Not more then 2 characters if possible.)

I asked on the Japanese Stack Exchange and I got sent here.

自爱 (love; respect oneself)

爱生命 (love life)

我是我 (I am myself)


What is the difference between 由于 and 因为? What is the difference between "由于" and "因为"?

For example, what is the difference between

  由于今天是公共假期，我不需要上学。

and

  因为今天是公共假期，我不需要上学。

由于 means "due to" or "because of".
因为 means "because".

There are also some differences in usage too,

由于 is usually placed at the beginning of a sentence

  由于天气恶劣，飞机被迫折返梳邦机场降落。 Due to the bad weather, the plane is forced
  to turn back to land at Subang Airport.

因为 can be used where the cause is stated following the effect

  我不需要上学，因为今天是公共假日。 I don't need to go to school because today is a
  public holiday.

因为 can be used in conjunction with 所以

  因为今天是公共假日，所以我不需要上学。 Because today is a public holiday, therefore I
  don't need to go to school.


What does 形势大好 in this situation mean I'm reading a letter that Ba Jin wrote in the 80s to a group of students, and there are a few places in the letter that he uses what appears to be a phrase '形势大好' that meant something specific to the context of the times.  Here's a usage of it in context:

  我常常想，我们生活在其中的社会有时会是十分古怪，叫人难以理解。人们喜欢说，形势大
  好，我也这样说过。这种说法不是没有道理，我也有自己的经验：根据我耳闻目睹，舍身救
  人、一心为公的英雄事迹和一人有难、八方支援的好人好事，每天都在远近发生。

I think the literal translation "excellent situation" is missing something.  So is there a better way of understanding it?

漢典
shows that 形势 means [situation; circumstance; condition; state of affairs]
在其周围环境中所处的情形；或在一定时间内，各种情形的相对的或综合的境况。

According to the context,
the author was talking about
社会形势大好
because there were many 好人好事 everyday.

Thus, I think 形势 means 气氛 here.

The social atmosphere is very good.


Is it okay to ask 你的电话号码是什么? Is it ok to ask:

你的电话号码是什么? (What is your telephone number)

Or do I have to say:

你的电话号码是多少? which is the translation on Duolingo.

Also, can I just say:

"你的电话是多少?

because 电话 already means phone number.

I'd say all of your sentences are used in practice within the  mainland.

These are all correct expressions:

你的电话号码是什么？
你的电话号码是多少？
你的电话是多少？

Colloquially, we even brief it like 你电话多少？ or 电话多少？

Hope this could help you.


What is the difference between 经验 and 经历? Is there any difference between these two words - 经历 and 经验? Both mean experience in English.

If there is a difference, how can I use it accordingly?

经历 stresses on the passive side, while 经验 on the active side. Like in a fire, it is not your intention to have such an experience because it is a disaster, but you get through it, so that is 经历， but when you tell others what you feel about or what you have learnt from it, that is 经验. That is my understanding, and hope it is helpful.


枕头 versus 垫子, are these different? I've come across these two words in a picture-book. Are  枕头 and 垫子 the same kind of pillow or are they different kinds of pillow?

枕头(Zhen Tou) is the pillow which is on your bed. That's the only meaning of that word.
However, 垫子(Dian Zi) usually means a mat or pad which you are sitting on. Or means some pad could be put under a glass cup, for instance.


About an extra sentence in a Min song in a CD 光盘上在这首歌的结束又多一句话：“na li bo sua tsong lai thi pue tua”（若你无线总来？袂大？）; maybe “tsong ai”, maybe “na bo sua”…就是“若你无线总爱紩袂煞” | Nā lí bô suànn tsóng ài thīnn buē suah | 如果你没线总要缝不完… but it sounds like it ends with thinn pue tuann…

This is what I annotated in my list of Chinese songs from a particular year about the song 针线情. Said song is found, along with many others, on one of a couple of CD's of Min Nan songs that were given to me by a friend a few years ago. The lyrics in the CD match the video exactly, except that at the end there is this extra sentence which, to my ears, and modulo nasal vowels which I cannot distinguish from the CD, sounds like:

  Na li bo sua tsong lai thi pue tua.

A sensible reconstruction that would fit (more or less) the rest of the song would be:

  若你无线总爱紩袂煞 | Nā lí bô suànn tsóng ài thīnn buē suah | 如果你没有线总都要紩不完 | If you have no thread you will never end sewing

There are three non-matches with the above rough transcription:

The 爱 which reads ài and not "lai", but that was already regarded as a possible mishearing in the annotation, and it is anyway easily fixed by replacing 爱 with 来 | lâi;
The 袂 which reads buē and not "pue";
The 煞 which reads suah and not "tua"; my problem is not much with the final (which from hearing could be either -ua, -uann, -uah, -uat, -uap, -uak, -uannh), but with the initial, which I hear as "t" and not "s".

I just relistened, and here is my revised rough transcription:

  Na bo sua tsong ai thi pue tua

So the first part is definitely 若无线总爱, but the second part definitely doesn't match the pronunciation of 紩袂煞. So which of the following is the case?

The singer in the CD mispronounced or I misheard;
It is actually not 紩袂煞 but something (then what?) that matches "thi pue tua" as a rough transcription.

The meaning of the last sentence is:

如果沒有線，要如何補被單？
How do I mend the sheets if there is no thread?

If we put it in Min Nan, the sentence is 若無線，怎樣補被單.

In this case, we can use 添 instead of 補 in 閩南語.

So, it becomes 若無線，怎樣添被單.

nā bô suànn, tsuánn iūnn thinn phuē tuann?


How can I get better at reading handwriting? How can I get better at reading handwriting? Are there fonts that look like it, or web sites with examples for practice? Are there some common shortcuts that people take when writing by hand?

I have been able to purchase in China books that have different styles of handwriting including shortcuts. They also have a layer of thin paper over the top of each page so you can trace.

You can also look for books that show common characters written in different styles from print, traditional to script etc.

This is not something you will be taught unless you pay someone to go through with you, as it's not commonly taught in classes.


Are `sh` and `x` really different phonemes, or just different realizations of the same phoneme? I can't think of any minimal pairs; like shu vs. xu probably shouldn't count as a minimal pair since the vowel is different.

This is a classic problem with defining phonemes. Looking for "complementary distribution" of sounds does not uniquely determine a phonological analysis. In Mandarin (I'll use pinyin here), the palatal set of consonants (j,q,x) is in complementary distribution with all of the following sets:

zh, ch, sh
z, c, s
g, k, h

This gives you three different options on which things to treat as the "same" phonemes. And you can go in the opposite direction too: Pinyin distinguishes all these consonant-sets, but then it merges the written form of the front-vs-back vowels. You could do a phonological analysis like that too, or at least, you almost could, as /u/ and /y/ contrast when following /n/ and /l/.
And indeed it's the case that different romanization systems make different choices about how to do this. To quote from Wikipedia:

The Yale and Wade–Giles systems mostly treat the palatals as allophones of the retroflexes; Tongyong Pinyin mostly treats them as allophones of the dentals; and Mainland Chinese Braille treats them as allophones of the velars. In standard pinyin and bopomofo, however, they are represented as a separate sequence.
The palatals arose historically from a merger of the dentals [t͡s, t͡sʰ, s] and velars [k, kʰ, x] before high front vowels and glides. Previously, some instances of modern [t͡ɕ(ʰ)i] were instead [k(ʰ)i], and others were [t͡s(ʰ)i] . The change took place in the last two or three centuries at different times in different areas, but not in the Jianghuai dialect used at the imperial court. This explains why some European transcriptions of Chinese names (especially in postal romanization) contain ki-, hi-, tsi- or si- where a palatal might be expected. Examples are Peking for Beijing, Chungking for Chongqing, Fukien for Fujian, Tientsin for Tianjin; Sinkiang for Xinjiang, and Sian for Xi'an.


Why is 讲 where it is in 他英语讲得很好? I was doing a sentence rearranging exercise and came across this:

  他英语讲得很好。

Could someone explain the structure of this sentence?  I feel like it would be more properly written as:

  他会说英语说得很好。

I was confused thinking that 英语 is the object of 讲 and so then would go after the verb. Could I say "他讲英语。"? Maybe "他讲英语讲得很好。"? And the explanation is that the first 讲 is just left out?

Why can't it be "他讲得很好英语。"? Is it just weird to have the adverbial phrase before the language being spoken?

Maybe "他讲英语讲得很好。"? And the explanation is that the first 讲 is just left out?

Exactly this.

The grammatical rule here is pretty simple, but sometimes overlooked:
with complements of grade (得 + verbal phrase) the main verb is doubled, in order to keep the strong bound between verb + object and between verb + grade particle, so your example would be actually written:

  他讲英语讲得很好

Then, the first occurrence of the main verb (the one before the object) can be omitted, so you end up with:

  他 (subject)
  讲 (main verb)
  英语 (object)
  讲 (verb doubled)
  得 (grade particle)
  很好 (verbal phrase)


What does it mean for a woman to be 贤惠 (xiánhuì)? Judging from what I've read, Chinese culture honors women who are 贤惠 (xiánhuì), e.g. a man would want a 贤惠 wife (this actually arose in my recent question).  However, I get the feeling there's not going to be a simple, one-word translation of 贤惠; it seems intertwined with traditional Chinese gender roles.
CC-EDICT says 贤惠 is a variant of 贤慧 (xiánhuì), and writes:

賢惠 贤惠 [xian2 hui4] /variant of 賢慧|贤慧[xian2 hui4]/
賢慧 贤慧 [xian2 hui4] /(of a wife) wise and kind/perfect in her traditional roles/

I'm fairly sure this is a surface-level definition (possibly even inaccurate).
Question: What does it mean for a woman to be 贤惠?
From what I've read online, it seems such a woman is "virtuous" and has "family values" (whatever that means), is loyal and respectful to her husband, and is willing to do housework.  Maybe she's shy, modest, and has feminine behavior.  It seems mostly unrelated to her physical appearance.

This might be a good example of how dictionaries, while correct, don't exactly capture everyday usage.
贤惠 is a very common everyday word, used when someone is:

good a cooking

good at cleaning up

good at taking care of chores

Usually it is used for women, married or not, but it can even be sarcastically used with men. If a guy cooks up a nice meal you can laughingly say something like: “好贤惠哦”.


Meaning of 差 in 现在差一刻九点? I have difficulties understanding sentence.
What is meaning of 差 in the following sentence?

  我看一下，现在差一刻九点。

It literally means differ. 差一刻九点 means a quarter to nine. 差 in the phrase 差一点 and 差几块钱/几个月 means the same, that is, adding the amount missed will turn the current situation into the target situation (could be better or worse).


When to use 于 and not 於 in traditional Chinese? On my last question, there is a hint not to treat 於 as the traditional variant of 于。However, my keyboard (Tw) never proposes 于。

I also noted that the commentary on the 學而 on this site uses 于 twice. The text and commentary combined use 於 nine times. Can anyone enlighten me?

This answer details a bit of history of the development of「于」and「於」, and addresses why they overlap. It is purely meant to be a complement to @user3306356's answer, which has responded to the question directly.

In the Modern Chinese language shared across all Chinese-using regions,「于」and「於」largely represents the same overlapping preposition/adposition function. For this function only*, any proposed "rules" specifying the difference in usage between the two are very unlikely to be accepted across all Chinese-speaking regions, mainly complicated by the fact that PRC has made「於」obsolete and Taiwan has a habit of using「於」and not「于」. This is also why you wouldn't find「于」on all but the most thorough Taiwan-Chinese input methods.

「于」and「於」are both phonetic loans; they both originally represented something else.

  Glyph origin of 于

  「于」was originally a picture of a wind instrument:

  It was later simplified to

  then further simplified to「于」. The original sense of the wind instrument is now written「竽」after「于」became extensively used for its grammatical function meaning and had lost its original meaning.

  Glyph origin of 於

  「於」and「烏」were originally the same character, but have been graphically differentiated. For reference, their development looked something like

  There was absolutely no difference between the characters「於」and「烏」before the Qin dynasty, and「烏/於」was used for its current grammatical function long before they became different characters.

The historical usage of「于」and「於」goes in accordance to something like the following timeline:

Western Zhou

Only「于」is used for the grammatical function.
During the same period,「於」is used as an exclamation.
This is especially obvious when both「于」and「於」appear simultaneously:

Late Western Zhou to end of the Spring and Autumn period:

「于」sees an additional use of a filler syllable to match rhythms across commonly used phrases.
「於」gains the grammatical function of what was previously「于」, but「于」still sees higher usage frequency for this function, and there is no difference between the two in this context.
「於」still kept its previous meaning (as an exclamation).

Warring States and later:

「於」overtakes「于」in frequency in the grammatical function sense, but both were still used and neither was permanently dropped.

See also 從“于 / 於”用法上的變化看複合詞“於是”的產生.

*There are differences between「于」and「於」when they're not used in the grammatical function sense, which this answer touches upon but doesn't explain thoroughly - detailed dictionaries will provide a more comprehensive explanation.


Why west and wine vessel/10 th terrestrial branch are similar? 西 xī west
酉 yǒu a wine vessel, 10 th terrestrial branch
Which word is first invented? Why these 2 are similar with a small line as an addition? Thanks

The first thing to point out is that both west for 「西」 and 10th terrestrial branch for 「酉」 are both rebuses or phonetic loans. This means that the shape of the character does not have anything to do with the meaning of the word that it represents.
The character 「西」 represented a word which sounded similar or sounded the same to an existing word meaning west, therefore it was also used for the word west, and the same idea goes for 「酉」.

時期
「西」
「酉」

商
甲　前5.13.2合集34340
甲　乙9021合集20856

西周
金　伯⿹戈冬簋集成4115
金　三年壺集成9726

戰國
晉・璽印　3966古璽彙編
燕・璽印　3447古璽彙編

秦
簡　日書乙種163睡虎地秦簡
簡　日書乙種225睡虎地秦簡

西漢
隸　二年酒鋗
隸　新承水槃

東漢
隸　史晨碑
隸　韓仁銘

—
楷
楷

The similarity in appearance between 「西」 and 「酉」 is nothing but a long history of shape stylisation.
「西」 originally depicted a bird's nest, and this word is now written as 「棲」 (Baxter-Sagart OC: /*s-nˤər/). The character 「西」 was borrowed to mean west (also /*s-nˤər/) since the earliest traceable inscriptions, but this borrowed usage is a phonetic loan.
「酉」 originally depicted a container for storing alcohol. This was very early on extended to mean wine, alcohol in general, now written 「酒」 (/*tsuʔ/). An abundance of characters containing 「酉」 or a derivative of 「酉」 as a semantic component have something to do with alcohol or fermentation:

「醬」 fermented soybean sauce
「尊」 ceremonial wine vessel > wine ritual > respect
「釀」 to ferment
「醉」 to be drunk

The character 「酉」 was also very early on used for one of the terrestrial branches (/*N-ruʔ/), but this usage is also a phonetic loan.

See e.g. 《甲骨文合集》37986 for a record of the calendar days inscribed on an oracle bone. In this sample, 「酉」 is the bottom-most character on the right-most column.

References:

季旭昇《說文新證》
小學堂字形演變
國學大師

郭沫若《甲骨文合集》
中國社會科學院考古研究所《殷周金文集成》


How to say "the fourth floor of that building"? My doubt is in translating this sentence:

"That apartment is in the fourth floor of that building."

Is there a grammatical structure to say things like "the fourth floor of that building" in Chinese?

the fourth floor of that building

It can be written in traditional Chinese 那棟建築物的(of that building)四樓(the fourth floor). Add 那棟建築物的 before 四樓 can describe that the 四樓 you said is from that building.


Which version is correct, 脚趾甲 or 脚指甲? My question is as the title. I have seen both versions as the Chinese equivalent of "toenail". Which one is correct? Or are both right?

Both 脚趾 and 脚指 mean toe.

趾 means toe and 指 means finger, and historically 脚趾 is the correct term, but because 指 is a homophone and has a very similar meaning, 脚指 is such a common mistake that in modern contexts, it could be considered correct also.

Note that this only applies to the 脚趾/脚指 pair; if you only write 指甲, it would mean "fingernail".


Is the pinyin for 他撇了撇嘴 actually "tā piē le piězuǐ" (as given by Pleco)? And if so, why are the two 撇s pronounced differently? There are two pronunciations for 撇: piē and piě.  As I understand, the pinyin for 撇嘴 is piězuǐ.  But then I see this example sentence on Pleco...

他撇了撇嘴，轻蔑地一笑。
Tā piēle piězuǐ.
His lips curled in a contemptuous smile (or a sneer).

I'm puzzled as to why the pinyin on the first 撇 is given as piē (1st tone) above.  My understanding is that this is an example of verb reduplication, so the two 撇s are the same, in which case I would expect their pronunciation to be the same.  So...
Question: Is the pinyin for 他撇了撇嘴 actually "tā piē le piězuǐ" (as given by Pleco)?  And if so, why are the two 撇s pronounced differently?

撇 is pronounced as piē when it means 'to cast away' (as in 撇下兒女) or 'to scoop off' (as in 撇油). Note it is a verb in both cases.

撇 is pronounced as piě when it means 'left-downward stroke' (as a noun in 撇捺), 'to throw (horizontally)' (as in 撇磚頭), or 'to incline' (outwards, as in 八字腳向外撇). 撇嘴 literally means to incline the ends of the lips downwards, usually to express discontent; so it must be pronounced in the third tone.

I suspect Pleco detected the first 撇 as a verb, then jumped to the conclusion it should be pronounced in the first tone. It failed to realise 撇 here is a detached verb and is collocated with 嘴. After tone sandhi 撇了撇嘴 should be pronounced like 3023.

Reference: 余培英（2012）《多音字學習手冊》。北京：商務。


How does one express frequency in Chinese? During my last Chinese tandem, me and my study partner translated several sentences. It rather confused me than it helped.
There arose three main questions:

How do you express “how many times” and “how often” in Chinese? How many times asks for a precise answer to frequency, numerically supported.
“How often” can be answered vaguely.
How does one express “how long”? This can be answered in either way.
Are the following sentences translated correctly? If not, what is the correct word order and translation?

你多久去游泳? How long do you swim?

你每周多少次去游 永? How often a week do you go swimming?

你每周去游几次 永? How many times a week do you go swimming?

你每天去游泳吗? Do you go swimming every day?

你每天去多久游泳?   How long do you swim everyday?

你每个小时休息几次?  How many times a hour do you take a break?

你每个小时多少分钟 休息？How many minutes an hour do you rest?

你每个小时休息多长时间. How often an hour do you rest?

你多久休息. How long do you rest?

我 一小时 休息三次。 I rest three times an hour.

How do you express “how many times” and “how often” in Chinese? How many times asks for a precise answer to frequency, numerically supported. “How often” can be answered vaguely.

'how many times?' is '多少次?' or '几次?'
'how often' is '有多經常?'

  How does one express “how long”? This can be answered in either way.

'how long' is ' 多久'

  1.你多久去游泳? How long do you swim?

你游泳游多久? How long do you swim?

*'你游泳' is the topic

*'游多久' is the comment

  2.你每周多少次去游泳? How often a week do you go swimming?

你每周有多經常去游泳? How often a week do you swim?

*多少次? means 'how many times?'

*多經常? means 'how often?'

  3.你每周去游几次泳? How many times a week do you go swimming?

This one is grammatically correct. You can replace '几次?' with '多少次?'

  4.你每天去游泳吗? Do you go swimming every day?

This one is grammatically correct. You can omit 去 and write '你每天游泳吗?' (do you swim everyday?) or you can replace '去' with '都' and write  '你每天都游泳吗?'

  5.你每天去多久游泳? How long do you swim everyday?

你每天游泳游多久? How long do you swim everyday?

  6.你每个小时休息几次? How many times a hour do you take a break?

This one is grammatically correct. You can omit the classifier 个 and just write '你每小时休息几次?'

  7.你每个小时多少分钟休息？How many minutes an hour do you rest?

你每个小时休息多少分钟？How many minutes an hour do you rest?

  8.你每个小时休息多长时间. How often an hour do you rest?

你每小时有多經常休息?. How often an hour do you rest?

*Again, 'How often' is '有多經常';  '多长时间' is 'how long (of time)?'

  9.你多久休息. How long do you rest?

你休息多久? How long do you rest?

  10.我一小时休息三次。 I rest three times an hour.

This one is grammatically correct.

user6065 wrote:

complements of duration (frequency) follow verbs

That's the reason in Chinese:

'一小时多久(how long)休息(rest)' is incorrect.
'一小时休息(rest for)多久(how long)' is correct.
'一小时三次(three times)休息(rest)' is incorrect.
'一小时休息(rest)三次(three times)' is correct.

user6065 wrote:

(adverbials precede verbs)

That's the reason in Chinese:

'經常(often)休息(rest)' is correct.
'休息(rest)經常(often)' is incorrect.


Is 々 commonly used and recognised by Chinese people? In Japanese the kanji 々 is used as a repetition kanji.

So instead of typing say 人人 you could type 人々.

Is this character recognized by Chinese people nowadays ?

For example instead of 谢谢 could I use 谢々.

Actually it's more of an effort to type 々 instead of the original character but I'm curious all the same.

It's not common in publications or daily writings nowadays, but all people can recognize it. It often appears in the calligraphies or on posters. The writing space of those media is precious.

And some teachers like to use it in class.

BTW, the Chinese prefer the right one, the cursive style, in their handwriting.

The source of it: cursive 仝, the variation of 同.


When is it appropriate to use 剩女? For the average Chinese woman approaching the age of 27-30, getting married is a fairly high priority, and a large motivating factor to this is the cultural pressure of avoiding becoming a 剩女, or leftover woman.

The word is used often enough in news articles and television when talking about girls who are nearing this tragic fate, but when, if ever, would a person specifically refer to someone directly as a 剩女? It's obviously not a compliment, but in regards to culture in Mainland China, could it ever be used jokingly (你今年都25岁了，快会变成剩女吧)? Or when concerned about a friend's future (你现在不年轻了，你要快点结婚，不然变成剩女)?

So when, if ever, can someone explicitly refer to someone as a 剩女?

In my opinion, it is usually offensive to call someone 剩女 in the face, even when joking. Of course there might be exceptions, for example, a senior family member may possibly use the word 剩女 to urge a child to prioritize marriage, but even in this case the person referred to may feel offended. My advice is to use other expressions that are more euphemistic.


Is classifier/measure word required after demonstrative? I have been reading into this topic and found a bit conflicting information - some say it is mandatory to put a classifier after demonstrative (e.g. zhè), while some say it actually is not mandatory.

For example a question "what's name of this cat", I have seen the following phrase:

  zhè māo jiào shén me míng zì? 这猫叫什么名字 ？

so I think, should it not be with zhī?

  zhè zhī māo jiào shén me míng zì? 这只猫叫什么名字？

Are both options correct? As I do not know characters much yet, I would be grateful for pinyin in the answers, if possible.

You should really have a measure word after a number or 'this' and 'that'. Therefore, 'zhe zhi mao' is the correct option.


What is the difference between 明确 and 清楚? Both mean "clear", but in what way these two words are different?

明 = bright = clear (you see thing clearly in bright light)
确 = definite; unambiguous = clear (when there is no ambiguity, it is clear)
明确 = clear (clear and definite/ unambiguous)

~

清 = clear (when water is clear,  you can see things in it clearly)
楚 = neat = detailed; comprehensive (when things are neatly displayed, you can see the details)
清楚 = clear (clear and detailed/ comprehensive)

Example:
明确指引 - clear (and unambiguous) guidelines
清楚指引 - clear (and detailed) guidelines
目標明确 -  the goal is clear (and unambiguous)
目標清楚 - the goal is clear (and comprehensive)
More detailed example:
清楚說説每一個細節 - Clearly explain every detail (everything you can think of and everything you can't think of is explained)
明确指出今次行動的目標 - Clearly point out the target of this mission (pointing out and confirm that guy is our target)
Simply put, just remember  "明确" as unambiguously clear;  "清楚" as comprehensively clear.
Of course, the English word 'clear' implies both 'unambiguous' (e.g. it is clearly him) and 'comprehensive' (e.g. everything clear?). That's why both  "明确" and "清楚" can be translated as "clear"


临江仙 rhyming and translation of phrase I was trying to learn more about the opening poem to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and I found out about 词牌. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, 临江仙 is a 词牌, because many poems share this as a kind of title, and as such they share a similar structure. Then I went to the Wikipedia page here, but I don't understand what it means by

前后阕各三平韵，一韵到底

Does this explain how these poems rhyme? The example poems rhyme, but they each do so in different places. Using the 三国演义 example, 雄,空,红,风,逢,中 rhyme (do we say -eng and -ong rhyme?), but in the other examples, the rhymes are in different places.
I'm not sure what that sentence I quoted means. If it means by “三平韵” that there are three rhymes in each five-phrase half of the poem, then it fits for this, but not for some of the others. Is it that in the past before certain pronunciation shifts, all of these were in the same place, or am I misinterpreting how rigid poems of one 词牌 must be?

前后阕各三平韵，一韵到底

You are exactly right. This means both the first stanza (前阙 or 上阕) and the second stanza (后阙 or 下阙) has three rhymes, each of them a level tone, and the entire poem uses the exact same rhyming set.
I think the main confusion is that ci are not supposed to rhyme in their current dialects: while the poem you quoted (杨慎，《临江仙·滚滚长江东逝水》) is written in the Ming dynasty, most Ming (and Qing) scholars regard Song dynasty rhyming course as the one they should follow. So Yang Shen's rhyming syllables, 雄,空,红,风,逢,中, are all in Group I of the Cilin Zhengyun, which is a Qing dynasty conclusion of rhyming courses in ci, and therefore are considered to rhyme.
That is, characters belonging to the same rhyme group in the CZ are considered to rhyme in ci (from the Qing dynasty onwards), even if the modern pronunciation is different; and vice versa. For example: 风 rhymes with 东 (both in Group I) and not with 争, 蒸, 增 (all in group XI).
Also, tones. Level tones (平声) are not supposed to rhyme with unlevel tones (仄声), but when ci transitions into qu, this requirement becomes loosened. Nonetheless, in the older cipai, you don't even get the chance to rhyme level tones with unlevel ones, for the tone requirement for the cipai itself excludes this.
P.S. If you want to try your hand on writing ci but do not want to look through old rhyme books, then you are perfectly allowed to write in the 中华新韵.


Punctuation - Omiting part of a quote In my native language we use '(...)' to indicate that part of the quote was omitted. For example, in the paragraph below I would like to omit the bolded part, how should I write it?

"在波兰，我们充分了解这样的一体化过程所带来的益处。**波兰2004年加入欧洲联盟。欧盟已为一个历史上长久遭受冲突和战争之苦的欧洲大陆带来了繁荣和稳定，给包括波兰在内欧洲国家提供了一个良好的发展环境以及许多的发展机遇。**因此，我们欢迎中国为加强东亚与欧洲之间的经济纽带，并为了沿一带一路的国家创造新的发展机遇所提出的倡议。"

If it was Polish, it would look like this:

"在波兰，我们充分了解这样的一体化过程所带来的益处。(...)因此，我们欢迎中国为加强东亚与欧洲之间的经济纽带，并为了沿一带一路的国家创造新的发展机遇所提出的倡议。"

Thank you in advance!

"在波兰，我们充分了解这样的一体化过程所带来的益处。……因此，我们欢迎中国为加强东亚与欧洲之间的经济纽带，并为了沿一带一路的国家创造新的发展机遇所提出的倡议。"

It is called 刪節號 in Taiwan, and 省略号 in China. Both use 6 dots.

In Chinese, the ellipsis is six dots (in two groups of three dots, occupying the same horizontal or vertical space as two characters).


In 当然，你说的部分也有道理, can we translate 当然 to "of course"? (Original title: "Translate “当然” with a truning meaning".)
通常“当然”翻译作 of course。考虑下面一种情况

我在和人争吵，我说：“我不同意你的观点！”
接下来，为了缓和气氛，我用一句转折， “当然，你说的部分也有道理。”

这里的“当然”可以译作“of course”吗？我感觉不能，这里需要一个表示转折意义的“当然”，而“of course”通常是强调的意思。可否译作

though

?

It seems "truning" is supposed to mean "turning", 转折, turning point, transition, turnaround.  Chinese grammar on the topic of 复句（complex sentences) mentions 偏正复句 (subordinate and main) with 转折关系 as subtopic, (A, 但是 B)

  有些句子，前一个分句往往能引起人们的一种预期，比如说＂他不很喜欢运动＂，这句话往往引起人们的预期-----＂所以身体不能健康＂。如果后一个分句同引起的预期相符合，那么两个分句的意思就是一致的。如果后一个分句同所引起的预期不符合，于是中间就转了一个弯儿，变成＂但是身体很健康＂。这样，两个分句的意思相背，前后不一致，中间有了转折，所以叫做转折关系。
  汉语语法基础

Possible conjunctions: 但是、可是、然而、不过、但、可、却、倒. Complex sentences need not have conjunctions, cf. 紧缩复句 (contracted complex sentence). It would seem translating 当然 as "of course" may not contradict the fact that in some sense there may be a turning point  转折。


The use of 地 after multiple, related nouns (e.g. “鸡”，“猫”，“狗”地) In the following sentence:

  秀春决定自己教他。丈夫好像明白了秀春的意思，跟着她“鸡”，“猫”，“狗”地念起来。

It seems that in this sentence, the meaning is something like the following, and it uses 地 coupled with animal nouns.

  Xiuchen decided to teach him by herself. Her husbund looks like understanding her intention, reading aloud "chicken", "cat", "dog" with her.

It seems that 地 modifies nouns here. Is this usage of 地 common in Chinese?  At what situation is it used as such? And should you always need ", " to modify nouns in these cases?

跟着她“鸡”，“猫”，“狗”地念起来。

“鸡”，“猫”，“狗”地 here works as an adverbial phrase modifying the verb 念.

“鸡”，“猫”，“狗” are basic noun words learnt by a beginner. Imagine the scene her 丈夫 following her reading these basic childish words, and you would get the idea of “鸡”，“猫”，“狗”地.

Another point is that they don't put 鸡，猫，狗地， but “鸡”，“猫”，“狗”地, because the quotation marks indicate those words are said by someone. For example, 他说： “我今天会来。” The quotation mark is used to quote what one has said.


腦力 the way to say "mental strength" in Cantonese? Someone offered two options for saying "mental strength" in Cantonese, but neither seems quite right.

Here were the two options suggested:

1) 腦力
2) 精神腦

What's the right way to say "mental strength"?

It is not good to take things out of context. Try to explain what you mean by 'mental strength', then translate that. Do you mean 'great intelligence, intellectual prowess' or 'a robustness of character which helps the person deal with any problems in an unperturbed way'

The former may be 天才, the latter you could approach from 四大皆空 or 波澜不惊。

当然以后需要翻译用粤语。


Words related to several 成语 (via 《AB》 → 《-A-B》) The word 颜色 (yánsè / colour; facial expression/looks) is clearly related to several chengyu:

五颜六色
容颜失色
正颜厉色
和颜悦色
怡颜悦色
喜颜悦色

I suspect that many two-character words AB are similar to 颜色, in that there are several chengyu of the form "-A-B".
I had a quick look and only noticed 情理 (通情达理，合情合理，揣情度理…).

We could call words like 颜色 and 情理 "potent" (or "chengyu-potent"). I have few questions related to this topic.

Are there any resources about such "potent" words? Is there a term in Chinese for such words?
One could in theory extract a list of potent words from any list of two-character words together with a chengyu dictionary. Which HSK 1, 2, … 6 words are potent?
At the moment I can't think of any interesting examples AB where there are "A-B-" -related chengyu (a different sort of chengyu-potent word). Are there any?

Are there any resources about such "potent" words? Is there a term in Chinese for such words?
One could in theory extract a list of potent words from any list of two-character words together with a chengyu dictionary. Which HSK 1, 2, … 6 words are potent?

It is very common for Chinese to combine two compound words and rearrange the order to create idiomatic phrase. It would make the speech more classical and literary.  Most of them are not actual proverb or idiom.
The examples you listed are not idioms; 五颜六色 and 和颜悦色 are common phrases, but the rest are not
Another way to create idiomatic phrase is just break up a compound word and apply separate adjective or adverb to them. Too many words have this potential, I am afraid it is impossible to list all the combinations.
Some dictionary might provide examples of idiomatic phrases  but it is not a standard feature.
Examples of combine two compound words and rearrange the order to create idiomatic phrase:
人馬 (men and horses = fighting force)
強壯 (strong)
人馬 + 強壯 = 人馬強壯 -->人強馬壯 (the fighting force is strong)
~
窮極 (extremely)
兇惡 (fierce)
窮極 + 兇惡 = 窮極兇惡 --> 窮兇極惡  (extremely fierce)
~
Examples of breaking up common compound words and apply separate adjective or adverb to them:
清楚 (clear) --> 一清二楚 (completely clear), 不清不楚 (not clear at all)
乾淨 (clean) --> 一乾二淨 (completely clean), 不乾不淨 (not clean at all)
成就 (achievement) --> 東成西就 (having achievement everywhere)

At the moment I can't think of any interesting examples AB where there are "A-B-" -related

天地: (AB) → (A~B~): 天崩地裂，天旋地轉，天昏地暗 (天地崩裂，天地旋轉，天地昏暗)

天地: (AB) → (~A~B): 烏天黑地，驚天動地 (天地烏黑，驚動天地)


Do the four Chinese symbols in the bottom-left corner of a Samsung battery mean manufacturing date? (Characters identified: 生产日期) For the purpose of this question I'd like to know whether the four Chinese characters in the bottom-left corner of the i9250 Samsung battery really mean manufacturing date:

Here, here or here are high-resolution images of the battery, which should be easier to read and confirm.

I am more than sure whether these four symbols actually mean that, so I only need a confirmation, since I don't know Chinese at all.

Disclaimer: I understand and full accept FAQ's regulation, claiming, that questions asking for translations are off-topic in this site. I think I did enough prior research. I only need a confirmation, not a translation.

Yes, it writes 「生产日期」 which means manufacture date.


How do I specifically find handwriting advice videos on TikTok 斗音? Sometimes I waste spend time on TikTok 斗音 with the hope it improves my Chinese.  Occasionally I stumble upon videos which describe advice for improving one's Chinese handwriting.  They might describe common handwriting problems by Chinese people.  I find this rather useful.

E.g. one described how 考 has 丂 at the bottom, but is often mistakenly written as if it has 与 (minus the 3-rd stroke) at the bottom.

But I'm not sure how I go about finding those videos specifically.

Question: How do I specifically find handwriting advice videos on 斗音?

search for 臧老师教你写好字, it's an account of a primary school teacher, he posted lots of videos teaching 6~7 years old students to write Chinese characters.

How to find more this type videos? Search for the keywords 教写字, and you'll find more related videos and accounts (eg. The account 熊猫教写字-1年级 in the figure below is really good. Do remember to click the button 查看全部用户 to find more accounts and follow them)


What's the significance of Tangut? With the preparation of the Tangut script for Unicode there seems to be extra added attention on the language, recently.

Tangut being a dead, sinitic language with a script all of its own.

What is the significance of the Tangut language?

No other significance than being a historical language and script of interest to academia. As such, it has a given role in Unicode.


What does 糗大 (qiǔdà) mean? What does 糗大 (qiǔdà) mean in the following phrase?

  那才真的糗大了。

From context, I think it ought to mean something like "that would really be terrible" or "that would be far worse," but I can't find a source to confirm my hunch. 糗大 isn't in my dictionary, and MDBG lists the translation as "hoax," which doesn't seem right in this context.

Any ideas?

Well that was easy: I should have done a better web search before posting. The answer can be found here:

  糗大了，为俗语。为：出丑的意思。（事情搞砸了，出丑了）
  [糗大了 is a colloquial saying meaning "to make a fool of oneself."]

If anyone knows the origin of this phrase, I'd be glad to hear it.


Are “玩家一” and “玩家二” appropriate in the context of a coop videogame? Google translate gave me  “玩家一” and “玩家二” as a translation for "player one" and "player two".
Are these the correct terms to use within a coop videogame? Or is there more context-specific terminology in this case, sort of how there is a different quantifier for different animals (一头牛，一匹马）?

generally, you can say: 1号玩家, 2号玩家
If the video game is LOL like 5v5, you can say: XX队伍的一号位, 二号位, YY队伍的一号位,二号位.


What is the phenomenon of putting a verb twice in a sentence called? Disclaimer: I am not asking about reduplication nor separable verbs!

I have noticed that the Chinese often use the same verb twice as if deconstructing a sentence into smaller clauses. I have also noticed it's often optional. I am talking about such cases:

我可以骑自行车每天骑100km。

我已经写博士论文写了一整天。

I have never seen a similar property in any other language I had come in contact with, and would like to learn more about it. How is this thing called?

I think this apparent phenomenon is more the result of the Chinese propensity for brevity and omission, omission especially of pronouns. I would not say this is unique to Chinese. Both sentences can be altered so that there is no repetition. If there are two propositions, you need 2 clauses.

I ride my bike, (I) ride 100 Km every day.
I've been writing my doctoral thesis, (I've been) writing the whole day.

P1: I ride my bike every day. 我每天都骑自行车。P2: I ride 100 Km every day. 我每天都骑100公里。

我可以骑自行车每天骑100km。
I (can) ride my bike every day and every day I ride 100 Km.
I (can) ride my bike every day. Every day I ride 100 Km.
1a. 我可以每天骑100公里自行车。(Probably not referring to a 100 Km long bike!)
I (can) ride my bike 100 Km every day.
我已经写博士论文写了一整天。
2a. 我已经写博士论文一整天了。


What does 如 in 如通常在论坛比较普遍的部分网络用语 mean? In the following page:

  “网络用语”，即多在网络上流行的非正式语言，经常引发社会热潮，多为谐音、错别字改成，也有象形字词，以及在论坛上引起流行的经典语录。如通常在论坛比较普遍的部分网络用语：

What does 如 in the final sentence mean and how does it work grammar-wise? At first I thought it means "if", but then I fail to detect the main clause. So maybe I'm missing something.

Also, what does the sentence mean? I feel I understand the sentences until the last one, though.

Here, 如 can be roughly translated into "like".
However, even as a Chinese, I fail to analyze the sentence grammatically...

The sentence can be roughly (or not-so-roughly) translated into:

"Internet Slang" is the slang language that is popular on the Internet and may often gains popularity over the whole society. They're mostly derived from homophones, misspelled words, pictograms, and popular quotes on Internet forums. Below are some common Internet slangs on forums:
(omitted)

Well...I don't use "like" in my translation in order to convey more precise meaning.


How can I memorise easily the four tones? I am still trying to memorise tones of Chinese words. In another post I gave a link for 3rd tone words. When I will have written sentences that are easy to remember, I think I will succeed in fixing a lot of my pronunciation.

For other tones, I plan to make sentences with the same pinyin which gives different words. For example, shi gives:

With the first tone: to lose, wet, division
With the second tone: to pick up, stone, to know
With the fourth tone matter, scholar, persimmon

My question is: what are the pinyin most often used for frequently used words?

Words do not generally have tones. Characters have tones, and they are integral to the character.

Memorizing batches of characters with certain tones is like memorizing batches of characters with certain pronunciations, that is, rather pointless.

When memorizing a character, you memorize its strokes and components, its pinyin transliterations, its tones (often more than one), and a number of common words formed by it.


Is "不會" a correct response to "謝謝"？ I live in Taiwan.There are occasions where I need to thank people, and sometimes they use "不會" to reply my "謝謝". Is this correct and what does "不會" in this occasion mean?


Which expression do native speakers actually use: Chinese New Year or Spring Festival (or other)? In relation to the Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) I've heard different names, as you can see from what I just wrote.
In Chinese we have:

春節 / 春节 = Spring Festival
Chūn jié
農曆新年 / 农历新年 = Chinese New Year
Nóng lì xīn nián

or simply (more general)

新年 = New Year

Apart from the last one, which I doubt is the most used when referring specifically to the Chinese New Year, which one is the most common expression in China? And are these the only ones?

The most common expression should be 春节.

农历新年 is a kind of rare.

We have another word for January 1st (not spring festival), 元旦(yuan2 dan4). So 新年 is normally the Chinese New Year.

Another expression is 阳历年(yang2 li4 nian2) for January 1st, 阴历年(yin1 li4 nian2) for spring festival. 阳历年 may be used more often, as 阴历年 is the default.


How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese? Here's an English example:

  Learner: Wait, how is c-o-w pronounced?
  Native: COW, like a K sound followed by ow.

But in Chinese there are no phonetic letters. So how are children taught how to pronounce something, other than to hear the difference by someone who already knows it? Unless they're taught pinyin (which didn't even used to exist), how on earth could you specify the difference between, for example, j and q, if the learner were uncertain which sound was being used in the pronunciation of a given word or character?

Nowadays schoolchildren are taught Pinyin pretty thoroughly first, so they know how to correctly pronounce Pinyin. Then when learning new words, all they have to do is learn the Pinyin. A lot of primary/elementary textbooks will have annotations like this:

Here's a typical Chinese primary school blackboard:

Here's a Taiwanese equivalent of this sort of annotation, usually used on difficult characters:

While we're at it, here's a Japanese equivalent:


Why is 的 needed in 二来是更深度的了解中国文化? In the following sentence:

  这次来中国，一来是提高中文水平，二来是更深度的了解中国文化。

The meaning should be something like the follows:

  The reason I came to China this time is, for one reason in order to raise my Chinese proficiency, and for another to understand the Chinese culture more deeply.

I also understand that 地 can be used to make the adjective work as an adverb. But this is 的, not 地.

If I break down the components:

更深度的 - adverb?
了解 - verb
中国文化 - object

I also understand 的 can make the adjective to a noun phrase, but in that case, it becomes a form of O-V-O, which doesn't make sense.

So why is 的 needed in the sentence above and how does it work there?

The author used "的" incorrectly.

Obviously should use"地".


What does this phrase outside Yue Fei Temple mean? (Characters identified: 乾坤正氣) Another phrase as 岳王廟 that I can't make out, this one outside the main courtyard. I can only make out the last two characters: 正氣. I found this image at kknews.

The characters are

⿰龺乙⿰土正氣

In modern characters, this would be written as

乾坤正氣

The tricky characters are the first and second, where

The right side of the first character is 「乙」
The right side of the second character is an old way of writing 「申」


Is there an English name for 过家家? 过家家 is a children's game, in which children mimic adults to run households. Activities includes preparing and serving make-believe dinners, looking after babies and pretending to be husbands and wives, doctors and cashiers. There is no rule.