Mandarin: when is it okay to use only 點 instead of 一點? 一點 means "a little" when applied to adjectives. For instance, 快一點 means faster (i.e., fast a little) but often times people shorten 快一點 to 快點.

What is the principle for shortening 一點 to 點?

Can you always shorten it, or does it only apply to certain words like 快?
For example can you say 淨點 instead of 淨一點? or 吃點?

Is it only colloquial, or can you also shorten it in writing as well?

點 「吃點東西吧！」、「一點小事別在意！」

一點 「也少盡一點子心哪。」

一點點 「祇有一點點大。」

一點兒 「大意一點兒」

In most cases these are interchangeable.

We do not omit 一, if there is no verb, adjective or adverb in front of it.
For example, 一點小事別在意！


多了 used as "to have" A carrier pigeon brings a letter. In the sentence ”鸽子的腿上多了一封信”, I do not understand the use of 多了, unless it is used here as a verb meaning "to have", as in "the carrier pigeon had on it's leg a letter". However, I haven't found any grammar or discussion about 多 or 多了 that  points to it being used with such meaning.

多 = more, much, extra
多了一封信 = to have an extra letter

Another example:

我们组多了一个人。
There is an extra person in our group.

In this case, the sentence can be translated to:

There is an extra letter on the carrier pigeon's leg.

Note: This sentence doesn't make sense as a single sentence. The pigeon has to be mentioned somewhere in the previous text.


Operational Procedure = liu shui; which characters? I hear the term "liu shui" often which means something like business procedure, or procedure (a row of actions).

now I am wondering what the correct characters for this (slang?) term may be.

流水 means "flowing water / business turnover." Is it that?

I just got confirmation from one of my (Chineses) Colleagues that this actually is 流水 (flowing water).


How to say: "This advice/guideline was distributed via (newspaper X、Y and news agency Z)"? How to say: "This advice/guideline was distributed via (newspaper X、Y and news agency Z)" please?

What I mean with advice or guideline is a set of principles propagated by a certain research institution or government agency to e.g. prepare your home for the impact of a natural disaster.

P.S.: It's not necessary to translate "(newspaper X、Y and news agency Z)", nor the words "newspaper" or "news agency" (I am just trying to clarify the context)  Feel free to translate it as e.g. XYZ.

Please note that the purpose of this sentence is to be spoken out loud. And the summation of all the newspapers and news agency might take a long while to pronounce. Therefor, it is my intuition that the summation of these news channels would best occur at the utmost end of the sentence, while all other parts of the sentence have already been placed beforehand? I think it will be easier for the listener to understand.

'Guideline for  natural disasters' could be translated to 自然灾害的防護準則.

via: 通過

distributed: 傳播

So, as a whole: 自然灾害的防護準則 通過 xyz 來 傳播 。


Why does the squirrel say 我才不是吃货? They started selling this at the local shop:

(See also TianMao.)  I thought this product contained squirrel, so I took a closer look, and it says:

  我才不是吃货 只是这个好吃~
  Wǒ cái bùshì chīhuò zhǐshì zhège hào chī

I think the squirrel is saying "I'm not edible, just that this is tasty."  Dict.cn gives alternative definitions for 吃货, "good-for-nothing" and "buy in", and I don't know if they're relevant here.  I'm also confused about the use of 才, which I'm used to meaning "just"/"only", such as in 我昨天才见到他 ("I saw him only yesterday") at dict.cn.

Question: Why does the squirrel say 我才不是吃货?

才 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/529/
[4] certainly; indeed

'货' can be used as a 'derogatory term (貶詞)' for 'person'. (货 = goods = thing) referring a person as a 'thing'.

'这货' = '这傢伙'

'这(货)沒救了' = This (person) is beyond help

吃货 is a term for 'gluttony' (a person who can really eat alot)

"我才不是吃货" means "I certainly am not a gluttony"
"只是这个好吃" means "But this thing is delicious" (therefore I can't stop eating it)

When we use '才' for 'certainly' the following is always a negative rebuttal
Example:
我才不信 =  I certainly don't believe
我才不幹 = I certainly won't do it
我才沒向老師告密 = I certainly did not rat to the teacher


How to express "x out of y"? The phrase I'm trying to grab is usually used when stating survey results or something of the like, e.g.:

  A survey found that 7 out of 10 men go to the gym every week.

Could this be translated as something like this?

  一个概观发现，七个出十个男人每周去健身房`

If you want to express a percentage:

（某集体之中）有十分之七的人去了健身房。
或者：（平均下来）十个人里面有七个去了健身房。
70% of them went to the gym.

If you want to express a number:

这十个人里面有七个去了健身房。
(There are exactly 10 people in total, and exactly 7 people went to the gym.)


Are there loanwords from Portuguese used in Macau Cantonese? I'd like to know if there are some words from Macau Cantonese that are from Portuguese. As HK Cantonese has some words from English, I think Macau also can have some words. Thank you for any examples you can give.
I'm sorry for bothering you with this question, but I wasn't able to find these answers on any other website.

Mostly food? The below examples are from Words.hk:
马介休

loanword from "bacalhau" in Portuguese; Portuguese-style salted fish

馬介休撻
maa5 gaai3 jau1 taat1
bacalhau tart

亞東

「亞東」喺澳門叫法, 由葡文atum譯過來

亞東魚

一種魚嘅名；「吞拿」喺香港叫法, 由英文tuna譯過來; 「亞東」喺澳門叫法, 由葡文atum譯過來

Two places names:
福尔摩沙

近義 台灣
音譯自拉丁文及葡萄牙文嘅「Formosa」（「美麗」嘅意思）, 畀歐洲人用嚟稱呼台灣, 所以台灣又有「美麗島」之稱。
Formosa; Taiwan

欧罗巴

名詞
外來語 | 專名 | 舊式
歐洲 嘅葡萄牙文、荷蘭文（Europa）傳入日本嗰時嘅音譯
Europe
jpn:ヨーロッパ（欧羅巴）


比方 as a conjunction/连词？？ So, I am wondering... HSK6 includes the word 比方 which, according to my vocab-list book, in addition to being a verb (他去过很多国家，比方美国，英国，中国等) and a noun (这只是个比方，你别当真) can also be a conjunction (比方你是我，你会怎么办？ or 比方你去求他，他会不会同意？) which seems to have the same sort of meaning as 如果. My two questions are:

Is 比方 really used as a conjunction in this way? I can find almost no other instances of it being used as a conjunction outside of the vocab book! ... and,
If it is used in this way, what kind of a level is it? Is it more like 如果/要是 or more formal like 假如/假使?

Many thanks guys!

I don't know which vocab book you are using, but to my native ears, your conjunction examples sounds a little bit weird! I would have added a 说 at the end of 比方 to mark the use of conjunction.

比方说 would mean

for example： 他去过很多国家，比方说美国，英国，中国等
if(colloquial)：比方说你是我，你会怎么办

Note that I personally have never used it in the second meaning. It is understandable, but not very common. I would use 如果/要是 instead. I also must contest the notion that 如果 is only for informal use. It can definitely be used in formal context as well, though probably less pretentious then 假使

hope it helps


What's the Cantonese/Mandarin equivalent of "condone"? These two dictionaries don't have entries for "condone."

https://www.yellowbridge.com
http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php?level=0

The Google translate answer is 縱容, which seems quite wrong at least for Cantonese.

What's the Cantonese/Mandarin translation for condone?

Here are some words that are similar in meaning to condone (and indeed some dictionaries even translate them to condone):

• 容忍 or 容受 -> tolerate; put up with.

• 赦免 -> absolve, excuse, remit a punishment

The essence of condone is to accept with reluctance -- consequently, it's usually used in the negative in English (as in "We do not condone the violence") or with a negative connotation ("They took the silence to indicate that she condoned their behavior" is a sentence that implies the behavior is somehow "wrong"). With this in mind, I feel 容忍 (in Mandarin at least) works well.


What does 些 mean when it's combined with 什麼? I found this sentence on tatoeba.org:

我就是不知道說些什麼。
I just don't know what to say.

I understand most of the sentence, but what is "些" doing there? I've always seen it used to mean "a few".

You are correct, "些" is used to mean "a few" and it also applies in the example you gave above - ie. you can't even find 'a few' words to say.

I believe you can also leave out "些" and it will still mean almost the same thing. To me, with/without "些" the sentence means the same thing but has a slightly different emphasis/tone to it.

For me, with "些" it feels a bit 'softer'...as if you are genuinely out of words (maybe you saw something and suddenly lost for words); whilst without "些" it sounds like you are frustrated (someone has annoyed you, did something stupid) and you don't know how to comment/what to say to them.

ps. I would personally say:

  我就是不知道要說(些)什麼

pps. I'm also learning Chinese, so confirmation from someone who is a native speaker would be nice :)


How did the compound 莫 + 非 semantically shift to mean "can it be/is it possible + that"? ABC Chinese–English Comprehensive Dictionary (2003), p 628. I can't access the "slightly revised through July 2005" ed. 莫非 - Wiktionary
appears correct.

Am I correct that 莫 here means 3 below?

none; nothing; not anything

(literary or dialectal Mandarin, dialectal Cantonese, Gan, Hakka, Min Dong) do not; don't; must not

particle indicating a rhetorical question

A surname.

I don't know which meaning fits 非?

not be; is not; not
(logic) NOT
wrong; incorrect
to reproach; to blame
(colloquial) Used to insist on something. to have got to; to simply must

Still I don't understand how these two characters compound to signify "can it be that"?  We're combining merely two characters that signify negation.

Don't we need more characters to signify the modal verb 'can', eg "possibility in either a dynamic, deontic, or epistemic sense"? Something feels missing!

Both 莫 and 非 denote the sense of not.  The combination 莫非(a double negative) is a set phrase to mean 难道. It's often used to initiate a rhetorical question.
E. g.  莫非你不知道？ / 难道你不知道? // Don't you know it?


Is Wade-Giles "Shih" pronounced the same as Pinyin "Shi"? I was wondering if the Wade-Giles pronunciation of "Shih", as in "Chiang Chieh-shih" is pronounced the same as the Pinyin pronunciation of "Shi" as in "Jiang Jieshi".
Thank you.

If you are considering the phonemes only and not taking into account tone, then the answer is yes. But if you want to get the most accurate answer about whether or not they correspond to the same sound in Chinese, then you should include a tone.

Shí and shih2 (the 2 should be superscripted) are both romanizations of the character 石 in the Chinese name 蔣介石.


What is the difference between 看不起 and 看不上? The two have very similar meanings and can both be used to mean "detest, despise, look down upon" but there seems to be a subtle difference.

According to these entries:

看不起 http://www.zdic.net/c/b/149/321190.htm

看不上 http://www.zdic.net/c/b/164/364508.htm

看不上 can also carry the meaning of "cannot suit for one’s idea". There's also a blog post that states that 看不起 is more of an objective judgement whereas 看不上 is more subjective, hence the latter could simply mean something is not up to the speaker's standards. However I'm not entirely convinced, and was hoping there were better sources outlining the differences between the two.

I am not a linguist. So I can only give you my perspective as a native Chinese speaker.

To make it short: 看不起 is rarely used on an object, whereas 看不上 can be used on both persons and objects.

Some examples:

我最 看不起 他这种自私的人。 CORRECT
我最 看不上 他这种自私的人。 CORRECT
品味一向很高的她根本 看不上 这种便宜货。 CORRECT
品味一向很高的她根本 看不起 这种便宜货。 Understandable but AWKWARD


What is the polite way to respond to a sneeze in Chinese? In English, one might say "bless you" or "gesundheit" in response to a friend sneezing. Is there a Chinese equivalent? If so, what is it?

From Wikipedia: [which funnily enough has a Responses To Sneezing page]

Usual Responses and Notes

  多喝点水 (Duō hē diǎn shuǐ), 一百岁 (yì bǎi suì), 保佑你 (bǎo yòu nǐ) or 长命百岁 (chánɡ mìnɡ bǎi suì); frequently, listeners do not comment on the sneeze.

meaning:

  "Drink more water","May you live for a hundred years.", "bless you." or "May you live to one hundred years."

sneezer reply:

  呵呵,不好意思 (bù hǎo yì si)

meaning:

  "He he (No meaning, just smile politely)","Excuse me."

tl;dr: frequently, listeners do not comment on the sneeze.

Here's some info on Cantonese

Usual Responses and Notes

  大吉利事. Sneezing in Southern Chinese culture means that someone is speaking ill behind your back.

meaning:

  "A great fortunate occurrence."

sneezer reply:

  唔好意思

meaning:

  "Sorry."


Are my answers to this question about 不仅 appropriate, and how can I make them more elaborate? This is an exercise in the book 标准教程HSK4上 about using 不仅 (bùjǐn; "not only") together with 也, 还, or 而且.

I transcribe it below:

练一练 Practice
完成句子 Complete the sentences.
(1) 李老师不仅喜欢看电影，＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿．（也）
(2) 他＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿，还喜欢游泳．（不仅）
(3) 不仅我会做中国菜，＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿．（而且）

I came out with these answers:

李老师不仅喜欢看电影，他也喜欢看电视．
Teacher Li not only likes to watch movies, he also likes to watch TV.
他不仅会走路，还喜欢游泳．
He not only can walk, he likes to swim.
不仅我会做中国菜，而且我也会吃中国菜．
Not only can I cook Chinese food, I can also eat Chinese food.

I'm not certain these are even suitable answers, and they don't seem particularly elaborate or interesting.
Question: Are my answers to this question about 不仅 appropriate, and how can I make them more elaborate?
My reflections on my answers:
The first is unexciting; it seems 李老师 is the most boring person in the world.  Possibly ...他也以前是电影中的表演 is more interesting (...he used to act in movies), but it's a bit out-of-character for 李老师, and it seems strange to begin the sentence pointing out how he likes to watch movies if we're subsequently going to say he acts in them.
For the second, I'm envisaging a toddler who is just starting to walk, and their (proud) parent talking about their child's abilities.  I'm unsure about this, but couldn't come up with a satisfying answer.
The third is meant to be a joke; the grammar indicates the sentence would continue with something more exciting, but instead it's unexpectedly mundane.  I was also thinking of something along the lines of ...而且我也会做西餐, but there seems to be a mismatch between 中国菜 and 西餐 (and I'm not sure if 西菜 is actually a thing).

You should pay attention to the word after 不仅, 还, and etc. Typically, the things after those words are the emphasis point.

So:

The first one 李老师不仅 喜欢 看电影, 也喜欢 xxx. xxx could be something
he likes, such as 玩游戏，看电视，踢足球, ... E.g. 李老师不仅喜欢看电影, 也喜欢踢足球.
The second one 还 喜欢 游泳 indicates that 他不仅喜欢 xxx has been
said. And again xxx could be something he likes, such as 玩游戏，看电视，踢足球,
... E.g. 他不仅喜欢玩游戏, 还喜欢游泳
The third one 不仅 我 会做中国菜 suggests that the later part should be
而且xxx也会（做中国菜）. xxx can be any person. E.g. 不仅我会做中国菜, 而且他们也会（做中国菜）.

Hope this can help you.


寻 找 ， 就 寻 见: I do not understand the second "xún" At the website http://learnchinesethrubible.org/ I find the following
phrase:

seek and you will find
寻 找 ， 就 寻 见

I do not understand the second "xún".
In the dictionary http://www.mdbg.net I cannot find an entry for

寻 见

So, why is this second "xún" here?

I have found it!
It is a grammatical construct called "resultive complement".
见 is the resultive complement for 寻. 寻 only means search and
寻 见 means "successful search" => "find".

http://eastasiastudent.net/china/mandarin/result-complement-detail-explanation


What is the character `bia` in `bia响`? In this video 方清平《春节记事》单口相声笑侃春节趣闻轶事 there's a short part of a sentence at around ~4:46 where the speaker says:

  往地一摔 bia响了

The subtitles themselves leave out bia and just go for:

  往地一摔 响了

I went through 北京话词典 but it just goes from:

避屈 bìqū

to

边边儿沿沿儿 biānbiānryán yánr

In other dialects I've seen bia written: 扁、瘪 and .

I've seen 嘌 noted as "pia" it might be an option with the confusion of b/p.

Any ideas?

Here are two characters that have the pronunciation bia:

拼音bia4
㈠邑名。
㈡姓。

㈠bia4,上下相付。

zdic has a question that reads:

从小有个朋友问我“bia”拼出来的汉字怎么写，我当时真懵了，不会啊！时间过去20年了，突然回想起这个拼音，有会写的么，请告知，谢谢了

the last comment says:

8楼14楼是权威说法。

Number eight reads:

pia、bia、diang，其实就是pa、ba、dang的变读。
方法是在声母与韵母间插入“i ” 。
例子太多了，就不列举了。

and number fourteen says:

多以“吧”字代之。如吧叽，吧嗒。吧读bia.

《哈尔滨方言词典》p. 110

Simply lists all bia:

□

but the same words from the zdic thread are written as:

吧叽

and

吧嗒

Seemingly making 吧 an acceptable candidate.

《北京方言词典》陈刚 商务印书馆 1985 p.17 confirms this assumption:


Why is latte written as "那堤" in Traditional Chinese? In Mandarin Chinese, the latte is written as "拿铁". In fact if you type in "natie" on iPhone the cafe emoji shows up in the predictive list.

However, I just entered a brunch of Starbucks in Taipei, and found that it is spelled as "那提". Why is it not "拿鐵", the equivalent of "拿铁" in Traditional Chinese?

well, "拿鐵" is just a translation term. it helps to indicate the particular type of drink. in hong kong, another place using traditional chinese, latte is translated as "鮮奶咖啡" by starbuck.

"鮮奶" - fresh milk; voila, "咖啡" - coffee :)

toffee nut crunch latte --> 拖肥果仁脆趣鮮奶咖啡

gingerbread latte --> 薑汁鮮奶咖啡 <-- my favourite

i'm thirsty now, have fun :)


Are These Equivalent Grammatical Syntax? Chinese Grammar

I am studying many sources for Chinese grammar. I understand that literally these two sentences mean slightly different things. Are there any implications or reasoning for using one versus the other? The literal translations seem equivalent from an English language context (are they interchangeable or am I missing some refinement)?

Subject + Adverb of manner + Verb + Adverb of place

tā jìng jìng de tǎng zài cǎo di shǎng

他静静地躺在草地上。

tā zài cǎo di shǎng jìng jìng de tǎng

他在草地上静静地躺。

(Source)

Strictly, they are not all the same.
The second one sounds some more poetic in Chinese.
But in daily life, you will say the first one to express the meaning,"he lies on the grass quietly", the second one may make you seems sort of strange.


Could someone please help explain to me what '收尸' means? Could someone please help explain to me what '收尸' means?

I'm learning what this '收尸' words mean, I've looked in ichiba, ichacha and mdbg and I still couldn't understand.

They all said that the meaning is 'bury the dead', but when I saw some of the sentences they showed as examples, some of them showed '收尸' as 'corpse'.

Is '收尸' considered as one 'word'? Or is it: '收'=verb '尸'=object?

Also, one of the example I completely didn't understand is:
- '她是法络德.翁海尔的养女, 为他的收尸人跑腿. '
- The adopted daughter of Pharod Wormhair, she runs errands for his Collectors.
I assumed it's supposed to be 'she is Fa Luo De, Wang Hai Er's adopted daughter, ....' I can't understand the '收尸人' in the continuation of that sentence.

Like dan said, 收尸 is a verb, which means 'collecting (a) dead body'.

The example in question only makes sense if you knew who Pharod Wormhair is. Basically he is someone who makes money from dead bodies, and he has his collectors, who collect dead bodies for him. Here is an introduction of him if you want to know more.
Here 收尸人 is used to describe his collectors. The translation from 'collectors' to 收尸人 is only specific to this context, otherwise 'collector' doesn't directly translate to this.

Normally, the word 收尸 is used between people who are relatives/very close.
For example, we have A, whose only acquaintance in the world is B. Then B dies. Now we say, A has no one to collect their body.

Ask if you're still unsure about this word.


Origin of Chinese Parable: Devils and Righteous Man Can anyone point to the origin of this Chinese parable?

“A man travelling through the country came to a large city, very rich and splendid; he looked at it and said to his guide, ‘This must be a very righteous people, for I can only see but one little devil in this great city.’

“The guide replied, ‘You do not understand, sir. This city is so perfectly given up to wickedness … that it requires but one devil to keep them all in subjection.’

“Travelling on a little farther, he came to a rugged path and saw an old man trying to get up the hill side, surrounded by seven great, big, coarse-looking devils.

“ ‘Why,’ says the traveller, ‘this must be a tremendously wicked old man! See how many devils there are around him!’

“ ‘This,’ replied the guide, ‘is the only righteous man in the country; and there are seven of the biggest devils trying to turn him out of his path, and they all cannot do it.’ ”

claiming this parable has chinese origin is doubtful. several themes in the text are very un-chinese, against the customs & culture:

1　"travelling through the country"

2　such travelling with a guide

3　seven

in other cultures, 7 might be a "magic" number, but it's not in chinese. we used 5, 10, 12, 3, or 4.

lastly, here's a link of its mormon origin:

https://www.lds.org/manual/book-of-mormon-gospel-doctrine-teachers-manual/lesson-36-on-the-morrow-come-i-into-the-world?lang=eng


美国意大利黑帮 - Expressing location without 在? Yesterday in class I was correcting the mistakes in my translation together with my teacher. He gave us an article about the mafia in America and the Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1978, which inspired the film Goodfellas.

Near the end of the article there is this sentence:

  导演马丁斯科西斯年拍摄的影片 《盗亦有道》 (又译为 《好家伙》) 即根据博克的真实经历和汉莎航空大劫案改编，该片由罗伯特德尼罗主演，至今仍被认为是继 《教父》 系列之后另一部描述美国意大利黑帮的经典之作。

Which I've translated like this:

  The film shooted by the director Martin Scorsese in 1990, Thieves have morals too, (also translated as The Goodfellas) is primarily based on a reconstruction of Burke's true story and the Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport. This film, interpreted by Robert De Niro as leading actor, is still considered today another cult movie that describes italian american mafia after the series The Godfather.

My teacher said that 美国意大利黑帮 should be "the italian mafia in America". I've thought about that for a while . . . If it's "in America", why there is no 在 before 美国?

He clarified that if it were "italian american", like I said, it would be something like 美意 or, better, 意美 (like in the title: 中英词典, "Chinese-English dictionary").

I know the two translations are pretty similar in content, but I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me which is better.

Thank you.

P.S. Sorry for my bad English; it's not my native language.

Chinese and English express this in different ways. Or better yet, English emphasizes the nuance that these mafiosi are of Italian descent but operate in America: Italian mafia in America.

The Chinese term 美国意大利黑帮 is just "American-Italian" mafia. Chinese has no proper word for demonym-adjectives, Italian will translate as 意大利人 if it is a demonym denoting a person ("Italy-person") and most likely 意大利的 if it is something from Italy (e.g. 意大利的经济 Italian economy) but omitting 的 is more natural in most cases, e.g.  意大利经济 Italian economy. It's a bit like headline style in English: UK minister resigns (where UK is certainly not an adjective) and not British minister resigns.

Since Chinese heavily relies on context, 美国意大利黑帮 requires you to use your knowledge and understanding of the context, and put this together. English on the other hand prefers splitting this up and making clear what role Italian and American play here.


Is there a database/application that sorts characters based on pronunciation, radical, frequency; and disyllabic compound words by frequency? Researchers have used/cited the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese for finding disyllabic compound words and characters with top-bottom and left-right construction. However I haven't found this information/filter on the site -- only sorting by part of speech.

The Traditional Chinese Psycholinguistic Database has been helpful but not comprehensive enough.

I'm designing materials for a research project comparing simplified readers and traditional readers, so being able to compare frequencies between characters of the two systems is important. I haven't found a research article that compared the two systems AND provided an appendix of the materials. any suggestions?

Various sources categorize simplification methods differently and only list some examples. Does a more comprehensive list exist?

where can I find a list of simplified radicals and their traditional counterparts? a list of disyllabic compound words sorted by frequency?

Any resources would be appreciated.

I hope this pdf, Simplified Chinese Mapping Chart (1956), could help:
This is 简化字总表(Simplified characters full list), an official list that includes 1) simplified characters that may not be used as radicals; 2) simplified radicals and simplified characters that may be used as radicals; 3) frequently used characters.
Another even more comprehensive list with versions and alterations through years can be found on wikipedia 简化字总表 (Chineses only). I guess you would get what you were looking for by translating that page!


Are there distinctions between the various terms for "Confucius" (孔子, 孔丘, 仲尼)? There seems to be at least three ways of saying "Confucius" in Chinese:

孔子 (Kǒngzǐ)
孔丘 (Kǒngqiū)
仲尼 (Zhòngní) with some variants:

字仲尼 (Zì Zhòngní)
孔仲尼 (Kǒng Zhòngní)

(There's possibly more I'm unaware of.)

I'm just wondering if these are all the same, or if there's some distinction between them.

Question: Are there distinctions between the various terms for "Confucius"?

First you need to know about how people were named at that time. Back then one's name had three parts:

姓 (family name), 名 (given name), 字(also given name, but doesn't exist today)

孔 was his 姓, 丘 was his 名, and 仲尼 was his 字.

I don't need to explain the family name much. As for 名 and 字, the difference is that 字 is more formal than 名. And one often calls himself by 名 to show modesty and calls the one he is talking to or mentioning by 字 to show respect.

Finally, "子" is a suffix after the family name to mention someone who is well-respected (for example, a teacher, a well-educated person, etc., and Confucius was both and more).


documentation/references: 全 being pronunced `qian` in Southwestern Mandarin I'd always had this hunch! The bus recording was supposed to be 安全 but why did it sound like 安前.
Then I got affirmation from 《成都方言》

刘前进
此词源于《刘全进瓜》的古典故事，即与瓜傻同义，便指傻瓜。又由于地域读音关系，“前”与“全”不分，此词又为“刘全进”。歇后语：“～——瓜！”

Specifically: “前”与“全”不分.
This, though, is the only evidence or documentation/reference I have come across talking about this phenomenon.
What other references or documentation exist talking about “前”与“全”不分 or 全 being pronounced qian in Southwestern Mandarin, or more specifically Sichuanese/Chengduese?

I am working in Chengdu. But I don't think they don't really 前/全 不分, they can easily speak 全 though maybe sounds a little different on tone with 普通话. Maybe the pure ancient 四川话 has the difference as you talked. But nowadays, it's not so obvious. Maybe caused by the develop and immigrants from other place, the 四川话 also changed day after day. 所以，如果如今的四川话和过去的不太像了，你也不必感到奇怪。


Is 其他人 any different from 别的人? I guess the question could also be, is 其他 any different from 别的?

Is one any more formal, any more slang, any more rude, anything of the sort, than the other?

Or are they essentially the same?

They are similar in the meaning, however, not exactly the same.

其他 has a meaning of "the others", but it also has the meaning of "the rest", since this word is often used in the last when you are listing some categories, for example, "这个项目, 小王负责写代码, 小李负责 code review, 其他人去做测试." this word has the meaning in dividing the scopes.

别的 also has the meaning of "the others", for example, "我只知道这些, 别的我不知道了", in this sentence, the speaker tries to emphasize what he knows ("我只知道这些"), since "别的", from the literature meaning, "别"+"的", 别 has the meaning of different, so this word has the tendency in comparing and emphasis.


Matrix movie quote question: Advice on saying/translating "There is a difference in knowing the path and walking the path"? I know how Google Translate translates this, but wondering how those who actually use Mandarin/Chinese would say it.

Thank you very much in advance.

There is a difference in knowing the path and walking the path

The idiom 知易行難 (knowing how to do something is easy; put it into action is hard) match this quote quite well
知 - know; aware
易 - easy
行 - implement; walk
難 - difficult
The writer might know this idiom but thought 行 meant walk
To put this idiom into quote:
正所謂「知易行難」
你知道「知易行難」的道理嗎?
古語有云 「知易行難」
To translate the quote from Matrix directly, you can say  "知道路怎麼走和真的去走這條路是有分別的" (There is a difference between knowing the path and really walking the path)
Note:

PaleNeutron wrote:
popular way is "说起来容易做起来难".

The elegant way to say it is "说時容易做時难", which is a common expression


What does the lettering on my shirt mean? (Characters identified: 花樣年華) My friend gave me this shirt, I've been trying to figure out what it means. Can anyone translate it?

That shirt might be the souvenir for the movie "花样年华".  Its English name is "In the Mood for Love", according to Baidu.


Erhua and reduplication If I want to say "a little" of something I might say  一点儿 yìdiǎnr.  Or I might say  一点点 yìdiǎndiǎn.  But I do not feel right using erhua with reduplication.

It sounds wrong to me (and maybe I am just wrong about this) to say either  一点点儿 yìdiǎndiǎnr  or 一点儿点儿 yìdiǎnrdiǎnr.  Is one of those reasonably normal?  Are both? Or what?

For simplicity suppose I am talking with university people in Beijing.

In spoken language, northerners do say 一点点儿 or 一点儿点儿 sometimes, but not all the time, it depends on the situation. It is not wrong to say those words with erhua.

However, I don't encourage Chinese language learners to learn them because

it is not really that important
it doesn't really change the meaning
it is hard for learners to say them in a natural way
you don't have to sound like a northerner.

I believe correctness is more important and sounding natural.


What is the difference between 妳 (nǐ) and 他 (tā) Wiktionary gives the meaning "you" for the character 妳 (nǐ), and tā (either 他 or 她).

Is there a formal / informal difference? Which should I prefer in general usage?

妳 is in theory a feminine form of 你, but it's rare because not many people care about the supposed masculinity of the 亻element.
他 and 她 are 'he' and 'she' respectively, as any reasonable dictionary will tell you. There is a formal/informal distinction for 'you', but it's 你(normal) and 您(formal).

Whatever your sources are for the reading 'hai' and the meaning 'you' for 他, you should ditch 'em, they're unreliable.


Why is 兼职 part time job? I searched up what each character means, and it doesn't make sense. 兼 means twice or simultaneously and 职 means job. So does it mean second job? I understand that some people have a part-time and full time job, which fits the definition. What about students who only have a part-time job?

Students’ primary occupation is ‘student’ so a part-time job is a secondary occupation. So do housewives. Because most part-time jobs are secondary occupations so they are usually translated as 兼职.
If a person only has a part-time job which is his primary occupation, then translate part-time as 兼职 is not accurate for him. In this case, you can call it 半职 or 半职工作. A full-time job is 全职 or 全职工作. However, 半职 is not often used. Please use 兼职 whenever possible.
Legally speaking, in the US, full-time jobs are defined as 21 hours or more per week, and in China, 24 hours per week. This is officially called 全日制工作. And a job less than this amount of hours is called 非全日制工作.
Ref：全日制劳动者


How to pronounce 廿卅卌 in Chinese? I originally just wanted to ask something about 廿 (20). But as I searched on the internet I found 卅(30) and 卌(40) as well, and I have to admit that I didn't know these two.

I think 廿 is pronounced as "ye" or "yia" in Cantonese.

Q1: Which one is correct (I myself pronounce it as "yia").
Q2: If it's "yia", is it a two-syllable word? Any other examples of two-syllable word in Chinese?
Q3: How to pronounce 卅卌 in Cantonese?
Q4: How to pronounce 廿卅卌 in Mandarin?

Most Cantonese speakers will pronounce 卅 as something like "sa-a" and 卌 like "se-a". But I think that's not the formal pronunciations of these words.

In most Cantonese speakers I know, 廿 is still a colloquial item of vocabulary, replaced with 二十 in usual formal writing; but 廿 remains a very common alternative, for counting as well as enumerating. According to CantoDict, the pronunciation "a" is the most common. This is verified in my experience; the variant with "e" I've not heard this before myself, but I suppose it is possible. (What is written as -ia becoming -ie is something I've heard before).

It has always been perceived as a one-syllable word, with one tone (the 陽去 tone, realised as low and level in standard Cantonese, and noted as 6th tone in Yale and Jyutping). True "polysyllabic" characters do exist in Chinese, but 廿 is not traditionally one of them. The most well known is 囍, but there are more.

In Standard Cantonese, 卅 is saa1, whilst 卌 is sei3 (note 卌 is pronounced the same as 四 when alone). These are somewhat more common in Cantonese than in Mandarin; 卅 is used in colloquial speech referring to the 30th of the lunar month in the traditional calendar, especially in reference to the last day of the year, [Lunar] New Year's Eve, 年卅晚.

The pronunciations 卅呀 saa1-aa6 and 卌呀 sei3-aa6 have been written with 呀 on the end in CantoDict to represent that second lower syllable.

In Mandarin, there are 廿 niàn, 卅 sà and 卌 xì as very literary characters with restricted usage. 廿 is commonly seen in Chinese calendars, but not necessarily commonly pronounced as 廿 niàn, so in Mandarin it could be considered a polysyllabic character. This however is not the traditional method of pronouncing it. MDBG.net gives a few more set expressions with 廿. 卌 is even rarer. But both these characters, along with 廿, have a long pedigree: 卌 is present in the Guangyun.

Among the topolects that use 卅 regularly apart from Cantonese, we also have the Min Nan group and the Wu group (including Shanghainese). 卌 is even rarer, and I don't know if it's used in Wu; but Cantonese and Min Nan attest to its existence.

Note there's also 皕.


How to say: "at three different sides of the room " I want to tell a joke where the teacher places three students at three different sides of the room. I tried like this, but apparently it was wrong:

  老師讓他們分散在房間的三方。

Can you offer any suggestions? Also things like "place them apart from each other " might help.

the teacher places three students at three different sides of the room：

老师让三个学生分别站在房间三面墙前。


Is 同性恋 considered a slur? Is calling a homosexual person 同性恋 rude, offensive, or a slur? My dictionary translates it simply as "homosexual" but then in the usage examples gives "fairy," which is definitely a slur in English ("reclaiming" aside). Are the usage example translations wrong, or what?

谢谢大家！

The expression of “同性恋” in Chinese, I think, is too formal and is hardly used in Chinese spoken language. In Chinese slang, some may use "同志"（which originally means comrade or like-minded or congenial people in China）to euphemistically refer to homosexual persons. In reality, influenced by English, we youngsters in China directly use gay or lesbian more frequently, rather than a Chinese word.


How do say toilet paper in Chinese? Was validating some Google translations and came upon this question:

rolling papers:
1. 廁所用紙
2. 捲菸紙

How do say toilet paper in Chinese? The more technical term for the commonly used toilet paper is 抽取式衛生紙, what about the Western toilet paper rolls?

In Hong Kong "Toilet paper" is simply called 廁紙.

Before the modern toilet paper,  people were using 草紙(rough straw paper) for toilet paper.

As for a roll of toilet paper , it is still called " 廁紙 " ( with classifier if needed. For example  一卷廁紙 ) and the more technical term would be 卷裝廁紙

For tissues in a box, we call it 紙巾 (with classifier if needed. For example 一盒紙巾)and the more technical term would be 盒裝紙巾

*衛生紙 is another name for 廁紙 or 紙巾.


Proper translation of the word "confidence" What would be the proper way of translating

  I don't have confidence in myself to dance on stage.

I understand that this isn't a translation service, but my difficulty arises from the many translations of the word "confidence".

I've narrowed it down to 信心 and 自信。I also believe the sentence structure will be slightly different depending on how which I select. May someone please provide an appropriate translation?

The main difference between the two is that the subject of 自信 is fixed - self. That is, "self-confidence" is a more direct translation of 自信. If you can fit "self-confidence" in your English sentence, you can fit 自信 in your Chinese sentence the same way.


Differentiating "to do a burnout" and "burning tyres" "To do a burnout" is 烧胎, so I assume a reasonable sentence would be:

  昨天晚上我在停车场烧胎。

How would one distinguish this activity from piling up tyres and setting fire to them, for example in this news clipping:

  [Pupils] had been unable to go to school ... because roads were being blocked with stones and burning tyres.

The problem was not that people were doing burnouts on the road to school.

TL;DR

烧胎 is a technical term understood by motor-sports enthusiasts as a burnout. If you are really burning tyres, you would need to say 烧轮胎 instead:

  昨天晚上我在停车场烧轮胎。

A translation for your news clipping example would be:

  [学生]无法去上学......因为道路被石头和燃烧着的轮胎给封锁了。

TL;DR???


When submitting forms on the web, you often click a button label 'submit'. I was wondering how to express the word 'submit' in chinese At the bottom of a web form, you might click update, or submit. I was wondering what the Chinese word for 'submit' is, and if this is correct: 提交. Similarly, if there is a distinct word for 'update'.

The answers are 提交 and 更新, respectively. FYI, I am a native speaker with enough knowledge of IT terminology.


Sheep or goat? 一只羊跑过来 In the sentence:

  一只羊跑过来

Would a Chinese person typically assume this is a goat or a sheep?

People usually say 山羊 when they mean a goat.

--- I don't think so.

Goat or Sheep, just only depends on the context or the environment!

Actually, the scene of language is as follows:

When a sheep comes, what the brain of a Chinese-speaking people presents/thinks about is: "羊 is coming."

When a goat comes, what the brain of a Chinese-speaking people presents/thinks about is ALSO: "羊 is coming."

That is to say, when a concept about any sheep or goat or any sheep-like or goat-like or any Caprinae-form animal comes into the brain of a Chinese-speaking people, he or she always thinks about "羊" only, usually without differentiation like a English-speaking people does.

Only if the Chinese-speaking people is need to differentiate sheep or goat in his or her concept, he or she says “绵羊” or “山羊”.

Similarly, in the area which people mainly eat pork (the flesh of a pig or hog), they usually refer to the pork as a single word “肉”. If the word “肉” leads to some ambiguity, they could say “猪肉” for  the pork and say “羊肉” for the mutton (or flesh of goat). Furthermore, in the area which people usually only eat mutton (the flesh of sheep), they could say “山羊肉” to indicate the flesh of goat.

You would meet a phrase “鸡鸭鱼肉”, these four words all indicate the flesh as food. Under this phrase,“鸡”means chicken, “鸭” means duck, “鱼” means fish, “肉” means pork mainly or means any flesh of a mammal such as beef, mutton.

Please NEVER forget this truth: The meaning of a word only should be presented from the context or the environment!

Additionally, similarly, when a English-speaking people says "a cousin", that could puzzle a Chinese-speaking listener, the latter wonders what the "a cousin" exactly indicates: a 堂兄 or 堂弟 or 表兄 or 表弟 or 堂姐 or 堂妹 or 表兄 or 表妹? The fact about this conflict is: the English-speaking people usually do not differentiate those consanguinities, but the Chinese-speaking people care for that.


How to say ‘run for office’ in Mandarin? I’ve searched dictionary and found 2 words: 参选 and 竞选.
I’m a bit confused, since it seems that 参选 is used more, but in Vietnamese (my mother tongue) we used the word “tranh cử” (爭舉). So what is the correct word to use?

Both 竞选 and 参选 are common with slight difference in usage. For example:

你会不会参选？ (Will you "enter the election"?)
她会竞选连任。 (She will run for reelection.)

It's hard to pinpoint when one will be favoured over the other, but the examples above will seem weird if the other phrase is used. I think it's due to the literal translation of the phrase: 参选 means "enter the election" and 竞选 means "compete in an election". (or maybe it's just convention that dictates which one is favourable.)

If you want to specify what office one is running for, you can express it as "选 + name of office". For example:

她要选总统。 (She is running for president.)
他要选市长。 (He is running for mayor.)


“这个是我常用的资料夹” equals “This is my frequently used folders” or "This is my favorite folder"? Should I translate “This is my frequently used folders” or "This is my favorite folder" as "这个是我常用的资料夹"?
Is it normal?

I would translate "This is my frequently used folders."to "这个是我常用的资料夹。"
Because "frequently used" exactly means "常用的", while "favorite" is more like "最喜欢的"。


If you are introducing a menu as a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, how would you say for 主菜, we serve 北京烤鸭, 点心, and 四川火锅? I started learning Chinese about three months ago.

If you are ordering from a menu, you just say wo de (food items). If I am introducing entree options, how would I say that we serve 北京烤鸭, 点心, and 四川火锅?

If I'm understanding the question correctly, you are asking from a waiter's perspective how would you say we serve 北京烤鸭, 点心, and 四川火锅?

There are many ways to say this. The easiest is probably "我们有北京烤鸭、点心和四川火锅"

Note that 点心 sounds a little weird in this context since it's usually perceived as dessert, not an entree item. So I would say "我们有北京烤鸭、四川火锅和餐后点心"

You mentioned saying "wo de (food items)" to order, but this is not a correct sentence to me. You might want to say "我想要..." "我要..."

Also, as an unrelated note, it's very rare that a restaurant would serve both hot pot and peking duck, since hot pot restaurants usually have tables specifically designed for their hot pots.


What is known about the new HSK 3.0 (2021) format? I found a brief note on Wikipedia that since 2020, HSK is going to be restructured. It links to a tweet, which shows a page in Chinese. Is there any more information compared to what Wikipedia currently states? If not, are there any educated guesses that can be made based on prior two changes to HSK structure and the way Hanban works?

At the time of writing, the best guess is that the HSK 3.0 vocabulary list is in the recently-published book:

汉语国际教育用词语声调组合及轻重音格式实用手册
A Practical Manual of Tone Patterns and Formats of Stressed and Unstressed Syllables in Mandarin Words for the Application of Teaching Chinese to the Speakers of Other Languages
刘英林, et al.

A redditor posted images of some of the pages from this book on Imgur (from this post; I transcribed some of it here).  I bought this book from JingDong (also available here), and posted about it on Reddit.  The guess is primarily based on a tweet from an account called HSK Official:

HSK is about to be reformed. #HSK In 2020, the Chinese Proficiency Standards will usher in a new change: a hybrid paradigm of “Three Stages and Nine Levels” characterized by integration and all-in-one.

There are also reports on QQ: here and here.  (Note the tweet links to the first QQ post, which mentions 刘英林 and other authors.)  These posts use screenshots from the recently-published paper:

汉语国际教育汉语水平等级标准全球化之路
刘英林, et al. (available here)

This paper has the same lead author as the book.  From this paper (p.152) we have the vocabulary breakdown:

(Here e.g. 140/608 implies new = 140, cumulative = 608.  The second last column is vocabulary 词汇.)
I'll reproduce my Reddit post in full, since I go into a fair amount of detail about the aforementioned book:

The book is almost nothing more than two long lists. The first list
contains exactly 11092 terms ordered by pinyin, and occupies 253
pages. The second list contains most (not all) of the 11092 terms
ordered by level, then by tones, and occupies 214 pages. It appears
that the second list omits all single-character terms: e.g. 2057 一① 多
appears in the first list, but not in the second list.
Both lists contain precisely the following:

序号: sequence number (the first list begins with 1 阿拉伯语 [on page 1] and ends with 11092 做生意 [on page 253])

等级: level (see below)

词语: the Chinese characters

轻重格式: which syllables are emphasizes, e.g., 左边 is ZQ (重轻; heavy, light) implying that the stress on 左 is heavy and the stress on 边 is light

声调组合: the tones, e.g., the tones for 昨天 are written 21. 0 is used for the neutral tone.

拼音: pinyin (with two tweaks: (a) a · indicates there's multiple pronunciations, and the example they give is 道理 which can be either dàolǐ or dàoli; (b) a // indicates that the word is separable, and the example they give is 见面 written "jiàn // miàn" [e.g. 见面 in 见你面])

词性: the type of word: 名词 (noun, e.g. 飞机), 动词 (verb, e.g. 听说), 形容词 (adjective, e.g., 安全), 数词 (number words, e.g. 一半), 量词 (measure word, e.g. 公斤), 代词 (e.g. 有一些), 副词 (e.g. 当然), 介词 (e.g. 通过), 连词 (conjunction, e.g. 所以), 助词 (auxiliary), 叹词 (interjections), 拟声词 (onomatopoeia). Many don't fall into any of these categories.

There are 3 major levels: 一 (普及化等级, 2245 terms), 二 (中级, 3211 terms),
and 三 (高级, 5636 terms). Level 一 splits into 一① (505 terms), 一② (837
terms), and 一③ (903 terms). Some of the terms (1461 terms) within
level 三 are classed as "附录" (appendix). It seems probable that the new
HSK levels 1 through 3 respectively have the vocabulary in the lists
一①, 一②, and 一③, and probable that the new HSK4-6 and HSK7-9 contain
those in 二 and 三 respectively. However, it's not clear how they are
divided.
In this book, there's an emphasis on "stress" (not just "tones") which
I haven't seen elsewhere previously. In particular they write:

学习汉语语音只把音节（声母、韵母和声调）发准是不够的，在语流交际中，按照汉语声调连读模式和轻重音格式发出的音才是地道的发音，才有标准汉语的味道。

Here, 音节 ("syllable") is regarded as the combination (声母, 韵母, 声调) =
(initial, final, tone). The book emphasizes how this is not enough for
authentic Chinese pronunciation.
The 4-character words are:

一①： none [page 260]

一②： 公共汽车 共用电话 一路平安 一路顺风 不好意思 [page 274]

一③： 中华民族 高速公路 电子邮件 另一方面 [page 291]

二： 这就是说 西班牙语 酸甜苦辣 绝大多数 五颜六色 一般来说 一模一样 自言自语 意想不到 [page 351]

三： 知识分子 东张西望 阿拉伯语 伊斯兰教 千方百计 依依不舍 粗心大意 亲朋好友 官僚主义 翻来覆去 哄堂大笑 多种多样 相比之下 资本主义 丰富多彩 鸦雀无声 公共场所 千变万化 说干就干 无家可归 长期以来 提心吊胆 没完没了 除此之外 时好时坏 难以想象
由此可见 无可奈何 从早到晚 实话实说 无论如何 一事无成 毫不犹豫 实事求是 一动不动 随处可见 犹豫不决 不大不小 十字路口 总的来说
小心翼翼 改革开放 与此同时 喜怒哀乐 讨价还价 也就是说 与众不同 乱七八糟 一帆风顺 大街小巷 兴高采烈 大吃一惊 或多或小 一天到晚
至关重要 未成年人 大名鼎鼎 帝国主义 一年到头 一长一短 自由自在 异口同声 不可避免 二氧化碳 四面八方 必不可少 社会主义 这样一来
断断续续 各式各样 不怎么样 讨人喜欢 一塌糊涂 [pages 434-436]

附： 忽高忽低 息息相关 ...omitted... 高新技术 有两下子 [pages 460-468]

This indicates the new HSK1-6 (levels 一 and 二) will not contain any
idioms, i.e. chengyu (成语). (If you want to compare, a while back, I
made a list of the HSK chengyu.)
(The book came with a CD labelled "MP3", but I don't have a CD player,
so I don't know what's on it. Presumably pronunciations of these
words.)

(Note the per-level vocabulary numbers in the book are not an exact match for the numbers in the paper.  Although the total number is the same: 11092.)
In this comment, I also analyzed some of the vocabulary.  In particular:

The new level 1 appears to be formed from: 36% of the HSK1, 23% of the HSK2, 12% of the HSK3, 1% of the HSK4, and 3 HSK5 words (工人, 日期, 平安), and many non-HSK words (forming 51% of the total words in the new level 1). [This ignores single-character words.]

The new level 2 appears to be formed from: 7% of the HSK1, 19% of the HSK2, 40% of the HSK3, 28% of the HSK4, 6% of the HSK5, one word from HSK6 (事业), and many non-HSK words (forming 32% of the total in the new level 2). [This ignores single-character words.]

(I may have made some transcription mistakes, so these numbers might not be perfect.)

Update:

18 July 2020: A Redditor posted an Anki deck containing levels 7 through 9.

3 August 2020: One Redditor posted a visualization of the change from HSK 2.0 to HSK 3.0 in the context of CEFR:

Another Redditor posted another visualization of the change from HSK 2.0 to HSK 3.0:

2 November 2020: the Redditor goeastmandarin (from the company Go East Mandarin) posted a photo of a meeting about HSK3.0 (also on Twitter).  The photo in the slide is identical to the table above.  The Chinese says:

汉语国际教育汉语水平等级标准
[My translation:] Chinese international education Chinese-level standard grading
HSK3.0只增加7-9级，1-6级不变
HSK3.0 only adds levels 7 through 9, levels 1 through 6 are unchanged

Above, "unchanged" seems interpretable as "unchanged as a whole".  (Specifically, if a vocabulary word belongs within levels 1 through 6 in HSK2.0, then it will belong within levels 1 through 6 in HSK3.0.)  The numbers in the table are not consistent with individually unchanged HSK levels.
Redditor A-V-A-Weyland includes a Dropbox link to the HSK3.0 vocabulary (i.e. from the abovementioned book).

18 November 2020: Redditor A-V-A-Weyland provides Pleco flashcards for the HSK3.0 vocabulary (i.e. from the abovementioned book).

1 April 2021: There was an official announcement of changes to the HSK, and it includes a 260-page document describing the changes in detail.  The changes are reported to be implemented on July 1, 2021.
The changes are summarized in a GoEast post: New HSK levels for learning Chinese (Update April 2021).  What we didn't expect already is item 4 from this post:

4: Hanzi handwriting and translation skills are added, in addition to listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills

13 April 2021: Anki decks containing the new HSK vocabulary and characters are provided via Reddit. Ninchanese has a "fact vs. rumor" post.  They point to this Tweet by the official HSK account (made in March this year):

There will be no changes for HSK 1-6 this year

15 April 2021: Chinese-Forums user mungouk claims to have received an email from chinesetest.cn, stating:

The current HSK 1-6 levels will not be changed for the present.
Under the premise of ensuring the stability of HSK 1-6, the advanced HSK (level 7-9) is under development, which is mainly aimed
at international students who are majoring in Chinese language and
literature, and international students in other majors with a high
level of Chinese, overseas Sinology researchers and so on.
The advanced HSK (level 7-9) is scheduled to be launched as early as the second half of this year.

The latest information about HSK will be released on our official
websites (http://www.chinese.cn/ and http://www.chinesetest.cn/),
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/HSKTestOfficial-107674817613428)
and twitter (https://twitter.com/HSKTestOfficial), please keep an eye
on our official publicity.

22 April 2021: A HSK Official tweet asserts:

目前正在实施的HSK1-6级近期不会调整，考试效力、考试内容、参考词汇及考试形式不变，将继续稳定实施。参加HSK1-6级的考生成绩仍然有效，已取得的证书效力不变。
[Google Translate]: The currently implemented HSK 1-6 levels will not be adjusted in the near future, and the test effectiveness, test content, reference vocabulary and test format will remain unchanged and will continue to be implemented stably. The scores of candidates participating in HSK 1-6 levels are still valid, and the validity of the certificates already obtained remains unchanged.

They also discuss the HSK7-9 rollout in a QQ post:

依据《标准》科学研制HSK7-9级需要一个过程，目前计划于2021年12月试考，2022年3月正式推出考试。
[Google Translate]: It takes a process to scientifically develop HSK Levels 7-9 according to the "Standard". Currently, it is planned to take the test in December 2021 and officially launch the test in March 2022.

Chinese Zero to Hero has a searchable webpage with the HSK7-9 vocabulary, including e.g. English translations.


(Shanghai Wu) "但是, 晓得 个 伊 来仔." Is this correct? 但是, 晓得 个 伊 来仔

  /dé.zz̩ ɕiɒ.tə́ʔ ɦəʔ ɦi le.tsź̩/

  Intended meaning: "But, she came here knowing (that this fight was hopeless)."

Is the use of 个 here correct? (伊 refers to an animate antecedent here.) If not, what is the proper way to write a relative clause?

In Chinese, clauses are often freely translated, since there is no such grammar structure. And the grammar of Wu Chinese is much similar with standard Chinese. I try to translate your sentence into both standard Chinese and Shanghai Wu.

But, she came here knowing (that this fight was hopeless).
(standard Chinese) 但是，她来这里的时候，就知道（这场战斗是没有希望的）。
(Shanghai Wu) 但是，渠（伊）来此地个辰光，就晓得（箇场仗是没啥希望个）。
/de zy, ghi le tshy di gheh zen kuaon, zhieu shiau teh geh zan tsan zy meh sa shi vaon gheh/

The following sentences which you intented to translate into are grammatically possible but less natural, and even less when clauses continue to grow.

(standard Chinese) 但是，知道（这场战斗没有希望）的她来了这里。
(Shanghai Wu) 但是，晓得（箇场仗没啥希望）个渠（伊）来仔此地。


What is the function of 哩? (Cantonese) What is the function of 哩 in 哩兩個人好相似?

And how different is it if you just say 兩個人好相似?

The standard character for ni1 / nei1 is 呢, not 哩, which mean 'mile'

呢兩個人好相似

呢 in this context functions as 'this'
呢 (this)
兩個人 (two persons)
好相似 (very alike)

呢 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/1029/
jyutping: ni1 / nei1
[粵][pron][adj] this

~

And how different is it if you just say 兩個人好相似?

呢兩個人好相似 (this two people are very alike)

兩個人好相似 (two people are very alike)

It is just like omitting 'this' in "(this) two people are very alike" in English.
You can omit '呢/this' if we know which two persons the sentence is referring to


Can one use 热 and 冷 to describe people? In many Indo-European languages metaphors of temperature are used to describe people. Is it the same in Chinese,  can we say '他很热' and not mean that they have a high temperature?

You may need words of 2 characters, but I'm sure Chinese can do that. Specifically, what do you want to express? Hot or cold: passion, zeal, enthusiasm, interest, love, desire, hate? Here are some pairs of opposites.

热情 —— 冷静
热心 —— 冷淡
热门 —— 冷漠

Furthermore, you can write:

  他冷冷地对我说了 ...
  我热情地微笑着, ...


Identify artist of tapestry I am try to identify the artist or school of art for a silk tapestry by their seal:

title: 松龄鹤寿, pine's age and crane's life. seal: 长寿, long life。There is not any artist information.


Confusion when describing the location of something using A在B的location pattern? For example, if I wanted to say the library is in front of the dorm, would it be:
图书馆在宿舍的前面

Or using the B的location是A pattern, would it be: 宿舍的前面是图书馆

I just get a little confused when using location words like front and behind. When I use actual directions it makes sense.

in terms of grammar, both sentences are ok. but the two sentences emphasize different points.
i'll put these two sentences in dialogues of English so that you can get a better understanding.

For 图书馆在宿舍的前面:
-Where's the library?
-The library is in front of the dorm.
(This is probably what you want in your case, emphasizes the location of the library-WHERE)

For 宿舍的前面是图书馆:
-What's in front of the dorm?
-The library (is in front of the dorm).
(Emphasizes it is the library that lies in front of the dorm-WHAT)

-native speaker here, hope this help :)


Eleven 把-related sentences containing grammar errors (e.g. 我把作业已经交给老师了): how do we explain these errors? This post on Reddit gives eleven 把 sentences containing grammar errors (original image).  It looks like a worthwhile exercise.  (A native Chinese speaker /u/Lvguichen gave corrections without explanations.)

I'm hoping to get feedback on my understanding, so please critique my explanations below.

In the following sentences the highlighted terms are misplaced:

  (1) 我把作业已经交给老师了。 -->   我已经把作业交给老师了。
  (4) 他把英语课本没有放回书架上。  -->  他没有把英语课本放回书架上。
  (5) 地上有水，你把背包不要放在地上。  -->  地上有水，你不要把背包放在地上。

In the following sentences the highlighted verbs lack complements:

  (3) 我们先把啤酒喝再走，好吗？  -->   我们先把啤酒喝完再走，好吗？
  (7) 别忘了把身份证带！  -->   别忘了把身份证带上！

These two are incorrect because they involve transitive verbs which lack objects:

  (2) 他不喜欢把自己的东西借。  -->   他不喜欢把自己的东西借出去。
  (10) 你不可能把他认识，你们从来没见过面。  -->  你不可能认识他，你们从来没见过面。

(I can't think of a reasonable way to say 认识他 beginning 把他...)

This one reads like something clumsily translated from English (and ignores Chinese grammar):

  (6) 弟弟常常藏脏衣服在床底下。  --> 弟弟常常把脏衣服藏在床底下。

The following seems wrong because 把 requires a positive action (把论文写完 is okay, but 把论文写不完 is not):

  (9) 来不及了，我把论文写不完！ --> 我不能把论文写完！

Below 当 and 作 seem completely wrong:

  (11) 别当我作傻子了。 --> 别把我当傻子了

For this one, I don't understand the grammar error (/u/Lvguichen
 simply deleted the 了):

  (8) 顾客把一些水果放在购物篮里了。

Similar examples are online: 女孩把钱放在包里了[src] and 昨天把东西放在桌子上了[src].  In fact, even the Chinese Grammar Wiki gives such an example 她把我的手机放在她的包里了.

(11) 别当我作傻子了。 --> 别把我当傻子了
another way to fix it is use "当是" instead of "当作" e.g. 别当我是傻子了
[当][我][是][傻子] is [v] + [n] + [v] + [n]
[当(我)作][傻子] is [verb + (n) + verb complement] + [n] (we don't insert noun between verb and verb complement)

~

(8) 顾客把一些水果[放]在购物篮里[了] --> 顾客把一些水果[放了]在购物篮里
If 了 is treated as a verb particle that indicate the action is completed, it is more effective to place it directly after the verb 放
If 了 is treated as a final particle that indicate change of situation, the sentence seems incomplete (what made the customers not put some vegetable in the basket before?)


What does "你什么都不是" mean? Literal translation:

你 - You
什么 - what / who / something / anything
都 - entire / all
不是 - blame

My guess - It's all your fault?

Literally: you are nothing at all, usually used in a disparaging way from what I can gather.  It follows the common pattern of Sub+什么都不+Verb, meaning that the subject verbs nothing at all.  Ex: 我什么都不知道 = I don't know anything.


Why is 对...不置一词 used like this? 该声明对东盟一些成员国长期以来在南海的大规模填海造地和军事建设活动不置一词。
I am having trouble with 对...不置一词。 So apparently, the sentence translates to, "This statement is not saying anything to stuff the ASEAN member nations have been doing for a long time."  However, the article was about how the Chinese were against other countries doing stuff in their territories.

Why is 对...不置一词 used here? Does it have a different meaning in this context?

对..不置一词 literally means to 'not place a word on...'.  As Pedroski suggested, it means to not making a comment (or even a word) about the incident.


What is the full name of 中央军委? According to my research, I find there are two institutions in China now which might have the shorter name as 中央军委, one being 中华人民共和国中央军事委员会, the other being 中国共产党中央军事委员会. Both of the bodies might be made up of the same and exact people, but it is unusual or impossible to have the same shorter name for two different bodies.

They're the same organization in fact.

  中央军事委员会与中国共产党中央军事委员会事实上是同一机构两块牌子，不是合署办公。对武装力量发布的命令一般仅使用中国共产党中央军事委员会名义、或以中央军委的作为统称。与中华人民共和国国务院联合发布命令是使用中华人民共和国中央军事委员会的名义。

(中央军事委员会 and 中国共产党中央军事委员会 is the same organization with two plates in fact, but not merging work in one official. Orders to armed forces are usually issued under the name of 中国共产党中央军事委员会, or 中央军委 as the general name. When orders are jointly issued with 中华人民共和国国务院 (the State Council) the name of 中华人民共和国中央军事委员会 is used.)

See 中共中央军事委员会和中华人民共和国军事委员会有何区别


Radicals: inescapable? I've started to learn independently some Chinese (on printed material mainly) but a friend who has studied the language at University level suggested I learn the radicals as a necessary start.
A bookseller also had suggested this a while ago and sold me a (lovely) book about radicals (that the bookstore itself, Librairie You Feng in Paris, printed).
I will be starting a course soon (not knowing where it will take me) but is this a reality? Should I really try to memorize the 214 basic radicals?
Thank you for your help!

I feel like this question could elicit subjective and open-ended answers, but here goes anyway ...

In Beijing, one of the classes I had was a dedicated 汉字 (Hànzì, Chinese character) class. In it, we were learning the most common radicals, and some word examples that contain that radical. We learnt how, often, the meaning is conveyed by the radical and the other portion is often a pronunciation component. I found this to be enormously helpful; even without recognising some characters, I could sort of guess at their general meaning and, with the context of the sentence, understand what was going on.

Contrasting this to the general classes I attend at 孔子学院 (Kǒngzǐ Xuéyuàn, Confucius Institute) where they do not teach you any radicals, simply tell you to learn and remember the new words yourself, I notice most classmates struggling to remember "which little bit goes next to the bigger bit." I found my prior knowledge of some radicals helped me learn the characters quicker than my classmates, and my belief that they are of importance continues to allow me to learn previously-unknown-to-me radicals and characters faster as well.

They are important. They are necessary to learn. However, whether you specifically set out to learn them first, or if you gradually learn them and get a feel for them as you continue your education ... that part is up to you.

I, for one, would definitely recommend to keep them in mind, but not necessarily learn 214 common ones before learning any whole characters. I would probably learn a character, figure out what the radical stands for, see if there are other variants (like 心 xīn: heart radical has a couple of different forms) maybe look up a few other characters with that radical, then press on with the next character in your book. Rinse and repeat.

Note, there will be certain characters where the radical doesn't appear to provide any understanding of what the character means. That's just how it goes sometimes: you might think it's stupid and it should have [x] radical instead of the [y] radical that it has, but you could say the same of any language really: some bits are just nonsensical, and you just have to remember it but not necessarily understand it (the best lesson my calculus teacher ever taught me: "You don't have to understand it, you just have to know it." took me from a C to an A.)


What's the difference between 校园 (meaning "campus") and 校院? Is 校院 incorrect? It seems like 校院 is infrequently used, while 校园 is normal.  I'm not sure if this is because 校院 is incorrect, or because it's less common.

It's possible to find examples of 校院 being used online, e.g. 校院简介.

Question: What's the difference between 校园 and 校院?  Is 校院 incorrect?

They refer to different things.

校园 means campus/schoolyard.

校院 means 校 and 院. In most cases they mean 学校(school) and 学院(college/academy/institute), e.g.

  校院简介
  本人在华并未以侨生身份申请其他大学校院。
  实行校院两级管理体制是高校深化体制改革的一项重要措施。

According to the context, they might mean 学校 and 医院, e.g.

  “校院合作、工学结合”是我国卫生高等职业教育改革和发展的必然趋势。

PS: 校院 is infrequently used because we have another much more common word 院校 (学院 and 学校). 校院 seems to be used only when the order does matter. E.g. in 校院简介 and 实行校院两级管理体制, 学院 is considered as the lower level unit of 学校, then 校院 should be used.


我学了中文了 - is it a good sentence? Is 我学了中文了 a good sentence? Is it possible to have 2 times 了 this way?
Are both of the following correct?

我学中文了
我学了中文

Is their combination also correct?

我学了中文了

"我学中文" - "I learn Chinese"
"我学了中文" - "I've learned Chinese" [了 after a verb is a verb particle that indicates the verb is completed]
"我学中文了" - Depend on context, it can Imply "我(開始)学中文了" (I have started to learn Chinese) or "我(肯)学中文了" (I am willing to learn Chinese now).  了 after a verb phrase is a verb particle that indicates a change of situation. (change from not learning Chinese to learning Chinese or from unwilling to willing)
In "我学了中文了" (I've learned Chinese), the first 了 is a verb particle and the second 了 is a final particle.
A final particle is a particle placed at the end of a sentence to (a) indicate the sentence has ended (b) soften the tone of speech (c) to stress the sentence itself or add emotional tone to it.
"我学了中文了" is a valid sentence


What is the purpose of 一切信息 in this sentence? Example sentence, from 青少年科学百科全书 （第一章：声音）

  各种各样的声音能够使我们了解来自内部身体和外部世界发生的一切信息。

I've translated this as:

  Various sounds can enable our understanding of events in the human body and the outside world.

However, I think I may have abandoned some meaning.

Questions

what is the purpose of 一切信息?  I translate this literally as "all information" or "all data".
does 发生 apply to both 世界 and 身体, or only 世界?

i.e. 世界发生 world happenings
and 身体发生 bodily happenings

a different literal translation attempt:

You are right, it is not written carefully, 信息 can NOT 发生，the sentese would read better if written as

各种各样的声音能够使我们了解来自身体内部和外部世界发生的一切 or
各种各样的声音能够使我们了解来自身体内部和外部世界发生的一切事情 or
各种各样的声音能够使我们了解来自身体内部和外部世界发生的一切事情的相关信息


How do I translate the words “player” and “team” into Mandarin? I have noticed there is a large number of words that translate as “player” and “team”. I've been trying to decipher those and so far it seems that:

  玩家 wánjiā, 玩者 wánzhě  – those two mean a player of a game

  竞赛者 jìngsài zhě – this one would be a contestant in a game such as
  race?

  游戏者 yóuxì zhě – a video game player or gamer

  球员 qiúyuán – player of a game involving a ball, such as football,
  basketball (golf?) etc.

And there there are the teams:

  班 bān – team?

  团队 tuándu – team?

  组别 zǔbié – team?

  球队 qiúduì – sports team involving a ball

Is my thinking correct? What is the difference between those terms? Are there other terms I am missing here?

Your thinking is correct!
班 is always 班级 (bānjí) — usually it means "class"

团队 (tuánduì) — you might consider the word as "group"

组别 (zǔbié) — also means "group", but it doesn't always have many people in the group

球队 (qiúduì) — sports team involving a ball, it's only used in ball games, like 足球队 (football team), 篮球队 (basketball team)…


How would I say Dominican Republic in Chinese? Google translate gives me: Duōmǐníjiā gònghéguó.

But I wondered if the chinese use a smaller word or lop-off the Republic at the end?

First of all, let's confirm the translation. If you look for "Dominican Republic" on Wikipedia, and then choose the chinese page, the result is:

  多米尼加共和国
  Duō mǐ ní jiā gòng hé guó

So, yes, it's the right translation. If you don't like Wikipedia as the only source, this is confirmed by the YouDao and CEDICT dictionaries.

I tried searching for "多米尼加" only (in both of those named above) and the result is simply "Dominica". Note that "Dominican Republic" and "Dominica" refer to two different countries, so since I think the same ambiguity is present in Chinese, you should keep the whole expression in order to be understood unambiguously.


Differences between 移民 and 移居 The two words 移民 and 移居 are really confusing to me, I’ve searched the dictionary but they are still vague to me. Can someone help me with the use of these 2 words and add some examples?

移民(v) immigrate; (n) immigrant

移居(v) migrate; move to ~ (to live)

移居中国= move to China (to live)

You just need to move to China to quality as 移居, even you don't become a citizen of China. Since it is very likely for someone 移居 to a country will later become an immigrant to that country, "移居" can also implies "to immigrate".

If you just move from Beijing to Shanghai, you are definitely not "移民"(immigrating) from Beijing to Shanghai; you are "移居" (migrate to) Shanghai from Beijing

移民中国 = immigrate to China - You are expecting to become a Chinese citizen
中国移民 =  Chinese immigrant
移居 is not a noun, therefore, there is no such thing as 中国移居


Punctuation - 書名號 in writing a title and chapter of a documentation It seems that 書名號 in English is called "Guillemet", I don't know if you knowing the English version makes it any better to understand.

I wanted to refer to a section/chapter within a user manual. Which of the following is the correct one, or the mostly acknowledged one? Or am I wrong about all these:

《××使用手冊．××方法》
《××使用手冊》－××方法
《××使用手冊》××方法章節

I want to make the following sentence:

詳情請參考 ____ 。

Here are my researches, as they are required on Chinese SE to show my effort. (I've learned the hard way)

《重訂標點符號手冊》修訂版--書名號

The above document is the official document written by the educational department in Taiwan. This is recommended to write a 書名(book title) with an 篇名(article title):

《莊子．逍遙遊》

As well as Wikipedia, though it didn't specify the syntax of writing such.

But I still wanted to make sure because I want to write a 書名(book title) with a chapter/section(章節)

Thanks.

GB/T 15834-2011, Section 4.14.3.2 seems to be more relevant than the section cowboy referenced since it explicitly mentions chapters in addition to volumes:

标示书名与篇（章、卷）名之间的分界。
示例： 《淮南子·本经训》

In other words, a middle dot should be used between the title and chapter. As others have noted, the Taiwanese reference describes the middle dot character but is using an ideographic full stop AKA period character which is not semantically equivalent to a middle dot.
There is no full-width middle dot character in Unicode and you're expected to achieve that effect using fonts and glyph selection tools such as CSS' relatively new font-variant-east-asian property. That's easier said than done though since you first need to find a font that provides a full-width middle dot glyph and the only one I know of is Adobe Ming Std.
Also, if you have a chapter/section number, one example I've seen of that kind of labeling is at http://www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/openaccess/rdfconcepts-tc.html#section-Literals where a section title is labeled in the form of "第4節Early Uniform Normalization". Of course, you can use 章 in lieu of 節 for both chapters and sections.


How can I put the understandability of classical Chinese and modern Chinese into scale? I am trying to explain to English-speaking people how different classical Chinese (文言文) and modern Chinese (白话文) are. I would like to put this into scale.

Basically, if an average modern Chinese person sees a text in classical Chinese, how much of it would he be able to understand? Would he be able to understand as much as an average English person understands early modern English (like in Shakespeare's works)? Or maybe Middle English? Latin even?

in short, it's middle english.

a long explanation, in general, roughly:

i would define classical chinese as "text from bc770 to bc221 (春秋 - 先秦),  afterward, it's literary chinese. there're big differences between this two, mainly, the grammar, style, vocabulary & underlying assumption.

for classical chinese text, thought modern average people know most of the characters and words, they would have great difficulty to understand an article without help. if you ask them to write in the same style. it's no.

it's like asking a land buddy to read the bowditch

for literary chinese text, modern average people would have difficulty to understand the articles, they may guess the meaning of words, clauses. if they've help (dictionaries, mentors), they could grasp the meaning roughly. i guess there're very few people can write literary chinese now.

it's like asking a high school children to read university level textbook.

next, types of articles has huge differences in the comprehension.

poems, correspondences and novels are easier to understand; while religious, medical, astronomical related materials are, very very tough.

have fun :)


How do I say that a program (coding) "Works!" I'm trying to say a program (as in something a programmer/程序员） finally works!
Is there a way to translate this "works" into chinese?

Could I say
我的代码终于可以了！？ Or is there a way that is more clear what I mean?

我的代码终于可以了 is close to My code is ok now, you can say something more clearly like 我的代码终于可以

运行
工作
跑（起来）

了！


What’s the meaning of 会 in 你明天这个时候会是在做什么? In this sentence: 你明天这个时候会是在做什么?, I find 会 useless, especially since its English translation on tatoeba.org does not seem to reflect its sense.
What meaning does it carry here?

你明天这个时候会是在做什么? is not a very fluent sentence construction. I would have re-written it as 你明天这个时候会做什么? instead.

会 is not useless. It carries the meaning of "likely" in this context.

  What will you be (likely) doing at this time tomorrow?

The way sentences are expressed in Chinese is not the same as it is done in English. What appears to be redundant in English need not be redundant in Chinese.

In the above example, because you can't predict what another person will be doing tomorrow, 会 has to be included in the Chinese sentence.

In the English sentence, the phrase "will... be" already expresses the meaning of likelihood in the question.


What purpose is 的 serving in 姐姐给我买的衬衫? In this sentence, I'm trying to understand the function of 的。

  姐姐 给 我 买 的 衬衫.

I thought it might indicate possession, but (in my beginner understanding), that would require 的 to be between 2 nouns.

See my answer to this post Why no 的 in this sentence?

  的 1.(adjective suffix):

  的 2.(possessive):

"的" in  [姐姐给我买] [的] [衬衫] is an "adjective suffix"

"姐姐给我买的" (the one that my sister bought me) is an adjectival phrase that describes the noun "衬衫"

What shirt? The shirt that my sister bought for me

  Using the adjective suffix 的 can turn a very short phrase or a long sentence into an adjectival phrase

Example:

失敗 (fail)--> 失敗的人 (failed person/ the person who failed )

沒有工作，整天玩電腦遊戲 (have no job and play computer games all day) --> 沒有工作，整天玩電腦遊戲的人 (the person who has no job and plays computer games all day)


Why say 少说两句 to break up a fight? In the movie 北京遇上西雅图 (~25m45s), during an argument the protagonist calls another pregnant woman a 骚货 ("slut") and they start physically fighting.  A third woman tries to break them up and says:

行了 行了 别别别
少说两句 少说两句 哎呀 肚子 肚子 孩子

I don't understand why she would say 少说两句 in particular, which means something like "say two fewer sentences".  I think the general idea is "stop speaking uncontrollably", and HiNative posts (here and here) suggests this is the case, but it's unclear to me why we would say 少说两句.
Question: Why say 少说两句 to break up a fight?

「兩」 here is basically a synonym of 「幾」 (several). 「少說兩句」 means 「少說幾句」, that is, the argument arose out of speaking too much (more likely to drag up disagreements and past grievances), so speaking less is a way of not adding fuel to the fire.
It's not really a way of breaking up the fight, but a way of calming the situation down.


Using 一样 instead of 同一 for "the same school" In my study software, I recently had the following sentence:

我想我们会上一样的学校.

The context (a girl speaking to another girl who had just moved into the neighborhood) made it seem like the correct translation was something like "I think we will be going to the same school."  But I had thought 一样 generally referred to things that were separate objects (though very similar), not the same exact one; and that 同一 meant "the same exact one".

For example, "these two women came to the party wearing the same dress," would use 一样, because it's two different dresses that look the same; but "These children want the same toy" would be 同一， because it's the same exact toy.

Is my understanding correct?  Could I say "我想我们会上同一个学校" instead?  Why or why not?

Your understanding is correct.

You never use 一样 to refer to the same school. You can only use it to refer to two similar schools.

同一 always means the same one.

  I think we will end up going to the same school = 我想我们会上同一所学校


What does 国产地效船双船 mean? Apparently it means "domestically produced fixed-wing amphibian aircraft" but I can't find this on any dictionary.  Can you break it down for me?

first, it is not 国产地效船双船+试飞. It should be 国产地效船+双船试飞.

Second, if you want to add 双船 to 国产地效船 as a phrase, you should go with 国产地效双（体）船.


What semantic notions underlie "righteousness, uprightness" (義) with "appearance; apparatus" (儀)? "Appearances can be deceiving", and  instruments have been used for torture. So how did 義 semantically shift to mean definitions 1-4 below? p 1134,  ABC Chinese–English Comprehensive Dictionary (2003). I can't access the "slightly revised through July 2005" ed.

CUHK doesn't answer, and merely states "參見「義」。" It's ironic that 義 features in "引申義" when I'm asking about 義's 引申義.

CUHK does give you an answer in the entry of 義 .
儀 is a derivative character of 義. When there are too many meanings derived for a character, people would like to make a new character by putting an indicator for specific meaning. Here they put 人 to 義 and it is 儀.
Actually, “righteousness, uprightness” of 義 is a derivative meaning. The original meaning of “appearance” is transferred to 儀. In the very ancient only 義 exists.
義 is composed of 我 and 羊. 我 is a kind of weapon and make the symbol of an army. Character adding 羊 is an indicator of good thing, such as 祥, 善 and 美. 義, the combination of 羊 and 我, demonstrates the meaning of the good appearance of an army and it is well-disciplined. It gives the meaning of 威儀. (For definition 1)
With good appearance of an army, ceremony and etiquette comes. (For definition 2) With ceremony and etiquette, they make use of some instruments as the symbol of power and mightiness. (For definition 4) It is the symbol of the common ruler of tribe rulers. The common ruler has the right to punish those tribes that do something bad.
From this point they associates it with the righteousness of army. The meaning of righteousness and uprightness in 義 hence derived.
The school of Confucius and Mencius speaks a lot about 仁 and 義. 仁 is soft and on the peaceful side, and it is benevolence. On the contrary 義 is the hard way and on the forceful side. 義 permits of the use of force to correct the injustice.
Giving others presents and gifts is part of ceremony and etiquette eventually. (For definition 3)


Generating ruby markup for HTML I am very much a beginner, and one of my learning methods is to listen to audio and follow along in text.  But generally, my texts are in Hànzì.

It's easy enough to convert Hànzì to pīnyīn but I want to start getting familiar with the Hànzì also.  Manually merging Hànzì and pīnyīn into ruby tags looks like a tedious job.  I could write a program to do it, but I suspect someone already has done so.  However, thanks to the programming language called Ruby, finding it in a web search is the proverbial "needle in haystack."

I realize that such a program could get up to 23% wrong, but manually correcting such errors will be far less tedious than manually generating the entire document.  Using a font with the Ruby built-in is undesirable because then the errors cannot be corrected.

I understand that Firefox and Opera support is lagging, but since the results are for my own use, that doesn't matter.  (And if I ever need to pass on a conversion, I can print to PDF.)_

So, where can I find such a converter?  Or if someone is working on one, perhaps I could help.

I see that Japanese.SE has a markup for furigana that has a much simpler syntax than HTML5's Ruby.

Try to search harder. I only typed "generate pinyin ruby markup" in google and found this:

az

The same search string in DuckDuckGo yielded

Key


How would you translate 云上蓝天万里 to English? How would you translate this expression to English?

  云上蓝天万里

Is it correctly written?
Does it sound weird for a Chinese speaker?

The literal meaning of 云上蓝天万里 is simple: "Above the (dark) clouds, there are thousands miles of (bright) blue sky"

The figurative meaning needs some comprehension. "Break through the dark clouds above, and you can find a bright blue sky" --> "get pass the darkness and you will find hope"


Best words in Chinese characterizing "cynical"? What are the best words that approximate the meaning of "cynical" closest? The traditional "憤世嫉俗" sounds not quite to-the-point; "憤世嫉俗" can be attached a positive meaning that describes the character of an upright man.

犬儒
KEY defines it as:

cynic (esp. as Greek philosophical school)

and 汉语大词典 defines it as:

原指古 希腊 犬儒学派的哲学家。他们提出绝对的个人精神自由, 轻视一切社会虚套、习俗和文化规范, 过着禁欲的简陋生活, 被当时人讥为穷犬, 故称。后亦泛指具有这些特点的人。

Here’s an example of usage by 鲁迅 from Miscellaneous Thoughts

《小杂感》
蜜蜂的刺, 一用即丧失了它自己的生命；犬儒的刺, 一用则苟延了他自己的生命。

Which translates to something roughly like:
The sting of a bee, once used terminates his life; the sting of a cynic, on the other hand, is able to prolong his existence.
Eileen J. Cheng's translation:

Once a bee uses its sting, it loses its life immediately. Once a cynic uses his sting, he drags out his life momentarily.

If it is good enough for Mr. Lu Xun then it should be good enough for anyone.


Could you give an example of a sentence in classical chinese wherein 爽 is used? I have some real problem understanding the semantics behind this word, I would be glad to see how this word was used in classical Chinese in order to get an idea of its original usage.

爽

clear, example:(idioms) 神清气爽
wise, example: 兹心不爽，而昏乱百度。——《左传·昭公元年》
cheerful, example: 温豪爽有风慨。——《晋书·桓温传》
v. make error, example: 女也不爽，士贰其行。——《诗·卫风·氓》
v. break one's word, example: 郭伋还州，尚不欺于童子； 文侯校猎，宁爽约于虞人。—— 李商隐《为张周封上杨相公启》


Why is "他在椅子上坐" wrong? Need help urgently!!

Question #1: What are the differences between these three sentences:
1) 他坐在椅子上
2) 他在椅子上坐着
3) 他在椅子上坐 (wrong)

Question #2: Why is "他在椅子上坐" wrong?

Thank you in advance!

1) 他坐在椅子上  = 2) 他在椅子上坐着

  He is sitting on/in a chair.

  or

  He sits on /in a chair.

You choose which translation to use depending on which part you want to stress.(movement or status)

3) 他在椅子上坐 (questionable)

  He sits on /in a chair.

If He sits on /in a chair in English sounds right to you, then 他在椅子上坐 is grammatically correct as well.

Here I can give you a rare context where it CAN be correct.

  你都这么大了，行为要变得正常一点，在桌子上吃饭，在厕所拉屎，在床上睡，在椅子上坐，该怎么样就怎么样。

You'd better put your context here so we can discuss. Safely speaking, avoid the third usage unless you are confident that you are correct.


What is the Chinese way to say "We had a lot of fun"? I know an English sentence cannot be translated into Chinese word-by-word. So is there a idiomatic way to express the same meaning of "We had a lot of fun" in Chinese? (The context-- someone said this to a party host when he is about to leave the party: Thank you for having us. We had a lot of fun.)

The word "had" is in past tense. So the Chinese equivalent needs to indicate this too.

Past tenths aren't as explicitly stated a lot of times in Chinese as they are in English.

For instance, your question We had a lot of fun could easily be translated as:

我们今天晚上玩得很开心

we + tonight + play + very + happy

and (assuming that you're not going to parties during the daytime) that would be a perfectly idiomatic, grammatical sentence.

Here 玩得很开心 would be the equivalent of the English had a lot of fun.

Note: 玩 here would sound a lot better er-ized: that is to say 玩儿 and not just 玩.


Does 青龙 not really mean Green Dragon? People at the Hebei museum, and my friends, and Baidu http://baike.baidu.com/view/606163.htm all agree that 青龙白虎 means "Dragon and White Tiger."  (I capitalize because these name specific folk animals.) When I asked at the museum whether it means the dragon is green they could not see why I would ask that.  So I suppose 青龙 is a traditional name that just means dragon and not green.

Can anyone here tell me if that is right? And can anyone explain a reason for it?  Or is it just the kind of thing can happen with traditional names in any culture?

Actually, on line a lot of people translate it as Azure Dragon.  I know 青 has several more meanings than the western green/grun/vert.  So maybe just plain Dragon is not a good translation of 青龙.  But I do not know.

青龙 should be translated as 'Azure (or Green/Blue) Dragon', that is the accepted translation for the mythological context. (Check some dictionaries, Pleco or CEDICT, they all use Azure Dragon, Wikipedia, and this Wiki article on the Four Symbols, too.)

Why would 青 mean nothing here? You can argue if it is blue, green or azure, but it is a color. Perhaps the people who translated 青龙白虎 as 'Dragon and White Tiger' just got confused about the different equivalents of 青 (blue, green, black) and left it out.

If Wikipedia is not authoritative for you, you can try a site colon search on Google with site:edu 青龙 . This will search for 青龙 on the websites of American universities. You can see that most of these sources will give the translation as either Blue, Green or Azure Dragon.

If you are still looking for some evidence, there are some books written on (or inspired by) Chinese mythology with the title bearing your expression:


Tang Dynasty Inscription In researching a Tang inscription (661 CE) I came across this in a journal article.

此外，玄导时代刻经有年号、施主、住僧可考的，有唐显庆六年（661）涿城府左果毅都尉杨社生及其一家施刻的“心经”[附注11]

　(11)显庆六年“心经”题记:“雍州栎阳县游骑将军守左卫涿城府左果毅都尉杨社生、母段、妻扈、息怀庆、玄嗣、玄黎、玄……眷属、缘此功德、齐成正觉。显庆六年二月八日造。

I think I mostly understand what it says, but I'd like to get a second opinion. The first passage is modern Chinese, the inscription is from 661 CE.

Very roughly...

Furthermore, from the era of Xuándǎo (玄导) there is an inscription dated to the 6th year of Tang Dynasty, Xiǎnqìng era [a reign name of 唐高宗 Táng Gāozōng] (661). The donor, one 杨社生 Yáng Shèshēng (涿城府左果毅都尉 city guard, commander of the left) had “心经” the Heart Sutra 其一家施刻的 engraved for the benefit of his family. (See note 11)

(Note 11) The Xiǎnqìng era 6 "Heart Sutra" inscription: 雍州 Yōng Province, 櫟陽縣 Yueyang county [50 km NE of Chang'an], 游騎將軍守 mobile cavalry/chariot unit, 衛涿城府 city and government defense force, 左果毅都尉 courageous commander of the left, [named] 杨社生 Yáng Shèshēng, [To] 母段 Mother Duan, 妻扈 Wife Hu, 息仗炭, 玄嗣, 玄黎, 玄... [and individuals named] Xī Zhàngtàn, Xuánsì, Xuánlí, and Xuán[zhēn]... [and to] 眷属 family dependents 缘此功德 go the merits 齐成正觉 to make them equal to the awakening of the Buddha [正觉 = Sanskrit abhisambodhi]. Made in 顯慶 Xiǎnqìng era, 六年 6th Year, 二月 2nd month, 六日 6th day (13 March 661).

The elided text, between 玄... 眷属 (reading directly from a blurry photo of the inscription) appears to be: "貞女天娘○○○利○山家", where ○ = a character I cannot read. The whole colophon is in three lines like this (with the extra part in square brackets):

雍州爍陽縣游騎將軍守左衛涿城府左果毅都尉楊社生
母段 妻屆息仗炭玄嗣玄黎玄[貞女天娘○○○利○山
家]眷屁線此功德齊成正覓○○顯慶六年二月六日造

I am not clear on the exact meaning on the phrases:

玄导时
住僧可考的
衛涿城府
齐成正觉
母段, 妻扈

I assume that 息怀庆 is also a name, and that 玄嗣, 玄黎, and 玄貞 are the names of Buddhist monks.

I've included an image of the source text for reference. The colophon is the last three columns on the left.

interesting question :) i answered the easier parts first:

  玄导时

the modern text should be interpreted as "玄導時代"

the era (時代) of "玄導" (a monk's dharma name 法號)

  母段, 妻扈

the surname of the mother of "楊社生" is 段. then a space, the surname of mrs "楊" is "扈".

  住僧可考的

this modern text would be

[the era name (年号), donors (施主),] monk-in-charge (住僧) which can be (可) researchable, provable (考 --> 考據, 考證)

  齐成正觉

"齊成正覺", though i can't recognise this verse from the picture, it's quite likely correct. it means

all together (齊) achieve (成 --> 成就) enlightenment (abhisaṃbudhya　正覺 is a specialised buddhism term)

ok, my recognition & best guess:

３２１
家母雍ａ
眷段州ｂ
屬　櫟ｃ
緣妻陽ｄ
此扈縣ｅ
功息游ｆ
德懷騎ｇ
齊慶將ｈ
成玄軍ｉ
正嗣守ｊ
覺玄左ｋ
　黎衛ｌ
　玄涿ｍ
顯貞城ｎ
慶女府ｏ
六大左ｐ
年娘果ｑ
二二毅ｒ
月娘都ｓ
八隸尉ｔ
日利楊ｕ
造庄社ｖ
　山生ｗ
　　　ｘ
　．．ｙ
　．．ｚ

judging from the heart sutra on the right, the inscription on the left had three column, each had 26 characters.

  雍州櫟陽縣

in 661, 雍州 was the prefecture where the capital (aka 長安) located, 櫟陽縣 is a county in the prefecture 雍州

edited. well, in the past, it's common to declare one's ancestral home (籍貫), in front of their name. e.g. "通州雷學淇", "武昌劉禺生"

  游騎將軍守左衛涿城府左果毅都尉

"游騎將軍" is a rank name

守 --> 駐守 ~ to station, guard / defend

"左衛ｘｘ府" or "右衛ｘｘ府" indicated the place stationed, ｘｘ is the name of prefecture.

涿城府 is a prefecture name. now, it's 涿州市, located southwest of peking.

"左果毅都尉" is a post name, another post is, "右果毅都尉"

  楊社生

donor, with surname "楊", name "社生"

all together, 雍州櫟陽縣游騎將軍守左衛涿城府左果毅都尉楊社生 means:

雍州櫟陽縣 --> mr 楊's ancestral home

游騎將軍 --> his current rank

守左衛涿城府  --> stationed 守 in (left guard, 左衛?) of prefecture 涿城府

左果毅都尉 --> his current post

楊社生 --> his surname & most likely, his courtesy name (字)

guess

１ｘ:  deliberate space

１ｙ: 父 (father)

１ｚ: ? (character of his father's name)

end of guess

  母段　妻扈

explained, just to remind "段" & "扈" are surname

  息懷慶玄嗣玄黎玄貞

息 is 子息 --> son

so, mr "楊" had four sons, named "懷慶", "玄嗣", "玄黎", and, "玄貞"

  女大娘二娘

daughter (女), named "大娘" & "二娘"

guess

  隸利庄山

assistant [in the office] (隸), with surname "利", and name "庄山"

２ｘ: deliberate space

２ｙ: 及

２ｚ: 其

end of guess

  家眷屬緣此功德齊成正覺

if one added "及其" in front of this verse, it would become "及其家眷屬緣此功德齊成正覺", which would be interpreted as:

[the above named persons] and (及) their '其" family (家) members (眷屬), caused by (緣) this (此) merit (功德) [of donating to the buddhism texts inscription project], all together (齊) achieve (成 --> 成就) enlightenment (abhisaṃbudhya　正覺)

guess

３ｌ & ３ｍ : deliberate space

end of guess

  顯慶六年二月八日造

ok, i recommend this site to exchange lunisolar & gregorian calendar:

兩千年中西曆轉換, by academia sinica, taiwan

so, 顯慶六年二月八日 was 13th march 661 ad

"造" means "made"

have fun :)


pronunciation of 着 in 怎么着 As most of you will probably know, 着 can be pronounced in many ways (depending on the context).

I'm wondering how the 着 in 爱怎么着就怎么着 (meaning: do as you like) should be pronounced. Is it zhe or zhao1, and why? I've heard some people it pronouncing zhe and some zhao1. In MDBG they use zhao1, but say it is also pronounced as zhe, but all the other dictionaries I've checked, I can only find zhe.

EDIT: In the mean-time I've found these websites where people asked for the same question: Baidu, SOSO and Xiaotieba. There doesn't seem to be a consensus, and there are no references.

Dictionaries generally only show the 'standard' heteronymic readings of a Han character, rather than including all its contextual variations. This is the unwritten standard on Wiktionary as well, on which I am an admin.

As you have precisely discerned, both pronunciations are acceptable in this particular phrase; however, the 'standard' reading of zhe0 would be used in a dictionary for this particular phrase instead as it applies to a wider range of contexts, whereas zhao1 is restricted to this particular context (怎么着).

See the Wiktionary entry for more information: 怎么着


When making j, x, and q consonant sounds, where in the mouth does the sound get created? This page clearly shows the difference in tongue position for forming these consonants.

However, I find that what I'm doing is placing the tip of my tongue against my lower teeth as directed, but the middle of my tongue is still touching the roof of my mouth, and the air passing between it and the roof of my mouth is being used to form the q, j, and x sounds the same way I would make the ch, j, and sh sounds in English with the tip of my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

Is that right, or should I somehow be making the sound somewhere else, like against my teeth, without using the gap between tongue and roof of mouth at all?

I think you're doing it right. The alveo-palatal part of sound (which j/x/q have in common) should be created by the gap between the middle of your tongue and the roof of your mouth, and that's exactly what 'alveo-palatal' means. The difference among j/x/q though, aspiration and frication, are controlled by other part of the mouth, but I don't think that's the core of your question.

There is one thing to note though, that you described the tip of your tongue as against your teeth. Your link says 'the tip of the tongue rests behind the lower front teeth' which I think is a very accurate description of the right way. It might be just different phrasing but if your tongue is tightly sticking to your lower front teeth or even exerting, then you're doing it wrong and the result may sound like lisping due to too little/too much air flowing from the sides of your tongue.


What is the difference between 一切， 都 and 全部？ What is the difference between 一切， 都 and 全部？ Can you give some examples where the difference would be visible?

一切 : all; everything; every; all sorts
全部 : entire; all; whole; total
所有 : all; whatever there is

~

'一切' describes everything that's known or unknown, without confine.
For example, "一切後果由我來負";  (All consequence will be handled by me).
You don't necessary know what exactly they are, there's no confine

~

'全部' describes everything that's known or in a confine
Examples:
人體裡的全部器官 (all the organs in human body)- You know what they are exactly; and it is in the confine of a human body
圖書館裡的全部書籍 (All the books in the library)- In the confine of the library

所有 is more general, it can replace either 一切 or 全部

所有後果由我來負 = 一切後果由我來負

人體裡的所有器官 = 人體裡的全部器官

圖書館裡的所有書籍 = 圖書館裡的全部書籍

都 is an adverb for [all; both; without exception]
Example:
圖書館裡的所有書籍都要盖章 - Every book in the library all needed to be stamped

一切 can be a noun for "Everything"
全部 can be a noun for "the whole thing/ the entire thing/ every parts"
所有 is strictly an adjective  when it means 'all/ every'.  But it carries other meanings too. (see link)


偷看一眼 sounds like "Ta kan yi yan": wrong lyrics (as happened with 一切都这么美好 which is sung as 一切都变得美好) or weird pronunciation? In the song 忘不了 by Teresa Teng (lyrics here), one line goes:

  偷看一眼

That is, according to online lyrics. Except in this video, both at 00:25-00:26 and at 1:18-1:20, I hear:

  Ta kan yi yan

So are the lyrics wrong, or is it me mishearing, perhaps its /thau/ with the /u/ being almost undetectable, and that is some regional/dialectal pronunciation? How should it be spelt if "Ta kan yi yan" actually makes sense?

Edit

While browsing Youku to respond to @dan's comment with a Youku video, I found this, where the line is:

  他看一眼

That certainly matches the sounds I hear, but what does it mean?

Trying to make sense of a tweet-length song is hard, but since the song is from a romance movie in 1980, it could be a boy meeting a girl for the first time.

His first glance warmed her and brightened her world.
His second glance established the fond love and sealed her fate.

That is all I can think of.


What is the Mandarin equivalent of Cantonese's 麻麻地 (so-so)? How do you say "so-so" in Mandarin? In Cantonese, you would say 麻麻地. What's the Mandarin equivalent of 麻麻地?

麻麻地 (Cantonese)

  麻麻地 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1503/

  so-so; not too good, not too bad; ho-hum; middling.

  Example: 佢嘅英文麻麻地 (his English is just so-so)

普通/ 普普通通

  普通 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/2782/

  ordinary; general; average; standard; common

  Example:他的英文程度算是普普通通 (his English level is considered average)

一般

  一般 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1495/

  [1] ordinary; common; general

  Example:他的英文程度一般 (his English level is just average)

The term '麻麻' came from '馬馬虎虎'

  馬馬虎虎 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/41049/

  careless; casual; just passable; so-so

  Example: 他的英文只是馬馬虎虎的程度 (his English is only at a so-so level)


Is there a difference between 風景 and 風光？ Our book just introduced 風景 as scenic view, landscape. Now it introduces 風光 as "scenery". The book is very basic. It typically doesn't introduce alternative vocabulary. So I am trying to spot any differences.

Would you perhaps use 風光 in a city and 風景 in nature? Like:

  天色很藍，雲都反映落日的紅光，落日時的北京真是一個漂亮的風光。

Or:

  西湖上有一座白色的橋，湖邊的樹很多，樹下的花紅紅綠綠，落日時的西湖真是一的漂亮的風景。

Feel free to correct. The sentences are mine and I always make mistakes.

「風」 in 「風景」 and 「風光」 carries the meaning of :

'Style': as in 「和風」 (Japanese style) and 「作風」(style of behavior)
'air; atmosphere' - (something that creates moods and evokes feelings)

「景」 in 「風景」 carries the meaning of  'scene/ sight' -- the picture you see in your eyes, as in 「奇景」(strange sight)，「場景」(scene in a play)

  The term 「風景」 (sight/ scenery) specifically refers to 'the sight of a landscape or a natural scenery'  as in 「看風景」(watching the natural scenery )

「光」in 「風光」refers to 'light', which is needed to enable people to see -- in another word: 'sight'.

  The term「風光」 generally refers to 'sight/ scene /scenery'

For example:「異國風光」(sights and scenes of foreign country) ;「園林風光」(sights and scenes of garden and forest)

Of course it includes 'landscape or a natural setting' For example:
「西湖風光」. Therefore 「風光」and「風景」are interchangeable in this sense. (You can write 「西湖風景」instead of 「西湖風光」)

Unlike 「風景」, 「風光」can also be used metaphorically.

「風光大葬」(scenic funeral = impressive, dignified funeral)
「風光了幾十年」( have been a sight to behold for decades = have been awesome for decades)


What is the term little meatballs (referring to spoiled kids)? In this video One Child Policy: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) there's a description of only children:

  little emperors or little meatballs as they're sometimes called in Chinese

These terms are referring to spoiled only kids.

Little emperor is easy: 小皇帝. But I don't think I've ever heard mention of "little meatballs." What's the original term? 小丸子? 小肉丸?

Any ideas? Where'd the term originate from?

From my life experience, there's no such phrase as "Little Meatballs".

What children (or even some adults) use to make fun of overweight kids is "小胖墩". "小胖墩" literally means "Little Fat Chunk", and of course, it is a slang word. And here, it is more likely "小胖墩" is used to represent children been spoiled with foods since s/he is the only child.


Still confused about putting 了 at the end of a sentence or right after the verb Obviously this question is very similar to When should 了 be after the verb and when should it be at the end of the sentence?. I just wanted you to know that I consulted that before I posted this question.

I'm working through Rosetta Stone and I have a screenshot that illustrates what I'm struggling with.

So here we have two instances where le is appearing at the end of the sentence and one where it appears immediately after the verb. However, all three sentences involve someone giving an item to someone else so I would think they would all follow the same grammar rules. Here is another example:

In both pictures someone finished eating something so I would think they would follow the same grammar. So why does le appear after the verb in one picture but at the end of the sentence in the other?

The order where 了 appears in the sentence is important: when placed at the end of a sentence, it represents a change of state (it has nothing to do with tenses); when placed at the end of a verb, it represents a completed action. Using the examples in your question:

他们给我写信了 They wrote me a letter. (This is the first time I receive
a letter from them.)
他们给我写了信 They have written me a letter. (This is the fifth letter
from them.)
她给我们买巧克力了 She bought us chocolate. (It has been a long while since she last treated us.)
她给我们买了巧克力 She just bought us chocolate. (Oh, she bought some yesterday too.)