What does 态度 mean in 她礼貌不礼貌是她的态度? I wrote this (Kong Lin has just met a non-binary person, and the narrator describes her mental process):

  反而孔琳觉得无所谓，别人的性别不是她的选择，不过她客气还是不客气就是她的选择。

It's intended to mean something along the lines of:

  Instead, Kong Lin doesn't really care, another person's gender is not her choice, but being polite or not is her choice.

My teacher changed it to the following (I think, I may have made a mistake):

  反而孔琳觉得无所谓，别人的性别不是孔琳能决定的，不过她礼貌不礼貌是她的态度。

I'm completely puzzled by 态度 = "attitude" being used here.  Searching for 是她的态度 gives results which lead me to think there's a meaning of 态度 that I don't know, and I've transcribed her corrections accurately.

Question: What does 态度 mean in 她礼貌不礼貌是她的态度?

It's easy to get tangled up between languages and end up confused. Teech was probably in a hurry and a bit confused.

My tip: take your original language and simplify it as much as you can, then translate. If that doesn't do it, paraphrase, then translate.

态度: attitude towards someone or something

相反，孔琳其实并不在乎，她不能决定别人的性别，但是她可以决定自己的态度。


Did Mandarin Pinyin `chiang` used to exist? Came across this today:

  《廣韻·平·江》：“，短敞衣也，丑江切。”

 has MSM pronunciation chuāng but if we take 丑江切 that means we have ch + iang = chiang.

Other characters with 丑江切 seem to include:

䚎 (MSM: also chuāng)

憃 (MSM: chōng)

广韵 isn't exactly modern and 丑江切 seems to come out differently in different cases today.

What I'm mainly curious about here though is:

Did (modern) Mandarin Pinyin chiang used to exist?

The 反切 in 廣韻 use Middle Chinese pronunciation, so one cannot take the modern readings of the 反切 上下字 as a guide to how a word might be pronounced.

In this case, you are looking at words in the 江 rhyme category. These words have developed a -j- medial in Mandarin (when there is a velar initial) that was not present in Middle Chinese. Other dialects have not. Compare, for instance, the Cantonese pronunciation of 江 "gong".

Although  is not a "living" character, words which are in the same initial and rhyme categories are still around, such as 撞 zhuang. This is the regular development.

Mandarin has never had retroflex initials followed by medial -j-; in fact, this would seem to be a very unlikely combination in any language.


Is there an Android app that pressing on words translates them? I found this popup browser dictionary: Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary. Hovering the mouse over a character, it displays the translation and the pinyin:

Is there an app that gives this easy segmented translation and the pinyin of Chinese characters in Android?
Currently, I use Google translator but I have to copy every word and open the app for translating, which is not practical and too time-consuming.

Edit disclaimer: This question was closed and deleted as off-topic, because resources are off-topic on this site. However, I just now found an answer to this question and I believe it could be very useful for other users of this site learning Chinese (e.g. to communicate with other people, read from websites or read ebooks). So I will post it in an answer, I understand if the question is closed again.

I found the Pleco app manages to do this task using the (free) option Screen Reader:

For example, browsing online in a website:

If we press on the button
, the app recognizes the characters and pressing on any character gives the pinyin and the translation:

You can even listen to the selected character or the whole text with the corresponding buttons: .
From my testings, this function works fine in Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook chat. But it does not work in Wechat or Facebook posts.


What is the difference between 餐馆 and 饭店? Is 饭店 used for restaurant or hotel? 饭店 and 餐馆 can both mean restaurant. My Chinese friend here in Dongguan tells me 饭店 is not commonly used to mean hotel. I want to understand in what contexts both of these words are used. 谢谢.

restaurant - 餐馆，饭馆，小吃店，酒店，饭店，食肆

hotel - 旅馆，旅店，宾馆，酒店，饭店，客栈

酒家 in old days meant restaurant, but nowadays it is almost only used in the names of restaurants or hotels.


Chinese equivalent of 'Surprise!' In English culture, when someone is giving other a surprise, he/she can call out with voice 'surprise!'.

Is there an equivalent in Chinese culture?

I can't recall any Chinese expressions used in the same way as calling out with 'Surprise!' in English. I guess the reason might be that Chinese Culture doesn't make Chinese people as playful as English Culture making its people.

We say something different from 'surprise!' in similar cases:

I bring a gift to a friend, before showing him/her the gift, I say: 猜我给你带来了什么？or 看我给你带来了什么？ Then show the gift, and after seeing his/her facial surprise expression, I say: 没想到吧？or 喜欢吗？He or she may say: 真没想到。or 我很喜欢。or 我太惊讶了！
We plan to throw a party for a friend's birthday, and one person leads the friend to a room where everybody else is hiding. When they come in, all the hiding people jump out together and say: 生日快乐！
In a classmates reunion party, we decide to invite the old flame of one of our classmates. Once that classmate arrives, we say to him/her: 你看谁来了？Then the old flame comes in to give him/her a surprise.
At a performance audition, the judge is pleased with an actor's performance. The judge may say: 你的表演很不错，但是你知道，其他的表演者也非常优秀。我知道你非常热爱表演，所以不论今天你是否被录取，我希望你一直坚持下去，不要放弃。Now the actor probably thinks he will not be picked. Then the judge says: 恭喜你，你被录取了！The actor is definitely surprised.


How Many Characters Are There Where The Radical Is The Same As The Main Component? How Many Characters Are There Where The Radical Is The Same As The Main Component?

Example:

字海网: 

字海网:

This question is definitely answerable as there are only a certain amount of radicals.

A quick perusal of my database gives me

u-cjk/6299      抙  ⿰扌手
u-cjk/726a      牪  ⿰牜牛
u-cjk/72be      犾  ⿰犭犬
u-cjk/73cf      珏  ⿰王玉
u-cjk/8aa9      誩  ⿰言言
u-cjk/8e00      踀  ⿰足
u-cjk-xa/3908   㤈  ⿰忄心
u-cjk-xb/201a7    ⿰亻人
u-cjk-xb/23c99    ⿰氵水
u-cjk/9342      鍂  ⿰金金

(considering only Unicode code points). I tested against the RegEx 氵水|礻示|⺬示|釒金|钅金|王玉|忄心|竹|讠言|言言|冫氷|扌手|足|⻗雨|爫爪|亻人|火灬|犭犬|牜牛|飠食|食|饣食, which may be incomplete.

In related news, a search for 水水|示示|金金|王王|玉玉|心心|竹竹|手手|足足|雨雨|爪爪|人人|火火|犬犬|牛牛|食食 brings up, amongst others, these:

u-cjk/4ece      从  ⿰人人
u-cjk/6c9d      沝  ⿰水水
u-cjk/708f      炏  ⿰火火
u-cjk/73a8      玨  ⿰王王
u-cjk/7958      祘  ⿰示示
u-cjk-xa/3e5c   㹜  ⿰犬犬
u-cjk-xb/225f0    ⿰心心
u-cjk-xb/22a92    ⿰手手
u-cjk-xb/24519    ⿱爪⿰爪爪
u-cjk-xb/24934    ⿰玉玉
u-cjk-xb/25d12    ⿱竹⿰竹竹

some of which may violate your expectations about how to correctly write characters, as the usual positional variants are not used in these forms.


Translation: "people with upright eyes will arrive" Related: Confucian Messianism, Mencius, etc

Still going through Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox Sects in Chinese History by Hubert Seiwert (In collaboration with Ma Xisha) and came across the following:

Google Books:

  This coming disaster was expressed in the prophecy that "people with upright eyes will arrive," which probably means an invasion of demonic forces.

  22 Hanshu, j. 26, p. 1312.

I hate, hate, hate doing backwards-translations but I'm having trouble finding the original Chinese.

What's the original Chinese for the sentence: "people with upright eyes will arrive"?

My previous question listed the specific version of hanshu:

  12 Hanshu 漢書, by Ban Gu 班固, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962 (1975), j. 56, p. 2496.

I'm having a hard time finding the '62 (or '75) version of hanshu, any help?

Excerpt from 《汉书》卷二十六《天文志》：

　　哀帝建平元年正月丁未日出时，有著天白气，广如一匹布，长十余丈，西南行，讠雚如雷，西南行一刻而止，名曰天狗。传曰：“言之不从，则有犬祸诗妖。”到其四年正月、二月、三月，民相惊动，讠雚晔奔走，传行诏筹祠西王母，又曰“从目人当来。”十二月，白气出西南，从地上至天，出参下，贯天厕，广如一匹布，长十余丈，十余日去。占曰：“天子有阴病。”其三年十一月壬子，太皇太后诏曰：“皇帝宽仁孝顺，奉承圣绪，靡有解怠，而久病未廖。夙夜惟思，殆继体之君不宜改作。《春秋》大复古，其复甘泉泰畤、汾阴后土如故。”

从 == 纵 == upright. As for who 纵目人 really was or were, there are a few hypotheses.
蜀人
The most prominent reference of 纵目 is related to 蜀人. It's said that either their first emperor, or the people themselves, were in possess of 纵目:

有蜀侯蚕丛,其目纵,始称王。——晋 常璩 《阳国志·蜀志》
蜀之先称王者,有蚕丛、柏濩、鱼凫(蒲泽)、开明。是时人萌,椎髻左衽,不晓文字,未有礼乐” ——西汉 杨雄 《蜀王本纪》

Then strange bronze masks unearthed from 蜀 area, current 四川 province. And they do possess extraordinary eyes. First, they are slightly larger to the east Asian standard, second, they are eerily protruded like that of a crab or shrimp.

It's probably that 蜀 people, being in a different ethnicity group, did have somewhat different eye shapes, or they do strange makeups of tattoos around their eyes. But I don't think 汉书 is referring to 蜀人 here, because 蜀 was already part of Han dynasty.
道教神祗
Since 西王母 was mentioned, it is possible that it was a reference to some evil deity, who would come and wreak havoc among the people, or some good deity who serves 西王母, and would come and save the people from suffering. We cannot know for sure.
There is a Taoism deity called 杨戬, who is said to have 纵目:

二郎为蚕丛之后，故其目纵。——道书《灌江备考》

杨戬 belongs to the good side, and he is also said to be 西王母's nephew. These were later stories, we really don't know originally what it was.
Tales about 杨戬 was first prominent in 蜀 area, then spread all over the country. Late depictions of 杨戬 shows him with one extra eye placed vertically between eyebrows. Early references doesn't seem to mention anything specific about his eye.
不知道
I found the two theories utterly implausible. If you see a man with an extra vertical eye in the middle, you would immediately think "three eyes!" instead of "vertical eye!" If it's a rumor about an invasion you would call them by race. If it's about deities then they ought to have names instead of a nickname.
What I observe is an alien invasion. They might be scary monsters that look like this:


Improve reading speed at advanced level I have actively studied Chinese for about 10 years now, and I can speak, read, and write at the advanced level. However, my reading speed is abysmally slow. It takes me about 7 minutes to get through a single page in a novel. I know almost every character, but I just read it so ridiculously slowly.
How can I improve my reading speed? For example, should I be practicing reading out loud (to ensure that I am pronouncing each word correctly) or is silent reading better? Would doing more handwriting help (I have almost exclusively used the computer for several years now)? Or as a foreign speaker am I just destined to not read Chinese nearly as quickly as I read English?
I hope this is within scope of this site--please note that I am not asking for resources, as in these two closed questions.

Hacking Chinese (by Olle Linge) mentions that the way to reading faster is to simply read more. Presumably extensive reading as opposed to intensive reading. That is, read many different texts that are well within your ability to read, as opposed to a few texts that are closer to the edge of your ability to read. By well within your ability to read, I mean that you know 98% of the words (not simply 98% of the characters). By reading extensively, you will be practising reading texts as opposed to practising studying them (i.e. looking up a lot of words or grammar, or frequently stopping and thinking in order to understand the text).
You could find easy texts (such as graded readers) and read (and re-read) those until you can read them at the speed you would like. Then, you could slowly increase the difficulty of the texts to improve your reading speed on more difficult texts as well.
Hacking Chinese goes into more nuances and has more advice in their articles, but I understand extensive reading to be the main thrust of the approach to improve reading speed.


Verbal reading of 块? In my open-source dictionary a contributor has suggested a verbal reading for 块: to cut/chop into pieces, noting that in this 'verbal sense' it is always reduplicated. I cannot find this in either CC-CEDICT or ABC. In my corpus of movie subtitles I find 10 attestations of 块块 (see below), all of them preceded by 一, and often as 成一块块 or as 块块的.
I am asking for an analysis and suggestions. Does 一块块 belong in a dictionary as a headword? Should it be marked as an adverb, a complement ("into pieces"), or something else? Or, is there in fact a verbal reading of 块?
Attestations:

一块块的找
把躯体一块块进行肢解
哦,把他们砍成一块块?
要是再玩大男人的鬼把戏 我把你从头到脚一块块切下来
灰熊的领地被公路切分成一块块 使他们限制在很小的范围内
我要把你剁成一块块 交给吉迪恩，你这个淫妇！
唯见一块块血淋淋的你和我"
这里面一块块的
把她的脸割成一块块
还有一块块的

First, it's not a verbal reading of 块.

Second, 一块块 could be used as adjective, adverb or a complement, meaning 'into pieces' or 'pieces of'.

Examples(as an adjective， modifying a noun): 一块块肉，一块块面包，...

Examples(as an adverb， modifying a verb): 一块块地找，一块块地切下来，...

Examples(as a complement): "哦,把他们砍成一块块?", "灰熊的领地被公路切分成一块块";


Does the job title 弼马温 really signify 辟马瘟 'avoid horse fever' 猪八戒说，“你这个弼马温!" baidu.com: “弼马温”不过是辟马瘟的谐音而已。

Someone else told me, 弼马温 might really be 弼马翁。

弼马温 was 孙悟空's job in heaven. baidu.com here has: "这样能有效的趋避马瘟。"

"古人们在马厩中养猴子"

Was Sun Wu Kong's job really to agitate the horses to avoid them getting horse fever? Did the ancient Chinese really keep monkeys in their stables?

The ancient Chinese did keep monkey in their stables,

But they actually keep female monkeys, as they believe their menstruation can prevent horse fever (馬廄畜母猴辟馬瘟疫,逐月有天癸流草上,馬食之永無疾病矣)

By assigning Sun Wu Kong to a female monkey's title, it is probably a subtle joke from the author.


Are 仙草, 毒草 and 良草 broadly-used idioms? Today I learned from a Chinese friend (a rather literate fellow) that you can use those words to describe books. Apparently:

仙草 = outstanding book, book as if made for Gods

毒草 = very poor or even noxious book

良草 = an okay book

I had trouble verifying this info, though, in any external sources. Can I use them and expect the Chinese to understand me? Have I got the meaning correctly?

Sometimes you can, just like you can use pot to refer cannabis when you talk to other smokers, you have to make sure the listeners are 网络小说 addict, otherwise they would totally have no idea what you are talking about.

P.S.

I don't read 网络小说, but I know some US TV drama fans call drama 草, looks like all addict call their favorite 草. :)

P.S.
Here is a list translated from tieba

仙草：epic

粮草：good

干草：so so,

水草：bad

带毒干草：even bad

毒草：terrible, unreadable

穿肠毒草：Call doctor, need 仙草 to save life


How to express ADJ + enough? I'm pretty sure that "good enough" is 够好，but I'm not sure if this structure can be extended to all adjectives.

Would the same structure work for all/most adjectives?

Is it good enough? -> 够好吗？
Is he strong enough? ->
Is the horse fast enough? ->
My tea isn't sweet enough. ->

Could anyone offer translation for the sentences above?

Yes [够 + adj] = [adj +enough]. It works for all adjectives

Is it good enough? -> 这够好吗？

Is he strong enough? -> 他够强吗？

Is the horse fast enough? -> 这匹马够快吗？

My tea isn't sweet enough. -> 我的茶不够甜

Also:

  [够 + noun] = [enough + noun]

够钱吗?  -> Is it enough money?

够人了  -> there are enough people

  [verb + 够 ] = [verb + enough]

打够了吗? -> hit (object) enough?

这痛苦我受够了 -> I've had enough of this pain


Is there any other language intelligible to Mandarin Chinese speakers? Can native speakers of Mandarin Chinese readily understand speakers of neighbouring regions such as Korea, Japan, Mongolia, or Canton? Are Mandarin Chinese and any of these languages mutually intelligible?

No. Mandarin is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, whereas Japanese, Mongolian, and Korean are not.

Even within the Sino-Tibetan family, most langauges are mutually unintelligble. Even worse, within the Chinese family, most regiolects and topolects are mutually unintelligble.

People in Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo speak Wu, which is not intelligble for Mandarin speaking people. The two topolects broke off some two thousand years ago.

People in Guangdong and Guangxi speak Cantonese, which is unintelligble for people speaking Wu or Mandarin. And so it continues. Only nearby topolects are intelligble, for instance Sichuan Mandarin vs. Hebei Mandarin vs. Tianjin Mandarin and so on.

Japanese has borrowed the Chinese writing system, but the spoken language has nothing in common with Chinese. Even so, Japanese has borrowed many loanwords, that often sound similar (电话 is denwa in Japanese, dianhua in Chinese). Chinese is therefore considered as the equivalent of Latin in East Asia, since many langauges have been influenced by Chinese.

At best, people from different nations can only pick up stray words in other languages.

On the other hand, they have long shared the same writing system, which means that Japanese can read Chinese and vice versa (when using characters, not Hiragana or Katakana), with some difficulty. This was true for Korean and Vietnamese before they incorporated their own writing systems.

It doesn't matter if the writing is in traditional or simplified, most can read both varieties, although may not be able to write in both scripts.


Is  An Acceptable Form Of 逗 In Sichuanese? The book《蜀籁》writes the word 逗猫惹草 as 猫惹草 and also contains many other usages of  where 逗 would normally be.
逗 in Sichuanese is read dou in the first tone (tone value: 55).
逗 in theory should be read dou fourth tone (tone value: 213).
 in both Mandarin and Sichuanese would be dou first tone (tone value: 55, unless anyone disagrees about the Mandarins tone values).
逗 does fit the meaning for tease/play with/provoke.
 according to 字海 just means 轻言, not really a valid estimation of what dou in the first tone (tone value: 55) should mean in Sichuanese.

Is  An Acceptable Form Of 逗 In Sichuanese?

or did the book just make it up?

According to a post on the zDic Forum for that character from 2010, it is a topolect character (despite its rather mysterious pedigree in the Kangxi Dictionary).

However, I couldn't find it in the 《成都方言詞典》 Chengdu Dialect Dictionary, nor a lexeme corresponding to it. On consulting the 《四川方言詞典》 Sichuan Dialect Dictionary from 1986, I only find it represented with the character 逗 dou1 (which is also repeated as a 多音字 for dou4).

I posit that it may appear in certain 川剧 libretti, but otherwise it may be that the author simply went through Kangxi to look up rare characters of that pronunciation to use. Nonetheless, the semantic shift from 輕言 to 逗引 is not inconceivable.


Translation Gaps On Comic Conversation : 2 I have translated the following:

  那可不一定

  It certainly can not be. (*Hope this translation is correct)

Here is what I have so far..

  三十分（？）從，大（？）會（？）吊（？） 來。

Thanks for any help to fill the gaps (?)

BTW: This is part of my series of Doraemon comic book questions

UPDATE

1) Based on accepted answer this should be..

繁体: 三十分鐘後，大雄會被吊起來

2) Please check out the comments on the answer below for 大雄 (the character's name).

那可不一定

lit. That [is] probably not absolute.

means, That may be not true / the case.

三十分钟后，大雄会被吊起来

means, After 30 minutes, Nobita will be hung.


Why does 就范 mean "to give in"? What is the etymology of this word?
As far as I know 就 means:
to start or to enter, which sometimes is being interpreted as to take some thing (to enter a position of...)
So I just can't see why "surrender". Maybe there is some story to that word?

就 here means 迁就，将就, "to accept" in english
范 here means "standard, model"; in history 范 is the model to cast iron.
So 就范 means "fit in a model" (given by others) in very strict way from the original meaning. It's a strong word, you can understand it as "surrender".


Tonal difference between 浪费 and 糟蹋 Both 浪费 and 糟蹋 mean "to waste." (I'm not really concerned with the other uses of 糟蹋 right now.)

I've seen the collocations 糟蹋粮食 and 糟蹋人才, and 浪费 is very common in phrases like 浪费时间 and 浪费水.

Are there situations where both 浪费 and 糟蹋 are acceptable? Are they only applied to different types of things? Is there a tonal difference between the two words? (糟蹋 seems stronger, but 浪费粮食 and 浪费人才 also sound OK to me.)

糟蹋比浪费的语气更强烈。人们觉得很珍贵的物品被损坏或不被爱惜的使用了，通常是用糟蹋，而不会用浪费来形容。粮食可被浪费，可被糟蹋；人才可能被糟蹋，无法被浪费。

浪费：较为便宜的物品被损坏或不被爱惜的使用了，说话者觉得可惜但不心痛，会使用浪费这个词。
糟蹋：很贵重的物品被损坏或不被爱惜的使用了，说话者有心痛的情绪，才会使用糟蹋这个词。

糟蹋 has a stronger tone than 浪费. When people feel a valuable object is being damaged or is not being used with care, one would usually use 糟蹋, and not 浪费. 粮食 can be 浪费 or 糟蹋; 人才 could be 糟蹋, but is unable to be 浪费.

浪费: use when a relatively inexpensive object is being damaged or used without care, when the speaker feels it's a waste but not in a painful way.
糟蹋: use when a very valuable object is being damaged or used without care, or when the speaker feels pained.


Description of a person in chinese I have three point to be clear about describing people.

1) In describing a person structures like this are usual.
我有一个好朋友叫徐浙峰，他的个子高高的，头发短短的，眼睛像葡萄一样亮.

What i understand is that in the sentences 他的个子高高的 the verb 是 is omitted after 个子 in a 是的 construction or no?  Could you say 他的个子高， without 的。 If so what is the diference?

In the second sentence 头发短短的   他 is omitted at the begining. ¿is it because it is the second sentece and we asume tha we are talking about the same person.

2) 他的个子高高的  which we saw in the first point is also seen as ，高高的鼻子 when describing as a second clause. What is the diference between 高高的鼻子  and 鼻子高高的。 Is it because the clause becaus must have a 有 when using 高高的鼻子 and a 是 maybe omitted in the first clause.

For example in the next sentece the 有 could be omitted in many of the clauses.

她有一头卷卷的黄头发，有一双乌黑的葡萄般的大眼睛，有一个高高的鼻子，还有一张樱桃小嘴。”

3) Another point for me to be clear is that i found this article in chinese. From what I understand is better not to use 有 when describing people or even may not be right.

写外貌不用“有”
作文如何写外貌？孩子的作文里总会看到类似这样的句子：“XX可漂亮了，她有一头卷卷的黄头发，有一双乌黑的葡萄般的大眼睛，有一个高高的鼻子，还有一张樱桃小嘴。”
如果你试着去掉文中的“有”，把文字重新串联一遍，会发现作文顺了很多。

例如：“XX可漂亮啦。一头卷卷的黄头发自然地披在肩上。她的眼睛太吸引人了，乌黑乌黑葡萄一般。高高的鼻子，和樱桃小嘴配合起来，有点混血的味道，同学们可喜欢她啦。”是不是读起来舒服多了？

What I understand is that in the sentences 他的个子高高的 the verb 是 is omitted after 个子 in a 是的 construction or no?

他的个子高高的 compare to another similar example, say, 他的肚子肥大.
we say 他的个子高高的 instead of 他的个子高高,
we say 他的肚子肥大 instead of 他的肚子肥大的.
Omitting "是" to construct 是...的 phrase, generally, for some rhetoric reasons, is done only when using twin characters. Like 他的肚子胖胖的，这朵花香香的.
If not with twin words, "是" should not be omitted. We say 他的肚子是肥大的 but never 他的肚子肥大的.
他的肚子肥大 is also right, but 是 and 的 are omitted together.
-
For better understanding, imagine this in English:
I got lost in a terrible field. Trees were tall and dense, houses covered with lush mosses, like that everything around was haunted.
"houses covered with lush mosses", grammatically should be "houses were covered with lush mosses". But the "were" it omitted. It's for a rhetoric reason, too.

Could you say 他的个子高， without 的

Yes. 的 can be omitted that you can directly say 他个子高.
In Chinese, you can say 他个子高 他个子很高 他头发很少 他肚子胖, with 的 omitted. However, it's informal. Such is just said in casual circumstances, for simplification.

What is the difference between 高高的鼻子 and 鼻子高高的。

There's a difference even in translation:
她有高高的鼻子: He has a high nose
她的鼻子高高的: His nose is high
Just feel the difference in English: He has a high nose -----vs----- His nose is high.

Is it because the clause must have a 有 when using 高高的鼻子 and a 是 may be omitted in the first clause.
For example in the next sentece the 有 could be omitted in many of the clauses.
她有一头卷卷的黄头发，有一双乌黑的葡萄般的大眼睛，有一个高高的鼻子，还有一张樱桃小嘴。”

Yes. It can be omitted so that the sentence is like this: 她有一头卷卷的黄头发，一双乌黑的葡萄般的大眼睛，一个高高的鼻子，还有一张樱桃小嘴 for a rhetoric reason.
Like that you say, for example.
She has a pair of twin-tails, has a couple of big eyes and, has a big long nose.
She has a pair of twin-tails, a couple of big eyes, and a big long nose.
Obviously the second one seems more beautiful.

Another point for me to be clear is that I found this article in Chinese. From what I understand is better not to use 有 when describing people or even may not be right.

NOT not right. It's right. Just seems ugly.
-
Notice comparing with the language you've already mastered when learning a new language is important. It can tell you many things.


Examples of verbless sentences in Chinese 祝大家元旦快乐！

I am looking for examples of Chinese verbless sentences. I have a few, I'm not too sure if Chinese people would really say things like this. They are all quite short.

Does anyone have any longer example sentences?

我中国人。
我中国人，你澳洲人。
我两部电脑。
屋里许多蚊子。
今天刚星期三。

Somehow related is to this is the use of 是。* indicates unacceptable.

For example:

他只是孩子。
*他只孩子。
他也许是张三。
*他也许张三。

If you want to use adverbs, you need 是 it seems.

I think 今天星期三 is more usual to be used than 今天刚星期三.

And some people use this kind of structure to concatenate other structure. For example: 我两部电脑, If you want to describe that both of two computers of your own are break. You can say that 我两部电脑都壞了. This example show that 都壞了 concatenate after 我两部电脑.

And sometimes, people do not need to use a verb in sentence, if they just need to use adjective to describe somethings. for example: 這幅畫好漂亮 in English: This picture is so beautiful. There is no verb in 這幅畫好漂亮.


Translation English->Chinese for computer words I would like to get the translation of the following words into Chinese Simplified. All those words belong to the world of computer. Basically, I want to get the same words as you would see in the UI of major software (Firefox/Windows10/...)

Think that you would have a button for each word below. What would you read in a Chinese software interface?

copy, cut, paste, cancel, about... are good examples of words that you will see in every software UI and have a special meaning that an automated translator won't understand well. For instance, Google translate doesn't seem to do a good job.

Abort
About
Advanced
Apply
Back
Bluetooth
Cancel
Copy
CPU
Cut
Delete
Device
Downgrade
Format microSD
Hardware
Internet
MicroSD
Next
No
OK
Options
Paste
Play
Processor
Server
Settings
Size
Software
Sound
Storage
Upgrade
Video
Web
Wi-Fi
Yes

It would be better to have someone who is using a Chinese computer to answer that question.

Though you didn't do enough research... anyway it is just a simple question for me.
I guess you just set the system language to Chinese and it is solved.
Abort 中止
About 关于
Advanced 高级
Apply 应用
Back 返回
Bluetooth 蓝牙
Cancel 取消
Copy 复制
CPU CPU/中央处理单元
Cut 剪切
Delete 删除
Device 设备
Downgrade 降级
Format 样式
microSD microSD
Hardware 硬件
Internet 因特网/互联网
Next 下一项/次项
No 否
OK 是
Options 选项
Paste 粘贴
Play 播放
Processor 处理器
Server 服务器
Settings 设置
Size 尺寸
Software 软件
Sound 声音
Storage 存储
Upgrade 升级
Video 视频
Web 网络
Wi-Fi WIFI
Yes 是


What does 按部就班 mean? I have checked the dictionary, the following are the meanings for Idiom and its components. could not get how ‘keep conventional ways’ was the meaning derived. can share more light on this? thanks
按部就班 ànbùjiùbān follow the prescribed order; keep to conventional ways
安 ān calm, quiet, peaceful, tranquil
按 àn put hand on, press down with hand
部 bù part, section, ministry, department

按部就班 is not wrong and is in fact etymologically more correct:

選義按部，考辭就班 （陸機《文賦》）
To obtain choice ideas in close observation of things in categories, and elect expressions that will fall in happy order (trans. Chen Shixiang 1951)

This was an advice by Lu Jin from the Jin dynasty on how essays should be written. Of course in modern Chinese the idiom has evolved to describe things other than writing.

Is 按步就班 wrong? Etymologically, definitely yes, but it is understandable, and there are cases where these variants that appease the modern reader become acceptable. Consider the etymologically correct 名副其實 （曹操《與王修書》） and its variant 名符其實. Personally, I would stick to 按部就班 and 名副其實. You should especially do so if you are taking a language exam. I would also interpret 部 and 班 in classical Chinese – good practice if you are learning idioms.

Also, try not to interpret 按 as 'to press'. It is similar to meaning 按照 ('according to') here.


Usage of 就 in these two examples I'm taking an intermediate Chinese course and ran across a character whose usage I can't quite wrap my head around: 就.

I believe the meaning of the character itself are "then, right away, etc." However, I'm finding it difficult to really understand the usage from just the definition itself. Here is an example from the textbook I'm using:

等你来天津， 我就给你当导游。 (When you come to Tianjin, I'll give you a tour.)
等你来天津， 我给你当导游。(When you come to Tianjin, I'll be your guide.)

How should I interpret 就 in this context?

Thank you.

[等 (X) 就 (Y)] = [wait till (X) then (Y)]

Example:

等(你来天津)， 我就(给你当导游。)

wait till (you come to Tianjin,) I'll then (be your tour guide.)

Other combinations:

  [一 (X) 就 (Y)]  = [once/as soon as (X) then (Y)]

Example:

你一(来天津)， 我就(给你当导游)

Once (you come to Tianjin,) I'll then (be your tour guide.)

  [如果(X) 就 (Y)] = [if (X) then (Y)]

Example:

如果(你来天津) 我就(给你当导游)

If (you come to Tianjin,) I'll then (be your tour guide.)


What is the function 就是 and 对 in 这个重大责任， 就是对民族的责任? I encountered the following sentence recently:

  这个重大责任， 就是对民族的责任。

I loosely translated it to:

  This important responsibility is the nation's responsibility.

But grammatically, I was confused by the use of 就是 and 对. I would have written it without those words. What grammatical function do 就是 and 对 play in the sentence?

"这个重大责任， [是]民族的责任。" - "This major responsibility, [is] the people's responsibility "
"这个重大责任， [就是]民族的责任。" - "This major responsibility, [exactly is]
the people's responsibility "
"这个重大责任， [就是][对] 民族的责任。" - "This major responsibility, [exactly is] the responsibility [to] the people"

In all cases, '这个重大责任' is the topic of a [topic + comment/opinion] sentence

The comment/ opinion:

1b. '是民族的责任'" (is people's responsibility) is the comment on the topic
2b. '是' = 'is' ; '就是' = 'exactly is' ; '就' has many meanings. However, in this sentence, it means 'exactly', which emphasize the verb '是', not only "it is", it  "exactly is"
3b. '对'(toward) = 'to' ; it is a preposition that indicates which object this responsibility is for

民族的责任 = the people's responsibility

[对]民族[的]责任 = responsibility [toward/ to] the people

Rephrase in English grammar: "This major responsibility, is the responsibility to the people"


Meaning of 的 in 在蓝天白云的 衬托下，阳光的照射下 What does 的 mean in this sentence? I think what follows 的 is Noun, but these are 衬托下, 照射下 (Verbs)

  ...在蓝天白云的 衬托下，阳光的照射下...

谢谢你们！

衬托 = set off (by contrast)
在蓝天白云的衬托下，= under the blue sky and white cloud's contrast
阳光的照射下. = under the sunshine.
An object here is omitted

A complete sentence:
[红衣少女] 在蓝天白云的衬托下，阳光的照射下，[看上去有如女神般美丽]
[The girl in red] under the blue sky and white cloud's contrast, under the sunlight, [looks as beautiful as a goddess]

~

What does 的 mean in this sentence?

的 is a possess marker. 蓝天白云 is a noun phrase, and it possesses the noun 衬托 (contrast)
在蓝天白云[的]衬托 = Blue sky and white cloud['s] contrast = the contrast of blue sky and white clouds (in the back ground)
If 衬托 is used as a verb, the sentence would become 被蓝天白云衬托著 (set off by blue sky and white cloud)


How do I improve Mandarin vocal conversation? I'm interested in learning Mandarin bit by bit via listening to music, having conversations with friends who are native to that language, movies and so on.

For some background I have many ethnic Chinese friends with whom I talk on daily basis.  I try to read into their conversation and ask about meaning of some words from them later on using them in my mixed English+Chinese speech which sounds funny!

I am also a fan of Zhou Chieh Lun (Jay Chou) and some other singers. Plus, I have been following many Malaysian Chinese YouTubers because of my personal interest who sometimes make videos in Mandarin/Canton.

But I don't have anyone with me interested in learning with whom I can easily discuss without annoying them. I miss that catalyst part in learning Mandarin.  I tried using YouTube but it was not that effective.

Is there anything I am doing wrong in my approach to learning Mandarin?
I haven't started thinking about writing style though.

Live in China and use it every day may be the best and quickest way.

Like learning everything, start from the beginning, learn some basic words, pronunciation, and grammar, then gradually increase the level, like Oxford Reading Tree for primary school pupils.

Watching TV, movie, listening music, reading a novel, all can be helpful.


why 没出息 becomes useless? I am going through the word: 没出息. How not ending/ ceasing out become useless?
没 méi not have
出 chū out
息 xi  cease
Any background or details how it become useless? was it referring to not stopping war/any disastrous activity?
does 没出 has any associated meaning? Thanks

Tl;dr: Your interpreting 息 as 'to cease' is incorrect. 出息 as we know it in modern Chinese is a much derived, figurative meaning.

It is better to parse the word as 沒/出息, i.e. understand 出息 altogether. This is also for the fact that the meaning of 沒 is uncontentious. Also, 息 surely is not a verb meaning 'to cease', because it does not make sense with 出 here. In classical Chinese, 息 can also mean 'breath' (the only definition that fits its glyph origin), or 'profit; proliferation'. That is to say, pay attention to its polysemy, and choose the meaning that makes the most sense.

Let us look at the definitions of 出息 chū xī/xí (息 in first or second tone; mainland Chinese uses the first tone, whereas the second tone is predominantly used in Taiwan) first.

佛教用語。稱呼出的氣息為「出息」。
生產所得的利潤。《喻世明言．卷二．陳御史巧勘金釵鈿》：「梁尚賓聽說，心中又忿，又見價錢相因，有些出息放他不下。」《紅樓夢．第五六回》：「一年在園裡辛苦到頭，這園裡既有出息，也是分內該沾帶些的。」

These are very literal renderings of the word, uncommon and rather archaic: the first entry means 'n. expiration; out-breath' (Sanskrit apāna), which is used specifically in Buddhist contexts. The second entry means 'n. yield; profit (息) from labour/production (出)'. Examples of which are drawn from classics like Dream of the Red Chamber. Note how these correspond to the meaning of 息 in classical Chinese (as listed in point 1.), but none means 'to cease'.

Now let us look at the definitions of 出息 chū xi (息 in neutral tone).

努力向上的趨勢。《老殘遊記二編．第四回》：「把我們的待你好意，都摔到東洋大海裡去，真沒良心！真沒出息！」《文明小史．第三一回》：「從來說三代以下惟恐不好名，能夠好名這人總算還有出息。」
利益、好處。《官場現形記．第二五回》：「現在這兩年，聽說出息比前頭好，所以價錢也就放大了。」
少年男女到了青春期間，體態容貌轉為美好出眾。《紅樓夢．第二七回》：「見智能兒越發長高了，模樣兒越發出息了。」

They mean something like 'prospects; an inclination to persevere and work hard', 'benefit', and 'blooming' (as in one's youth) respectively. The commonest use, however, is the first entry. It appears to be most related to the second non-Buddhist literal definition: we say someone is promising if we think they have the potential to achieve something in life (to produce achievement, so to speak). To contrast polysemy, we drop the tone for the second character when we intend the more colloquial, figurative, and derived meaning.
A word of caution: I believe relating the literal 'profit from labour' to the figurative 'prospects' is the most sensible, but I do not have authoritative evidence. This is however based on the observation that 1) the gain of neutral tone in the second character of compound words usually indicates derivation, and 2) the remaining literal sense of 出息 chū xī/xí is rather limited to Buddhist contexts. Regarding the etymology of 出息 as we mean it today, I found a dubious article that claims it is related to the State of Xi, which I think is too far-fetched.

What is described above is not a unique phenomenon. E.g.: 買賣 mǎi mài means literally 'the collective act of buying and selling'. But 買賣 mǎi mai means figuratively (and somehow colloquially) 'a transaction'. See the first point in my answer to another question here.

So, if you say someone is 有出息, you are commending their effort and regarding them as succeeding in a certain aspect. If you say 沒出息, you mean otherwise. Essentially you think they are unpromising, or good-for-nothing. Perhaps you think they haven't worked hard enough to prove otherwise.

Reference for points 2. and 3.: 教育部重編國語辭典修訂本


Meaning and translation of: 钱米? I have this sentence here:

  乱花钱米叫“泡稍”

Another reference also confirms this saying:

  ②形容(手头) 宽裕 ▷他的钱～，尽是大手大脚的用。

References for 钱米, though, are very few.

古汉语大词典's entry for 俸恤 says:

  旧时官史除俸禄外，其亲属所受之钱米，称俸恤

ABC defines it as:

  payment and pension

Grand Ricci says

  traitement et allocations

Could we just combine the English and the French to define 钱米 as payment and allocations or, more simply, money and food?

more simply, money and food?

Basically, yes. It is a common practice in Chinese or English to use a couple of representative items to form a general term for a single concept.

'钱米' (coins and rice) can be used as a general term for 'wealth / resources'

  '旧时官史除俸禄外，其亲属所受之 钱米，称俸恤'

钱米 (coins and rice) refers to consumables resources like money and food
俸恤 (allocations) is a portion of resource assigned to particular recipient.

'钱米' (coins and rice) can also be used as a general term for  'wealth / consumables resources', as in '乱花 钱米 叫“泡稍”'

Similarly, '鱼米' (fish and rice) is a general term for 'natural food resources' in the phrase '鱼米之乡'(land of plenty) ; '刀剑'(knife and sword) refers to all 'weapons' in '刀剑没眼'(weapons have no eyes)

In old time war campaigns, 钱粮 (coins and grain) is a common term for 'resources' like soldiers' salary, food and horse feed.

  "打仗就是打钱粮 "


In what kind of scenarios are honorifics such as 大姐, 大哥, and 师傅 used, and when is it acceptable or polite to use them? In Chinese films I've often heard characters refer to each other using some of these honorifics:

大姐 dàjiě (big sister; auntie)
大哥 dàgē (big brother)
师傅 shīfù (master)

In what kind of scenarios are such honorifics used, and when is it acceptable or polite to use them? Likewise, when should they not be used?
What terms of familiarity you need to be with people before you should use them?
Is there any potential to offend by using the wrong honorific term?

For males or females who are older than yourself are not blood relatives e.g. not 表哥 or 表姐 and are usually unmarried and not quite old enough to be referred to as 阿姨 or 叔叔 then this is someone you might refer to as 大姐 or 大哥.

This is normally out of respect to someone who maybe treats you as a younger brother or sister.

In certain movies 大哥 is used for a leader of a gang of street kids or thugs.

This is also normally used for someone younger to someone older, so you won't see many people 40+ referring to someone else as 大姐 or 大哥 unless they have been doing this for a long time.

师傅 is commonly used for someone with skills in a certain area. I have seen this used for a personal carer, a repair man and also someone that teaches martial arts.

Don't call someone without specific skill 师傅, e.g. someone that helped you do something like give directions otherwise they may think you are having a lend of them.


What is the meaning of the sentence 字了一? I ve found this sentence between two other sentences in an article about the scholar wang li:
中国语言学家、诗人。字了一。广西壮族自治区博白县人

I understand both sentences before and after 字了一, but i am clueless what this particular sentence mean and if it really is grammatically speaking a real sentence.

This is a good question.

字了一 should be understood as:

  (and his) 字 (is) 了一

Thousands years ago, many people in China have a special name besides their first name and last name though nowadays most of Chinese don't have one. And this special name is often described after '字'. For example: 刘备，字玄德.

According to some reference in Chinese, 字 sometimes can be changed. For example, 关羽 was using 长生 as his 字 but then changed to 云长 (which is mostly known by all Chinese)

字 can be given by a person himself/herself or his/her friends, mentors. While ordinary names were mostly given by the parents.


What's a precise translation of "they wouldn’t know if their backside was on fire"? You have these people who have never left the city and wouldn’t know if their backside was on fire, then all of a sudden they’re telling farmers what to do?
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, quoted in Stuff.NZ.

In informal Australian speak, Michael McCormack criticizes PETA members as above.  I was reading Chinese news, and this was translated to the part in bold below:

莫里森政府对此回应，这些“小动物”已经对农民造成麻烦，善待动物组织（PETA）并不了解这给农民带来了多大的困境，这些言论是非常愚蠢的，副总理麦科马克也表示，提出这些想法的人没有离开过城市，他们当火烧到屁股也不知道该怎么办，在这场鼠患中，这些提出愚蠢想法的人才是真正的老鼠。
澳大利亚正被老鼠侵占?老鼠堂而皇之过马路,民众苦不堪言, 2021年05月24日

However, I feel this translation is imprecise, equivalent to something like:

[My translation:] ...when the fire reaches their bottom, they won't know what to do...
[Google translate:] ...they don’t know what to do when the fire burns to the bottom...

Question: What's a precise translation of "they wouldn’t know if their backside was on fire"?
Here's my attempt:

他们不知道屁股是否着火。

But this doesn't feel precise either, since the original English doesn't mention the alternative (否).  I feel like there should be a better, more natural translation.

The government statement suggests PETA supporters only see things in their perspective, never care to consider other people's side, or look at the big picture, simply put - they are short-sighted (目光如豆), ignorant (愚昧無知) and don't know the suffering of the people (不知民間疾苦)

...wouldn’t know if their backside was on fire"

...他們後庭着火(自己)也不會知道

(they don't observe and think about things around them)

後庭(backyard) is also slang for 屁股 (buttock)


How can I distinguish 地 in different words I am learning the use of the word 地  recently，How can I distinguish 地 in different words，like

小心地滑 and 慢慢地走 。

Your example is a kind of special.

Strictly speaking, “小心地滑” is intrinsically ambiguous. It can be interpreted in two different ways: “caution slippery floor” (where 地 is floor) and “slip carefully” (where 地 is the structural particle for adverbial phrase, the same as the 地 in 慢慢地走). Without any context, they both make perfect sense. There are some jokes that make use that ambiguity.

It is the everyday life experience that let the Chinese people know, that when 小心地滑 appears on a sign on a floor, it means “caution slippery floor”, but not the other.

So, based on grammar only, you cannot distinguish the two. 小心地滑 is ambiguous, and the 地 in the two words can be interpreted in the same way. You need context (not only context from text, but also environment, etc.) to distinguish the two meanings of 小心地滑.

By the way, 小心地滑 is not ambiguous in speech, as the two meanings have different pronunciation.


Chinese Proficiency tests available What are the different official (government sponsored) Chinese Language proficiency tests available? I want to know about PRC as well as Taiwan tests. All Chinese language tests are for Mandarin only or is it available for Hokkien etc.?

The one for the PRC (mainland China, HK, Macao) is the 汉语水平考试, abbreviated to HSK, directed at non-native speakers (including overseas Chinese heritage learners as well as foreign students and workers). The test is administered by Hanban, part of the Minstry of Education of the PRC.

The equivalent for the ROC (Taiwan and its territories) is the 華語文能力測驗, abbreviated to TOCFL. It is also used as a qualifying credential for the Taiwan scholarship, applying for universities and job specifications. It is administered by the SP-TOP, under the direction of the Ministry of Education of the ROC

There is also a 职业汉语能力测试 (ZHC) for native speakers in mainland China, which is under the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, and reserved for those PRC citizens who want to go into certain fields e.g. journalism, judiciary, translation.

The proficiency test for PRC citizens hoping to work in broadcasting, education or the government is the 普通话水平测试, with its very clear emphasis on Standard Mandarin as strictly defined by the latest standard.

There is also a HK-specific English and Mandarin proficiency test for teachers there: 教師語文能力評核 (LPAT).

These are all Mandarin tests under their respective standard of Mandarin; I have not heard of such a government (as opposed to a university or medical) test for Hokkien, Hakka, or even Cantonese.


Are there some greetings or phrases particular to the Hui people? I'm in Yunnan and have noticed lots of Chinese muslims and ate at one of their restaurants today. I was aware of Turkic-speaking muslim ethnic minorities in the far west of China but now I know those people, the Uyghurs, are distinct from the Hui people I have been noticing. According to Wikipedia the Hui people speak their local Chinese dialect rather than an ethnic language.

But I'm wondering if they still have some common phrases or greetings used only by Hui and not by most Han Chinese, possibly due to Islamic or Arabic language influence.

For instance do they have Sinicized equivalents to "inshallah" or the greeting "As-salamu alaykum"? Possibly translated literally or calqued into Chinese? Or possibly just adapted to the sound system of the Chinese language?

The Wikipedia article on the Hui people has a language section, but it doesn't mention anything of this nature.

Yes there are. Such language in Chinese is referred to as 回回话 Huíhui huà.

Thanks to user xiaohouzi79 for pointing out the book Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic By Dru C. Gladney, which is partly viewable on Google Books.

This book contains a large appendix, A Select Glossary of Hui Chinese Islamic Terms on pages 393 to 421.

Here are some Hui greetings I found, which are transliterations from Arabic:

安色俩目阿莱空 Ān sè liǎ mù ā lái kōng - "Peace be to you"
安色俩目，尔莱库目 Ān sè liǎ mù, ěr lái kù mù - "Peace be with you"
色俩买提 Sè liǎ mǎi tí - "Peace be to you"

The glossary contains many terms relating directly to Islam and derived from Arabic, but there are many terms not pertaining to religion and terms from Persian, Turkic languages, and even wholly Chinese words used only by Hui or with additional Hui-specific senses.

Apparently Hui use Persian or Arabic numbers among themselves when bargaining so regular Chinese will not understand.

Here are a couple of other terms I found interesting:

番客 Fān kè - barbarian guest, foreigner
色瓦布 Sè wǎ bù - expression of thanks, "May Allah reward you"

As a traveller in China I'm interested to find out if Hui think of me as a 番客 and I will try saying 色瓦布 instead of 谢谢 next time I buy a meal from them.


Mandarin Chinese Most Frequent 1000 First Names (中国最常用的1000个名字) Is there a list of common Chinese first names? There are some lists containing top 100 names but it is quite insufficient as it covers only 15% of total population. I need a comprehensive list.

(哪里可以找到中国最常用的1000个名字？有一些排名列出了最常用的100个，但是它不够充分，因为它仅覆盖15％的总人口。我需要一个完整列表。)

I don't think there's an official account for the top 1000 most used first names. But here is an interesting statistic I've found.

In this image, it says the top 10 most used first names are:

英(ying)，华(hua)，玉(yu)，秀(xiu)，文(wen)，明(ming)，兰(lan)，金(jin)，国(guo)，春(chun).

I think its pretty accurate tbh.


"If you can't beat them, join them" 成语 or 俗语 There is an English expression, "If you can't beat them, join them."

For example,

  After competing with Microsoft for so many years, he finally accepted the lucrative offer and joined as their head of software development. You know what they say, "if you can't beat them, join them!"

Is there a 成语 or 俗语 to this effect?

The essence of  "If you can't beat them, join them." is "It is better to be  practical and join the winning side than being stubborn and stick to one's own position."
The example you gave for this idiom, describes "識時務者為俊傑" (Ones who understand situations and act accordingly, are the elites) very well.

所謂「識時務者為俊傑」，當對手強橫無比，而自己又一無所有時，唯有順應時勢，才不致因彼此對峙而有所耗損。
"Ones who understand situations are elites" means when the opponent is too strong to overcome, you can only conform to the situation to avoid meaningless lost"


Fixing sentences with object and complement after a verb While perusing an article on allsetlearning.com about complements, I came across an interesting example of an ungrammatical sentence: 回来中国, where the object and complement are both placed after the verb.

The article suggests fixing this by rearranging it into: 回中国来, justifying it by saying "You can't say 回来中国 because 回 is the verb, 来 is the complement, and 中国 is the object. You can't put both a complement and an object after a single verb, but it's OK to put just a 来 or 去 after the object." In this corrected sentence, what is the function of 来？Is this serial verb construction?

In a similar vein, the article also recommends two alternative solutions: doubling the verb -- placing one before the object and one before the complement-- and moving the object to the front of the phrase. To this end, I came up with these two phrases: 回中国回来 and 中国回来。Although I realize the phrasing may be a bit awkward, I was wondering if they were grammatically correct.

Link to article: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Direction_complement
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Degree_complement

Thank You!

Different from other verb complements that you can place directly after the verb and before the object, the verb complement 来 and 去 require the object to be placed between the verb and them,

Insert the object between the verb 回 and the verb complement 来 as in '(回)中国(来)' = '(back to) China (here)' connects the object with the verb in Chinese grammar
Place the object after both the verb 回 and verb complement 来 as in'(回来)中国' = '(back to here) China' , the verb and the object would become disjointed.

The verb complement that can be placed directly after the verb and before the object here is 到, as in '回(到)中国' = 'back (at) China' not '回(来)中国' = 'back to (here) China'


Can any one tell me about the script or the seals please? (Characters identified: 藍鳥深竹 癸亥年 二月 興利) I would like to know what the script says and also what the seals denote. The seals are red on the painting but I have changed the colour to make them easier to read.

as @droooze pointed out, the text is:

藍鳥深竹
癸亥年　二月　興利

the first seal is "陳奇傑印"
the second one is "陳興利畫"
"藍鳥深竹" is the painting's title, roughly
blue (藍) bird (鳥) [in] bamboo forest (深竹)
"癸亥年" is 1983 - 60i (i is integer), eg 1983, 1923, . . .
"二月" is february
together, the painting is drawn in the february of 1983 (or 1923, . . .)
"陳奇傑印" means the seal (印) of mr 陳 (surname) 奇傑 (name)
"陳興利畫" means drawn (畫) by mr 陳 (surname) 興利 (name)
most likely, mr 陳 used 2 names here.
have fun :)


Translation of Chinese Scroll and Seal Is someone able to help translate the text (calligraphy?) and seal on this scroll?

I had a go at translating the seal using guoxuedashi and http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/ but wasn't sure how to group the individual elements into characters. Thought the right half might be just 匕玉? Couldn't make any sense of the left half.

Thanks

The seal pointing to the artist name says 任可澄. In particular, you're very unlikely to find out the last character 「澄」 through a simple search:

The right hand side of the character 「澄」 in the seal is actually 「⿱豆廾」, which is a variant shape of 「登」 sometimes appearing in bronze inscriptions.
「澄」 is not a character appearing in bronze inscriptions, so the character in the seal is a modern character hypothetically back-projected to a bronze inscription form.


How to say emojis in Chinese? We have tried different translators with no luck. Is there any translation to Chinese? Do we have to write the English version like Sim Card?

These are emojis:

Google translates 'emoji' as 表情符號, I think it is an acceptable translation.

The term Emoji originated from 絵文字 in Japanese. Since Japanese Kanji came from Chinese characters, 絵文字 can be reverse import back to Chinese. Which mean if you say 絵文字 in Chinese, people would know you are talking about emojis.

Emojis is different from 顏文字 , which you make faces with typed characters.

Examples of 顏文字:


How to distinguish between 为 and 给 when both means "for" Both 给 and 为 can mean "for." Both can be used with verbs to express an action done for anyone.

So how can I distinguish? Please make it clear.

Thank you so much.

My feeling is:

That 给 is for doing something ''for'' someone.

I will buy it for you. 我给你买。

You will do the verb for someone else.

And 为 is more abstract

I am sad for you. 我为你伤心。

I'm not native but I don't think you could say:

我为你买东西。  X

我给你伤心。   X


What Different Patterns Are There To Make 不如 Sentences？ A 不如 B+object+verb+得+adjective
example:

  玛丽不如保罗法语说得流利

A 不如 B+Verb-object+verb+得+adjective
example:

  玛丽不如保罗说法语说得流利

Are these two patterns correct?

Some say it's correct, some says it's wrong, I'm so confused.

Can you please tell me the different patterns of using 不如 to make comparisons?

Both are correct.
Your question has nothing to do with 不如. The point is 法语说得流利 vs 说法语说得流利. The former's emphasis is 法语, while the latter's one is 说法语. Here's a nuance of the sentence's sense.


Any chance someone could tell me what these characters mean? I'd like to apologise beforehand in case I'm breaking any rules since I'm extremely new to forums but my curiosity is killing me!! I've had this sword for years and forgot its existence until a few weeks ago. I've been told by students who study Japanese that it's traditional Chinese and I've been told by students who study Chinese that it's Japanese, so I'm also kind of at a loss as to which language this is to begin with

It was an attempt to write "河內國"

日语：河内国〔河內國〕／かわちのくに〔かはちのくに〕

Kawachi No Kuni

河內 - inside the river

國 - country


What does the following phrase mean: 故虽有珉之雕雕,不若玉之章章——《荀子》 The character 珉 from the original phrase  is said to mean "an apple of Sodom"...is that true?  If so, what does that even mean?  I though the character 珉 meant a jade-like stone as it has the particle 王 = 玉 (jade).

Even 珉 is beautiful and looks like 玉, it's still stone.

So 故虽有珉之雕雕,不若玉之章章 means, even 珉 is beautiful and has high value to  be engraved (to artwork), it's still not as clear and beautiful as 玉.


Please correct my chinese "Today is my day" Today is the Singles' day, so I want to say something like "Today is my day. I accept your congratulations". Sure, it's some kind of a joke.

Could you correct me, please, if I'm wrong:
今天我的日子！ 接受你们的祝贺。

Is this sounds ok? Or it's gonna sound strange for chinese people?

今天是我的日子 is not something a Chinese person would say, because it is a direct translation of an English colloquial phrase.

If you want to express your happiness on this day, you can say:

光棍节真是为我设计的 (Single's Day was created for me).

光棍节了真开心， 都来祝贺我啊~ (I am so happy that it is Single's Day. Everyone congratulate me).

These are informal ways of talking, which may have better results if you want to make a joke :)


How do you say "Welcome to English", as in welcome to English class? How do you say "Welcome to English", as in welcome to English class?

If it is a title of a book, it can be translated as  "英語入門"

If it is a greeting from a teacher to his class, it means " 歡迎第一次學習英語。" = "Welcome to English learning for the first time."

Beside the above examples, the phrase " Welcome to English" doesn't provide enough context to be meaningful.


Recognise language from the image Can someone help me by identifying ehat language it is?

Chinese.
translation: I think this is important to me and all the Latvian people.


What do the character components in 旅 and 派 represent? Memorizing characters is tough. For me, these two were hard (旅 and 派), until today when I noticed that the bottom right part looks just like the character 刃 (the edge of a knife) written backwards. This resemblance makes it easier to memorize.

Nevertheless I have a few questions:

What does the bottom left character component in these two characters represent?
What about the top right part of 旅?

These components seem a bit uncommon in the dictionary for me, which is probably what made it harder for me to remember them in the first place.

Can I use a special dictionary on Android to look up all the characters in Chinese that have one of these two non-radical components in them, so that I might memorize similar looking characters?

I have tried Pleco, but could not find this feature.

Thanks.

though part of the right component of the character "旅" & "派" look similar, they've different origin.

旅 (u+65c5) is a character since oracle bone script, that it's composed by 㫃 (u+3ac3), plus 2 人 (u+4eba)

旅 (u+65c5) in oracle bone script:

㫃 (u+3ac3) in oracle bone script:

人 in oracle bone script:

then, the character 派 (u+6d3e), according to 說文解字 is 水 (u+6c34) +  (u+200a2), in which  is the mirror writing of  the character 永 (u+6c38).

永 (u+6c38) in oracle bone script:

flip it horizontally, you've  (u+200a2):

so, about your question:

what does that bottom left character component
in these two characters represent?

㫃 (u+3ac3) roughly is a flying flag. while 水 (u+6c34) is water.

What about the top right part of 旅?

the character 旅 (u+65c5) should be "chopped" into 㫃 + 人, if not, you'd be confused.

to look up all the characters in Chinese that have
one of these two non-radical components in them

the components of chinese characters ranged from 1600+ to 3000+, depends on who did the research, including simplified chinese, oracle bone script, bronze script, small seal script or not.

though i don't have a smartphone yet, it's in doubt that any apps in android, or ios would satisfy your need.

lastly, i would recommend multi-function chinese character database to you, which is "with archaic script forms, etymologies, english-chinese lookup, & word-formations phonologically disambiguated according to the cantonese dialect"

have fun :)


Why native speakers always say "一块钱" and write "一元钱 "instead of "壹圆钱"？ The 1 RMB notes has the Chinese word "壹圆". In spoken Chinese, I hear many native speakers say "一块钱" instead of "壹圆钱"。In written Chinese, I have seen "一元钱" more than "壹圆钱".

My questions:

In spoken Chinese, is it correct to say "壹圆钱" instead of "一块钱"?
In formal writings in Chinese, should we write "壹圆钱" (or "一圆钱") instead of "一元钱" (or "一块钱")?
What on earth is the difference among "壹圆钱", "一元钱", "一圆钱" and "一块钱"?

To begin with, there is one thing called 大写 (daxie, “upper case”), in contrast to 小写 (xiaoxie, “lower case”).

  小写：一二三四五六七八九十百千  -  元

  大写：壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖拾佰仟  -  圆

Daxie numbers are only used in finance in order to protect against falsification, because they contain too many strokes to modify. For example, 一 can be easily modified to 二 or 十, but 壹 cannot be modified. Therefore, daxie numbers are usually seen on invoices, receipts, cheques, promissory notes, etc, in order to protect against falsification.

The tamper-proof technique daxie has been used for over a thousand years since the Tang dynasty, invented by the empress regnant Wu Zetian (武则天), and enforced by the emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋). It has been tested for so long time as the best practice of tamper resistance. Therefore, daxie numbers finally became the tradition of finance, and are now printed on cash.

However, when we write it down, we still use xiaoxie, like 一元钱, unless we are really writing financial documents, such as receipts and cheques. Daxie numbers are regarded as the specific jargons that should be strictly limited in financial area.

一块钱 is the colloquial term of 一元钱, because in the past the money was only made of metal.

  Colloquial:   块      毛      分

  Formal:        元       角      分

壹圆 is only used on invoices and receipts, and printed on cash.


How to translate 新科状元? I don't know if other countries had similar systems for electing officials, but I often struggle to find the right English equivalent for 新科状元 or just 状元 when trying to translate Chinese text.
Are there any good suggestions or ideas?

Like all cross-linguistic and cross-cultural translations, this requires a knowledge of the context, not just of the source material but also of the target language.
In medieval and Renaissance Western Europe, the 科举 was not "a thing" in the same way as in Imperial China (and East Asia), with the viva voce being more traditional. However, with greater knowledge of these practices, an accepted translation for certain terms formed, e.g. 科举 = imperial examination.
There are plenty of possible translations for 状元 which are native to English, that any good Chinese dictionary should give:

top scorer
best in class
top of the class
leading light (best applied to the world of work)

However, in most academic texts, zhuangyuan is used, in recognition of its origin.


What does this calligraphy by 張照 say? I can make out bits of this calligraphy, but not enough to look up the poem. The first line (and the poet, which I assume is the last two characters) should suffice for the purposes of using a search engine to find the entire thing...

The calligraphy is by 張照 of the Qing dynasty. I particularly like his style of grass script, but have not managed to find many images of his calligraphy.

Click here to see the image (279KB)

It's hard to read such works if you don't get trained with calligraphy knowledge. For me, I could only read some characters in this work. I.e., I read "歸去嵩陽" in the last line, so I used this word and 张照 as key word to search more info on the internet, and I found this on "baike.baidu.com". xiecheng127 is right, and I would like to paste the traditional version, since they are really traditional characters.

  自有僲*才自不知，十年常夢採華芝。西風動地黃雲暮，歸去嵩陽尋舊師。

*Actually, 仙 is also used in traditional system, and 僲 (or 僊, more standard) is another form in old times. Here, it seems that the 舛 part was replaced with 升. I think this happens in calligraphy (some characters look "wrong" in calligraphy when compared to the standard form).

If you want to see more his works, "artist.artxun.com" may be a good site.

By the way, when searching on some Chinese topics, google is not as good as baidu 百度, though you will get more ads with 百度.


Chinese dictionary or list of ABB adjectives? I found a list of ABB colours, is there a list of ABB adjectives in general and their corresponding meanings?

I'm not aware of a list, but I can come up with a few off the top of my head:

ZH
EN

冷冰冰(的)
icy cold

黑黢黢(的)
pitch-dark

粘稠稠(的)
thick, sticky

香喷喷(的)
delicious, fragrant

亮晶晶(的)
glittering

软绵绵(的)
soft, cushy

孤零零(的)
all alone

慢悠悠(的)
slow, sluggish


Is it proper to say “她给我帮助”？ What are the ways of saying somebody helped you in Chinese?

For example, I want to say, "My Chinese friend gave me some help for writing my Chinese essay."

Is this correct?: "我的中国朋友给我帮助写我的中文文章”。

Since 帮助 itself can be a verb for 'help', you can simply write:

[1. 我的中国朋友][2. 帮助][3. 我][ 4.写(omit 我的)中文文章]

[1. subject][2. verb][3. object][4. relative clause ]

  If you use 帮助 as a noun for 'assistance' then the structure would be:

[1. 我的中国朋友][2. 给][3. 我][4. 写中文文章的][5. 帮助]

[1. subject] [2. verb] [3. indirect object][4. adjectival clause for the direct object][5. direct object]

  The problem with 我的中国朋友给我帮助写我的中文文章 is the placement of the adjectival clause for the direct object.

[1. 我的中国朋友][2. 给][3. 我][4. 帮助][5. 写我的中文文章]

[1.subject][2.verb][3.indirect object][4.direct object] [5.adjectival clause for the direct object]

  It should be placed before the direct object with the possessive particle [的]

[1. 我的中国朋友][2. 给][3. 我][5. 写(omit 我的)中文文章][的][4. 帮助]


What is the difference between 会 and 说 in 你会英文吗？ vs. 你说英文吗？ What is the difference between the characters 会 (huì) and 说 (shuō), for example in these simple closed questions:

你会英文吗？ [Nǐ huì Yīngwén ma?]
你说英文吗？ [Nǐ shuō Yīngwén ma?]

I am wondering since various online resources give both of them as examples of the verb 'to speak' or 'to say' but I want clarification on whether this is correct and if there are any rules on when to use them in different contexts.

This is exactly what I stuck in at the very early stage of learning Mandarin!

会 is usually used as an auxiliary verb (mean "can", "will", etc...) and thus take a verb after that, but it can also function as a verb, to mean "know" or "understand".

That's why in your example, both mean "Do you speak English?".

Also, if you want to use 会 as an auxiliary verb, you can also say "你会说英语吗？".


Rule: tone sandhi in topolectical dictionaries I'm looking for a rule or a guideline.

Dictionaries dealing with MSM (Modern Standard Mandarin) would never include tone sandhi into their entries, as people are supposed to know the rules and apply them themselves. 你好 is always going to be ni3 hao3; many topolectical dictionaries, though, do not expect the reader to know the rules of tone sandhi, 你好 would become ni2 hao3, for instance.

Are there any rules or guidelines regarding whether or not to implement tone sandhi rules in topolectical dictionaries?

edit: some topolectical dictionaries will also include original tone to sandhi marks, e.g.: ni3-2 hao3. I'm not sure if there is a preferred standard when dealing with dialects.

I think to include both original tones and sandhi marks would be a preferred way, as the individual characters are very important in Chinese. And also, the dictionary will include a preface or something explaining the sandhi rules and how they mark them.


Is there a Chinese phrase equivalent to "difficult to eat"? I wonder if there is a Chinese word or phrase equivalent to "difficult to eat" or "hard to eat".
For example, someone said that pomegranates and artichokes are among the 19 most hard-to-eat foods.
I thought it would be "难吃" or "不方便吃", but the former literally means "taste bad" and the latter means "it's not the right time to eat".
石榴很**
I know a long answer: 吃起来不方便. For example, 石榴吃起来不方便。
Is that the best/only expression?

You could try: 吃起来很麻烦
I can't agree with the list of hard to eat foods!


When translating "he thinks I bought three books, but I didn't buy anything", do we add a completion 了 for "bought"? When learning about when to use 了, we're typically given simple examples with clear-cut answers, such as the following:

我买了三本书。
I bought three books.
Expressing completion with "le"

We are taught that the reason we add the 了 is for completion: 买 is complete in the above example.  Then we get thrown into the real world, where we might want to say something like:

他以为我买了三本书，但是我什么都没买。
He thinks I bought three books, but I didn't buy anything.

We have a grammar vs. context battle: the (local) grammar implies we should add the 了 (as above in 我买了三本书), while the context destroys the logic used above (买 is not complete), which gives a contradiction.
Question: When translating "he thinks I bought three books, but I didn't buy anything", do we add a completion 了 for "bought"?

which gives a contradiction.

There is no contradiction. Everything described in "他以为 (he thought)" is hypothetical.
Similarly, everything described in [He said: "...." ] doesn't need to be in the same universe with the rest of the text.

Nothing wrong with '他以为我买了三本书，但是我什么都没买。' (The fact -- 'you bought three books' is in his mind only)

'我看着我买了三本书，但是我什么都没买。' would be contradicting (The two facts cannot be both true)

'他叫我买了三本书，但是我什么都没买。' would also be contradicting. It has to be '他叫我买三本书，但是我什么都没买。' ('told you to buy' cannot be changed to 'told you to have bought')


History of the pronunciation of 辰 Today, it is pronounced chén in Mandarin.

However, in Chữ Nôm, this character is used for the sound thì. This is surprising, since most Chữ Nôm characters either borrow the meaning of existing Chinese characters, or the pronunciation of a particular Chinese word.

In chunom.org, it is indicated that 辰 was pronounced like “zhin” during the Tang Dynasty. This doesn’t really correspond with the Vietnamese pronunciation. The meaning of the character doesn’t correspond too. 辰 generally has to do with timekeeping in Chinese, but in Chữ Nôm 辰 is used to write the connector “so, then”.

Were there any developments in the phonology of this particular word during the transition from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese, which resulted in such a divergence?  Or is this scenario a random error which cannot be explained using Chinese phonetics?

There is no contradiction. The formal Sino-Vietnamese readings of 辰 are thần [tʰən˨˩] and thìn [tʰin˨˩], which correspond nicely to the Middle Chinese [d͡ʑin] (Pulleyblank-Miyake), Old Chinese [djɨn] (Baxter). Compare 臣 with the same MC reading, also having Sino-Vietnamese thần. The Fifth Earthly Branch is called thìn (or thần) in Vietnamese.
However, the reading thì definitely exists. The confusion stems from the fact that it is a Nom reading, not some formal Sino-Vietnamese. Its type is either C2 (using a character to spell a local word with a similar sound): I believe that both thì 'time' and thì 'topic particle' are attested as 辰. thìn 'preserve' and thời 'time' are also occurring spelt 辰, and with the variety of Nom, it shouldn't be surprising.
Source: Tự Điển Chữ Nôm Dẫn Giải


Placement of stative verbs I notice that stative verbs tend to connect with the subject and then the rest of the sentence proceeds with normal word order.

我們喜歡在圖書館讀書

Why does 喜歡 precede the location-phrase 在圖書館？ (why not 我們 在圖書館 喜歡讀書 )

她希望將來當工程師

Why does 希望 come before 將來？(why not 他 將來 希望當工程師 )
On the other hand, intensifiers are allowed to come before the stative verb:

她很希望 xyz
他真的不懂 xyz

Why is this so? What is different about intensifiers in relation to stative verbs?

First of all let me point out that in Chinese the term "stative verb" 状态动词 is commonly associated to what you call intensifier, on this website too, for example here.
In English though, stative verbs are verbs that describe a relatively unchanging state, so we can include your examples, as 喜欢，希望，etc.
As for your questions, this is how I interpret the whole thing:

Why does 喜歡 precede the location-phrase 在圖書館？ (why not 我們 在圖書館 喜歡讀書 )

Because what you like in this sentence is the entire thing of reading in the library. If you invert the order, 我們 「在圖書館」 喜歡讀書 then you say that in the library, we like reading (i.e. when we are not in the library we don't like reading anymore).
Same as in the other example:

她希望將來當工程師

She hopes to be an engineer in the future (someday), and not, 將來希望當工程師 in the future, she will hope to be an engineer.
The state described by the stative verb applies to what follows. If you move complements before it, it doesn't apply to them anymore.
And finally:

On the other hand, intensifiers are allowed to come before the stative verb:

because they work as adverbs here, and modify the intensity of the described state:

我超级喜欢 I extremely like
我很喜欢 I like a lot (very)
我不太喜欢 I don't like too much (not very much)
我非常不喜欢 I extremely dislike


What does this mean: 更不是被告? Does it mean "not the defendant"? The translation I have available (which isn't mine) is the following: "let alone the defendant", so which of us, if any, is correct?

"not the defendant" is just "不是被告"

"let alone the defendant" in Chinese is "更不必提被告"  or "更不用說被告"

"更不是被告" means "specifically not the defendant"

Example:

他不是被告 = he is not the defendant

次被告也判死刑, 更不必提被告 = even the second defendant is sentenced to death, not to mention (let alone) the defendant. -- of course he has to be sentenced to death

犯案的不是陳某或張某, 更不是被告 = The one who committed the crime is not Chen or Zhang, certainly (specifically) not the defendant.


What kind of nuance does 呗 have? In the northeastern dialect, 呗 is sometimes added to the end of a sentence. Although I use it often as well, I don't really know how to explain why it is used and what nuance does it carry.

My first thought was that it is used to state something obvious, like in this example (assume A has never seen a TV):

  A: 那是啥呀？ (pointing to a TV) What is that?

  B: 电视呗。 A TV (of course).

But then I thought I was wrong because when you ask for favours you can also use 呗, like this:

  你帮我把这个整完呗。 Help me finish this.

And I found nothing "obvious" in that sentence.

so I think it is not always to state something obvious. What nuance does it carry exactly? Or in other words, how can I explain this to a foreigner?

From 汉语大词典

呗 II
bei
˙ㄅㄟ

1. 助词。表示事实或道理明显，易于了解。
▶ 何永鳌《火焰山上四十天》：「有什么奇怪的，一块红石头呗。」

2. 助词。表示勉强同意或无所谓的语气。
▶ 周立波《暴风骤雨》第一部一：「他想，不明白就不明白吧，反正他们会给他车钱，这就得了呗。」
▶ 草明《乘风破浪》第四章：「他闷闷不乐，低着头说：‘挺好呗。’」

So, the 呗 in your first example is the first meaning above.

But I think in the second one, 呗 may mean 吧.
你帮我把这个整完吧。


The number of "components" (potentially) to define a Chinese character typeface This post goes into some hypotheticals on how long it might take to design a Chinese font compared to a Latin font.

It shows an image of potentially some "radicals" which could be used as the base components to construct more complicated characters. But from looking at radicals compared to complex Chinese characters, there are many many subtle variations in the complicated characters that aren't directly mappable to these basic Chinese radicals. So I'm wondering if and how you could actually build up a sort of component library to design a Chinese font without having to built every character from scratch.

My question is, if there is a (ideally known) finite number of components/radicals/etc. in Chinese that could be used to streamline the development of a Chinese font.

Yes this is possible, but there are a number of exceptions and edge-cases to account for. For example, some radicals have variants depending on their position (which are not typically considered distinct radicals):

Radical
Left variant
Right variant
Bottom Variant
Exceptions

心
忄

⺗

人
亻

从

手
扌

拜

水
氵

沝

犬
犭

㹜

刀

刂
⺈
切

火

灬
災

There is also the issue of some radicals not conforming to a left/right/top/bottom/quadrant position, but instead sorrounding other radicals (e.g. 囗).
Additionally, there is not a neat 1-1 map between all traditional and simplified character radicals, with identical radicals being simplified in different ways in some characters.

https://github.com/amake/cjk-decomp
https://github.com/LingDong-/rrpl


Where does the 'nominative object' go? So, I realise that you probably shouldn't think of Chinese sentences in terms of Latin grammar, right? That is probably doomed to failure. But on the other hand, I have noticed that often, Chinese sentences push the nominative object/the subject of the sentence after the verb that it is supposedly doing, and I'm not too sure why this structure is sometimes preferred to a standard S V O approach.
I should point out here that I'm not referring to a O V structure such as 我的车该擦了which implies the passive.

This is probably best explained using some examples. So, here goes...

朋友要的词典玛丽买到了 - here, I could understand both 玛丽把朋友要的词典买到了 and 玛丽买到了朋友要的词典 but the structure above seems a bit... random
前面开一辆车 - why not 一辆车在前面开?

Any thoughts or links very welcome - not sure what to search for!

Thanks, Hashamyim

This is all subsumed under "topicalisation". Chinese does it, but so do others (even Latin!). Indeed, most languages have a way of focusing on something, and Chinese allows certain word orders.

The first example is "object NP fronting" or "object preposing".

  朋友要的词典 玛丽 买到了

comes from...

  玛丽 买到了 朋友要的词典

This is particularly favoured when the wording of the object is long, and especially when it is much longer than the subject.

The second example is locative inversion.

  前面 开着 一辆车

(In general the sentence would require a 着 here.)

The more canonical sentence

  一辆车 (在)前面 开着

... doesn't sound as good for this sentence.

Only specific types of verbs are permitted to undergo locative inversion, specifically unaccusative and passivised verbs. There are very few transitive verbs that can do so, most notably 放 fàng.

These non-SVO orders have several different functions. This locative inversion has two main ones: describing the landscape, and presentation focus. These two are relatively similar to English, although the specific number of verbs allowed by English in this construction is lower.


Difference between 继续 and 接着 I learned 接着 a while ago, and the CEDICT definition is as follows:

  to catch and hold on / to continue / to go on to do sth / to follow / to carry on / then / after that / subsequently / to proceed / to ensue / in turn / in one's turn

Today I encountered 继续 for the first time, and it has this definition:

  to continue / to proceed with / to go on with

Are they mostly interchangeable? It looks like 接着 has a few more meanings, but are there any situations where 继续 is preferred? Are there any differences in tone or formality?

Both of "接着" and "继续" can mean "to continue"(of course,either of them has other meanings), in this case, I would say "接着" must have an infinitive while "继续" may not have. Examples:

  现在太晚了，明天再接着写吧。  Right  It's too late now. [I suggest you]continue to write tomorrow.
  现在太晚了，明天再继续写吧。  Right It's too late now. [I suggest you]continue to write tomorrow.
  现在太晚了，明天再继续吧。   Right It's too late now. [I suggest you]continue tomorrow.
  现在太晚了，明天再接着吧。   Wrong


How do you say "I do" as in when you are about to get married? I'm trying to figure out what the chinese equivalent of "I do" would be. Is there a phrase that people say in Chinese that represents getting married? Or is there a direct translation for "I do"?

Thanks for the help!

我愿意.

It has become a fixed idiom for I do.


What is "Chinese Culture"? What is Chinese culture?
What does it consist of?
How would you describe it?

I've been asked what American and British culture is - and I really have no idea what it is or how to even explain it others.

I've heard from a lot of Chinese, even, that Hong Kong and Taiwan have preserved Chinese culture better than mainlanders. So what Chinese culture?

It's difficult to describe precisely what the culture is, different people give different answers. As to me, the culture is: Filial piety, jiaozi , kongfu, paper-cut, beautiful scenery.


Does a good equivalent of "pitch" not exist? I've been wondering if there is a good Chinese equivalent of the word pitch. Pitch is short for sales pitch and it is another term for a sales presentation (presentation, another word without a good Chinese equivalent), basically it:

  is a line of talk that attempts to persuade someone or something, with a planned sales presentation strategy of a product or service designed to initiate and close a sale of the product or service.

There is also a Wiki page for filmmaking, pitch. Where it talks about people selling there idea of film or TV.

It isn't that there isn't an equivalent word, it is just that usually the English word becomes the default. There is a question on Zhihu entitled: 投售或推介 (Pitch) 时你都有哪些诀窍？, where we see two Chinese words 投售 and 推介, but in the description of the question it goes on to say:

  欢迎来说说自己 pitch 时的一些小窍门。

The highest upvoted answer is also filled with English:

  Pitch的确是有一些Dos and Don'ts。我来到这个问题主要是刚刚休息的时候看了一个Pitch集锦，特别想找人聊聊——一搜知乎，果然有。

Does a good equivalent of "pitch" not exist?

Pitch

  3a: to present or advertise especially in a high-pressure way : plug, promote

  3b: to attempt to persuade especially with a sales pitch

  In these cases, 'pitch' means "推銷" E.g. "推銷某主張" (to pitch an idea); "推銷某產品" (to pitch  a product)

~

  3c : to present (a movie or program idea) for consideration (as by a TV producer)

  In this case, 'pitch' means "推薦" or 提議  E.g. "推薦某劇本" / "提議某劇本" (to pitch a script)

推銷 - to promote --> pitch
推薦 - to recommend --> pitch
提議 - to proposal --> pitch

Typically, a pitch is an oral presentation

Pitch = (現場)推銷; (現場)推薦


Wubihua / Traditional Chinese / Open-source index I have been looking for an open-source index of Chinese characters (Traditional) indexed by the Wubihua (五筆劃). I have found only partial lists (up to four digits), and only for Simplified. I know there are lists out there, since all the phones in Hong Kong have Wubihua for Traditional installed... Any pointers?

What do you want to use it for? Mostly it is used as an input method, which is probably why only four digits are included. If you need the order of all strokes, changing your search phrase to something like "stroke order" might help. Here are some links I have found:

http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-stroke-order.php?searchChinese=1&zi=%E5%9C%8B

Edit: I've found this:

https://code.google.com/p/ibus-t9/issues/detail?id=3

Very inclusive! Download that attachment. I bet that is exactly what you are looking for. :)


How should I interpret 最大限度 in 我们最大限度地利用现有港口条件运货? 我们最大限度地利用现有港口条件运货。

I think I should treat 最大限度地 as one word, namely 'maximally‘. Does that fit?

Rough draft; not good English:

  We maximally exploit current harbour conditions transport goods.

Final interpretation:

  We make maximum use of the currently existing harbour conditions to transport goods.

We exploit the current harbour conditions transport goods to the largest extent.
Here "to the largest extent" means 最大限度地.


Why "我想了退这件新买的毛衣。” is wrong? The correct sentence is "我想退了这件新买的毛衣。"  But why?
Please do not use grammar jargon because I seldom understand them.
I have been teaching Mandarin with grammar included but never mention and grammar term in my teaching and even the word "grammar" itself, simply because I am a victim of (English) grammar: hours spent just to memorize those stupid names, mind you, both in English and Chinese and their function/usage.
Instead, I use "logic" to teach grammar because Chinese is one of the most logical and cultural language in the world.

我想退了这件新买的毛衣。

Semantically, 我想 itself connotes a completion already because when you say it you already think about it.  So we don't need 了 after 想 for completion.  That's why the sentence in title is not correct.
退了 denotes I want the action 退 get done. "Done" is for completion, so we need a 了 after 退.
P. S.  I somehow agree with you Chinese language is easier to learn if you focus more on logic, convention and culture, especially for second language learners.  Chinese grammar is the hardest part of the language. Only few people truly master Chinese grammar. Second language learners can easily create a wrong/stilted sentence based on the grammar rules they learned.


How to ask for response and closing statement in a letter in cantonese and in traditional chinese? I need help in writing a closing paragraph to my letter. What I need to write in cantonese is:

Please, don't forget to reply back my postcard and letter
I'm looking forward to get soon news from you.
Best regards, wish you good luck.

What I tried to do is to translate this using google but it rendered this result:

請不要忘記回复我的明信片和信件
我期待很快收到你的消息。
最好的問候，祝你好運。

Needless to say that I am uncertain if it is right grammatically speaking. To add some insight the recipient of this message is a male. Not sure if it will affect the translation.

Doing a quick research I've found this article which explains that written cantonese lacks of support in google and that is not very used even in Hong Kong (the place to which this letter is intended to be sent). Can somebody help me with this matter?. I really need to do this thing right so that my message can be understood clearly.

If possible an answer which can be accompanied by a formal version of my message and an informal version would help me the most, of course written in traditional chinese characters.

an informal one:

  Please, don't forget to reply back my postcard and letter

拜託．唔好唔記得回信

  I'm looking forward to get soon news from you

我想早啲收到你嘅消息

  Best regards, wish you good luck

祝安康

about a formal version, well, it's tricky. because, there're "canned" terms for correspondences in chinese, and these terms are in literary chinese.

if you google "尺牘用語", there're numerous pages. briefly, you must know who has superiority, you, or the receiver; then choose the appropriate opening &  ending.

即覆為盼 - hope for your immediate reply

敬請臺安 - for equal status, roughly "wish you calm"

personally, i "write" colloquial cantonese, mixed with english words in email with my friends. these literary chinese terms are simply, "overkill" in context of cantonese.

edited, if the receiver is more important, only use the two below, previous suggestions are not appropriate.

祈請示覆 ~ pray for your reply

祈 kei4　請 ching2　示 si6　覆 fuk1

敬請鈞安 ~ wish you calm

敬 ging3　請 ching2　鈞 gwan1　安 on1

you may click the word to play the sound file :)

the dilemma is, these terms are not colloquial cantonese. i doubt that people would understand, and guess the correct characters when they hear your saying.

c'est la vie, the written chinese is different from the spoken chinese.

anyway, don't misuse "canned" terms for equal, or lower status; it's extremely rude.

last, you may use the 漢語多功能字庫 for learning cantonese pronunciation:

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/

or, if you're using mac os x, the text to speech function is quite good, have a try :)


来 vs 去 usage for the speakers movement towards a place So I know that 来 is used for actions that is moving towards the speaker and 去 is away from the speaker but I don’t know if I am moving towards a place I would use 来 or 去
For example: I go to Paris will be “我去巴黎” or ”我来巴黎”？

Depends where you are now. If you're not in Paris now, you'd have to 去 to get there, but if you are in Paris now, you can talk about when you 来'd or how often you 来. A lot like 'go' and 'come'.


Jewish texts in Chinese? For those familiar, I am curious to what extant holy Jewish texts have been translated into Chinese. Of course, the Bible is translated but that understand by on its own. Now, obviously, the extant of the Jewish diaspora has not really extended into Chinese speaking countries or areas. (Except for that small window ever there:) I’d be curious if there was, for example, a translation of the Talmud ever attempted. I don’t know who the people who have to be with such a particlar set of skills.

Yes, there is. For example, see this. Although, according the comments, it seems it's only a small part of the Talmud.


Describe or explaining the Engineering occupation Possible Duplicate:
  How are  the words “engineering” or “engineer” translated in Cantonese?

I love what I do and my family has no idea what I really do. I can explain it in English, but I have a hard time thinking of a way to explain it in Chinese. I am a computer engineer (and student) and I thought just saying "computer engineer" in chinese would make sense, i.e, 电脑工程师. I feel like I have to explain the engineering portion. I presume computers make sense to my native chinese people, but engineering isnt.

What I thought up was saying "I build computers" but its so inaccurate its almost offensive to myself.

Engineering in english is someone who designs and builds a structure which will "fix" or improve a certain way of performing something, i.e improving a systems using whatever field of focus (mechanical, electrical, computer, etc) to improve how things are done. e.g, Cellphones were engineered to remove people from a land-line (very crude example), or cars moved people away from horse carriages.

good reference is from Engineering: Wiki :

  Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring
  and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical
  knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices,
  systems, materials and processes.

In general, people know what "工程师" means.
If you say "computer engineer", people will assume you are doing some programming work. If you can be more specific about what kind of engineering? It will explain everything.

For instance, computer hardware engineer, software engineer,network engineer and so on...


How to mix Latin and Chinese script with style? I am currently writing a Chinese translation for a webpage about a Go meeting. The section about how to get there contains a lot of mixed Chinese and Latin text:

地點
社團處所在 Lehrter Straße 53，附近有 Kruppstraße, Perlenberger Brücke 和
Quitzowstraße

自 Hauptbahnhof 搭乘１２３號線公車前往 Mäckeritzwiesen
自 Turmstraße 地鐵站搭１２３號線公車前往 Hauptbahnhof
從Ｕ７號線各站乘坐Ｍ２７號線公車前往 Pankow

Can you give me a short stylistic guide about how to mix these two scripts? I am especially interested in how to handle punctuation

If I understand your question correctly, you're asking how to format a mixed Chinese-Latin sentence... I don't think there is a set of rules on this...

The way I think of it is:

Use the punctuation appropriate for that given sentence/word...

我明天要跟我女朋友去看"Les Misérables"电影。 (It's a latin movie title, so use latin quotes... but a Chinese sentence, so use Chinese 句号)


What does 以 mean in 也提供了低层级的控制功能以尽可能提高灵活性和性能? In the following sentence:

  TensorFlow 既提供了高层级的 API 以便让您轻松构建和训练您的模型，也提供了低层级的控制功能以尽可能提高灵活性和性能。

(Source: TensorFlow documentation)

What does the 以 mean in this context?

The whole sentence would mean:

  TensorFlow already offers the high-level API for you to constitute and train your model, and also offers the lower-level API to control the function and ...?

尽可能 means "as ... ao possible", but I don't understand what the 以 mean in this context...

Literally speaking, you could translate 以 into "so that""in order to" or some other words that introduces the goal or objective of something.

P.S. It seems that this sentence is obtained from direct translation [i.e. word-by-word] with minor modification according to grammar. Usually the structure of these translated Mandarin sentences is fairly close to the that of the original English, so you could try to check each word one-by-one.


Do most native speakers understand these Chengyus at all? 霽範永存, 亹亹不卷, 巾袖無光, 鑿枘不入 I am learning some Chengyu but after a google search with inverted commas, only a very small number of usages are found:

266 results for 霽範永存;

720 results for 亹亹不卷;

817 results for 巾袖無光;

886 results for 鑿枘不入.

The small numbers seem to indicate most people do not use these Chengyus, and some people may not even understand them.

Are these Chengyus considered as outdated? Do most native speakers understand these Chengyus at all?

I would like to say they are uncommon variants of common 成语 or just single case originated from some literature, which I think I am inventing such 成语 everyday. But it requires high level of classical Chinese skills to recognize.

Here I would show what I thought before I search for more info.

霁范永存

身正为范。范乃楷模之意。

又，光风霁月。霁乃晴明之意。

又，正气永存。

So I guess it means:  高节永为世人之楷模。

After searching: Exactly as what I thought.

亹亹不卷

亹亹文王，令闻不已！

勉励的文王啊，他的美名没有止尽。

又，孜孜不倦。

So I guess 卷 is the ancient variant (or origin?) of 倦. So this 成语 means 勤勉而不知疲倦.

After searching: 今作：娓娓不倦，多指谈话娓娓不绝，不知疲倦。

巾袖无光

巾，手帕。袖，衣袖。

又，黯淡无光。

不考虑比喻，似乎就是：衣服不起眼，或陈旧。不能推断意象。

After searching:形容穿戴的服装敝旧不华丽。孤例。

凿枘不入

This is obvious~

方枘圆凿。

They are the same.

After searching: Yes!

P.S.

It is not any four-character, concise word that can be categorized as 成语! A 成语 should be popular enough (at least in its time)!

彼素苑囿籍典，兀兀以穷；今闻鱼跃之喜，定不自胜，故延亲邀友，飨于庭园。倾以仪狄，馔以凤肝，奏以焦尾，焚以龙涎，欢歌笑语，春风踌躇。

See? I use A LOT OF four-character verse, but they are (mostly) not 成语, but my personal invention.


How do native speakers of Chinese pronounce Latin characters? I hear that "Windows XP" is commonly called "Chā P" because the letter "X" may be pronounced "Chā".

Are there other Latin characters that have similarly peculiar pronunciations?

There is no single way to pronounce a given letter in the Latin alphabet. The set of rules varies wildly depending on the speaker's geographical location.

That being said however, I have, a few years ago, compiled a list of common (more Northern I believe) pronunciations of Roman letters. You can find it on this subpage of my Wiktionary homepage: Roman Letters in Mandarin.

For your convenience, I am going to paste it here:

字母  漢語拼音標音                    同音字
A     ēi
B     bì                            閉
C     sēi                           塞（白讀）
D     dì                            地
E     yì                            意
F     ái fu                         癌副
G     jì                            既
H     éi chi
I     ài 或 ái                      愛 或 癌
J     zhèi                          這（口語）
K     kèi
L     ái lur                        癌露兒
M     ái mu                         癌木
N     ēn                            恩
O     ōu                            歐
P     pì                            僻
Q     kiùr
R     àr 或 ár                       二
S     ái si                         癌四
T     tì                            替
U     yōu                           幽
V     wēi（聲母多為唇齒音 IPA: /ʋ/）    微
W     dá bu liu                     達不六
X     ái ke si                      癌克四
Y     wài（聲母多為雙唇音 IPA: /w/）    外
Z     zèi

Just on your specific example, chā is certainly possible as X resembles the cross. I have never heard of people pronouncing XP like this before though.


Why does the radical for water and ice often look so weird When I see the radical being used in 洗 and 凉 in some books or even sougou. They break it up into a broken radical that looks nothing like it.

Is it one of those things that are related only to computers and I should just ignore the difference?

As others have commented, it is just another font. I would say just ignore it and as a learner, stick to the standard one for now, which is like three short strokes on the left. It would make more sense if we look into the origin of water character in Chinese: 水 (shui3). The pictographic form for 水 (shui3) looks like a river flow, which gradually evolved into the three strokes as the radical form for water character in Chinese: 水 (shui3).


many ways to say Today I've seen "today" translated in several ways: "今日", "今天", "本日".

Are they all official words?
What's the difference among them? Are those words more or less interchangeable in common language?
Are there any other expressions?
Are there so many ways to indicate "yesterday" and "tomorrow"?
Can you provide examples?

A similar question (and useful answers) have already been provided at "Today" in Spoken Singaporean Mandarin.

Thanks!

In mainland China, we say 今天 mostly. I have never heard of 本日 personally. 今日 should only be used in a formal setting like a newspaper or a TV program.


How come 将 is a "future marker" and a "passive marker"? Any good logical theories on the subject? What twisted life must have 将 took to merge such functions into one glyph?

For my background 将 as 把(to take) and 将 as 且(further) are queit different in their meaning.

All linguistic articles on the subject are quite hard for me to read (all of them in chinese, of course). And usual books just give you rules but not how those rule originated in the first place.

P.S. Please don't tell me anything about 把, 且 or any other modern 将 equivalent. I'm interested in the evolution, the etymology of the functions of 将 and how they come to be so "perpendicular".

I know that 将 is like 把, it's almost similar, it's used in books more not in everyday talk and so on...

I care only about evolution, etymology. Thanks.

将 before a verb is functioning as a [modal verb]: 'will / will soon'

Example:
(将)回家 = (will) go home
(将)死 = (will) die/ will die (soon)

将/把 before a noun is functioning as a [depositive marker] that marks the noun to be deposited by the verb

Example:
打死他 (beat him to death)
将他打死 (take him, and beat to death) - 将 marks 他 as the object that's being deposited by the verb 打死

将 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%87
Phono-semantic compound (形聲, OC *ʔsaŋ, *ʔsaŋs): phonetic 爿 (OC *braːn, *zaŋ, “bed; small table”) + semantic ⺼ (“meat”) + semantic 寸 (“hand”) – >to offer meat as tribute by putting it on the table.

"to offer meat" is to "deposit the meat' that's how 将 acquired the function of [depositive marker] that marks object to be deposited of
Just read the article at WiKi
Stumpy Joe Pete wrote:

how did the "to want, to wish, to approach" meaning come to be attached to that character? Did it come about later, or have both meanings been attached to the same character/pronunciation as far back as we can go?

from Sino-Tibetan root:
⺼ (“meat”) +  寸 (“hand”) is the semantic component of 將 . It describes the action of handling a piece of meat; 爿 (table) is a semantic + phonetic component of 將.
The original meaning of the character 將 meant "to offer meat as a tribute to gods by putting it on the table"
The action of 將 described (put meat on the table) acquired the function of [depositive marker] later
From Austroasiatic root:
"Khmer ចង់ "  (to want, to wish, to approach) was imported to Chinese language in ancient time, and the existing character 將 was loaned to express this word for phonetic  reason. Since  "to want, to wish" is related to future event. meaning of the modal verb "will" was added to 將 later


Is it incorrect to use 儿化 (érhuà) inside a word, e.g., 门儿口, and 小孩儿子 and 玩儿具? Sometimes we use 儿化 (érhuà) without it changing the meaning of the word, e.g., 门 (mén; door, gate) becomes 门儿 (ménr).

However, some Chinese words contain 儿化-izable words, such as 门口 (ménkǒu; doorway, gate), and I intuitively feel that it's incorrect to apply 儿化 mid-word, giving 门儿口 in this case.  I want to check if my intuition is correct.

Question: Is it incorrect to use 儿化 inside a word?

Other examples are:

小孩子 (xiǎoháizi; child) contains 小孩 (xiǎohái; child), which can be turned into 小孩儿 (xiǎoháir; child) without changing the meaning, but it feels incorrect to write 小孩儿子.
玩具 (wánjù; toys) contains 玩 (wán; to play), which can be turned into 玩儿 (wánr) without changing the meaning, but it feels incorrect to write 玩儿具.

"门儿口", "小孩儿子" and "玩儿具" are all incorrect, we don't say that. In the final analysis this is an idiomatic usage issue.

For example we say 东便门儿, 西便门儿; but we don't say "天安门儿". (There's a historical reason behind.)

Particularly, 小孩儿 and 小孩子 have similar meaning and usage, "小孩儿子" sounds repetitive and redundant. 玩儿 is usually used as a verb, you can say 玩儿游戏, 玩儿手机, 玩儿玩具; but not 玩儿具, 古玩儿, 玩儿笑.

  Is it incorrect to use 儿化 inside a word?

Yes you can, but only in the specified cases; i.e. in which conforming to the idiomatic usages. e.g. 锅儿挑, 巴儿狗.

It is known that it's hard to summarize logical rules for 儿化音. This 北京话儿化词典.pdf might help you.


What is the difference between 经营模式vs。商业模式 I'm trying to figure out if there's a difference between  经营模式and 商业模式。 Right now, I'm writing a business case  （商业案例） and I'm trying to figure out which of these two would be the better title for a section of the case.

Thanks for the help!

Stephen

The main difference is the scope besides their definitions. Business models can be very different, say between service and manufacturing. But operation model could be the same for different businesses, say retail stores for car parts and used furniture. Operation model could have bigger scope like network of dealerships, but it's somewhat defined by the business model - selling cars.