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Bragging and Showing Off
This week’s Chinese semantic field is all about showing off – that is, to proudly demonstrate one’s skill, talent, possessions, achievements, etc before others – and bragging – the expression of these characteristics in spoken form. There are a truckload of translations here, so forgive me for not providing example sentences. (At least I tried […]
Variant Pronunciations in Mandarin
I’ve been editing Mandarin entries on Wiktionary for about a year now, and one unexpected phenomenon I have come across is, for the lack of a better term, “variant pronunciations”. Mandarin as we know it has been heavily standardised over the years, and we have come to think of “readings” of Chinese characters or word […]
16+ Intermediate and Advanced Sentence Structures
I have been curious lately about more intermediate or advanced structures that might exist in Mandarin Chinese. Textbooks do list them from time to time, but it’s hard to know which ones are common and which ones are out of date. So with the help of 汉英虚词词典 – a dated but useful dictionary of Chinese-English […]
20 Actually Useful Chengyu (成语)
Most advanced learners, I think, have a love-hate relationship with chengyu (成语), those pesky, mostly four-character idioms taken from classical China. Sure, you get learners who are obsessed with them and endeavour to memorise one hundred a month only to find their practical usage is hazy to say the least. (It’s also very difficult at […]
Interference Experienced By Chinese Learners
As an ESL teacher, I see my students struggling with interference from their mother tongue on a weekly basis. It’s a challenge, at times, but it is something that can be overcome by putting in a lot of hard work under the right kind of guidance. I had never really given too much thought to […]
100 English and Chinese Conversation Topics (with Pinyin)
My role at Global Hearts has expanded lately, which is very cool. They provide unique, bilingual tours of Melbourne for international students from all over the world. Their goal is to bridge the existing communication gap between international students and locals, a very worthwhile ambition. They also run a very awesome Chinese and English language […]
15+ Ways To Say “You’re Welcome”
It is true that we have quite a few ways to express “you’re welcome” in English – “no problem”, “no worries”, “forget it”, “my pleasure”, “not at all”, to name a few. But how about Chinese? Here, I think, is the most exhaustive list you’ll find on the web: 不客气 bù kèqi (variants: 不用客气 bùyòng […]
Do You Need a Hug?
Realising that Chinese has no direct equivalence for “French kiss” got me thinking about other displays of affection and how they might fare in the translation process. One that springs to mind is hugging. Evidently Mandarin has four basic building block characters that can form hugging-words: 抱 bào： To wrap your arms around someone; to […]
10 Ways to Make Fun of Someone
The phrasal verb “make fun of” looks like such an easy combination of words to an English native speaker, but in Chinese it spurs a whole myriad of potential translation options. I came across another great semantic thread when faced with translating it and I’d like to share the Top Ten here.
10+ Ways to Say “Shout”
Synonyms in other languages have always intruiged me, and Chinese is no exception. Why does one language have twenty words for one concept? It’s a perrenial debate, and one that will be forever immortalised in the infamous urban legend about the Eskimo words for snow. Throughout my Chinese studies I’ve come across many such “Eskimo-snow” […]
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