Articles About the Chinese Language

Donald Sutherland in The Big Shot's Funeral

If you haven't seen 大腕 (da4 wan4 = big wrist), you should go and buy it right now. It's a great movie.

In English, the movie is called "The Big Shot's Funeral". 大腕 is a colloquialism in Mandarin that means "big shot".

I love the cast of this movie:

Donald Sutherland is awesome because his name in Mandarin is pronounced tang2 na4 de2 sa4 se4 lan2. Go ahead and say it... it's fun!! And it really sounds like "Donald Sutherland." Donald Sutherland is also amazing because he gave birth to Jack Bauer.

Rosamund Kwan is breathtaking.

葛优 [ge1 you2] is great.

In summer, you need cold angry gas machine.

Sometimes, occasionally, mercifully, something is actually simple in Chinese. This is sort of one of those cases, but sort of not.

The word for air conditioner is 冷气机 [leng3 qi4 ji1]. 冷 means cold, and 气 means air, angry or gas. 机 means machine. So air conditioner is "cold air machine". Makes sense.

Here's the air conditioner from my brother's old apartment in Beijing:

For short, you can call air conditioner 冷气. We don't usually add the 机.

The only mildly confusing thing is that the full word for machine is  机器 [ji1 qi4]. Of course, both of these words mean "machine". So, "machine" in Chinese is really "machine machine".

If you use the common short form of air conditioner, it sounds like "cold machine", but it's really "cold air"!! Rookie mistake to think it'd be as simple as "cold machine". Although, if you pronounce it correctly, no one will know you're using the wrong word.

(Yes, the word for "heater" is 暖气机, or just 暖气 for short. The word 暖, pronounced nuan3, means "warm".)

Challenge #2 - Beijing Hua translated

I put forth a challenge in a recent post to see if folks could translate some authentic Beijing Hua. I took some crap for the post in the comments because the recording is not the best (sorry!!) and because the sentence is really just a snippet of conversation taken out of context.

Despite the criticisms, I still think it's a good exercise. Here's the translation:

Ta1 jiu4 yi3wei2 wo3 gan4ma2 ne? Wo3 shang4 fen1ju2 le... n'n' nar3 you3 gong1 fu40r (time) a?

What does he think I was doing? I went to the local police station. How [the heck] do I have time?

Does anyone out there (other than me) like these posts and want more Beijing Hua sentences to translate?

UPDATE: I received an email from my Chinese friend who was actually there when this sentence was recorded. He writes:

"J, I listen to the clip again carefully. I'm a bit unsure about our former translation of the second character "jiu4". It's too fast and unclear. I guess there is another possibility. The second character is not jiu4, but zhe4. Both of the answers are Ok. It's too hard for me to recognize. Actually this time I prefer the latest version of translation. Anyway, I gave you both options:

Answer：他就以为我干嘛呢，我上分局了，哪有工夫啊
Another Possible Answer：他这以为我干嘛呢，我上分局了，哪有工夫啊 "

Ok, if W can't translate this then I guess the test isn't fair after all... sorry loyal readers.

CHALLENGE #2: Can you translate authentic beijing hua?

I've studied Chinese for a long time. It's one thing to understand "classroom Chinese" and quite another to understand true Beijing Hua. I secretly recorded this sentence in Beijing and listened to it about 1,000 times before finally translating it (with the help of a friend). Can you translate this sentence?

You can also try to translate the sentence from challenge #1, or skip straight to the answer from challenge #1.

Leave your translation in a comment and I'll post the answer soon.

Good luck!! 

Excuse me, can I kiss you?

I developed a technique for creating an awkward and somewhat entertaining misunderstanding with Chinese women while living in Beijing. I should point out that I never actually tried this since I was too shy!! But I think it might have been funny.

If you want to interrupt a stranger to ask a question in China, perhaps to ask directions or the time of day, you might use the following phrase:

对不起，我问你一下。。。

对不起 = dui4 bu4 qi2 = "opposite" + "not" + "angry"  = excuse me

我问你一下 = wo3 wen4 ni3 yi2 xia4 = "I" + "ask" + "you" + "1"+ "time" = may I ask...

This is a polight way to get someone's attention before beginning a conversation.

My innovation is to substitute the word 吻 [=wen3 = to kiss] for the word 问 [=wen4 = to ask]. Since only the tone is different,  Chinese people will assume you mispronounced the word accidentally (assuming you're not Asian). So the phrase goes:

对不起，我吻你一下。。。 

Which is a polight way of saying "excuse me, may I kiss you?"

Deliver the line, then pause for giggles.

(Comment back here if you actually try this... it's all theoretical at this point.)

Free Pirated Music?

China is the land of pirated software, and imitation goods. We don't pay for music here, we download it for free from the Chinese version of "google" known as 百度  (bai3)(du4). It literally means "one hundred degrees" 百 means 100，like 一百 one hundred (yi1)(bai3) and 度 means degrees, either mathematical or temperature or in 程度(cheng2)(du4) which means degree, as in "to some degree, i like pirated software." FYI pirated anything is called 盗版 （dao4）（ban3）which means "pirated" "edition" ; since the 海盗 (hai3)(dao4) is literally an "ocean pirate" and 版本 （ban3）（ben3）means an "edition" of something, like a book, or the newest edition of windows 8.0 (also available in pirated version).

So without installing anything on your computer, you can just go and download tons of free music from http://mp3.baidu.com/

The only thing is that they don't have all songs, although mainstream music will all be there.

 To compete with them, google now offers free music in china too, on their site http://www.google.cn/music/homepage

but, the google site is blocked to users in america, and you thought only the communists knew how to censor free information?

 

 

 

you should be ashamed, very ashamed.

One of my favorite signs visible all over the place, on college campuses or put on residence buildings by the government, is the "glory-shame list" or "荣辱观" (rong2)(ru3)(guan1).

荣(rong2)means glory, as in 光(guang1)荣(rong2); the second word 辱(ru3) means shame or shameful as seen in 耻（chi3）辱(ru3) and finally the word for "outlook" or "idea" i.e. way of looking at things, 观(guan1) is part of the word for idea: 观念 (guan1)(nian4).So the 荣辱观 (rong2)(ru3)(guan1) is basically a guideline that tells you what constitutes failure and shame and what consititues glory. Of course, loving your contry, working hard and obeying the law are all glorious. But more importantly, it is shameful to be lawless, to benefit oneself at the expense of others (yeah, right), and to be extravagant and wasteful.

An extension of the traditional 8 glories and 8 shames, sometimes you can see in student cafeterias the "wasting food is shameful" sign, always a favorite. "以浪费为耻" 浪(lang4)费(fei4)=waste.

 

Let's Make Some Money

As you may have guessed, this is the first in a series of attempts to commercialize chineselanguageblog. I would therefore like to introduce the chiense "summer sleeping mat" which i took the liberty of translating myself. Why? Because we don't have any in the US. But we should. It's called a 凉(liang2)席(xi2) and pretty much every household in southern china (more people than in all the USA) use them. Literally, 凉 means "cool" or “chilly" as seen in 凉快 （liang2kuai4) and 席 means "mat" as in 席子 （xi2zi). What it looks like is a greenish or brown/beige bamboo mat, flat and pretty thin, usually big enough to cover an entire bed. It's not hard to use, you just put it on there and lie down. It makes you considerably cooler in the summer, i'd say at least by 7 or 8 degrees, and gets rid of that summer heat sticky feeling. I know what you're thinking, "but they just use it because they can't afford air conditioning" Yes, that's true, but can you really afford air conditioning either? It's expensive. And the sleeping mat runs from a basic one for about 5 bucks (us dollars) to a top of the line model for like 20 or 25 bucks. Ok who wants one?? I'll ship it for you and only take 1 dollar commission, since i can live on that one dollar for like ten days.

 

 

How to say "air-to-ground missile" in Mandarin Chinese

Let’s start with the word 导, pronounced dao3, which means “lead; guide; channel; transmit; conduct; instruct, direct (as in a performance)”.

You may know this word from the word for “tour guide”, which is 导游 [= dao3 you2]. This is just “guide” + the word 游, which means “travel”. (Note that 游 can also mean “part of a river” or “to associate with”, which doesn’t make sense, but hey, why not.)

Ok, so now let’s add the word 弹, pronounced dan4, which means “ball; pellet; bullet; shell; bomb”. The combination is 导弹, dao3dan4, which means “guided missle”. (Now we’re making progress.)

The next few words you need are pretty easy ones:

• 空 = kong1 = “empty; hollow; void; unoccupied; air; sky; in vain; for nothing; to no avail”
  
•  地 = di4 = “the earth; land; soil; fields; surface; ground; floor; place; locality; position; situation; room; background; distance” Finally, you need the word
  
• 对 = dui4 = “reply; answer; treat; cope with; confront; be trained on; to face; bring into contact; suit agree; fit; compare; set; right; correct; add; mix; adulterate; divide into halves; pair; couple; concerning; regarding” This is one of those words that means just about everything in the right context. But one of the pretty standard uses is “oriented towards” or “with respect to” or “facing”.
  

Now you can put all this together and you get:

空对地导弹 = kong1 dui4 di4 dao3 dan4 = “emptiness facing earth guide bomb” = air-to-surface guided missile !!

You can create some obvious variants on this phrase. How about:

• 地对空导弹 = surface-to-air guided missile (just switch di4 and kong1)
  
•  空对水下导弹 = air-to-underwater guided missile (just add 水= shui3 = water, and 下 = xia4 = under, and you get 水下 = shui3xia4 = underwater).
  

Now that you’ve got the pattern, what other kinds of guided missiles can you invent and work into your next conversation in Mandarin?

Chinese pop: You are so awesome. Great version of 對面的女孩看過來.

The refrain is 對面的女孩看過來.

對面 = dui4 mian4 = "across from"

的 = de0 = [posessive particle]

女孩 = nu3 hai2 = girl.

Put these three together and you get:

對面的女孩 = girl sitting across from me.

看 = kan4 = look

過來 = gou4 lai2 = over here, or sometimes come.

All together, it means "girl sitting across from me: look over here!".

The other amazing refrain is

我左看右看上看下看原來每个女孩都不简单

The translation is:

我 = wo3 = I

左看 = zuo3 kan4 = look left

右看 = you4 kan4 = look right

上看 = shang4 kan4 = look up

下看 = xia4 kan4 = look down

原來 = yaun3 lai2 = from the beginning

每 = mei3 = beautiful

个 = ge2 = [measure word, here applying the adjective "beautiful" to the girl]

女孩 = nu3 hai2 = girl

都 = dou1 = completely

不简单 = bu4 jian3 dan1 = not simple 

我左看右看上看下看原來每个女孩都不简单 = i look left, i look right, i look up, i look down, but from the beginning that girl is totally not simple!