Articles About the Chinese Language

Ducks and chickens are delicious! But they're also dirty. (Be careful of 鸭 and 鸡.)

In china, you can eat 北京烤鸭 [bei3 jing1 kao3 ya1 = beijing roast duck]. You can also eat many kinds of 鸡肉 [ji1 rou4 = chicken meat]. Warning: these foods may cause 口水 (kou3 shui3 = saliva (see last post)].

But beware.

If you ask for a 鸭子 [ya1 zi0 = duckling] you may hear some giggling. The slang meaning of yazi is male prostitute. Hmmm. Not so delicious anymore.

Also, if you ask for 鸡nu3 [i can't get my chinese input editor to give me the character for woman. apologies.] then you are asking for chicken woman, which means prostitute. Careful!!

This kind of slang doesn't usually show up in the dictionary. When I first moved to China I thought people were calling prostitutes ji4nu3. ji4 means "for sale". I thought whore was "for sale girl". But it turns out it's chicken girl. Who knew.

So beware of 鸡 and 鸭子!

That food looks so good i've got 口水!

Being basically 文盲 [wen2 mang2 = illiterate] -- I use computer software to help me write Chinese characters -- I especially appreciate the SIMPLE characters. These are the characters that mere mortals like me can actually remember how to write.

First, thank you Chinese language for including the word 口, pronounced kou3, which means mouth. Love it. It even looks like a mouth.

I can also handle the word 水 [shui3 = water]. It's just 4 strokes.

Put these two words together and you get 口水, mouth water... also known as.... SALIVA!!

I have no proof or research to back it up, but my sense is that things that have been around a long time (like saliva) tend to be expressed very simply in Chinese.

Chinese Foods - Say These Words and You Can Eat Delicious Kinds

The word 家 (jia1) is defined as:

1. family; household; 2. home; 3. a person or family engaged in a profession; 4. a specialist in a certain field; 5. a school of thought; school; 5. [used when addressing elders]; 6. domestic, tamed; 7. [counting word for families and enterprises].

This is a very important word in Chinese that is used all the time. If you combine this word with the word 常 (chang3), which means "often", and then add the word for restaurant (饭馆 fan4guan3) then you get 家常饭馆, which means family style restaurant. 

These restaurants are everywhere. They serve 家常菜. (I added the word 菜 (cai4), which means "food".) This means home style cookin!

Like most foreigners who spend time in China, I developed a repertoire of 家常菜 that I ordered regularly. All these 家常饭馆s basically have 90% of the same dishes, so you can usually order without looking at the menu. You just order from your repertoire.

I'm giving pronunciation only for now, since all you need to do is say these words and you'll be eating well:

1. di4 san1 xian1 - delicious combination of potatos, green peppers, and eggplants.

2. zhu1 rou4 da4 cun1 - pork and scallions with sauce

3. tu3 dou4 ni4 - mashed potatos. (believe it or not, this is literally just like what you'd get at kfc.)

4. gan1 bian1 bian3 dou4 - spicy stringbeans with pork

5. gu3 lao3 rou4 - sweet and sour pork.

6. jing1 jiang4 rou4 si1 - pork strips in sweet/savory sauce that gets wrapped up in little pancakes made of tofu. 

enjoy!

 

 

Have it our way

Burger King's philosophy of 'have it your way...' is wrong.

I went to McDonald's in China, ordered a Chicken sandwhich, and when I asked for some ketchup packets, the cashier was like, sorry, "这个this(zhe4 ge) 有has(you3) 自己own(zi4 ji3) 的(de) 味道flavor(wei4 dao)，加add(jia1) 番茄酱 ketchup (fan1 qie2 jiang4) 不not (bu4) 好吃good-tasting(hao3 chi1) "...this has flavor already, it's not good with ketchup.

I was like...ah...what do i say...ok, i guess yor're right, i'm sorry. i guess i really don't like ketchup on my fried chicken, MY BAD.

 

 

Beijing taxi automated message

If you have ever taken a taxi in Beijing then you've probably noticed that when the driver flips on the meter a recorded female voice rattles off a message in Mandarin. I personally find this message extremely entertaining. 

The lady says:

乘客,您好.欢迎你坐北京出租汽车.清对我们的服务进行监督.

Or in pinyin:

Cheng2 ke4, nin3 hao3. Huan1 ying2 ni3 zuo4 Bei3 jing1 chu1 zu1 qi1 che1. Qing3 dui4 wo3 men2 de0 fu2 wu4 jin4 xing2 jian1 du1.

Let's translate word by word.

乘客passenger, 您好hello.  欢迎welcome 你you 坐ride 北京beijing 出租汽车taxi.  清please 对with respect to 我们的our 服务service 进行carry out 监督close inspection.

Entertaining aspects of this sentence:

• I am referred to directly as "passenger"
  
• The term 服务fu2wu4 (service), is very, very broad and funny. it is used in lots of places in Mandarin. Consider the word 特别te4bie2, which means "special". 特别服务 means special services, which usually means prostitution. A janitor might also be referred to as 服务员 (fu2wu4 yuan2), or "service person". Anyway, fu2wu4 is a very broad term for "service" and it cracks me up.
  
• I also love being instructed to 进行监督. "carry out a close inspection" is so formal that it's funny.
  

 

How many ways are there to say "Chinese?"

Well, I haven't counted yet, so I don't know. But I think it's quite a few. Let's start with number 1) 中文 Zhong1中(Middle) Wen2文(Text, Language). The first Character here stands for the word for China: Zhong1中(Middle) Guo2国(Country). 2) 汉语 Han4汉(The Han nationality) Yu3语(Words, Language). This one is pretty easy to understand, the majority of Chinese people are Han, and the word Yu3语 stands for the full word Yu3语 Yan2言 which means language. 3) 普通话 Pu3普(Ordinary) Tong1通(Communication) Hua4话(Speech). The first two characters together 普通 mean common, or ordinary, and the character 话hua4 means speak, as in the word 电dian4话hua4 or 'electric speak' = telephone. The reason Chinese might be called putonghua 普通话 is that there are so many dialects...but when people say 'Chinese' they mean the common or standard variety. It's also worth noting that some Chinese characters like the word 通 above have so many meanings that it is basically useless to try to translate the single Character, instead it is used almost exclusively in combination with another (or several) Characters. 4) 国语 Guo2国(Country) Yu3语(Language). This one is easy, the 'offical language of the country' is obviously Chinese. One annoying thing that Chinese people often say is 'Wo3我(My) Guo2国(Country)' which just means 'China.' And it's said not just by individuals, but in essays or written into the evening news. 5) 中国话 中1Zhong 国2Guo 话4Hua. It's almost unnecessary to put the english, as all these characters were already explained above. The first two together 中国 mean China and 话 means speech. I like this one best, maybe because it's also the title of a Chinese pop song. Ok, so the answer is '5' common ways of saying "Chinese."

A game of cat and mouse

Waiting in line at the bank, traveling on the subway or just sitting in the comfort of your own home, who doesn't love a good episode of Cat and Mouse? Yes, the American cartoon 'Tom and Jerry' is loved in China too. And, since there is clearly just one television show with a feline and a...mouse, the Chinese translation for this show name just tells it like it is: "." (Mao1猫)Cat (He2和)and (Lao3shu3老鼠)Mouse.

A word about miscreants

There were miscreants running amok in Tibet as of late, according to the front page of TheBeijingNews. These 非Fei1 法Fa3 (lawless) 分Fen4 子Zi3 (particles, members of bad organizations) were shown burning the flag and carrying around chains and large knives. On the other hand... one American report talked about the events as, "what started out as peaceful protests led by monks." 

attain -> guilt/crime -> evil -> goblins -> methods -> military fierceness = kung fu

You can follow Chinese words like a path. Where the path leads is often crazy, but that's the path of any student of the language. Here's a stroll I took a while back:

1. Start with the word de2, which means "get, gain; finish".
   
2. Add the word zui4, which means "guilt, crime; fault, blame; suffering, hardship"
3. Then you have de2 zui4, which is the verb "to offend"
4. ok... makes sense. We have sort of attained some kind of blame or guilt, so we have offended...
5. Now go with zui4, and add nie4, which means "evil, monsters"
6. Now you have zui4 nie4, which means "sin"
7. Ok... zui4 is guilty crimes and suffering and nie4 is evil monsters... so I guess to the Chinese a sin is like a guilty suffering monster...
8. Now we'll go with nie4, and add yao1 before it.
9. yao1 means "goblin, demon, evil spirit; evil and bewitching, seductive"
10. We have yao1 nei4, which means "person or event associated with evil or misfortune; evildoer"
11. Got it... goblin demon + monster = evil person...
12. Now let's add the word shu4 to yao1.
    
13. Shu4 means "art, skil, technique, method, tactics"
14. We end up with yao1 shu4, which means "sorcery".
15. Right... so seductive goblin spirits + skill techniques = sorcery. I can buy that...
16. Now we can take the word wu3, which means "military; of military strength; bold and powerful; valient; fierce; a surname, (half a) footstep"
17. Add wu3 to shu4 and you get wu3 shu4, which means "martial arts"
18. Half a military footstep plus some fireceness, tehniques and methods and you get kung fu...
    
    

Sometimes at the end of these strolls I wonder If I just learned something or if I'm more confused than when I started...

Why is it so hard to understand: going to the local police station

It amazes me that after studying Mandarin for 10 years I still can't understand basic sentences spoken at a "normal" rate in "standard" Mandarin by people in Beijing. This recording is a single sentence on repeat. This was said by a Beijing cop in my apartment in 2002. He didn't know I was recording him... in fact I didn't even know my mic was on. Sorry!  Anyway, I had no idea what he was saying until I played it back at super slow speed and translated it.

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

The translation is: What does he think I was doing? I went to the local police station. How [the f***] do I have time?

Anyone who can understand this without the pinyin and translation is a pretty hardcore Mandarin speaker. This aint no textbook Chinese.