Articles About the Chinese Language

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...

Early Love

Because of cultural differences, the Chinese language has many words which simply do not exist in English. One funny example of this is the Chinese word (zao3早)(lian4恋). The first character literally means ‘early' while the second is the word for ‘love.' This word is used to express the problematic phenomenon of two young people (teenagers) becoming involved romantically, i.e. holding hands or even kissing. I remember watching a Chinese TV program in which the father scolded his son, "Early love is wrong! (zao3早)(lian4恋)(shi4是)(cuo4错)(wu误)(de的)!" How very wrong indeed! ‘Early love' is certainly a troubling trend that we in America have overlooked for far too long, much as we have failed to adequately fix left handed people.