Articles About the Chinese Language

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.