Hot answers tagged vocabulary
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Thumb: 拇(mŭ)指(zhĭ) or 大拇指 or 大拇哥.
The first two words are common while the last one is less common. You would hear it more in oral speaking, in some regions(I heard of it from one of my relatives in HeBei province).
Watch the shape of "拇". The left part refers to "hand", and the right part is "母“， meaning "mother". I think it gets this name because of ...
10
清水 clear water; 淡水 fresh water (contrast to salt water); 自来水 Tap water, 30 years ago most of the chinese people had to fetch water from nearby rivers, lakes or wells by using buckets (挑水). Tap water goes through pipes to homes, people think these water go to their home automatically (without 挑水), they created the word 自来水
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相声 is a form of Chinese traditional stand-up comedy where two two performers talk back and forth to each other, telling a funny story or just chatting about a humorous topic. Because it's a traditional Chinese art form and originates in northern China, it has a higher political status than other Chinese art forms. This means that it gets broadcasted across ...
9
There is a technique I started to use and actually, I've seen it also in other dictionaries, so maybe I wasn't that original...
But anyway, the answer is colors! When you're studying new Hanzi or vocabulary, just color each character according to the tone... It's very helpful to remember the tones, because after a while, you visualize the tones in your ...
8
I think translating 铁饭碗 as "guaranteed lifetime employment" gets the point across quite well. There's also a phrase, "cradle-to-grave socialism" -- it's a little more political than guaranteed lifetime employment, but it accurately reflects the use of the word in Chinese history.
Neither phrase has the English resonance of the Chinese original, but I think ...
8
铁观音 Tie Guanyin Tea / tat-kuan-yin Tea / Iron Buddha Tea
乌龙茶 Oolong Tea
黑茶 Dark Tea
红茶 Black Tea
龙井茶 Longjing Tea / Lungching Tea / Dragon Well Tea
君山银针 Junshan Silver Needle Tea
碧螺春 Biluochun Tea
牡丹绣球 Peony Jasmine Tea
黄山毛峰 Huangshan Maofeng Tea
岩茶 Rock Tea
冻顶乌龙 Dongding Oolong Tea
菊花茶 Chrysanthemum Tea
台湾阿里山乌龙 Taiwan Alishan Oolong Tea
大红袍 Dahongpao Tea ...
7
I guess you have known the "old fashioned" terms like 宝贝(baby), 亲爱的/亲亲(darling), 心肝(heart and liver), 乖乖(well-behaved) etc. Here's some other terms:
孩子他爸，孩子他妈(Father/Mother of our children). Used for spouses who have children.
Some words for depreciating one's lover literally. 笨蛋、傻瓜、呆子、笨笨⋯⋯(fool,idiot). I guess it means love make a person blind and fool.
...
6
Well, not sure if this answers your question or not, but I've played a game before involving using idioms (aka 成语) where you have to carry on using the same sound (not including tone) from whatever 成语 the previous person said.
For example, if I started with 骑虎难下 (qi hu nan xia - something like stuck between a rock and a hard place) the next person might say ...
6
屋:
In standard Mandarin, 屋 is not commonly used as a noun by itself. Though, 房屋 is a common word, which is very similar to real estate in English. e.g. 房屋中介 = Real estate agency.
Another common usage of 屋 is in forming a name of a special kind of house. In such usage, it normally has a quite cozy feeling, e.g. 小屋 is a hut, 淑女屋 is a female clothing brand ...
6
You have 3 methods when talking about the seven days of the week.
星期[X]
礼拜[X]
周[X]
Here, "X" represents "一，二，三,四，五，六" for "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday". For case 1 and 2, X could be "日" or "天" for Sunday,for case 3, X should be "日" for Sunday.
What' the difference?
Well, I think the 星期 and 周 are common to see, ...
5
It's hard for average Chinese to answer the etymology of the words, I think. Why isn't "son" 男儿? For me, I would say because "男儿" has another meaning in both classic and modern Chinese.
男儿 young man, vital man.
男儿何不带吴钩，收取关山五十州. By the poet 李贺 in 唐 Dynasty
nán ér hé bù dài wú gōu ,shōu qŭ guān shān wŭ shí zhōu.
As a man, why not I take ...
5
Direct translation of fail would be 失败
However, in internet context, I think 糗(qiǔ) is more suitable.
糗 means embarrassing, usually as a result of you failed something...
When used as verb, you would say 出糗, means you did something embarrassing. For example:
我出糗了
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Jun Da has published character frequency, bigram and phoneme frequency lists here.
I used the character and bigram frequency lists for my final degree project, creating an application to allow for input of handwritten Chinese using neural networks combined with other techniques. Very helpful they were too :)
If you are interested, bigrams are groups of two ...
5
Yes, there is a game like "Crossword". I played such a game in this site. The site is a little famous since it provide this game for the famous newspaper Southern Weekend.
Here is a screenshot:
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There is a Wikipedia article dedicated to this, Numbers in Chinese culture; it states that numbers are divided in two categories, lucky and unlucky numbers.
Lucky Numbers:
二, the number 2: There is a saying that states "Good things come in pairs", for this reason many things in China seem to be "presented" in pairs of two, since this is considered a ...
5
I believe the correct characters should be 什烩 and the correct pinyin should be "shí huì".
When 什 is prnounced as "shí", it means "serveral kinds of, various kinds of [something]". Generally, this meaning is used in dishes or foods, like 什锦糖(a kind of candy containing different flavors in one candy). 烩 is a method of cooking.It means,
1. After frying or ...
5
Everything can be poetic, especially Chinese write all kinds of poems ...
Part I - Nature/Astronomy
Nature 自然
乘风 乘風 Ride the Wind
破浪 破浪 Break the Eave
拈花 拈花 Touching Flower
采花 採花 Picking Flower
扑蝶 撲蝶 Catching Butterfly
看海 看海 Watch | Look | Admire the Sea
听涛 聽濤 Listen to the Wave
落花 落花 Flower Dropping
流水 流水 Flowing Water
开花 開花 Blossom
结果 結果 Have Fruit
...
4
It might be a bit hard to explain it in English. I may sounds incoherently.
First to clarify, '子' is a magic character. It's not fair to put it after one but not the other. Some usage of '房子' could be replaced with '屋子', but very few with just '屋'. So I will just discuss 房 and 屋.
As many synonym characters, their origins had different specific usage.
房: ...
4
Check out this page: 3 ways to say 'but' in Chinese - difference between 不过 bù guò - 可是 kě shì - 但是 dàn shì.
That page says that:
不过 is softer.
可是 is usually associated with something unfortunate.
但是 is more formal and stronger.
4
The Unihan standard contains the kFrequency field. This fields gives you a general idea of how frequent the character shows up. This data and other data gets aggregated from scholarly sources which the standard discloses in its notes. Note, Unihan will also contain the Korean and Japanese variants in use. As far as I know, it does not have data for character ...
4
Primary school students use 2 text books per year. Each book is broken down into individual lessons and there is usually about 4 - 8 characters to be learnt for each lesson. At the back of each book it lists all the characters in order from each lesson which are the required characters to be learnt for that half year.
The set of high school (secondary) ...
4
Man 男人
Woman 女人
Male 男(性)
Female 女(性)
Son 儿子
Daughter 女儿
Male and Female when used alone to refer to people, may be translated to 男性 and 女性. 男 and 女 are not often used alone, except in some forms. 男 and 女 can be used (in form of supplementary description) to form other word as "male teacher" "男教师".
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This is just a selection based on things I've heard - I'm not sure if these are the concrete meanings, or just what I've heard from friends, but here goes:
1 - 要 - at least on occasions, for example there is a job website
called 51job meaning '我要job'
2 - 二 - in the north where I used to live, this commonly means stupid,
shortened from 二百五 (also ...
4
立春 Lìchūn "Beginning of spring"
雨水 Yǔshuǐ "Rain Water"
惊蛰 Jīngzhé "Awakening of insects"
春分 Chūnfēn "Mid spring"
清明 Qīngmíng "Clear and bright"
谷雨 Gǔyǔ "Rain for the grains"
立夏 Lìxià "Beginning of summer"
小满 Xiǎomǎn "Partially filled grains"
芒种 Mángzhòng "seed sowing"
夏至 Xiàzhì "Summer Solstice"
小暑 Xiǎoshǔ "Slight Heat"
大暑 Dàshǔ "Great Heat"
立秋 Lìqiū ...
4
Can I share my thoughts after the OP has chosen the best answer?
I disagree with everyone here: 整块的时间 is correct, and I hear people say it all the time.
If you Google the phrase "整块时间" (commonly used without 的), you see a lot of test prep websites suggesting that students use an entire block/period studying for one subject as opposed to spending ten ...
4
The first two are both commonly used. I have never heard of the third one, but a look on google shows usage. I suspect the third one is used more in Northern China, but this is just a guess.
So yes, since they refer to the same thing, you can use them interchangeably, but I'd stick with the first two just to be safe.
4
All three terms refer to the same thing - table tennis table.
乒乓球桌 is a commonly used (1.58M results on Google, 2.60M results on Baidu) layman's term.
乒乓球台 is the technical term (both Baidu and Wikipedia use
this term) and is commonly used (2.14M results on Google, 4.19M results on Baidu) as well.
乒乓球案子 is rarely used (0.21M results on Google, 0.13M ...
4
I am running two hours late for the meeting.
这个会我已晚到2个小时了。
There are various ways to say "behind schedule" in Chinese, depending on the context.
I am **behind schedule**.
我的**进度晚**了。(or **进度拖后** or **进度滞后**)
This project is two weeks **behind schedule**.
这个项目已**拖延**2个星期了。(or **拖后**)
Any borrowing country must be aware of the hazards of refusing to repay ...
4
The word "sophisticated" has several meanings. As you have already stated in your question the meaning in context being "a person or their thoughts, reactions, and understanding, being aware of and able to interpret complex issues", I will try to elaborate on this meaning first before going into the details.
Being sophisticated does not mean being, 精明 ...
4
I don't think there is an exact Chinese counterpart for 'sophisticated'. It depends on the context.
世故 (worldly) is the context-agnostic translation but sometimes it has a negative connotation of slyness. When you use it on a 10-year old, it's almost surely negative.
Like the other comment mentioned, (少年)老成 can be used when to say a kid is sophisticated, ...
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