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Tag Archives: #language
Periselene
My favorite part of my trip has been reading my friends Martin & Zoya’s daughter Goodnight, Moon in Chinese before bedtime. She was kind enough not to point out that my tones were terrible.
Egocentric
This Qin-era weapon is called a “gē”. It usually gets translated into English as “spear” or “pike” or “dagger axe”, but as you can see from the picture it’s kind of weirder than any of those and I can’t really think … Continue reading
Antonym
Quick! What’s the opposite of a squat toilet? Yeah, I got it wrong, too. For the record, the Chinese characters actually just say “sit toilet.” Way to keep it classy, Baidu Translate.
Firefly
The Chinese word for “highlighter” is 荧光笔 (yíngguāng bǐ) which translates to “firefly pen”.
Daimyo
Thanks to late 70s/early 80s anime, I grew up kind of obsessed with Japan. For example, I have long known that a “daimyo” was a feudal ruler back in the era of the shoguns. But I had only ever seen … Continue reading
Chan
My feelings about Jackie Chan are well known. About a decade ago, he dropped by the DreamWorks campus. I saw him from afar and it was one of the rare, rare occasions living in L.A. that I was actually starstruck. … Continue reading
Peanut
COWORKER: Do you want a cookie? DAVID: What flavor is it? COWORKER: Penis. DAVID: I’m pretty sure you mean “peanut”…but now I definitely don’t want one.
Pirates
Although Mandarin, the Beijing accent is distinct in that they tend to add 儿 (“er”) to the end of words. Which, to Western ears, makes them all sound like pirates.
Romanization
I notice things. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised when I point something out to my Chinese coworkers that they had never noticed before. A few days ago, I went out to lunch with some of them to a Hong Kong … Continue reading
Animals
Ever since Alex told me that the German word for “raccoon” was “waschbär” meaning “wash bear” I’ve been absolutely fascinated by foreign words for animals. Some of words for animals in Chinese are just straight-up calques. The word for “sealion” … Continue reading
Titanic
As far as I can tell, this is sort of China’s “My Heart Will Go On.” I was pleasantly surprised by how many words I recognized.
Epithet
In Chinese, 这个 (zhège) means “this” and 那个 (nàgè) means “that”. Interestingly, 那个 is also what the Chinese use instead of “um” or “uh” when speaking. (This sprinkling of meaningless pause syllables in verbal communication is known as speech disfluency, in … Continue reading
Portmanteau
Can we clear the air? No, seriously, can we clear the fucking air? Shanghai is on the sea. (The city’s name literally means “Upon-the-Sea.”) Just like Los Angeles. In many ways, the smog reminds me of growing up in L.A. … Continue reading
Deaf
The highlight of my visit to the Shanghai Bookstore was noticing two kids signing to each other in Chinese sign language. I saw that one — the older brother, perhaps? — was wearing earbuds, but the other one — the … Continue reading
Cryptanalysis
CCTV are the state-run television channels here in China. Because of the Mandarin/Cantonese split I’ve discussed, they are always subtitled in Simplified Chinese. I watch quite a bit of CCTV9 because it’s the documentary network. I’ve watched documentaries on… The … Continue reading