Funny Facts About Standard Chinese

Every language has its quirks. In German, for example, there is a word of 67 letters which looks like this: 

Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung 

In fact, this is a whole sentence. It can be translated as Regulation on the Delegation of Authority Concerning Land Conveyance Permissions. Even in the most romantic people, this combination of consonants and vowels awakens sadistic inclinations: you just want to hear a German official pronounce this train-length word for the third time in 5 minutes.

As for the name of the Icelandic volcano – Eyjafjallajökull  – can you pronounce it quickly on your first try? There are a lot of strange words and concepts in the world. Do you know, for instance, what a phloem is? 

But now you are invited to a Standard Chinese (Putonghua) lesson. It also promises to be interesting. Although this language is spoken by almost two billion people, it remains one of the most mysterious. Let’s start without delay: 

你好, 最近怎么样 – our Chinese ‘Hello!’ and ‘How are you?’

A character is not always equal to a word in Putonghua. There are words composed of two, three or more characters：

你 – you

水 – water

好看 – beautiful

维生素 – vitamins

历史学家 – a historianIn Chinese, you are unlikely to find very long words, but there are characters consisting of numerous strokes. The first place among them belongs to the character below – biang. Biangbiang noodles originating from Shaanxi cuisine is renowned for being written with this character.

Any character in the vast majority of cases consists of components – building blocks that are repeated from character to character. Let’s take one with the meaning “a love, to love.” From top to bottom in traditional writing it is composed of graphemes which have the following names: ‘claws’, ‘roof’, ‘heart’ and ‘hand with a stick’. This can be interpreted in different ways.  ‘Claws’ perhaps speaks of jealousy. ‘Hand with a stick’ is about fighting for what your heart wants. Or maybe it’s all about the fact that your heart is captured by someone’s nimble hands and since then you have been destined to each other by Heaven. Therefore, even if your partner turns out to be a rude person, be patient. This is your fate.

You can philosophize long and hard, the components encourage you to do this. Now, however, in mainland China this character is written in a simplified way – ‘claws’, ‘roof’, and ‘friendship’. Since the simplification of characters occurred under socialism, the impulses of the heart have been replaced by quieter manifestations of friendship. To hell with a reckless heart, the friend zone is easier to control!

Sometimes the Chinese have very unusual names. We are not talking about what the names below look like, but about their literal translation.

刘书林 – the name of Chinese female student

王麒麟 – the name of Chinese male student 

The first one is Book Forest. The second one is Unicorn. In China, your neighbor might be a 60-year-old woman called Rainy Pavilion or a 30-year-old school teacher called Light Rain. One of the travel companies in Manzhouli has a manager named Li Guoqing – 李国庆 – where Guoqing means national holiday, the founding day of the People’s Republic of China.

Would you like to be the girl whose name is Like a Horse? Comparisons with this animal don’t sound like a compliment in Europe or the USA, right? Horse-faced persons have large faces with lantern jaws and large teeth. But in China, people think a little differently. For them, a horse is a graceful, noble as well as hardworking animal. When parents call their daughter this name, they want her to be elegant and not lazy.

Chinese is a very metaphorical language. Metaphors are everywhere. What do you think the phrase “blowing up chrysanthemums” means? Do you feel how poetic it is?! For example, you can say “he likes blowing up chrysanthemums.”  Chinese girls will become embarrassed and giggle at this. Because we just said that “he loves anal sex.” The same phrase can be used when luck is not on your side. Yeah, sometimes chance can blow up your chrysanthemum. It’s actually a cool phrase and deserves to be in common world-wide use.

Next question is, can you guess what the word combination ‘spoiled egg’ means? You have only 5 seconds to think. Well, it’s a ‘scoundrel’ or a ‘bastard’ in Chinese. Also a metaphor, isn’t it? The Chinese very rarely resort to the word ‘坏蛋.’ For us, it’s just a spoiled egg, a bad person, but for them, it’s one of the most terrible words in the lexicon. Even ‘to have diarrhea’ is expressed through metaphor in Putonghua. They say ‘他拉肚子’, where 他 is ‘he’, 拉 is ‘to pull down’ and 肚子 is a ‘belly.’

Words are made up of syllables, everyone knows this from school. But in Chinese, unlike English, Portuguese or Russian, syllables are not numerous. In fact, there are ‘ma’, ‘sha’, ‘wan’, ‘zhuan’, ‘fei’, ‘lei’, ‘huang’, ‘shuang’, ‘hao’, ‘bao’, about two dozen more, and that’s all. Nevertheless, the language is by no means poor in synonyms and antonyms. There is a drawback for those who learn this language, as many words sound similar. On the other hand, there is a nice bonus: due to the fact that some words and numbers sound almost the same way, entire phrases can be written in numbers.

For example, the Chinese are ready to fight for the car number ‘5257’, because the numbers in this sequence mean ‘I love my wife.’ As for the newlyweds, they will definitely want to stay in hotel room 510 or buy an apartment under that number, because it’s nothing but ‘I need you.’ On social networks and instant messengers, the Chinese manage to encrypt entire phrases with numbers. If you reprimand your boyfriend, accusing him of all imaginable and unimaginable sins, he will send you 81357 (“No need to let off steam on me”). Or imagine that for the second time in a week you receive an anonymous ‘104’. Horror in the eyes. What to do? Maybe it’s time to contact the police? “I want you to die” – if it’s not a prank from friends, your life is probably in danger.

The madness of Chinese for many Europeans lies in its grammar. Chinese doesn’t have the categories of past and future tenses that we have been accustomed to since childhood. That is, “I’m buying a bottle of water” may immediately turn into the fact that you have already bought it. How do the Chinese get out of this confusing situation when it is not clear who is where and what they are doing? Sorry, there is no unified approach.

Here’s an example. Pay attention to the phrase 我吃饭去了. This is normal colloquial speech, but the meaning of the phrases depends very much on the context.

Situation 1

一个小时都找你，你都在哪里呀？

I’ve been looking for you for an hour. Where have you been all this time?

吃饭去了, 你找我有什么事？

I went out to eat, why are you looking for me?

Situation 2

吃饭去了，别发私信

I’m going out to eat, don’t send me messages.

那就这么定了

Agreed.

We often say, “I hate the way that actress plays,” or “I hate this bar, and their cocktails are crap.” But not the Chinese. They avoid loud statements. To hate is too strong an emotion. The Chinese prefer to say 我不喜欢 (I don’t like) or 我烦透 (I’m tired of). But of course there is a word for hatred in the language – 恨. Who can the Chinese hate? Of course, they can hate enemies and traitors. Therefore, the word is heard more often in films and TV series, and not on the streets.

Chinese is definitely one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world. It contains many homonyms – words that sound the same but have different meanings. It is also a very melodic language. Each syllable has one of four intonations in Standard Chinese. 

橡胶 xiàngjiāo ( rubber) and 香蕉 xiāngjiāo (banana)

好像 hǎoxiàng (to resemble) and 好香 hǎoxiāng (fragrant)

The first two words differ only in the tone of the first syllable when pronounced. The second two words differ only in the tone of the second syllable. As you can guess, in real speech it is very difficult to distinguish these words by ear.

We Don’t Say Goodbye, We Say 再见

We hope we were able to surprise and amuse you a little. The languages ​​and cultures of other people are always an unforgettable experience. It would be great to know that you also share our interests.