chinese tuesdays

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Chinese Tuesdays: Tadpole

 

Tadpole is 蝌蚪 (kēdǒu). I find this interesting because both characters seem to only mean tadpole, but are never used alone, and also because they both consist of the same meaning radical, 虫 (chóng) – often referred to as the “insect radical” – with a different phonetic radical. In the first character the phonetic radical is 科 (kē), and in the second it is 斗 (dǒu or dòu). You may notice that 科 also contains 斗, but in 科 it is not a phonetic radical, but a meaning radical along with 禾 (hé) – which may or may not be the reason 科 is said kē. This is why I love Chinese.

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Chinese Tuesdays: Bra

 

When I saw the word for bra, 胸罩 (xiōngzhào), for the first time I giggled “chest mask, hehe”, as I had only seen 罩 in 口罩 (kǒuzhào), which is a surgical or face mask. Looking it up I was a little disappointed to see that 罩 actually means “cover”, making the word quite logical and somewhat less amusing. Then I came across another word for bra, 文胸 (wénxiōng), the first character meaning “culture” and the second “chest”, which is stranger still.

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Chinese Tuesdays: The ugly bride

 

I finished The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan a couple of days ago, and it was a great read. Even Howard Goldblatt’s English translation had me reaching for my dictionary and searching on Baidu though, as the book contains a lot of directly translated expressions and idioms.

My favourite would have to be 丑媳妇总得见公婆 (chǒu xífù zǒngděi jiàn gōngpó), translated in the novel as “The ugly bride has to meet her in-laws sooner or later."

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Chinese Tuesdays: Calligraphy robot

So jealous of this robot. H/t Chinese Hacks.

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Chinese Tuesdays: The bystander effect

 

There’s a phrase "一个和尚挑水吃,两个和尚抬水吃,三个和尚没水吃"*. It means “one monk can carry drinking water [balancing a pole and buckets on his back], two monks can carry drinking water [lifting the buckets together], three monks have no water to drink." It can refer to the diluted sense of responsibility felt by people in crowds to take action, or to encourage you to be self-reliant.

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