Chinese Help

只可意会不可言传

2008-03-12T16:01:13Z

成语：只可意会不可言传
拼音：zhǐ kě yì huì bù kě yán chuán
解释：只能用心去揣摩体会，没法用话具体地表达出来
翻译：can only be perceived, cannot be explained;
can only be experienced, cannot be put in words

This Chinese idiom is such a typical answer that I almost always get when I ask for the meaning of a Chinese expression. So I thought I’ll share it with all other Chinese learners, who certainly also already heard or will hear of this saying. The first half 只可意会 means it “can only be perceived”. 意会 means to experience or perceive. It implies that it isn’t directly spoken but rather experienced. The second half means “cannot be put forth in words”. You know that 言 stands for “language” and 传 means “to pass”
As an example, if you ask for the meaning of something, like, say 尴尬 or 内疚 or 丢脸 or another weird adjective or expression that is not easy to explain. And the person you asked only knows Chinese, so he also can’t translate it and tell you it means “awkward” and “sense of guilt” and “to lose one’s face”. So most likely he will answer 这个…只可意会不可言传 which just isn’t any help for us people trying to learn the language^^
But still I have to say 只可意会不可言传 does apply to many special Chinese expressions that can’t be translated so easily. In this case only reading and communicating a lot helps, I guess…

So anyway, I hope you could understand this idiom and don’t let it discourage you and your Chinese studies ;)

周柏豪 - 同天空

2008-03-07T14:50:42Z

Here is a very cute new singer from Hong Kong. His name is Pakho (funny name…) or Chinese 周柏豪. His very first album “beginning” just contains very few songs. This is my favorite out of it. It’s called 同天空 which means “the same sky”. It’s in Cantonese, so I’ll just put the Chinese lyrics and and English translation here:

谈天说地 - tán tiān shuō dì

2008-03-07T14:12:44Z

成语：谈天说地
发音：tán tiān shuō dì
解释：指随便谈论，漫无边际。
翻译：to shoot the breeze

Here we have a Chinese idiom that means “to talk casually” in English. 谈说 both means to chat, talk, discuss. 天地 mean the world or everything. This Chengyu again has the structure verb-noun-verb-noun. The English meaning would be “to talk casually”. Or there is also the similar English idiom “to shoot the breeze”. In German there is also a very similar expression “über Gott und die Welt reden”. Other Chinese expressions you could use are 聊天 or 闲聊.
Example:

在火车上大家没事儿干就开始谈天说地。
On the train we had nothing to do, so we were just shooting the breeze.

周杰伦 - 甜甜的

2008-03-05T15:27:42Z

Here is another song from Jay Chou’s new album 我很忙 (I’m very busy). It’s called 甜甜的 which means sweetness. It’s rather fast, so the words are not so easy to understand and the lyrics are very long, but it’s a really good-mood song :) Enjoy!

石沉大海 - shí chén dà hǎi

2008-03-04T22:10:17Z

成语：石沉大海
发音：shí chén dà hǎi
解释：石头沉到海底。比喻从此没有消息。
翻译：lit.: Like a stone sinking into the ocean.

While practising calligraphy I came over this funny Chengyu, which literally means “a stone sinking into the ocean”. It is very easy to imagine, and after looking it up in the dictionary, I learned that it is an idiom for not getting news. For example if you don’t hear anything from your friends it can be compared to “a stone sinking in the ocean”. Or if you sent an application somewhere, but don’t get any reply, it’s also like “a stone sinking in the ocean”. All right, I hope you could understand the meaning.
This is the example from the dictionary:

我写了几封信去催，都石沉大海，至今不见回音。
I wrote several letters urge, but they were all like stones sinking in the ocean, and I didn’t get an answer until now.

周杰伦 - 蒲公英的约定

2008-02-19T23:14:35Z

This is such beautiful ballad by Jay Chou from his new album 我很忙 (literally “I’m very busy”, but I heard it’s called “On the Run”). The song is called 蒲公英的约定 which means “the dandelion’s promise”. I really love it^_^ So here are the Chinese lyrics:

画龙点睛 - huà lóng diǎn jīng

2008-02-19T23:11:05Z

成语：画龙点睛
发音：huà lóng diǎn jīng
解释：原形容梁代画家张僧繇作画的神妙。后多比喻写文章或讲话时，在关键处用几句话点明实质，使内容生动有力。
翻译：to add the crowning touch

Here we have another Chengyu just like 千里送鹅毛 which has to do with an animal and which is easy to understand from the first sight. Watch out for the structure, it is verb-noun-verb-noun, which we encounter often. 画龙 means painting a dragon. And 点睛 means adding eyes to it. So in this case 点 does not mean “point” but is a verb instead. Literally translated 画龙点睛 means “painting a dragon and adding the eyes”.

The Chengyu originates from a great painter named zhāng sēng yāo (张僧繇) whom many people were watching while he was painting dragons at a temple. The dragons were very beautiful, only were they missing eyes. So the surrounding people curiously asked: “Why don’t they have eyes?” He mysteriously answered, that if they have eyes, they will fly away! Since everyone just regarded him in disbelief, he lifted his hands again and added a pair of eyes. In this moment that dragon… whuushhh…. indeed became alive, and flew away!! (Magic….) and all the people were stupefied.

This is the origin of the idiom 画龙点睛. It is used to describe that by adding only a tiny little detail, the whole work becomes much better and lively. Just like the dragon who became alive. In German you would see “das Sahnehäubchen” or “das gewisse Etwas”. In English there is a similar saying: “do add the crowning touch”. Often this Chengyu is used to describe, of course painting, but also essays and literature work, speeches, decoration and more and more.

For example:

这盏灯对我的房间的装饰起了画龙点睛的作用。
This light adds the crowning touch to my room decoration.

周杰伦 - 发如雪

2008-02-18T18:04:09Z

Another beautiful old song by Jay Chou from his album from 2005: November’s Chopin (11月的萧邦) The song 发如雪 (fā rú xuě) means “hair like snow” and reminds me a bit of his new song 青花瓷. Hm, it’s a bit hard to imagine for me how black hair can be like snow… but well, the music video is really awesome. It was of course directed by Jay himself and it has many historic scenes with a very beautiful girl in a red dress ;-) And for all Chinese learners, have fun pronouncing the 啦儿啦啦儿啦啦儿啦儿啦 (Lar lar lar lar…)

千里送鹅毛

2008-02-17T19:53:39Z

成语：千里送鹅毛
拼音：qiān lǐ sòng é máo
解释：比喻礼物虽轻，但情意深厚

A not so known, but still very straightforward Chengyu where it helps to know the story behind it. Literally translated it means to bring a swan feather over 1000 miles as a present. 里 (Li) is an old Chinese unit of length that corresponds to 500 m.

The Chengyu story behind it is that during the Tang dynasty many people bought valuable presents from far away to the emperor. So there happened to be one man from a very remote region who wanted to present a very beautiful white swan to the emperor. During the long trip the swan got quite dirty, so when he arrived at a lake, he took the swan out of the cage so that it could…eh… take a bath. But to his big anger the swan flew away!!! (What a surprise…) So after a phase of despair he picked up a few left feathers and decided to see the emperor anyway. At the palace he felt quite uncomfortable among all the other visitors with big presents. When it was his turn he said 礼轻情意重，千里送鹅毛 which means that my present is little but my sympathy is grand, this is why I am bring you this feather from so far away. To his fortune the emperor forgave him and even had to laugh at his cleverness.

So this Chinese idiom is used to describe that even though a present looks small, the effort and the sentiments behind it where big.

张震岳-再见

2008-02-17T00:18:17Z

A friend just showed me this song by 张震岳 (zhāng zhèn yuè) named 再见 (Goodbye). It talks about saying goodbye and the whole procedure, not wanting to go, all the memories, the tears, and stuff like that :) By the way it was also this singer who sang the original version of 爱我别走 (Love me, don’t leave me). Now here are the Chinese lyrics for Goooodbye:

香港 Hongkong

2008-02-17T11:35:44Z

When I was in Hongkong, it gave me the feel of being in a completely different country. They have a different language, different character set, different currency, different TV channels, different outlets, and they drive on the left! After 1997 Hongkong became a special administrative region of the PRC. With a population of “only” over 6 million inhabitants it still feels very very crowded due to an extreme density of over 6000/km².

桂林 Guilin

2008-02-19T16:17:34Z

Guilin is a very beautiful medium sized city (population ~1 million) situated in Southern China in Guangxi, the Zhuang Autonomous Region. The Li River (漓江) passes Guilin and a very beautiful natural landscape surrounds it. No wonder there is the proverb 桂林山水甲天下 (guì lín shān shuǐ jiǎ tiān xià) which means that the mountains and the water, read the landscape, of Guilin are the best on earth. Thus it is a very popular destination for foreign tourists and you will easily see many foreigners in the city, which is not so common for medium sized cities in China. From the city you can already see the beautiful surrounding mountains which remind you of those ancient Chinese paintings with mountains and rivers. Furthermore Guilin has many ethnic groups, especially the Zhuang (壮族).

重庆 Chongqing

2008-02-17T12:00:53Z

The biggest city in China with more than 31 million people! It is one of the four municipalities that don’t belong to a province, apart from Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. It is also one of the hottest cities in China. With its location in the center of China far away from the seaside it can get as hot as 40°C in summer.

Dialect:

The Chongqing dialect is similar to Sichuan dialect. It is also quite hard to understand, mostly because their intonation of the words is very different from mandarin. That is also why Sichuan dialect sounds a bit like singing to me (but that’s just me) and it is very nice to listen too…

Food:

The people in Sichuan are known for their spicy food. Famous for Chongqing is its Chongqing Hotpot (重庆火锅, zhòng qìng huǒ guō). A hot pot is where you have a pot with usually red spicy boiling water in the middle of the table, and then you cook all kinds of meat, sea food and vegetables in there. But pay attention, it is extremely spicy!

Pictures

As I mentioned Chongqing is the biggest city in China. So this is what buying a train ticket would look like over there…

Let’s better not have to stand in line there…

上海 Shanghai

2008-02-17T12:06:55Z

Another huge metropolis and as opposite to Beijing rather the economic center of China. There the Expo2010 will be held. By the way, its cute mascot which can already be seen everywhere, reminds me of a detergent advertisement @@. When you look at a map of Shanghai you will realize that it is much more chaotic and unstructured as opposite to Beijing, where the streets form a very even grid. The Huangpu River (黄埔江) goes through Shanghai and divides it into the two areas Pudong (浦东, east of the river) and Puxi (浦西, west of the river).

Dialect:

The Shanghai dialect or Shanghainese (上海话) is much harder to understand than Beijing dialect. For example Hello 你好 is pronunced as “non ho” and Goodbye 再见 is pronunced as “tzeiwei”. Furthermore it is spoken very fast, and that’s why they also tend to speak Mandarin very fast.

Sight:

The view from The Bund (外滩) on the Huangpu River and Pudong is very famous. There one also sees the Oriental Pearl TV Tower (东方明珠). Furthermore the Nangjing Road (南京路) is a very big, famous (and expensive) shopping street where many tourists like to go.

Food:

Any expert on famous Shanghainese food? Please let me know ;-)

Pictures:

(click to enlarge)
A view from the Bund on the skyline of Pudong:

The famous shopping street Nanjing Road:

A rural old suburb of Shanghai:

北京 Beijing

2008-02-16T13:29:32Z

The capital and political center of China and the host of the Olympic Games 2008. The weather is considered “dry” in comparison to other cities. Winter usually has snow and in addition a very freezing cold wind. The spring is known for its sand storms (->风沙), so at that time you’ll see many people with masks. In summer it gets hot and humid with about 30 degrees, which can be unusual for foreigners from cooler regions. The autumn is probably the favorite season for many people, without icy winds or sandstorms, but instead a very agreeable temperature.

Dialect:

Mandarin (普通话, pǔ tōng huà) and Beijing dialect (北京话, běi jīng huà) are spoken here. Note that Beijing dialect does NOT equal Mandarin, even though it is similar to it and thus not difficult to understand for people who know Mandarin. Most notably Beijing dialect has the -er (儿) ending which they like to put at the end of words and sentences however often possible ;-) It is comparable to a southern dialect in the US.

Food:

北京烤鸭 Peking duck is very famous. The historic restaurant 全聚德 (quán jù dé) is probably the best known restaurant for its Peking duck.

Sights:

The TianAnMen Square (天安门, lit. “Gate of heavenly peace”) is in the very center of the city and served as the front entrance to the Imperial City.
The Great Wall (长城) can be reached from Beijing in approximately one hour. Especially the Badaling section (八达岭长城) is a popular destination for tourists.

南山可移 - nán shān kě yí

2008-02-16T13:25:31Z

成语：南山可移
发音：nán shān kě yí
解释：南山：终南山。比喻已经定案，不可更改。

南山 refers to the mountain 终南山 which is a mountain near the city of Xi’An (西安). 可移 means it can be moved. This literally the whole chengyu means “the ZhongNan mountain can be moved”. But of course again there is another layer of meaning under it, so lets dive into history again… (Maybe you’re not a fan of history, just like me, but for learning Chinese idioms it really helps!)

So… during the Tang dynasty there was a official named Li Yuan Hong (李元纮) who was a very fair-minded and also a bit stubborn person. He worked as a judge near the capital Chang An (长安) which is known as Xi’An (西安) nowadays. At that time there also lived a princess named Taiping (太平公主, lit. her name means pacific). She was quite powerful and touchy princess, so that many people preferred to not get too close to her and anger her.
One day a monk visited Li Yuan Hong to tell on Princess Taiping, because she stole a very valuable stone with carvings from his temple. (I believe the stone was from a mill, correct me if I’m wrong…) He officially decided that Princess Taiping was wrong and had to give back the stone, which of course terribly angered her and also shocked his superior, who urged him to change the court ruling. But Li Yuan Hong only retorted that the Nan mountain may be moved, but this decision canot be changed. (-> 南山或可改移，此判终无摇动).

As you could see this Chinese idiom refers to decisiveness and rightful justice, where you must not change the decision later on.

一饭千金 - yī fàn qiān jīn

2008-02-16T12:51:46Z

成语一饭千金
发音：yī fàn qiān jīn
解释：比喻厚厚地报答对自己有恩的人。
翻译：One bowl of rice is worth a thousand gold coins
-> showing deep gratitude to one’s benefactor

For this chengyu, it is helpful to know the story behind it, in order to understand its meaning. From the words and the literal meaning 一饭 means one bowl of rice. 千金 means thousand gold coins. Thus by adding a verb it could be translated into “one bowl of rice is worth a thousand gold coins”.
This Chinese idiom is already about 2000 years old. It happened during the Han dynasty where a young man named Han Xin (韩信) had to live his childhood in poverty due to the early death of his parents. He was often fishing at the river in order to earn some money to buy food. A woman that was washing clothes there saw the starved boy and felt very sorry for him. Thus, she often brought him some food, for which the boy was very thankful. Later, it happened that Han Xin became a very respected and successful general who helped to strengthen the Han dynasty. He did not forget the woman who gave him food when he needed, so he called her and insisted on giving her a present of thousand gold coins to show his deep gratitude for her.
This is the origin of the chengyu 一饭千金 which means that one shows deep gratitude to the person who once offered help when needed.
To find out more about Han Xin, who is sometimes regarded as “Alexander the Great of the East”, Wikipedia has an informative article.

Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Xin

physical terms

2008-02-10T16:04:07Z

In addition to the chemical terms here is a list of some Vocabulary related to physics. Here too, the list is very random and, here too, the average language learner will fortunately never need it, but maybe it is helpful for someone. Leave a comment, if you were looking for a specific term that you could not find so that I can update the list! And for all Physics haters that have bravely read until here, now is the time to quickly go to another site…

振幅 - amplitude
周期 - period
频率 - frequency

质点 - mass point
参考系 - reference frame
坐标系 - coordinate system
路程 - path
位移 - displacement
矢量 - vector
标量 - scalar
速度 - velocity
速率 - speed
平均速度 - average velocity
瞬间速度 - instantaneous velocity
加速度 - acceleration
自由落体运动 - free fall motion
自由落体加速度 - free fallacceleration
重力加速度 - gravitational acceleration

力 - force
分力 - components of force
合力 - resultant force
力的合成 - composition of force
力的分解 - resolution of force
重力 - gravity
重心 - center of gravity
万有引力 - gravitation
弹力 - elastic force
弹性形变 - elastic deformation
弹性限 - elastic limit
摩擦力 - frictional force
静摩擦力 - static frictional force
滑动摩擦力 - sliding frictional force
动摩擦因素 - dynamic friction factor

运动学 - kinematics
动力学 - dynamics
牛顿 - Newton
牛顿运动定律 - Newton’s laws of motion
惯性定律 - Law of inertia

抛体运动 - projectile motion
线速度 - linear velocity
匀速圆周运动 - uniform circular motion
向心力 - centripetal force
向心加速度 - centripetal acceleration
宇宙速度 - cosmic velocity
万有引力定律 - law of universal gravitation
能/ 能量 - energy
势能 - potential energy
动能 - kinetic energy
功 - work
做功 - to do work
焦耳 - Joule
功率 - power
机械能守恒定律 - law of conservation of mechanical energy

Some Major Cities in China

2008-02-16T13:37:07Z

Here I’m going to introduce some well-known cities in China (in no particular order). This might help tourists who are planning to travel to China, and give them some general information about the city they will visit.

黄品源 - 小薇

2008-02-29T11:15:08Z

This is a very nice and popular song. To avoid confusion, the name of the singer is 黄品源 (huáng pǐn yuán) while the name of the song is 小薇 (xiǎo wēi). The song talks about a the girl Xiaowei, whom all the boys are in love with, and with whom the singer is in love and together. Only that she is, uhm, very difficult, what you will see in the music video!
Here are the lyrics first. Furthermore, I will try a translation this time. Feedback welcome!

Chinese Help

只可意会 不可言传

周柏豪 - 同天空

谈天说地 - tán tiān shuō dì

周杰伦 - 甜甜的

石沉大海 - shí chén dà hǎi

周杰伦 - 蒲公英的约定

画龙点睛 - huà lóng diǎn jīng

周杰伦 - 发如雪

千里送鹅毛

张震岳-再见

香港 Hongkong

桂林 Guilin

重庆 Chongqing

Dialect:

Food:

Pictures

上海 Shanghai

Dialect:

Sight:

Food:

Pictures:

北京 Beijing

Dialect:

Food:

Sights:

南山可移 - nán shān kě yí

一饭千金 - yī fàn qiān jīn

physical terms

Some Major Cities in China

黄品源 - 小薇

只可意会不可言传