Archive for the ‘Idioms’ Category
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
The other day I saw a few students taking a photo together and as they were arranging themselves the girl holding the camera shouted:
"Nán zuǒ nǚ yòu" 男左女右 [boy left girl right]
This seems to be a common/traditional way of arranging a boy and a girl for a picture or on ...
Posted in Idioms | 10 Comments »
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
This tiny article at Wikipedia gives the Chinese credit for the proverb:
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
as well as:
"It is good to strike the serpent's head with your enemy's hand."
But there are no references for either. I'd like to learn the Chinese for one or both of those.
So ...
Posted in Idioms | 5 Comments »
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
We're only a few hours away from the annual Chinese text-message switchboard overload. Just in case you want to contribute your own duǎnxìn 短信 to the 19 billion that will be sent tonight, here are some common options with rough English translations (click on the hanzi for a literal breakdown ...
Posted in Idioms | 7 Comments »
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
For those of you who've ever wondered why Chinese kids snicker up their sleeves when you say "250," this post will illuminate the numerous numerical euphemisms in Chinese. You'll also see why phone numbers with a lot of 8s are more expensive than phone numbers chock-full of 4s.
Acoustic Puns ...
Posted in Idioms | 23 Comments »
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