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Changed line(s) 64,65 (click to see context) from:
The way Chinese people read Japanese names is to use the Chinese readings for the ''kanji'' of their names, and thus a name like 'Tanaka Tarō' (田中太郎) would become ''Tiánzhōng Tàiláng'' in Chinese.[[note]]Both transcriptions in the previous sentence are in the Asian naming order, with the family name first.[[/note]] If a name isn't written in ''kanji'' (and instead with ''kana''), then it would most likely be assigned one when transitioned, usually using the most common ''kanji'' word that the name corresponds to. This also applies to [[MultiEthnicName multi-ethnic names]] with Japanese in them. This naturally has a tendency to cause problems [[SpellMyNameWithAnS when people have no idea what Chinese character to use and thus use them inconsistently]]. Phonetical transcription is extremely rare, and usually requires a very good reason. Nico Yazawa from ''Franchise/LoveLive'' notably has a transcribed last name in Chinese (the most commonly used version, at least) due to how her catch-phrase "Nico-nico-nii" requires the knowledge of her name's phonetics, in addition to being semantically awkward in all of its possible ''kanji'' forms.
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The way Chinese people read Japanese names is to use the Chinese readings for the ''kanji'' of their names, and thus a name like 'Tanaka Tarō' (田中太郎) would become ''Tiánzhōng Tàiláng'' in Chinese.[[note]]Both transcriptions in the previous sentence are in the Asian naming order, with the family name first.[[/note]] If a name isn't written in ''kanji'' (and instead with ''kana''), then it would most likely be assigned one when transitioned, usually using the most common ''kanji'' word that the name corresponds to. This also applies to [[MultiEthnicName multi-ethnic names]] names with Japanese in them. This naturally has a tendency to cause problems [[SpellMyNameWithAnS when people have no idea what Chinese character to use and thus use them inconsistently]].inconsistently. Phonetical transcription is extremely rare, and usually requires a very good reason. Nico Yazawa from ''Franchise/LoveLive'' notably has a transcribed last name in Chinese (the most commonly used version, at least) due to how her catch-phrase "Nico-nico-nii" requires the knowledge of her name's phonetics, in addition to being semantically awkward in all of its possible ''kanji'' forms.
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Changed line(s) 20,21 (click to see context) from:
When written in vertical columns, Chinese is generally read from top to bottom, right to left. When written horizontally, as on a shop sign or a modern book print, it is generally read from left to right. Traditional-styled signs (on temples, for example) are read from right to left, which is actually a special case of right-to-left vertical column writing where each of the columns consist of a single character.
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When written in vertical columns, Chinese is generally read from top to bottom, right to left. When written horizontally, as on a shop sign or a modern book print, it is generally read from left to right. Traditional-styled signs (on temples, for example) are read from right to left, which is actually a special case of right-to-left vertical column writing where each of the columns consist consists of a single character.
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Changed line(s) 10,11 (click to see context) from:
The history of Chinese is a long one; 4000-year-old pictograms carved into tortoise shells have been been discovered throughout China. Chinese is generally divided into the Classical and the Modern period, with Classical being [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing everything before the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912]] and Modern being everything after. As has been noted before, the needs of administering such a large empire largely prevented the official Classical or Literary Chinese from mutating. Bureaucrats and poets self-consciously modeled their writing on the grammar and style of the Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE) and on the writings of Confucius in particular. New words and grammar are continuously introduced to the Literary language from the spoken dialects, but at a glacial pace (kind of like how modern Church Latin is different from the Latin of Caesar, but still looks Latin). But in the waning years of the Qing, reformists criticized the increasingly impenetrable Literary Chinese for creating a gulf between the largely illiterate masses and their literate overlords and held it up as one of the reasons of why China had failed miserably in modernization in face of colonialist encroachment. Reformist authors like Creator/LuXun advocated the use of spoken Chinese as the basis of written language and popularized the use of ''Báihuà'' (白话/白話, written vernacular Chinese, i.e. literally the plain tongue based on the Beijing dialect) through their novels and essays -- many of these authors would go on to advocate for the simplification of the Chinese script and the use of ''Pinyin''. In the modern era, use of ''Baihua'' has been encouraged by the Nationalist and Communist administrations. They have brought written Chinese even closer to the spoken variant.
to:
The history of Chinese is a long one; 4000-year-old pictograms carved into tortoise shells have been been discovered throughout China. Chinese is generally divided into the Classical and the Modern period, with Classical being [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing everything before the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912]] and Modern being everything after. As has been noted before, the needs of administering such a large empire largely prevented the official Classical or Literary Chinese from mutating. Bureaucrats and poets self-consciously modeled their writing on the grammar and style of the Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE) and on the writings of Confucius in particular. New words and grammar are continuously introduced to the Literary language from the spoken dialects, but at a glacial pace (kind of like how modern Church Latin is different from the Latin of Caesar, but still looks Latin). But in the waning years of the Qing, reformists criticized the increasingly impenetrable Literary Chinese for creating a gulf between the largely illiterate masses and their literate overlords and held it up as one of the reasons of why China had failed miserably in modernization in face of colonialist encroachment. Reformist authors like Creator/LuXun advocated the use of spoken Chinese as the basis of written language and popularized the use of ''Báihuà'' (白话/白話, written vernacular Chinese, i.e. literally the plain tongue based on the Beijing dialect) through their novels and essays -- many of these authors would go on to advocate for the simplification of the Chinese script and the use of ''Pinyin''.the ''Pinyin'' system. In the modern era, use of ''Baihua'' has been encouraged by the Nationalist and Communist administrations. They have brought written Chinese even closer to the spoken variant.
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Changed line(s) 54,55 (click to see context) from:
One of the most notable features of Chinese that sets it apart from Japanese (with which people often associate it, despite sharing no common language origins according to mainstream linguistics) is its loanword-hostile character. This is because, unlike Japanese, Chinese has no secondary script used for writing foreign words, and relies solely on characters to convey pronunciation. This means an average user of the language might have a hard time figuring out whether what they are reading is actually supposed to mean something or if it's just a foreign loanword. Examples include 麦克风/麥克風 (''màikèfēng'', "microphone") and 模特 (''mótè'', "model"). For proper names of foreign countries, some countries have their own special Chinese name, while most are rendered phonetically.
to:
One of the most notable features of Chinese that sets it apart from Japanese (with which (which people often associate it, it with, despite sharing no common language origins according to mainstream linguistics) is its loanword-hostile character. This is because, unlike Japanese, Chinese has no secondary script used for writing foreign words, and relies solely on characters to convey pronunciation. This means an average user of the language might have a hard time figuring out whether what they are reading is actually supposed to mean something or if it's just a foreign loanword. Examples include 麦克风/麥克風 (''màikèfēng'', "microphone") and 模特 (''mótè'', "model"). For proper names of foreign countries, some countries have their own special Chinese name, while most are rendered phonetically.
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Changed line(s) 54,55 (click to see context) from:
One of the most notable features of Chinese that sets it apart from Japanese (which it is usually grouped with, despite sharing no common language origins according to mainstream linguistics) is its loanword-hostile character. This is because, unlike Japanese, Chinese has no secondary script used for writing foreign words, and relies solely on characters to convey pronunciation. This means an average user of the language might have a hard time figuring out whether what they are reading is actually supposed to mean something or if it's just a foreign loanword. Examples include 麦克风/麥克風 (''màikèfēng'', "microphone") and 模特 (''mótè'', "model"). For proper names of foreign countries, some countries have their own special Chinese name, while most are rendered phonetically.
to:
One of the most notable features of Chinese that sets it apart from Japanese (which it is usually grouped with, (with which people often associate it, despite sharing no common language origins according to mainstream linguistics) is its loanword-hostile character. This is because, unlike Japanese, Chinese has no secondary script used for writing foreign words, and relies solely on characters to convey pronunciation. This means an average user of the language might have a hard time figuring out whether what they are reading is actually supposed to mean something or if it's just a foreign loanword. Examples include 麦克风/麥克風 (''màikèfēng'', "microphone") and 模特 (''mótè'', "model"). For proper names of foreign countries, some countries have their own special Chinese name, while most are rendered phonetically.
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Changed line(s) 102 (click to see context) from:
*** Speaking of the fish, if you are having fish with a driver or a fisherman for a meal, DO NOT mention the word 翻 (''fān'', "flip") or letting them flip the fish to the other side. Doing so will imply that the driver will have a car accident or the fisherman will suffer a unfortunate shipwreck.
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*** Speaking of the fish, if you are having fish with a driver or a fisherman for a meal, DO NOT ''do not'' mention the word 翻 (''fān'', "flip") or letting let them flip the fish to the other side. Doing so will imply that the driver will have a car accident or the fisherman will suffer a unfortunate shipwreck.
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Changed line(s) 99 (click to see context) from:
* {{Pun}}: Those four tones and the [[FunWithHomophones sheer number of true homophones]] make for loads and loads of these. There's an entire ''class'' of jokes called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiehouyu xiēhòuyǔ]] whose punchlines often rely on wordplay.
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* {{Pun}}: Those four tones and the [[FunWithHomophones sheer number of true homophones]] make for loads and loads of these. There's an entire ''class'' of jokes called [[http://en.''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiehouyu xiēhòuyǔ]] xiēhòuyǔ]]'' whose punchlines often rely on wordplay.
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Changed line(s) 4,5 (click to see context) from:
--> --'''WebVideo/JonTron'''
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Changed line(s) 10,11 (click to see context) from:
The history of Chinese is a long one; 4000-year-old pictograms carved into tortoise shells have been been discovered throughout China. Chinese is generally divided into the Classical and the Modern period, with Classical being [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing everything before the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912]] and Modern being everything after. As has been noted before, the needs of administering such a large empire largely prevented the official Classical or Literary Chinese from mutating. Bureaucrats and poets self-consciously modeled their writing on the grammar and style of the Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE) and on the writings of Confucius in particular. New words and grammar are continuously introduced to the Literary language from the spoken dialects, but at a glacial pace (kind of like how modern Church Latin is different from the Latin of Caesar, but still looks Latin). But in the waning years of the Qing, reformists criticized the increasingly impenetrable Literary Chinese for creating a gulf between the largely illiterate masses and their literate overlords and held it up as one of the reasons of why China had failed miserably in modernization in face of colonialist encroachment. Reformist authors like Creator/LuXun advocated the use of spoken Chinese as the basis of written language and popularized the use of ''Báihuà'' (白话/白話, written vernacular Chinese, i.e. literally the plain tongue based on the Beijing dialect) through their novels and essays--many of these authors would go on to advocate for the simplification of the Chinese script and the use of ''Pinyin''. In the modern era, use of ''Baihua'' has been encouraged by the Nationalist and Communist administrations. They have brought written Chinese even closer to the spoken variant.
to:
The history of Chinese is a long one; 4000-year-old pictograms carved into tortoise shells have been been discovered throughout China. Chinese is generally divided into the Classical and the Modern period, with Classical being [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing everything before the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912]] and Modern being everything after. As has been noted before, the needs of administering such a large empire largely prevented the official Classical or Literary Chinese from mutating. Bureaucrats and poets self-consciously modeled their writing on the grammar and style of the Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE) and on the writings of Confucius in particular. New words and grammar are continuously introduced to the Literary language from the spoken dialects, but at a glacial pace (kind of like how modern Church Latin is different from the Latin of Caesar, but still looks Latin). But in the waning years of the Qing, reformists criticized the increasingly impenetrable Literary Chinese for creating a gulf between the largely illiterate masses and their literate overlords and held it up as one of the reasons of why China had failed miserably in modernization in face of colonialist encroachment. Reformist authors like Creator/LuXun advocated the use of spoken Chinese as the basis of written language and popularized the use of ''Báihuà'' (白话/白話, written vernacular Chinese, i.e. literally the plain tongue based on the Beijing dialect) through their novels and essays--many essays -- many of these authors would go on to advocate for the simplification of the Chinese script and the use of ''Pinyin''. In the modern era, use of ''Baihua'' has been encouraged by the Nationalist and Communist administrations. They have brought written Chinese even closer to the spoken variant.
Changed line(s) 32,33 (click to see context) from:
Further difficulties with Chinese stem in part from the fact that Mandarin includes a number of phonemes (sounds, basically) not found in, say, English. For example, Standard Mandarin has two distinct ''sh'' sounds where English has only one.[[note]]To those who are curious, they would be the 'x' and 'sh' in ''pinyin''--'x' is pronounced like the English "s" with a scrunched-up nose, while 'sh' is pronounced with a curled tongue (or the voiceless retroflex fricative if you're a linguistics nerd).[[/note]] This can work the other way as well, creating that [[JapaneseRanguage 'flied rice' accent]]. While some people may think that ''r'' and ''l'' might be [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone allophones]], such as in UsefulNotes/{{Japanese|Language}}, it isn't quite as simple as that. Standard Mandarin does have two[[note]]or possibly three, if you take ''Erhua'' into consideration[[/note]] distinct sounds corresponding to the English ''r'' and ''l'', although generally, the Mandarin ''r'' can be quite different to the English one, and has a 'buzzy' quality, sounding like something between a French ''r'' sound, and the ''s'' in 'measure', depending on the dialect; in Standard Mandarin, it is usually the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_sibilant voiced retroflex sibilant]], which speakers of [[UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} Polish]] should recognize as the consonant 'rz'. Most Mandarin speakers should be able to perceive ''l'' and ''r'' as distinct sounds, but they may have difficulty pronouncing them in consonant clusters, which are common in English but don't occur in Mandarin at all. So it's quite possible that a Mandarin speaker would struggle with saying words such as 'flight' and 'fright' distinctly, but not with 'lice' vs 'rice'.[[note]]To complicate matters, there may be a few dialects in which the sounds of ''l'' and ''r'' are pronounced more similarly than the Standard Mandarin, or even reversed--Cantonese doesn't even ''have'' an 'r' sound. And there are also some dialects (mainly in southern China), which have similar issues for ''l'' and ''n''.[[/note]]
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Further difficulties with Chinese stem in part from the fact that Mandarin includes a number of phonemes (sounds, basically) not found in, say, English. For example, Standard Mandarin has two distinct ''sh'' sounds where English has only one.[[note]]To those who are curious, they would be the 'x' and 'sh' in ''pinyin''--'x' ''pinyin'' -- 'x' is pronounced like the English "s" with a scrunched-up nose, nose (or the voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative [ɕ]), while 'sh' is pronounced with a curled tongue (or the voiceless retroflex fricative if you're a linguistics nerd).[ʂ]).[[/note]] This can work the other way as well, creating that [[JapaneseRanguage 'flied rice' accent]]. While some people may think that ''r'' and ''l'' might be [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone allophones]], such as in UsefulNotes/{{Japanese|Language}}, it isn't quite as simple as that. Standard Mandarin does have two[[note]]or possibly three, if you take ''Erhua'' into consideration[[/note]] distinct sounds corresponding to the English ''r'' and ''l'', although generally, the Mandarin ''r'' can be quite different to the English one, and has a 'buzzy' quality, sounding like something between a French ''r'' sound, and the ''s'' in 'measure', depending on the dialect; in Standard Mandarin, it is usually the [[http://en.[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_sibilant org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_fricative voiced retroflex sibilant]], sibilant fricative [=[ʐ]=]]], which speakers of [[UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} Polish]] should recognize as the consonant 'rz'.'rz', or the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_approximant voiced retroflex approximant [=[ɻ]=]]]. Most Mandarin speakers should be able to perceive ''l'' and ''r'' as distinct sounds, but they may have difficulty pronouncing them in consonant clusters, which are common in English but don't occur in Mandarin at all. So it's quite possible that a Mandarin speaker would struggle with saying words such as 'flight' and 'fright' distinctly, but not with 'lice' vs 'rice'.[[note]]To complicate matters, there may be a few dialects in which the sounds of ''l'' and ''r'' are pronounced more similarly than the Standard Mandarin, or even reversed--Cantonese reversed -- Cantonese doesn't even ''have'' an 'r' sound. And there are also some dialects (mainly in southern China), which have similar issues for ''l'' and ''n''.[[/note]]
Changed line(s) 46,51 (click to see context) from:
The third-person pronoun has separate written forms for male, female, and neuter which sound exactly alike when spoken. Before modern times, there was actually only one written form of third-person pronoun 他 (''tā''), different written forms were introduced from western languages. This can lead to PronounTrouble for native speakers of Chinese who learn new languages with gendered pronouns.[[note]]The ''number'' of third-person pronouns actually varies by region. In traditional Chinese characters, there are five versions--masculine/neutral human (他, "he"), feminine human (她, "she"), neuter inanimate (它, "it"), neuter animate (牠, "it, an animal"), and divine (祂, "He" or "They, a deity"). In simplified Chinese characters, the latter two don't exist and are conflated with the first three. And to clarify, 他 is gender-neutral in that 他们/他們 (''Tāmen'') can refer to a group of men ''or'' a group of mixed genders, while 她们/她們 (also ''Tāmen'') refers to a group of women only--like how 'Latinos' can refer to a group of mixed-gender Latin Americans.[[/note]]
The 'classifier' or "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_measure_word measure word]]" is yet another feature likely to give trouble to students of Chinese. These are a class of nouns which can have very general meanings, and in fact can in many cases simply be omitted when translating Chinese. Nevertheless, they are still an essential part of Chinese grammar (not just Mandarin).[[note]]The main difference is that in other "dialects" of Chinese, the measure words used can be different for some words; using the Mandarin ones wouldn't be incorrect, just extremely formal.[[/note]] Simply put, they indicate the class of objects to which a number refers. English does it on occasion; you say you have 'four loaves of bread' instead of just 'four breads'. Well, in Chinese, you have to do that with everything, which is simultaneously more nitpicky and more precise. Four trees would be 四棵树/四棵樹 (''sì kē shù'') while four cars would be 四辆车/四輛車 (''sì liàng chē''). 四 (''Sì'') means "four", 树/樹 (''shù'') means "tree", and 车/車 (''chē'') means "car"; 棵 (''kē'') and 辆/輛 (''liàng'') are the measure words. Using the wrong measure word for something can be a bit embarrassing (e.g. "I have four terabytes of bread"), especially if one uses one of the words for animals on people instead (e.g. "I have four flocks of priests"). Thankfully, the measure word 个/個 (''gè'') can stand in for nearly any other measure word in a pinch, functioning in many ways as a generic measure word (e.g. 我有四个朋友/我有四個朋友--"I have four [units of] friends").[[note]]Which may also cause trouble. 位 (''wèi'', "seat") is usually the proper/polite unit of people, and in some situations using 个/個 may be seen as rude.[[/note]]
Interestingly enough, exclamation points and question marks can be included as words in the sentence. In ancient times even full stops had word representations. These are known as particles, and are typically added to the end of a sentence; they're a feature kept almost intact from ancient Chinese. The ''a'' (啊) (pronounced "ah!") sound that [[StereotypesOfChinesePeople Chinese people supposedly make]] expresses surprise, doubt, agreement, or affirmation depending on the tone used. ''Ma'' (吗/嗎)--yes, another word to mix up with "mother" and "horse"[[note]]If this isn't confusing enough, there is also the particle 嘛, pronounced identically as ''ma'', and used to add emphasis[[/note]]--is used to express a question. There are many other useful particles, including 吧 (''ba''), which is used to imply politeness when making suggestions. There is also 呢 (''ne''), which roughly means "How about...", which is commonly used when responding to "你好吗/你好嗎?" (''Nǐ hǎo ma?'', "How are you?/Are you well?")--"好,你呢?" (''Hǎo, nǐ ne?'', "I'm fine, how about you?"). Particles can also be used to indicate conjunction, completion of an action, the verb 'to be', etc.
The 'classifier' or "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_measure_word measure word]]" is yet another feature likely to give trouble to students of Chinese. These are a class of nouns which can have very general meanings, and in fact can in many cases simply be omitted when translating Chinese. Nevertheless, they are still an essential part of Chinese grammar (not just Mandarin).[[note]]The main difference is that in other "dialects" of Chinese, the measure words used can be different for some words; using the Mandarin ones wouldn't be incorrect, just extremely formal.[[/note]] Simply put, they indicate the class of objects to which a number refers. English does it on occasion; you say you have 'four loaves of bread' instead of just 'four breads'. Well, in Chinese, you have to do that with everything, which is simultaneously more nitpicky and more precise. Four trees would be 四棵树/四棵樹 (''sì kē shù'') while four cars would be 四辆车/四輛車 (''sì liàng chē''). 四 (''Sì'') means "four", 树/樹 (''shù'') means "tree", and 车/車 (''chē'') means "car"; 棵 (''kē'') and 辆/輛 (''liàng'') are the measure words. Using the wrong measure word for something can be a bit embarrassing (e.g. "I have four terabytes of bread"), especially if one uses one of the words for animals on people instead (e.g. "I have four flocks of priests"). Thankfully, the measure word 个/個 (''gè'') can stand in for nearly any other measure word in a pinch, functioning in many ways as a generic measure word (e.g. 我有四个朋友/我有四個朋友--"I have four [units of] friends").[[note]]Which may also cause trouble. 位 (''wèi'', "seat") is usually the proper/polite unit of people, and in some situations using 个/個 may be seen as rude.[[/note]]
Interestingly enough, exclamation points and question marks can be included as words in the sentence. In ancient times even full stops had word representations. These are known as particles, and are typically added to the end of a sentence; they're a feature kept almost intact from ancient Chinese. The ''a'' (啊) (pronounced "ah!") sound that [[StereotypesOfChinesePeople Chinese people supposedly make]] expresses surprise, doubt, agreement, or affirmation depending on the tone used. ''Ma'' (吗/嗎)--yes, another word to mix up with "mother" and "horse"[[note]]If this isn't confusing enough, there is also the particle 嘛, pronounced identically as ''ma'', and used to add emphasis[[/note]]--is used to express a question. There are many other useful particles, including 吧 (''ba''), which is used to imply politeness when making suggestions. There is also 呢 (''ne''), which roughly means "How about...", which is commonly used when responding to "你好吗/你好嗎?" (''Nǐ hǎo ma?'', "How are you?/Are you well?")--"好,你呢?" (''Hǎo, nǐ ne?'', "I'm fine, how about you?"). Particles can also be used to indicate conjunction, completion of an action, the verb 'to be', etc.
to:
The third-person pronoun has separate written forms for male, female, and neuter which sound exactly alike when spoken. Before modern times, there was actually only one written form of third-person pronoun 他 (''tā''), different written forms were introduced from western languages. This can lead to PronounTrouble for native speakers of Chinese who learn new languages with gendered pronouns.[[note]]The ''number'' of third-person pronouns actually varies by region. In traditional Chinese characters, there are five versions--masculine/neutral versions -- masculine/neutral human (他, "he"), feminine human (她, "she"), neuter inanimate (它, "it"), neuter animate (牠, "it, an animal"), and divine (祂, "He" or "They, a deity"). In simplified Chinese characters, the latter two don't exist and are conflated with the first three. And to clarify, 他 is gender-neutral in that 他们/他們 (''Tāmen'') can refer to a group of men ''or'' a group of mixed genders, while 她们/她們 (also ''Tāmen'') refers to a group of women only--like only -- like how 'Latinos' can refer to a group of mixed-gender Latin Americans.[[/note]]
The 'classifier' or "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_measure_word measure word]]" is yet another feature likely to give trouble to students of Chinese. These are a class of nouns which can have very general meanings, and in fact can in many cases simply be omitted when translating Chinese. Nevertheless, they are still an essential part of Chinese grammar (not just Mandarin).[[note]]The main difference is that in other "dialects" of Chinese, the measure words used can be different for some words; using the Mandarin ones wouldn't be incorrect, just extremely formal.[[/note]] Simply put, they indicate the class of objects to which a number refers. English does it on occasion; you say you have 'four loaves of bread' instead of just 'four breads'. Well, in Chinese, you have to do that with everything, which is simultaneously more nitpicky and more precise. Four trees would be 四棵树/四棵樹 (''sì kē shù'') while four cars would be 四辆车/四輛車 (''sì liàng chē''). 四 (''Sì'') means "four", 树/樹 (''shù'') means "tree", and 车/車 (''chē'') means "car"; 棵 (''kē'') and 辆/輛 (''liàng'') are the measure words. Using the wrong measure word for something can be a bit embarrassing (e.g. "I have four terabytes of bread"), especially if one uses one of the words for animals on people instead (e.g. "I have four flocks of priests"). Thankfully, the measure word 个/個 (''gè'') can stand in for nearly any other measure word in a pinch, functioning in many ways as a generic measure word (e.g.我有四个朋友/我有四個朋友--"I 我有四个朋友/我有四個朋友 -- "I have four [units of] friends").[[note]]Which may also cause trouble. 位 (''wèi'', "seat") is usually the proper/polite unit of people, and in some situations using 个/個 may be seen as rude.[[/note]]
Interestingly enough, exclamation points and question marks can be included as words in the sentence. In ancient times even full stops had word representations. These are known as particles, and are typically added to the end of a sentence; they're a feature kept almost intact from ancient Chinese. The ''a'' (啊) (pronounced "ah!") sound that [[StereotypesOfChinesePeople Chinese people supposedly make]] expresses surprise, doubt, agreement, or affirmation depending on the tone used. ''Ma''(吗/嗎)--yes, (吗/嗎) -- yes, another word to mix up with "mother" and "horse"[[note]]If this isn't confusing enough, there is also the particle 嘛, pronounced identically as ''ma'', and used to add emphasis[[/note]]--is emphasis[[/note]] -- is used to express a question. There are many other useful particles, including 吧 (''ba''), which is used to imply politeness when making suggestions. There is also 呢 (''ne''), which roughly means "How about...", which is commonly used when responding to "你好吗/你好嗎?" (''Nǐ hǎo ma?'', "How are you?/Are you well?")--"好,你呢?" well?") -- "好,你呢?" (''Hǎo, nǐ ne?'', "I'm fine, how about you?"). Particles can also be used to indicate conjunction, completion of an action, the verb 'to be', etc.
The 'classifier' or "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_measure_word measure word]]" is yet another feature likely to give trouble to students of Chinese. These are a class of nouns which can have very general meanings, and in fact can in many cases simply be omitted when translating Chinese. Nevertheless, they are still an essential part of Chinese grammar (not just Mandarin).[[note]]The main difference is that in other "dialects" of Chinese, the measure words used can be different for some words; using the Mandarin ones wouldn't be incorrect, just extremely formal.[[/note]] Simply put, they indicate the class of objects to which a number refers. English does it on occasion; you say you have 'four loaves of bread' instead of just 'four breads'. Well, in Chinese, you have to do that with everything, which is simultaneously more nitpicky and more precise. Four trees would be 四棵树/四棵樹 (''sì kē shù'') while four cars would be 四辆车/四輛車 (''sì liàng chē''). 四 (''Sì'') means "four", 树/樹 (''shù'') means "tree", and 车/車 (''chē'') means "car"; 棵 (''kē'') and 辆/輛 (''liàng'') are the measure words. Using the wrong measure word for something can be a bit embarrassing (e.g. "I have four terabytes of bread"), especially if one uses one of the words for animals on people instead (e.g. "I have four flocks of priests"). Thankfully, the measure word 个/個 (''gè'') can stand in for nearly any other measure word in a pinch, functioning in many ways as a generic measure word (e.g.
Interestingly enough, exclamation points and question marks can be included as words in the sentence. In ancient times even full stops had word representations. These are known as particles, and are typically added to the end of a sentence; they're a feature kept almost intact from ancient Chinese. The ''a'' (啊) (pronounced "ah!") sound that [[StereotypesOfChinesePeople Chinese people supposedly make]] expresses surprise, doubt, agreement, or affirmation depending on the tone used. ''Ma''
Changed line(s) 82,83 (click to see context) from:
** Hanyu Pinyin[[note]]the modern standard Romanization used in mainland China and currently used for most purposes in Taiwan, as well (although names of people and places still use older systems)[[/note]] has shades of this too--it uses the Latin alphabet to represent the pronunciation of Chinese words. In most cases, this is fairly straight forward: for example ''ping'' and ''ban'' are pronounced pretty much as you'd expect. However, there are a few letters which are used to represent non-English sounds -- sounds like ''ci'' or ''quan'' aren't pronounced ''at all'' like their spelling might suggest.[[note]]''Ci'' is pronounced similarly to the ''tsu'' in tsunami, and ''quan'' is pronounced more like ''tchwen''.[[/note]]
* BrokenBase: The supporters of Traditional versus Simplified characters. The simplified supporters like the fact that they can write a paragraph in half the time and not have the characters turn into illegible inkblots when the font gets too small, while the traditionalists like the hints to meaning and pronunciation that the old-style characters contain and the link to history that it provides. Which one is easier to learn and remember is the subject of much debate--which will not be done here. Also, as the simplification scheme is promulgated by the Mainland communist government, the people of Taiwan/overseas Chinese may take slight offense due to political/ideological reasons instead of anything linguistic.[[note]]In Hong Kong, at the very least, while younger students usually learn Traditional characters and many in the population default to them, Simplified characters are accepted in exams and occasionally used by teachers and students alike from secondary education and above, mainly for convenience. Signage is also available in both Traditional and Simplified in public areas due to the large number of Mainland tourists. The Traditional characters are also used in some Simplified-defaulting areas for artistic purposes like calligraphy.[[/note]]
* BrokenBase: The supporters of Traditional versus Simplified characters. The simplified supporters like the fact that they can write a paragraph in half the time and not have the characters turn into illegible inkblots when the font gets too small, while the traditionalists like the hints to meaning and pronunciation that the old-style characters contain and the link to history that it provides. Which one is easier to learn and remember is the subject of much debate--which will not be done here. Also, as the simplification scheme is promulgated by the Mainland communist government, the people of Taiwan/overseas Chinese may take slight offense due to political/ideological reasons instead of anything linguistic.[[note]]In Hong Kong, at the very least, while younger students usually learn Traditional characters and many in the population default to them, Simplified characters are accepted in exams and occasionally used by teachers and students alike from secondary education and above, mainly for convenience. Signage is also available in both Traditional and Simplified in public areas due to the large number of Mainland tourists. The Traditional characters are also used in some Simplified-defaulting areas for artistic purposes like calligraphy.[[/note]]
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** Hanyu Pinyin[[note]]the modern standard Romanization used in mainland China and currently used for most purposes in Taiwan, as well (although names of people and places still use older systems)[[/note]] has shades of this too--it too -- it uses the Latin alphabet to represent the pronunciation of Chinese words. In most cases, this is fairly straight forward: for example ''ping'' and ''ban'' are pronounced pretty much as you'd expect. However, there are a few letters which are used to represent non-English sounds -- sounds like ''ci'' or ''quan'' aren't pronounced ''at all'' like their spelling might suggest.[[note]]''Ci'' is pronounced similarly to the ''tsu'' in tsunami, and ''quan'' is pronounced more like ''tchwen''.[[/note]]
* BrokenBase: The supporters of Traditional versus Simplified characters. The simplified supporters like the fact that they can write a paragraph in half the time and not have the characters turn into illegible inkblots when the font gets too small, while the traditionalists like the hints to meaning and pronunciation that the old-style characters contain and the link to history that it provides. Which one is easier to learn and remember is the subject of muchdebate--which debate -- which will not be done here. Also, as the simplification scheme is promulgated by the Mainland communist government, the people of Taiwan/overseas Chinese may take slight offense due to political/ideological reasons instead of anything linguistic.[[note]]In Hong Kong, at the very least, while younger students usually learn Traditional characters and many in the population default to them, Simplified characters are accepted in exams and occasionally used by teachers and students alike from secondary education and above, mainly for convenience. Signage is also available in both Traditional and Simplified in public areas due to the large number of Mainland tourists. The Traditional characters are also used in some Simplified-defaulting areas for artistic purposes like calligraphy.[[/note]]
* BrokenBase: The supporters of Traditional versus Simplified characters. The simplified supporters like the fact that they can write a paragraph in half the time and not have the characters turn into illegible inkblots when the font gets too small, while the traditionalists like the hints to meaning and pronunciation that the old-style characters contain and the link to history that it provides. Which one is easier to learn and remember is the subject of much
Changed line(s) 95 (click to see context) from:
** In written Chinese, 'he' and 'she' are fairly intuitive, with the left-side radical being "woman" for 'she' and "person" for 'he' while sharing the same root/base. However, the word for 'it' does not resemble the others in any way--as it was originally the Chinese word for "others".
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** In written Chinese, 'he' and 'she' are fairly intuitive, with the left-side radical being "woman" for 'she' and "person" for 'he' while sharing the same root/base. However, the word for 'it' does not resemble the others in any way--as way -- as it was originally the Chinese word for "others".
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Changed line(s) 82 (click to see context) from:
** Hanyu Pinyin[[note]]the modern standard Romanization used in mainland China and currently used for most purposes in Taiwan, as well (although names of people and places still use older systems)[[/note]] has shades of this too--it uses the Latin alphabet to represent the pronunciation of Chinese words. In most cases, this is fairly straight forward: for example ''ping'' and ''ban'' are pronounced pretty much as you'd expect. However, there are a few letters which are used to represent non-English sounds - sounds like ''ci'' or ''quan'' aren't pronounced ''at all'' like their spelling might suggest.[[note]]''Ci'' is pronounced similarly to the ''tsu'' in tsunami, and ''quan'' is pronounced more like ''tchwen''.[[/note]]
to:
** Hanyu Pinyin[[note]]the modern standard Romanization used in mainland China and currently used for most purposes in Taiwan, as well (although names of people and places still use older systems)[[/note]] has shades of this too--it uses the Latin alphabet to represent the pronunciation of Chinese words. In most cases, this is fairly straight forward: for example ''ping'' and ''ban'' are pronounced pretty much as you'd expect. However, there are a few letters which are used to represent non-English sounds - -- sounds like ''ci'' or ''quan'' aren't pronounced ''at all'' like their spelling might suggest.[[note]]''Ci'' is pronounced similarly to the ''tsu'' in tsunami, and ''quan'' is pronounced more like ''tchwen''.[[/note]]
Changed line(s) 97 (click to see context) from:
** When the overzealous language reformers made up genitive third-person pronouns, they also made up a ''ta'' for animals; a ''ta'' for all inanimate ''it'', and a ''ta'' for ''gods''. See above for that.
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** When the overzealous language reformers made up genitive third-person pronouns, they also made up a ''ta'' ''tā'' for animals; a ''ta'' ''tā'' for all inanimate ''it'', and a ''ta'' ''tā'' for ''gods''. See above for that.
Changed line(s) 99 (click to see context) from:
* {{Pun}}: Those four tones and the [[FunWithHomophones sheer number of true homophones]] make for loads and loads of these. There's an entire ''class'' of jokes called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiehouyu xiehouyu]] whose punchlines often rely on wordplay.
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* {{Pun}}: Those four tones and the [[FunWithHomophones sheer number of true homophones]] make for loads and loads of these. There's an entire ''class'' of jokes called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiehouyu xiehouyu]] xiēhòuyǔ]] whose punchlines often rely on wordplay.
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Changed line(s) 36,37 (click to see context) from:
Further, Chinese is a ''tonal'' language. Mandarin Chinese uses four tones and a neutral tone. A student not accustomed to tonal speech can easily mishear what is intended or form [[{{Malaproper}} strange malapropisms]] just by not paying attention to the tone. As an example, the words for "mother" (妈/媽, ''mā''), "hemp" (麻 ''má''), "horse" (马/馬 ''mǎ''), and "to scold" (骂/罵, ''mà'') are distinguished only by a change in tone (now ''there's'' an international incident just waiting to happen).[[note]]Observant readers might notice that the words for 'mother' and 'scold' are the same basic shape as 'horse', but with additional elements (radicals). While it's not a cast-iron guarantee that similar-looking characters have similar pronunciations, it is a useful rule of thumb.[[/note]] And on top of it, normal sentence intonations still exist, twisting the original tones in subtle ways.[[note]]See [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Tone_sandhi this]] section on Wiki/TheOtherWiki for more information on that.[[/note]]
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Further, Chinese is a ''tonal'' language. Mandarin Chinese uses four tones and a neutral tone. A student not accustomed to tonal speech can easily mishear what is intended or form [[{{Malaproper}} strange malapropisms]] just by not paying attention to the tone. As an example, the words for "mother" (妈/媽, ''mā''), "hemp" (麻 ''má''), "horse" (马/馬 ''mǎ''), and "to scold" (骂/罵, ''mà'') are distinguished only by a change in tone (now ''there's'' an international incident just waiting to happen).[[note]]Observant readers might notice that the words for 'mother' and 'scold' are the same basic shape as 'horse', but with additional elements (radicals). While it's not a cast-iron guarantee that similar-looking characters have similar pronunciations, it is a useful rule of thumb.[[/note]] And on top of it, normal sentence intonations still exist, twisting the original tones in subtle ways.[[note]]See [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Tone_sandhi this]] section on Wiki/TheOtherWiki Website/TheOtherWiki for more information on that.[[/note]]
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Changed line(s) 28,29 (click to see context) from:
Each character generally corresponds to a single sound or 'syllable' in spoken Chinese, which means that even a relatively short line of dialogue can span the entire screen when close captioned. While each character can have an intrinsic meaning, many 'words' are short phrases consisting of multiple characters, and similar phrases can have widely different meanings. For example, 火车/火車 (''huǒchē'', lit. "fire vehicle") means "train" while 救火车/救火車 (''jiùhuǒchē'', lit. "help fire vehicle") means "firetruck"[[note]]or "fire engine", to those of you reading in "Traditional American"[[/note]]. One particularly cute compound is the word for panda: 熊猫/熊貓 (''xióngmāo''), which has the literal translation of "bear cat".[[note]]Which was actually an error; some time ago, both writing from left to right and vice versa was common, and 貓熊 ("cat bear") was accidentally read backwards by the public, and it stuck. Some purists still use their InsistentTerminology, though. In Taiwan, 貓熊 is more commonly used.[[/note]]
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Each character generally corresponds to a single sound or 'syllable' in spoken Chinese, which means that even a relatively short line of dialogue can span the entire screen when close captioned. While each character can have an intrinsic meaning, many 'words' are short phrases consisting of multiple characters, and similar phrases can have widely different meanings. For example, 火车/火車 (''huǒchē'', lit. "fire vehicle") means "train" while 救火车/救火車 (''jiùhuǒchē'', lit. "help fire vehicle") means "firetruck"[[note]]or "fire engine", to those of you reading in "Traditional American"[[/note]]. One particularly cute compound is the word for panda: 熊猫/熊貓 (''xióngmāo''), which has the literal translation of "bear cat".[[note]]Which was actually an error; some time ago, both writing from left to right and vice versa was common, and 貓熊 猫熊/貓熊 ("cat bear") was accidentally read backwards by the public, and it stuck. Some purists still use their InsistentTerminology, though. In Taiwan, 貓熊 is more commonly used.[[/note]]
Changed line(s) 44,45 (click to see context) from:
Chinese is almost completely uninflected. There are no verb or noun endings to reflect tense, number, or grammatical case. One exception is the 'word' 们/們 (''men'') which is attached to pronouns[[note]]and a select few nouns referring to people, e.g. 人们/人們 (''rénmen'', "people") and 朋友们/朋友們 (''péngyǒumen'', "friends")[[/note]] to indicate a plural: 我 (''wǒ'', "I") becomes 我们/我們 (''wǒmen'', "we"). A verb's tense is indicated by context, usually by stating when it was done or will be done; this can be construed as Chinese having only three tenses; past, present, and future, with various offshoots. Aside from this idiosyncrasy, word order is usually similar to English's subject-verb-object order. In fact, a sentence written in English and translated word-for-word into Mandarin might look a bit odd to a native speaker, but would probably be perfectly understandable. To give an idea of this, the sentence 我跟朋友走去公园/我跟朋友走去公園 (''wǒ gēn péngyǒu zǒu qù gōngyuán'') would translate word-for-word into the odd-sounding "I with friend walk go park" ("I walk to the park with my friend").
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Chinese is almost completely uninflected. There are no verb or noun endings to reflect tense, number, or grammatical case. One exception is the 'word' 们/們 (''men'') which is attached to pronouns[[note]]and a select few nouns referring to people, e.g. 人们/人們 (''rénmen'', "people") and 朋友们/朋友們 (''péngyǒumen'', "friends")[[/note]] to indicate a plural: 我 (''wǒ'', "I") becomes 我们/我們 (''wǒmen'', "we"). A verb's tense is indicated by context, usually by stating when it was done or will be done; this can be construed as Chinese having only three tenses; past, present, and future, with various offshoots. Aside from this idiosyncrasy, word order is usually similar to English's subject-verb-object order. In fact, a sentence written in English and translated word-for-word into Mandarin might look a bit odd to a native speaker, but would probably be perfectly understandable. To give an idea of this, the sentence 我跟朋友走去公园/我跟朋友走去公園 (''wǒ (''Wǒ gēn péngyǒu zǒu qù gōngyuán'') would translate word-for-word into the odd-sounding "I with friend walk go park" ("I walk to the park with my friend").
Changed line(s) 102 (click to see context) from:
*** Speaking of the fish, if you are having fish with a driver or a fisherman for a meal, DO NOT mention the word 翻 (''fān'', "flip") or letting them flip the fish to the other side. Doing so will imply that the driver will have a car accident or the fisherman will suffered a unfortunate shipwreck.
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*** Speaking of the fish, if you are having fish with a driver or a fisherman for a meal, DO NOT mention the word 翻 (''fān'', "flip") or letting them flip the fish to the other side. Doing so will imply that the driver will have a car accident or the fisherman will suffered suffer a unfortunate shipwreck.
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Loads And Loads Of Characters is no longer a trope
Deleted line(s) 93 (click to see context) :
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The writing system has over 40,000 characters with a college grad knowing about 5,000. You only need 200 to 500 or so for a basic conversation or skimming a newspaper. As described above, there are rules for deducing the pronunciation of an unknown character, though they are not completely foolproof. In fact, there are characters that ''have no pronunciation'', like 込 (used in Japanese).
