Specific Language Focus 3, Chinese languages: 16 Idioms with transliteration, literal and semantic translations preceded by an introduction to Chinese
Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI
![Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI]()
Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI
US Certified Court Interpreter 1980 / Ph.D. Spanish Portuguese 1981 / 24 years university professor / Estimates: 12,000+ depositions, hearings, etc. / 850 trials / 3000 documents / Conference Interpreter 650 conferences
??
Specific Language Focus 3, Chinese languages: 16 Idioms with transliteration, literal and semantic translations preceded by an introduction to Chinese languages
Before copying parts of the Britannica article on Chinese languages, it is important to keep the following in mind. It is important to note of the 1.3 billion speakers of Chinese, by far the biggest number of speakers is Mandarin, with 800 million speakers, followed by?Min?(75 million, e.g.?Southern Min),?Wu?(74 million, e.g.?Shanghainese), and?Yue?(68 million, e.g.?Cantonese).[6]?These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with the other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). Please note a half million Chinese speak other languages since they are mutually unintelligible. Yet, as to be expected, many Mandarin speakers say that Mandarin is Chinese, since socially and politically many of them look down on these other languages. From a linguistic perspective, they are separate languages since many of them and other subgroups are mutually unintelligible. Nonetheless, Mandarin continues to be the Goliath since it is closing in on a billion speakers
?
Chinese languages
?
Also known as: Han languages, Sinitic languages
Written by S?ren Christian Egerod
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated:?Article History
Chinese languages, principal?language?group of eastern?Asia, belonging to the?Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese exists in a number of varieties that are popularly called?dialects?but that are usually classified as separate languages by scholars. More people speak a variety of Chinese as a native language than any other language in the world, and Modern Standard Chinese is one of the six official languages of the?United Nations.
The spoken varieties of Chinese are mutually unintelligible to their respective speakers. They differ from each other to about the same extent as the modern?Romance languages. Most of the differences among them occur in pronunciation and vocabulary; there are few grammatical differences. These languages include?Mandarin?in the northern, central, and western parts of China;?Wu; Northern and Southern?Min;?Gan?(Kan);?Hakka?(Kejia); and?Xiang; and?Cantonese?(Yue) in the southeastern part of the country.
All the Chinese languages share a common literary language (wenyan), written in characters and based on a common body of literature. This literary language has no single standard of pronunciation; a speaker of a language reads texts according to the rules of pronunciation of his own language. Before 1917 the?wenyan?was used for almost all writing; since that date it has become increasingly acceptable to write in the?vernacular?style (baihua) instead, and the old literary language is dying out in the daily life of modern?China. (Its use continues in certain literary and scholarly circles.)
In the early 1900s a program for the unification of the national language, which is based on Mandarin, was launched; this resulted in?Modern Standard Chinese.?In 1956 a new system of romanization called?Pinyin, based on the pronunciation of the characters in the Beijing?dialect, was adopted as an educational instrument to help in the spread of the modern standard language. Modified in 1958, the system was formally prescribed (1979) for use in all diplomatic documents and foreign-language publications in English-speaking countries.
Some scholars divide the history of the Chinese languages into?Proto-Sinitic?(Proto-Chinese; until 500?BC),?Archaic (Old) Chinese?(8th to 3rd century?BC),?Ancient (Middle) Chinese?(through?AD?907), and Modern Chinese (from?c.?the 10th century to modern times). The Proto-Sinitic period is the period of the most ancient inscriptions and poetry; most loanwords in Chinese were borrowed after that period. The works of?Confucius?and?Mencius?mark the beginning of the?Archaic?Chinese period. Modern knowledge of the sounds of Chinese during the Ancient Chinese period is derived from a pronouncing dictionary of the language of the Ancient period published in?AD?601 by the scholar Lu Fayan and also from the works of the scholar-official?Sima Guang, published in the 11th century.
The sound system of Chinese is marked by its use of?tones to indicate differences of meaning between words or syllables that are otherwise identical in sound (i.e., have the same consonants and vowels). Modern Standard Chinese has four tones, while the more archaic Cantonese language uses at least six tones, as did Ancient Chinese. Chinese words often have only one syllable, although modern Chinese makes greater use of?compounds?than did the earlier language. In Chinese?compound?words, few prefixes or infixes occur, but there are a great number of suffixes. Few words end in a?consonant, except in such archaic?dialects?as Cantonese. A Chinese word is invariable in form (i.e., it has no?inflectional?markers or markers to indicate parts of speech) and, within the range allowed by its?intrinsic?meaning, can serve as any?part of speech. Because there is no word inflection in the language, there is a fixed word order. Person and number are expressed in the pronoun rather than in the verb. Chinese has no definite article (i.e., no word meaning ‘the’), although the word meaning ‘one’ and the demonstrative adjective are sometimes used as articles in the language today. Adjectives, which are probably of verbal origin, are not inflected for degree of comparison and may be used as adverbs without any change of form.
?
Linguistic characteristics
All modern Sinitic languages—i.e., the “Chinese dialects”—share a number of important typological features. They have a maximum syllabic structure of the type consonant–semivowel–vowel–semivowel–consonant. Some languages lack one set of semivowels, and, in some, gemination (doubling) or clustering of vowels occurs. The languages also employ a system of tones (pitch and contour), with or without?concomitant?glottal features, and occasionally stress. For the most part, tones are lexical (i.e., they distinguish otherwise similar words); in some languages tones also carry grammatical meaning. Nontonal grammatical units (i.e., affixes) may be smaller than syllables, but usually the meaningful units consist of one or more syllables. Words can consist of one syllable, of two or more syllables each carrying an element of meaning, or of two or more syllables that individually carry no meaning. For example, Modern Standard Chinese?tian?‘sky, heaven, day’ is a one-syllable word;?ritou?‘sun’ is composed of?ri?‘sun, day,’ a word element that cannot occur alone as a word, and the noun?suffix?tou; and?hudie?‘butterfly’ consists of two syllables, each having no meaning in itself (this is a rare type of word formation). The Southern languages have more monosyllabic words and word elements than the Northern ones.
The Sinitic languages distinguish nouns and verbs with some overlapping, as do Sino-Tibetan languages in general. There are noun suffixes that form different kinds of nouns (concrete nouns, diminutives, abstract nouns, and so on), particles placed after nouns indicating relationships in time and space, and verb particles for modes and aspects. Adjectives act as one of several kinds of verbs. Verbs can occur in a series (concatenation) with irreversible order (e.g., the verbs ‘take’ and ‘come’ placed next to one another denote the concept ‘bring’). Nouns are?collective?in nature, and only?classifiers can be counted and referred to singly. Specific particles are used to indicate the relationship of?nominals?(e.g., nouns and noun phrases) to verbs, such as transitive verb–object, agent–passive verb; in some of the languages this system forms a sentence construction called ergative, in which all nominals are marked for their function and the verb stays unchanged. Final sentence particles convey a variety of meanings (defining either the whole sentence or the predicate) that indicate ‘question, command, surprise, or new situation.’ The general word order of subject–verb–object and complement and modifier–modified is the same in all the languages, but the use of the preposed particles and verbs in a series varies considerably. Grammatical elements of equal or closely related?values?in various languages are very often not related in sounds.
The Sinitic languages fall into a Northern and a Southern group. The Northern languages (Mandarin dialects) are more similar to each other than are the Southern (Wu, Xiang, Gan,?Hakka, Yue, Min).
Modern Standard Chinese?(Mandarin)
The pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing?dialect, which is of the Northern, or Mandarin, type. It employs about 1,300 different syllables. There are 22 initial consonants, including stops (made with momentary, complete closure in the vocal tract), affricates (beginning as stops but ending with incomplete closure), aspirated consonants, nasals, fricatives, liquid sounds (l,?r), and a?glottal stop. The medial semivowels are?y?(i),???(ü), and?w?(u). In final position, the following occur: nasal consonants,???(retroflex r), the semivowels?y?and?w, and the combinations??r?(nasalization plus?r) and?wr?(rounding plus?r). There are nine vowel sounds, including three varieties of?i?(retroflex, apical, and palatal). Several vowels combine into clusters.
There are four tones: (1) high level, (2) high rising?crescendo, (3) low falling diminuendo with glottal friction (with an extra rise from low to high when final), and (4) falling diminuendo. Unstressed syllables have a neutral?tone, which depends on its surroundings for pitch. Tones in sequences of syllables that belong together lexically and syntactically (“sandhi groups”) may undergo changes known as tonal sandhi, the most important of which causes a third tone before another third tone to be pronounced as a second tone. The tones influence some vowels (notably?e?and?o), which are pronounced more open in third and fourth tones than in first and second tones.
A surprisingly low number of the possible combinations of all the consonantal, vocalic, and tonal sounds are utilized. The vowels?i?and?ü?and the semivowels?y?and???never occur after velar sounds (e.g.,?k) and occur only after the palatalized?affricate?and sibilant sounds (e.g.,?t?), which in turn occur with no other vowels and semivowels.
Many?alternative?interpretations of the distinctive sounds of Chinese have been proposed; the interaction of consonants, vowels, semivowels, and tones sets Modern Standard Chinese apart from many other Sinitic languages and?dialects?and gives it a unique character among the major languages of the world. The two most widely used transcription systems (romanizations) are?Wade-Giles?(first propounded by?Sir Thomas Francis Wade?in 1859 and later modified by?Herbert A. Giles) and the official Chinese transcription system today, known as the?pinyin zimu?(“phonetic spelling”) or simply Pinyin (adopted in 1958). For a comparison of these romanization equivalents,?see?the table. In Wade-Giles,?aspiration?is marked by ’ (p’,?t’, and so on). The semivowels are?y,?yü, and?w?in initial position;?i,?ü, and?u?in medial; and?i?and?u?(but?o?after?a) in final position. Final retroflex?r?is written?rh. The tones are indicated by raised figures after the syllables (1,?2,?3,?4).
One of our colleagues, Whitney Wang, a language fanatic ?at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/whitney-wang-6a9b1389, was kind enough to share with us 16 Chinese idioms that she chose. They are copied below with their transliteration into Roman orthography as well as their literal and semantic or meaningful translations. ?
?
1.????? 铁公鸡—一毛不拔
(An iron rooster from which not a single hair can be pulled)
An extremely stingy person; a miser.
?
2.????? 墙头草
(Wall top grass; grass that grows on top of a wall that moves in whatever directions that the wind blows in)
A fence rider; an opportunist.
?
3.????? 吹牛皮
(Blow up a cowhide; Blow up a whole cowhide the way you would blow up a balloon to make it fully inflated so as to make drums or rafts.)
Boast; exaggerate
?
4.????? 刀切豆腐两面光
(As a knife that cuts into tofu, both sides are smooth.)
Talking or behaving in a manner that does not offend anyone. Very diplomatic.
?
5.????? 脱裤子放屁—多此一举
(Take off pants to fart – totally unnecessary/pointless/meaningless.)
To describe something, especially some hard effort that is totally unnecessary/pointless.
?
6.????? 哑巴吃黄连，有苦说不出
(As a mute eating the bitter sprout inside a lotus seed, he has to endure the bitterness but is unable to say it out.)
Have to suffer in silence, unable to tell anyone their pain, unfair experiences or other sufferings.?
?
7.????? 一朝被蛇咬，十年怕井绳
(Once bitten by a snake, ten years in fear of a well rope)
Overly cautious due to a past traumatic incident.
?
8.????? 画龙点睛
(Add the eyes to a dragon painting) ?(An artist painted a dragon but did not add the eyes. After he added the eyes, the dragon became alive and flew away). A final touch that gives life to the whole thing or makes the whole things look complete and perfect.
?
9.????? 刀子嘴豆腐心
(Knife mouth and tofu heart)
Someone who is harsh and cold in words but tender in heart. Someone who is sharp-tongued and critical but actually kind-hearted and compassionate. Someone who gives tough love.
?
10.?? 小别胜新婚
(A short separation makes a couple more intimate than when they were just married)
Absence makes the hearts grow fonder
?
11.?? 英雄难过美人关
(It’s difficult for a hero to pass the chokepoint of beauty)
It’s difficult for a hero to resist the temptation of a beautiful woman/beautiful women.
?
12.?? 拿起筷子吃肉，放下筷子骂娘
(Pick up chopsticks to eat meat; drop the chopsticks to curse the meat provider’s mother)
It depicts the action of someone who takes advantage of something/someone without scruples when he needs it but bad-mouth or condemn such thing or person after he is done.
?
13.?? 纸上谈兵
(Discussing military strategy on paper)
Address a problem purely theoretically, based on what is learned from books instead of practical experience.
?
14.?? 黄鼠狼给鸡拜年，没安好心
(A weasel that visits the chicken to wish it a good new year harbors no good intentions)
Appear friendly/nice to someone (all of a sudden) but actually have an axe to grind; have an agenda
?
15.?? 心急吃不了热豆腐
(If you are too impatient, you cannot eat hot tofu.)
Haste makes waste. Slow and steady wins the race.
?
16.?? 百年修得同船渡，千年修得共枕眠
(It takes 100 years spent together by two people in previous lives for them to share a ferry boat ride once in this life; it takes 1000 years spent together by two people in previous lives for them to share a pillow in this life.)
Every encounter or every intimate relationship in this life is actually the fruit cultivated across lifetimes so we should cherish them
?
?
?
Sources
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-languages/The-Qieyun-dictionary
Olga Dvorova language fanatic https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/olga-dvorova