In Eastern Guangdong, do some Chaoshan people understand some Cantonese language?

May 24, 2023 0 Comments

The Chaoshan (潮汕) region has its own language, Teochew (or Chiuchow) – which isn’t mutually intelligible with Mandarin or Cantonese, actually I find it closer to Minnan (my dialect) spoken in southern part of Fujian Province with accent variation of course. If you speak Teochew, you can get by easily in Chaozhou, Jieyang and Shantou …

How does China have so many different languages but still call them all “Chinese”?

May 22, 2023 0 Comments

Again, China in your imagination is China retold from western perspective. Even as someone a Chinese diaspora in eastern hemisphere, who has growing up through western education perspective, China in my eyes is quite different from how western mainstream media, pop science, history, literature, let alone politicians portrays it. In early 2000s, when I am …

Why did the ancient Chinese create such a beautiful but difficult writing system?

May 20, 2023 0 Comments

Chinese writing evolved. It started out as pictures. Sometimes they used images to represent ideas; even in today’s writing, you can see that 大 is someone standing with their legs and arms spread apart, thiiiis big! Sometimes you have to know how to look at them. For example, 車 (che), originally chariot, the | is the axle, …

Why do the Chinese use so many words with the letter “X” pronunciation?

May 17, 2023 0 Comments

Because of Zhou Youguang and his team. Chinese, of course, has its own script distinct from the Roman alphabet. And like many languages, it uses sounds which don’t show up in other languages, or appear but are not regarded as distinct in other languages. In order to represent words in one language in a script …

Is Chinese language written one way, and read and spoken in two completely different ways?

May 17, 2023 0 Comments

Linguists divide Chinese into about ten varieties that are not mutually intelligible, although some count with fewer and some with many more. They are not “dialects”, they are more comparable to the Romance languages – they have a common origin, but are no more similar than Portuguese and Romanian. Mandarin and Cantonese are the most well-known, but …

Do you speak Cantonese? If so, when did you start speaking it and why?

May 11, 2023 0 Comments

Unfortunately, I do not. I’ve had over three years of Mandarin lessons because I assumed it would enable me to better communicate with Chinese people. But what I have found, to my amusement, is that most of the people I know speak Cantonese or Hokkien. This seems to be the case whether they are in …

What would a good Chinese girl name be that’s not too old fashioned that includes either the character 莲 or 雨?

May 10, 2023 0 Comments

Well, in my humble opinion, these two Chinese characters don’t sound too old-fashioned. 莲 means lotus and its Pinyin is lián. And in a metaphorical way, it could mean purity. That’s why in a famous essay, Ode to the Lotus, or 爱莲说 in Chinese, by Zhou Dunyi, or 周敦颐 in Chinese, a renowned neo-Confucian philosopher …

Why is the name “Confucius” unlike other Chinese names?

May 8, 2023 0 Comments

The real name of Confucius is Kong Qiu (孔丘, kǒng qiū), with surname Kong (孔), and the given name (丘). In Chinese culture, it has been a tradition to add 子 (zǐ) to the surname the show respects. For example: Han Fei: 韩非子 (Hánfēi zǐ) Mencius: 孟子 (mèng zǐ) Obviously, Confucius is one of the …

Why do Westerners in China create a Chinese name instead of transliterating their Western name into Chinese?

May 6, 2023 0 Comments

Probably for the same reasons that when a fictional Mr. Xǔ Zhì Qiáng (許志強) settles down in beautiful America, he goes by the name “George”: To better-assimilate into the culture and environment of his new home Because 8 out of 10 persons probably cannot figure out how the heck to correctly pronounce his name, what …

How hard will it be for a 9-year-old native English speaker to learn Mandarin fluently at junior high school if I first hire a private tutor to teach her Cantonese?

May 4, 2023 0 Comments

Why learn Cantonese when Putonghua is used all over China? If you have a family connection for learning Cantonese then, by all means, learn Cantonese. But I would not hire a tutor and spend money to learn Cantonese, especially if it is for a nine-year old. The China of 2023 is not the China of …