Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
Well, Isaiah Lee is translated in Chinese as 以赛亚·李. In my humble opinion, if your friend wants to have a name looks and sounds more like a Chinese name, then Li Zeyan, or 李泽彦 in Chinese, could also be an option. 李 is a major surname in Mainland China. The founder of Tang Dynasty, a … Read more
Well, if what you wanted to ask in this question is whether after learning traditional Chinese characters, you could automatically understand Classical Chinese, then the answer is no. Whether you learn simplified Chinese characters or traditional Chinese characters, if you learn want to understand Classical Chinese, you need to first learn and understand vernacular Chinese, … Read more
Well, it depends on which chemical elements you refer to. I mean, if you refer to chemical elements that Chinese people already knew before the introduction of the periodic table, for instance, mercury and silver, they were known as 汞 and 银 in Chinese for thousands of years. Of course, apart from these familiar chemical … Read more
Well, it depends on which surname Wang you refer to. I mean, there are four Chinese surnames that could be written in Pinyin as Wang, i.e., 王, 汪, 望 and 旺. Of course, precisely speaking, 王 is written in Pinyin as wáng. 汪 is written in Pinyin as wāng. 望 and 旺 are written in … Read more
I live in China, whenever I write numbers (01234566789) on a piece of paper by hand, Chinese people are generally confused and can’t understand what I wrote. I doubt you actually live in China since a single trip to the market would show you a bunch of vendors with calculators if they don’t have computers … Read more
This would be a really fun question for me to answer. Little bit on my background. I’m Singaporean Chinese, L1 is Chinese and L2 is English, but due to my education and work, I’m L2 dominant. With respect to the topic of Chinese handwriting, I would like to quote a video I watched recently, that … Read more
This is very difficult to answer in a general, catch-all way as it depends on many variables Where you live: I lived in Shanghai when I first arrived in China. I didn’t have zero Chinese, but pretty close. I could recognise the obvious everyday characters, such as those for entrance and exit (入口，出口）and some place … Read more
This Chinese character 虚 has multiple meanings. It could mean empty and unoccupied, for instance, 座无虚席, which literally means a banquet with no empty seats and is usually used to mean full house. It could also mean humble and modest, for instance, 虚怀若谷, which means modest and open-minded. It could also mean weak in health, … Read more
No, it can’t. I mean, although some might argue that Ti could be seen as Wade-Giles version of a Chinese surname 狄, then how do we see Dao, since there are not Chinese characters which could be spelled as Dao in the Wade-Giles romanization? So, Ti Dao looks like a Pinyin version of two Chinese … Read more
I did. I was really interested in Chinese (still am) and worked like a demon. I had the advantage that I was in Taiwan, surrounded by the language. When I came to Taiwan, I didn’t know much more than 我、你、他、好、不好, but I saw people who had been here for three or four years still struggling … Read more