I need to learn what?

Am I the only one here that is totally unable to remember which one means "river" and which one means "lake"? All I can remember is that they both have something to do with water.

At least I can easily remember the pronunciation, due to 可 and 古 being in there, and each of these have the same vowel (e vs u) as those, and in both cases the initial is "h" and the tone is second.

屋 and 室.

They both have the same phonetic part, 至, but yet are pronounced nothing alike, and not like 至 either. [shì and zhì are spelled quite similarly to each other in pinyin, but to me they sound nothing alike..... the dangers of pinyin!]

They have more-or-less the same meaning, but their usage is different and often can't be interchanged.

They have different radicals, and 尸 is very weird here, I assume it used to be 戶, which would mean the radials are similar.

I just can't tell them apart.

This reading always throws me, as in 會計 (accounting).

I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason why 會 has two entirely different meanings with two entirely different pronunciations. But for the life of me I have no idea what it could be.

I think it's time I get a Chinese etymology dictionary.

Another one that stumped me. But, in retrospect, I must have just not really been paying attention.

I could pretty easily see the parts: 广匕田力 Several of which could be the radical.

Opps.

It's not 广 on top.

In looking at it, this is somewhat of a confusing case. The pronunciation of the character (lu3) is quite close to the pronunciation of the radical (hu3), and dissimilar to the pronunciation of the "phonetic" part (nan2).

And the meaning really has nothing, as far as I can see, to do with a tiger.

In the simplified form, 虏, the phonetic part, 力, has a pronunciation (li4) closer to that of the character. Although, in my opinion, 力 is a much more meaningful radical for the character than 虍 is.

No chromosomes involved here. Just the pattern used in Chinese when trying to describe orally which character I mean given the large number of heterographs for some sounds.

For example, "白色的白", when giving my Chinese family name.

I say "try", as I am usually unsuccessful. I'm not sure why this is. I'm hoping it is not due to my pronunciation being that bad, although I fear it might be the case. Rather, I've noticed that there are certain 'XY' that Chinese typically use for a given 'X'. Since I don't know this "secret pattern", I give some other 'XY', which leads to blank stares, and I eventually try to write it.

Chinese measure words are starting to really crack me up. I keep coming across "ordinary" characters that turn out to be measure words as well.

Just now, for example, 片.

"What?", you all cry, "we all know 片 is a measure word. For DVDs, etc."

But yes, look at this clause: "有一片密密麻麻的枣树林".

According to MDBG, 片 is also a measure word for "scenario, scene, feeling, atmosphere, sound etc" -- but only for the number 一.

This is embarrassing. I just realized why, after so many years of studying Chinese, I still get 忙 and 忘 confused.

It's because they are the same character.

At least they are the same character to me: 心 radical and 亡 as the mnemonic. That makes them the same to my brain.

Now that I realize this I still won't be able to keep them separate, but at least I'll understand why I keep getting this hash collision.

Oddly enough, other characters with this property (e.g 景 vs 晾) doesn't confuse me at all. Maybe 晾 is rare enough and I managed to internalize 景 before I saw 晾. Neither does 裏 vs 裡; maybe because I think 裏 is a very awkward-looking character, too tall for its own good.

It's commonly said [1] that one aspect of Chinese that is easy to learn is because the meaning of most words are "obvious" once you know the meaning of each individual character.

I disagree, but that is the topic of another post.

Back to the topic, anyone care to help me understand why 手續 means "formalities / procedures"? "手" by itself means hand (or, by extension, someone that does something), and "續" means "continue / replenish". I realize in China it seems that the paperwork continues to keep your hand busy, but that's hardly a derivation <_<

[1] No reference, I'm just going to say it's true because I say so.

I don't think I want to live in China. No insult at all to native Chinese, nor to any ex-pat enjoying life there. But for me personally, it's just too much activity, and too much effort. Likely if I did live there I'd get more used to the flow and find it less effort and more pleasant, but I fear I've gotten too soft living in Suburbia to handle a major city, let alone a major city in China.

I take back every good thing I've ever said about taxi drivers in China and how honest they are. At least in Chengdu. Out of 5 taxi rides, they tried to cheat us twice. And I don't mean just go a couple extra blocks longer for an extra yuan or two (used to that), I mean try to charge us 2x-3x the proper fare. And these are in licensed, metered taxis.

It's too difficult to find diet soda in China. On the plus side, when I do find it, it's usually Coke Zero.

Things are still cheap in China. I was concerned that between the USD-RMB exchange rate going from 8.4:1 to 6.2:1 since I was there last, and the high inflation rate in China, things would feel expensive. Nope, still not. Especially in 3rd tier cities like Pingxiang. One morning took my daughter to a neighborhood square to run around; we bought three rides on those kiddie coin-op rides, two bottled drinks (water and "iced" tea), and two "ice cream" snacks; total cost, 14 yuan (!). Compare that to, say, the cheapest bottle water I found in terminal D of the Shanghai airport was 34 yuan (but it was Evian).

Mixed kids still gets a lot of attention in China. I'm used to be stared at when out and about, but with her, it was a lot more attention. People even came up and wanted to have their picture taken with her!

I was more impressed with Shanghai than I was last time I was there (2005). Not sure what the difference is, but it feels like it's advanced a lot in the last 7 years.

Chengdu is backwards. I don't mean the infrastructure -- it's quite developed. I mean the peoples' thinking. I can't believe in 2012, in the central business district of a major city, one still has kids yelling "hello!" to all the random 老外. Yes, I'm white, not Chinese, get over it. I really felt the difference between Chengdu and Shanghai.

In addition, I was less impressed with the food in Chengdu than I expected. I've heard great things about Sichuan food, but we didn't see it. This is certainly due in part to our choice of food -- we didn't have Sichuan hot pot (too spicy), for example. But we did go to what was told were decent restaurants and tried Sichuan dishes. Not bad, but not great, and everything was much too oily.

On the plus side, I think Chengdu woman are more attractive. To me, Beijing and Shanghai woman are too skinny, Chengdu woman are much curvier. They also dress skimpier, but less fashionable.

I don't like jiaozi as much as I thought I did. Last trip (in Beijing), I ate jiaozi at every opportunity, and loved every one, down to the 1 yuan street vendor ones. This trip, had a couple of them, not so impressed. Only decent one was at the Nanxiang 1900 (at the Super Brand Mall). I even encountered ones I actually didn't like, first time ever.

I no longer feel the need to speak in Chinese just to show them that I can speak Chinese. On past trips, I've had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it; this trip, well, not only did I not mind switching to English if they replied in English to my Chinese, but I would often just start in English. The only exception to that was passing by a book store in Shanghai airport, a woman calls out to me (in English) "Do you want to learn Chinese?" I had to reply in Chinese to that!

The second best part of the Oriental Pearl is the History of Shanghai Museum (at the end). "Interestingly" enough, there are no signs in English saying what it is, nor saying that it's free (with ticket to visit the tower). It's a really well done museum, very interesting, with signage in English and Chinese (and Japanese).

Plane ticket to China for my daughter: $1400. Look on her face the first time she sees (and needs to use) a squat toilet: priceless!

Addition 5/22/12:

What's up with the meaningless use of pinyin? As an example, I saw a road/traffic working with a sign on his back saying 交通 -- with "jiao tong" written on the back. How can that ever be helpful?

Addition 6/16/12:

A much smaller percent of the people smoked than I remember. I remember last trip it seemed like freeking EVERYONE smoked. This trip, very few people smoked. On the downside, those that smoked did so freeking EVERYWHERE: hotel lobbies, next to non-smoking signs, even in elevators! And in bathrooms -- it seems a common way to smoke in non-smoking buildings (hotels, airports) is to go into a bathroom stall, lock the door, and puff away.

Why does both characters in the word "沙漠" have the"水" radical?

Quiz for the day: decompose 齋 into its radical and non-radical components.

Hint: The non-radical part is

. Can you even find that in 齋? I couldn't.

Answer:

Did you even know that was a radical? I didn't.

Part 2 in my series of "why not all words in Chinese are obvious once you know the meaning of each individual character."

Let's look a various words with the character 獵. [All taken from MDBG]

• 獵人 -- person who hunts
• 獵犬 -- dog which hunts
• 獵豹 -- cheetah (lit. leopard/panther which hunts)
• 獵鷹 -- falcon
• 獵槍 -- gun used in hunting

All pretty easy. 獵 means hunting, second characters says what object is doing the hunting.

Now let's look at 獵物 . 獵 again means hunting, 物 means "thing", or might mean animal (from 動物 ). So 獵物 is an animal that hunts, right?

WRONG.

It's an animal that is hunted.

One might argue that 獵物 still makes sense, 獵 means things related to hunting, and 物 means object. And I would not disagree. But my point is that you can not guess from just looking at 獵物 whether the meaning is things that hunt versus things are are hunted. Which is a pretty big difference.

Reminds me of the joke: If olive oil is made by pressing olives, how is baby oil made?

That surprised me. I would have looked at the metal/gold radical (金) in 鈔 and would have assumed it meant coins.

For a while I was rather despondent about ever learning the correct pronunciation for characters with multiple pronunciations. Recently, however, it's seemed much easier. Between focusing more on words rather than characters, and getting better at reading entire sentences so I understand the meaning, I can see that with some amount of further practice it won't require conscious thought to determine which reading to use.

This one, however, threw me. Since this refers to a person ("to be good at / to be expert in "), I assumed that 長 would be pronounced as zhǎng​ (as in 校長 , 董事長 , 處長 , etc).

Nope, it's cháng​.

At first I assumed it was an error on MDBG. But no, TW MOE, zdic.net, and nciku all agree.

Weird.

All these years I always thought "typhoon" was written 太風 -- lit. "great wind". And now, 20 years later, I finally learn it's 颱風 (or 台風).

I still prefer my version.

匪 and 罪 are the latest pair of characters I'm unable to keep separate. Anyone care to help me out and come up with a mnemonic to help me remember which one has which meaning and pronunciation?

Just came across 奓. This struck me as weird, as it has the same meaning as, and seems to be a combination of, 奢侈.

Digging a bit deeper, it doesn't appear in the TW MOE dictionary.

Digging even a bit deeper, this dictionary says that 奓 has three meanings:

1. 奓, pronounced as shē, means the same as 奢 (which is also pronounced shē)
2. 奓, pronounced as chǐ, means the same as 侈(which is also pronounced chǐ)\
3. 奓, pronounced as zhà , means "to open"

[Also, that dictionary lists 奓 as '古同“奢”', while it lists 奓 as '古通“侈”'. Why the 同 vs 通? Is that a type-o?]

I'm starting to think that Chinese do this on purpose, just because Chinese isn't hard enough to learn on its own.....

灬 is the fire radical, 火, when on the bottom. See, four dots in 灬, four strokes in 火. Not very hard.

I was trying to describe a character to someone, and tried to say it had the fire radical on the bottom, so I said "下面有火". He looked confused, so I wrote it for him, and then he laughed and said that they call it "四點水"!

So why, when describing it, do they call it "four dot water"? Would calling it 四点火 really be that hard?

Totally unrelated to learning Chinese, but perhaps related to China.....

I like drinking tea at work (cuts down on coffee and diet pepsi.....). I don't like tea bags: even the "good quality" ones (e.g. Peet's, Ten Ren) pale in quality to a decent loose leaf. But loose leaf teas are a pain to use at work, too hard to clean a teapot w/o a sink.

Enter the solution: ingenuiTEA.

It actually works amazingly well, and when done just open the top, wait a day for the leaves to dry (optional), and dump them out with a single shake of the wrist.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled topics.

I'm sure we've all had this happen to us: you see a character "for the first time ever!" -- and you know it must be very obscure, because you've never seen it before. Then you see it again soon.

Just happened to me with 扣. Saw it on an airplane (context was something like "请坐后扣好安全带"), and I was surprised that I've never seen as simple a character as 扣 before. Five minutes later, saw it on a headline on a paper someone was reading (something about US-China discussions, being 扣解, IIRC).

Another confusing simplification.

寧 starts out bad, with two different pronunciations, nìng​ (rather / to prefer) and

níng​ (peaceful), with the latter more common in place names.

The simplified form of 寧 is 宁. Not too bad, just drop a couple of strokes, and the new part (丁) doesn't sound that different from 宁 (dīng vs nìng/níng​), so you got that phonetic help going for you.

Weirdly enough, 宁 is also a traditional character, although I think very rare, pronounced zhù​. For whatever reason, according to MDBG, the simplified form is 㝉! As if 丁 isn't simple enough.....

And to round out the fun, there appears to be another character 甯, also pronounced níng​ and meaning peaceful, with the simplified form of 宁. I assumed 甯 was some obscure variant of 寧, but it actually gets over 15 million hits on google.....

I had a need to look up "鯛", yet another character I had never seen before. [Due to reading Yotsuba, if you must know.]

MDBG defines it as "porgy / pagrus major".

I have no idea what a "porgy" is. I assume it's a type of fish, but I knew that before I looked it up.

Fortunately, MDBG has this cool feature where you can click on a word in the definition, and it brings you to a dictionary.

There it is defined as "a sparid food fish, Pagrus pagrus, found in the Mediterranean and off the Atlantic coasts of Europe and America."

I have no idea what a sparid is. I still assume it is a type of fish, but I have yet to learn anything new.

Clicking on "sparid" there tells me that it is "any of numerous fishes of the family Sparidae, chiefly inhabiting tropical and subtropical seas, comprising the porgies, the scups, etc."

There's "porgy" again. But what is a scup? Yes yes, I know, it's a type of fish.

Clicking on "scups" brings me to "a sparid food fish, Stenotomus chrysops, found along the Atlantic coast of the U.S., having a compressed body and high back."

I give up.

蒙 is second tone (méng​) in the common meaning of "to cover / ignorant / to suffer (misfortune) / to receive (a favor) / to cheat"

蒙 is third tone (měng​​) in the also common meaning of related to Mongolia / Mongol ethnic group.

That much I can handle.

The second meaning of 蒙 is also pronounced as second tone (méng​) in Taiwan, same as the first meaning. I like Taiwan's way more, having only one pronunciation, but since the mainland doesn't do that, I need to remember both.

蒙 as second tone (méng​) is the one used for surnames.

Still OK. Now things get even more complicated

蒙 is also the simplified form of 濛, which means "drizzle / mist". Fortunately, it is also pronounced as second tone (méng​).

蒙 is also the simplified form of 矇. 矇 itself also has two pronunciations, second tone (méng​) meaning "blind / dim sighted", and first tone (yes!) (mēng​) meaning "to deceive / to cheat / to hoodwink / to make a wild guess". From what I can tell (corrections anyone?), for this character the first tone (mēng​) is the more common one, and the second tone (méng​) is seen only/mostly in the word 矇矓. And as a surname.

Ouch, my head hurts.

MDBG also lists a first tone (mēng​) meaning for 蒙, meaning "(knocked) unconscious", but I don't see any words that use it, so I have to conclude it is obscure or an error, and I will ignore it. [Taiwan MOE dictionary confirms this, and has only a single pronunciation for 蒙.]

Speaking of errors, MDBG also lists the pronunciation of 蒙嘉慧's surname as third tone (Měng​​), even though the other entries only list a second tone pronunciation as a surname. Error? Or exception? How does one find out how people pronounce their name?

Phew.

For some reason, two months ago my brain suddenly refused to distinguish between 都 and 部. I guess they do look somewhat similar -- city/area radical on the right, and left is some lines on top with a box-ish thing in the bottom. But I never had issues with them before.

I think it started when I realized that 都 has an alternative meaning and pronunciation than the one we are all taught in first-year Chinese. Upon learning that, so much more made sense. Now I know why Kyoto is written "京都"; "capital all" makes no sense at all. I should have realized it earlier as well with 成都, but it never clicked.

But now that I know that, with how close the pronunciations are (du1 vs bu4), my brain decided they are too close to distinguish.

Came across a new-to-me name for a toilet during last month's trip: 盥洗室 I don't recall ever seeing that name before, but it's quite possible I have seen it many times and just didn't know what it was.

How common is 盥洗室? Be honest, feel free to tell me that it's everywhere and I'm just an idiot.