Chinese words with no English equivalent

[Guest Anonymous]

I think an example of Chinese without any equivalent should be the family terms' date=' which sometimes I think quite a trouble.

Uncle, Aunts, Cousin, Grandpa/ma, etc...

I have an uncle in Belgium who is actually "the fifth brother of my father", in Chinese, he's my "wu shushu" only.[/quote']

The specific titles for family members reflects how important family is in the Chinese society. Different society places importance on different aspects of life. If you ever notice the translation of the Chinese zodiac, "ji" can be chicken, cock, rooster, or hen; "yang" can be sheep, ram or goat; "shu" can be rat or mouse... etc.

[Guest si_ze_sen]

All of you are so advanced that you have forgotten the basics.

Many of the most commonly used words do not *really* have a ONE-TO-ONE relationship.

我 = I or Me in English, because our grammer is different.

他 when spoken can mean he she or it, only the character is a little clearer.

了 = "participle indicating completed action" (yeah, no duh!)

I had a character tutoring program that claimed the most commonly used chinese character is:

的

But simply translating it into "of" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of this word, as in it's various uses English never uses "of" for.

My point is, after a while ( for me alittle more than a year) of learning a language, you really start to get comfortable with the logic inherent in it. You begin to take for granted the hundreds of subtle differences that amount to what I consider the language's built in "perspective".

You have to, or you never become comfortable enough to actually think, listen and speak a second language.

[smithsgj]

> But simply translating it into "of" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of this word

It means something like the opposite of "of", doesn't it? Like: 's

Except with measure words:

san nian de zhongwen

xiao bei de na tie (latte)

Now why on earth would that be???

[Guest Anonymous]

The names for relatives in Chinese have me all confused, such as:

A-yee, A-so, A-kum, A-sook.

And to top it off, they give numbers to all of them to denote birth order... Yee-sook, Mm-sook, Chut-sook.

I could never get it right. :?

[pazu]

Homsuplo (or Ham Sup Lo?? haha), it was indeed very difficult for me to call my uncle/aunt's names, I don't mean it's forbidden in my culture, but it's just a bit difficult to recall their names sometimes, haha. Probably it's just a matter of time to get used to the custom.

Anyway, I have an uncle in Belgium who's my father's youngest brother (the fifth in rank, my father's eldest). We mistakenly called him "四叔" (fourth uncle) for a few years because he didn't know much about the rule of Chinese relative signs, he just thought he was the fourth son after my dad's birth. THen until one day we found out that he's indeed the fifth uncle. So we just twisted our pronunciation a little bit to "細叔" (youngest uncle) for him.

[ax]

孝順也很難翻‧

ax

[skylee]

filial piety/love??

[Quest]

pazu you missed the "action" with hahm sup lo a couple days ago. he's now banned.

[roddy]

He's not banned. I don't ban people. I simply deactivate them. All deactivated accounts can be activated again, if the owner requests it, and I think it's a good idea.

Roddy

[Quest]

ok

[smithsgj]

I thought it was a jokey thing he'd put in his signature line. What happened, anything exciting?

[pazu]

Quest, what did I miss? ;) Did he hamsup Roddy?

[Quest]

He was hamsup'ing the whole forum. He even had this hahmsup avatar of him touching a girl's bottom.

[confucius]

Let's get back to the original topic.

What is the English equivalent of "hom sup"?

[pazu]

hamsup means something salty, sour and moisty in Chinese, so it means any kind of snacks that a pregnant woman wants to eat during pregnancy.

鹹濕 (Ham Sup in Cantonese).

e.g. 口淡淡, 我想食o的鹹濕野! (in Cantonese without tones: Hou Taam Taam, Ngo Seung Sik "D" Ham Sup Ye!"

(Lit. Translation: Mouth tasteless, I want to eat something HAM SUP.)

And let Quest to tell you more about Ham Sup please.

[confucius]

"Salty, sour, and moisty"

Hmmm, sounds like something I might want to eat before she gets pregnant.

我想食D鹹濕野!

I imagine a sequel to "Cat in The Hat" starring Austin Powers:

Cat in the Hat II, Green Eggs and Ham Sup

Hamina hamina!

(Awkward.)

[kentajidaxiao]

Behold the powers of google-inspired thread resurrection!

• Wix,
  the translation I was taught for huanying guanglin was the hilarious "we welcome your radiant presence." Assuming the glowing refers to the door and not the Buddha-like presence of the customer, it's a little less funny but the intended semantic content could still be translated "welcome"* or "thank you for choosing Mega-Lo-Mart" (or whatever company), although this later is usually used as one is leaving the store.
  (* but not "We welcome you to arrive," jennychen )
  Also, Tsunku is right: man zou ("walk slowly") can be completely translated as "take it easy." Additionally, it's pretty common for Anglophones to say "be careful," "be safe," or "drive safely" as people are leaving to wish them a safe trip home. If you want someone to take their time and not leave just yet, you can always say "take your time."
  English uses the words "linked" or "bound (by fate)," but I guess I don't know enough about exactly what yuanfen is supposed to cover to figure out if those are adequate. A loanword from Spanish, simpatico, is used for two people who simply understand each other beyond words (like this: "He and I are simpatico. We can finish..." "...each other's sentences.").
  
• Roddy,
  I've always been curious: what do Sinophones call twin sisters or brothers? or do they label them by whichever was extracted first?
  Pazi's right - Chinese family words carry a lot of specifications that English ones just don't, and there are different cultural connotations.
  Chinese words for "brother" and "sister" have been altered since the One Child policy (if not before) from their English equivalents - it's very rare for an Anglophone to call his cousin his "brother" or "sister" (though he might say, eg, "he's like a brother to me") whereas it seems very common for people here in Shanghai to label their cousins just so.
  "Uncle" and "aunt" are used similarly - older "friends-of-the-family" are introduced as "Uncle Bob" or "Ayi An Le" to little children; - but ayi is also used here for "maids" or "cleaning ladies," who wouldn't qualify as an "aunt" for most Anglophones. Similarly young ladies, waitresses and (!) prostitutes both qualify as xiao jiejie (whatever that's supposed to mean), whereas Anglos would be loathe to include them into the family quite so readily.
  
• Choudofu,
  Yeah, ni chi fan le ma? (esp. since you're using "rice" to mean "meal") is just one of those idioms like "what's up?" unless it's being used literally to mean "are you hungry?" or "have you eaten?"*
  (* but not "have you eaten a meal?" jennychen, since that's nonsensical in English - the answer, assuming you didn't starve following childbirth, is "Yes.")
  Jennychen's right, though, mianxi is understood by the term "face" as a noun (sometimes capitalized "Face" to emphasize the use.) It's the idea and not the word that's been carried over though; Amrdiab is totally incorrect - "mien" is from middle English and old French and means something totally different; in fact, it cannot mean mianxi, even though mien's a partial synonym for the straight-forward definition of "face."
  
• Tsunku,
  for wan, is the idea of "fun" not enough? Adults say they're going to "go have some fun" (although what they mean by it is usually not the same thing -hopefully - that children usually mean when they say it ).
  
• Kangkai,
  Does "whining" not cover 嗲声嗲气?
  
• Si Ze Sen,
  Yeah, 的 has to be translated dozens of different ways depending on the context since it doesn't only indicate possession ("of" or "'s") but also functions to turn nouns into adjectives of relation, etc.
  You're right to upbraid people for beginning to point out that Chinese doesn't map one-for-one directly over English since the languages developed totally differently, but I still think a thread like this could be useful for showing some Chinese words or phrases that simply do not have any adequate translation in English.
  As an example, in Czech there is one word, litost, which means "the feeling of wanting to make a bad occassion worse since it can't be better." In German and now (by loanword) English, shadenfreude means "taking pleasure in another's misery." Nearly everyone alive has experienced these at one time or another, but there is simply no word for the ideas in many languages. I came across this thread looking for some from Chinese versions of those kind of words - things that are simply expressed better or more clearly in Chinese than any other language - and unfortunately, what seem like the best examples (renao, yuanfen, zenmeyang, jiaotong, guanxi (which heretofore I'd thought meant "congratulations"), qizhi, & suibian) are left almost totally unexplained and without examples or context. One of the few examples consisted of "if you're going to the shou4piao4chu4 and you know the shoupiaochuren" - which is pretty much useless for establishing context for an Anglophone.

If anyone is still reading these forums and could help, I'd appreciate it.

j.

[zhxlier]

天，as in “民以食为天”；

饭、菜；

主食、副食；

节气、除了春分秋分夏至冬至之外的所有节气名；

上火、着凉；

（形容食物的）寒、热、发（非指温度）；

[semantic nuance]

two phrases come to me: 1. 老師, 您辛苦了! 2. 默契

[Qiuyue]

What about shifu, shifu 师傅? I know it can be translated as "master" in english, but who says master to the taxidriver? And "mr", well there is actually another word for that:

The translation should be like something in between: a man who has the skills.