Tag Archives: Chinese

10Jan / 2010

Jack of all trades, master of none

You’ve probably all heard the saying “Jack of all trades, master of none” before, but if not, you probably have a good idea what it means. However, the following equivalent sayings in Chinese might require a little thought.

  • Mandarin (Simplified):
    门门懂,样样瘟
    mén méndǒng ,yàngyàng wēn
    All trades known, all trades dull
  • Mandarin (Traditional):
    樣樣通,樣樣鬆
    yàngyàng tōng ,yàngyàng sōng
    All trades known, all trades dull
  • Shanghainese (Simplified):
    三脚猫
    sān jiǎo māo
    A cat with only 3 legs
  • Shanghainese (Simplified):
    万宝全书缺只角
    yīwàn bǎo quánshū quē zhǐ jiǎo
    An encyclopedia with one corner missing
  • Cantonese:
    周身刀,無張利
    zhōu shēndāo ,wú zhāng lì
    Surrounded by knives, none are sharp

I take my hat off to anyone who can explain the cat with three legs. The full article can be found on Wikipedia: Jack of all trades, master of none

Credit to @alicialiu for finding these equivalent sayings.

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16Oct / 2009

Home is where…?

I came across this quote by Stuart, a British Born Chinese (BBC) in Race and ethnicity: culture, identity and representation By Steve Spencer. It reminded me of the saying, “Home is where the heart is.”

I was born in England in Leicester, spent most of my life
in the UK, went over to HK when I was about seven for a year so I
adapted to the culture then, but most of my life I’ve been in the UK.
But I feel that – even though I’ve only lived in HK for a year, in my
heart I still feel Chinese. I have friends in HK who are totally
Chinese, when they come to England they want to be English – even
though their experience of life is Chinese – they want to be English,
wheres me I’m opposite: I’m totally English behaviour and in my heart
it’s very Chinese.

This got me wondering, Is the heart always where the home is? Thanks to @alicialiu for the quote.

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13Oct / 2009

Google Wave for Language Study

The second wave batch of Google Wave invites was released today and I was lucky enough to receive an invite. Along with many others who have received Wave invites so far, I’ve found it difficult to evaluate or even comprehend the possibilities that Wave offers because my contacts list is currently empty. To solve this problem Google have given me 8 Wave invites to hand out.

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11Oct / 2009

Discovering Mandarin

In my first ever guest post I attempt to recall how it was that I found myself learning Chinese.

I cannot remember the moment I decided to learn Chinese. It was not one of those decisive moments where I said to myself that I was going to learn a new language, it just kind of happened.

I managed to leave school (and university) in stereotypical British fashion, speaking only one language, English. Despite dabbling in Latin, Sanskrit, and to a greater extent Classical Greek, I wouldn’t consider myself a linguist by any means. I tried French a couple of times but spent more time outside the classroom than in and consequently never made much progress. So why Chinese?

You can find my post in full, along with some other great content for Mandarin learners over on Discovering Mandarin.

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21Sep / 2009

Labelling the House

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Something I should have done a long time ago is to label everything in our flat in Chinese. Alicia was out quite a bit over the weekend and so I took the opportunity to run around the flat labelling everything in Chinese. She came back last night and just laughed: “You forgot 镜子 [jìngzi], mirror.”

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