Chinese lesson 1.2

A couple posts ago, I started with a fave word to teach you just a little Chinese. We will pick up with another favorite and very useful word. 麻烦 pinyin: máfan (this one is somewhat easy to pronounce: maa-fahn, not really fan. Think more nasal). The meaning:

1. Troublesome, inconvenient; To trouble, or bother somebody. e.g. "Because of all the construction, that road is really a bother to drive on." But this is one that even though I say that sentence, I am not sure that you get the full meaning of  麻烦 . For example, think of something that is such a pain to do that it is virtually impossible. And then you are getting close to the meaning. Because sometimes things in China are just difficult to get done (for various reasons), and nothing else describes it like this word. In fact, we don't even say this in English anymore. We will be talking along and drop this word in the midst of an English sentence. Chinese do this as well. One of the engineers at the company was talking to Andy about fixing a machine. He said that, "It would be broken for a couple more days and then they were going to have to build the part and it was going to . . . " (and here he paused, trying to think of a good way to describe it) . . . and finally he summed it up with: "it is going to be 麻烦 ."

2. Excuse me (with the intent of asking a question), . . . Because much like in English if we are going to ask a question of a stranger, we don't usually just walk up and jump in. Usually we say something like: "Excuse me, where is the  . . . ?" Similarly, in Chinese you would say: "麻烦 您, . . ." which literally means: "Can I bother you, . . . ?"

I think next lesson, we will tackle the tones. You know, those funny marks over the vowels. That adds a whole new level of hard.

Chinese lesson 1.1

Now that I have been studying Chinese for a while, I feel it is my duty to share this knowledge with you all. Don't worry, I will go slow. Actually, I just want to teach some of our favorite words and phrases. Most of these are now so part of our lingo that even when we are speaking English sometimes we use one of these because it just says it so perfectly. So let the lessons commence.

But first, I feel like I need to give you a little background. Each Chinese character has a reading (the way you pronounce it) and meaning. Put various combinations of the 1000s of characters together and you form words. But unlike English, each character is usually a word on its own. But when combined with another character(s), it forms more complex words. Are you tracking with me so far? During the 1950s, someone came up with a way to transcribe these characters in order to teach. This pronunciation method is called pinyin. Nowadays, people also use pinyin to input Chinese into computers and when sending texts. But where it gets complicated is that while pinyin uses the English alphabet, most of the letters are not pronounced the same way. Are you still with me? 

Because it would be too complicated to teach you how to say each thing in pinyin, I will show you the character and the pinyin, but then in parenthesis I will write it out phonetically the way it sounds. Okay, we have all of that out of the way. Oh, wait. I forgot about the tones. Hmm, maybe we will leave that for another day. Just know that the marks above the letters mean something and we will get there.

One of our favorite and a very useful phrase/word is: 差不多 pinyin: chàbuduō (cha-boo-dwoe). The meaning:

1. Similar or about the same. e.g. You and I are about the same height. 差不多

2. Approximately or just about. This is my favorite usage. For example: Is the part for the machine the right size? 差不多. 

Do you know the way to go (when asking a taxi driver)? 差不多. Ah, the uses are endless.

Alright, that is the lesson for the day. Astound your friends and neighbors with your knowledge. Or at least, impress us when we come back this summer.