classic chinese/cutural references still used/ other curiosities of 汉语
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Kimosabe -
Do you have any good examples of remains of classical chinese or other pop-cultural references
used in modern chinese?Or just weird things? Id like to expand my vocabulary with words that may
sound weird but can be used jokingly, or that display an aspect of chinese culture. I know, this
sounds confusing so I'll come with some examples:
1: self deprecating first person pronouns. (instead of using 我)
在下， 不才, dialect words for 我，like 俺
Extremly polite stuff like 何足挂齿 (hardly worth mentioning) or another saying wich is
"showing your incompetance" always made my teacher laugh when I did a mistake. Good thing to know:P
2. historical references
西施 famous beauty in chinese history, great line to pick up girls
伏羲 famous genious
3. dialect words that would be known to most of chinese, stereotypes, etc
beijings, northchinas 哥们儿！apperantly people from song are the sterotypical stupid person
in china? like polish jokes in the west. any chinese feel free to correct me.
weird canton characters like mao3 that means 没有
4. popculture references like 吃人社会， eat people society from luxuns madman diary.
望梅止渴 hoping peaches stop the thirst, wane hope for something that won't happen. Cao Cao
used this to motivate his troops, reference to romance of three kingdoms
5. weird sayings, like dong zhuo from romance of three kingdoms, saying
顺我者昌，逆我者亡 those who follow me will prosper, those who offend me will die. easy
to remeber is good.
6. Chengyus with long explanations and useless meanings; 满门抄斩, pillage a house and kill
all it's inhabitants.
Think of all the funny and weird stuff you have come across studying chinese and post it here!
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tooironic -
Oh yes I think we're kinda similiar, as I also like to collect 'weird' Chinese sayings,
references, etc.
My favourites:
PK就PK - "Player Killing" is nothing - really hard to translate!
我是看蹭票的 - I never buy a ticket - used to let someone know that you always get into
concerts, plays, etc for free
八成是不行了 - It doesn't look good - literally "the [bad] result is at least eighty percent
assured"
墙里开花墙外香 - The blooming flower within the wall exudes its fragrance beyond - it
refers to the phenomenon that if something is too close to you, you cannot fully appreciate or
understand it
吃什么醋啊 - Why are you so jealous? - love how they envisage that jealousy is like eating
vinegar (醋) :P
破财免灾 or 折财人安 - A loss of wealth is a gain of health
郁闷 - means "sulk!" as an exclamation, again, hard to translate into English...
I got some of those from the book Popular Chinese Expressions, Latest Edition published by
Sinolingua. It's a really fascinating book on Chinese colloqualisms, and although it has some
translation errors (though most Chinese texts do), it's a really good read.
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