One possible explanation might be that in ancient china (possibly Tang Dynasty), governments restrict what you can sell, when you can sell and where you can sell. Merchants are only allowed to sell certain things at certain location. For example, you might have to go to the east market to buy food and the west market to buy cooking utensils. And it is very troublesome to say that “ I have to get this and that from the east and west market” every single time you have to go shopping. So it was shorten to “ I have to buy east west “ 我去买东西
As a native Chinese speaker, it's somehow really fun to watch those video targeting the people who wanted to learn Chinese. And surprisingly sometimes I actually learn something new from those videos
same here! it’s hard for us native speakers to explain all these because we grew up with the language so to us, it is what it is. i like watching these videos gain new insights
对不起 is very interesting bc "verb + 不起" means "can not afford doing smt". like 买不起 means "cant afford buying" so 对不起 literally translates to "cant afford treating", which means "I'm sorry (for not being able to afford treating you well)"
I don't think this is accurate. 不起 by itself does not have anything to do with affording something in a monetary sense. It is closer to meaning 'not activating' or 'not moving'. So 买不起 means buy, not activating, ie cannot afford to buy. 烧不起 means burn, not activating, ie something is not flammable or cannot be burnt. 聚不起 means gather, not activating, ie cannot gather like in I cannot gather my thoughts / am distracted. 对 here means to face, eg, to speak to someone face-to-face. So 对不起 means to face, not activating, ie I cannot face you because I am too embarrassed / I have done you wrong, ie (implying) I am sorry.
@@MrFutarchy also there are two interpretations for 烧不起. one is that u can say 纸烧不起来, meaning the paper can't ignite. if u say 我烧不起纸 it means "i cant afford burning paper"
Seems peoples didn't accept the idea of Tai-Yin(太阴) but accepted Tai-Yang(太阳). So we call sun in its formal name Tai-yin, but still use imformal name Yue-Liang(月亮) to say moon
Love this! I have been studying Chinese now for a few years, just as a hobby really because I love language in general, and it is so fascinating. I keep finding new layers and ways of studying. I started with a simple app like Duolingo and now I’m getting into reading and recently writing which adds more pieces of the puzzle. My most recent addition is singing children’s songs. So much fun! All on my “hand machine!” 😂😂😂
@@ABChinese According to Wiktionary, both 垃 and 圾 mean “clod” (as in a lump of earth or clay). 坷垃 also means clod. Also, the 2-syllable word thing is mostly just in Mandarin; most other Chinese dialects have more syllables/tones than Mandarin does, making it easier to distinguish between 1-syllable words.
translate for the top comment: It's great! I think this is the thing that every middle-grade Chinese learner need to know. If they can understand it perfectly, their Chinese will be better. This kind of word building method can let this old language keep its properties and let it go on without the problem of time.
I really like the analogy of words as the ingredients. I think the changeble and interrelatable nature of the chinese language is what makes it so interesting to learn. I feel that this makes the language somewhat poetic in nature. Thanks for sharing this knowledge 老师!
Thank you! I started learning Chinese myself just for fun because I really the language, but I took a long break. 🤦♀️ I want to start back again and I find this channel extremely helpful. Please make more of these helpful grammar videos in the future :)
It's funny but Japanese has a lot of 2 character (and longer) Chinese-derived words that seem to be slowly falling out of fashion in favour of multisyllabic words from English. A good example is the names of most gemstones. Diamonds, emerald, and sapphire are usually called ダイヤモンド、エメラルド、and サファイア (daiyamondo, emerarudo, safaia). Years ago the traditional names were still used: 金剛石、翠玉 and 青玉 (kongoseki, suigyoku, seigyoku). I think part of the reason is that the English words being longer sound more distinctive whereas in Sino-Japanese there are dozens of characters all with the same pronunciations which must get confusing for the Japanese. (It certainly confuses me!)
I noticed the same by learning Japanese. Two-kanji compounds are almost all read in the Sino-Japajese reading and most of them are Chinese loanwords. Three kanji compounds are mostly those words plus an affix, or four kanj compounds are two of them stuck together. As a result using the Sino-Japajese reading is the default assumption when seeing words of two Kanji or more. However, because verbs and adjectives usually are either mixed kanji/kana or full kana, this is mostly exclusive to nouns and other noun-like words there (which can still act as verbs and adjectives, but form classes of their own). Derivative words are rarer but still work the same, like the "reader" example as 読者 (doku-sha).
The rise of disyllabic words in Mandarin mostly has to do with phoneme collapse in Middle Chinese. Many, many phonemic contrasts were lost on the transition to Mandarin, making many monosyllabic words now have many homophones. For example, the word for friend "Yu" 友, had no homophones in Middle Chinese, but by the Old Mandarin period, sound changes caused it to become homophonous with around 8 other words. To clear up the ambiguity, a reinforcement term was added. Homophones were disambiguated by adding an extra syllable word. In this case a word with a similar meaning "朋" was added. Therefore the modern Chinese word "朋友", literally means "friend-friend".
Yes, that would be correct. Southern dialects such as Cantonese and hokkien, to a certain extent, preserve the middle Chinese structure of tones, which include the upper and lower yin and yang registers as well as the level, rising, departing, and entering types of tones. Consequently, those dialects do not have as many two-syllable words as Mandarin does. They use more one-syllable words because they have more phonemes to work with because there are more tones available (8-9 in Hokkien and Cantonese dialects as opposed to four in Mandarin) to distinguish meanings in those dialects.
Also because of the adoption of Wasei Kango, that is, vocabulary created by the Japanese using Chinese characters. Lots of wasei kango that the Chinese adopted are two-character words.
@@reonarimPolitics is the driving force for people to say such nonsense, same with how Taiwanese deny the viability of Simplify Chinese and the pinyin system. Political stand points always wins over facts🫤.
Love the 幫助理解釋 graphic and your cooking analogy is just brilliant. Thought you’d be interested to know (indeed, likely you already do) the analogy used by Joseph Needham, the pioneering UK historian of Chinese science: "To the natural scientist approaching the study of Chinese, a helpful analogy is possible with chemical molecules and atoms-the characters may be considered roughly as so many molecules composed of the various permutations and combinations of a set of 214 atoms". I think your cooking analogy may be even better though, because more causal and fluid
It is really important that you point out how language learners should perceive the way in which Chinese words are formed. It's not for the purpose to deduce the meaning of a word from the meaning of its component characters because no matter how many times you may succeed at deducing the right meaning of a word, you would definitely encounter equal, if not more, failures. There are just too many factors to be considered and Chinese native speakers themselves won't be aware of most of them. Those failures will significantly impact the passion of learners. (You will have a ton of questions like 'why can't it be this way?' with no answers. Cause even the Chinese don't know.) So, as described in the video, I don't recommend guessing the meaning of a word by its components. However, on the contrary, you should learn the right meaning of a word first, and then you may check on the meaning of its components to get a deeper understanding of the nuance of that word, which is really helpful for learners to shape their overall concept of the Chinese language.
Started last September taking a Chinese course as I love the language and culture. Really interesting video and thanks for adding Jin in there as well😄
Dude. You're epic! I've had a few teachers in the past who have told me not to think about etymology and just to memorize. But as my Chinese has progressed and I've come into contact with increasingly more words, shear memorization has become very difficult. I've found it much more useful to get the flavor of individual characters in order to understand more complicated words. Thanks for presenting this approach in such clear and succinct way. Excellent video!!
OMG! Are there still teachers out there asking students to memorize things? This is the 21st century, the century of AI - artificial intelligence. And even it doesn’t memorize too much. Yes, you’re right to try other ways. Any other way is better than memorization - unless of course the goal is to exercise your memory, which acan also be a good thing! Goodonya mate!
6:25 Just my opinion but in "楼上", I'd say 楼 is the modifier, just as in the English "top of the building", technically, the main concept is "top" and "building" acts as a modifier, a specifier. You can remove "building" and it's still the same concept, just less precise (top of what?) whereas if you remove top and keep building, you end up with a completely different concept (and the question becomes, what kind of building?). That being said, I was under the impression that 楼 could also hold the meaning of "floor" (as in 1st floor, 2nd floor, etc), if only in specific compounds, in which case, then, one could argue that "floor" is the main concept in "upper floor", and "up/upper" is the modifier. But if 楼 is taken to mean "building", I think my argument above stands.
You know, I learn a lot about Japanese, and why Japanese people do things the way they do from these videos because the written language(and most of the culture) comes from (Middle) Chinese. Like, the vast majority of people in Japan have two names composed of two characters, which I think is related to the last video. Some Chinese people have the family name 井, but Japanese people usually have a name like 石井 that mean the same thing, but just more clear. A lot of Chinese people have one character for their given name, like 美, but Japanese people usually have two, like 美子 or 美勝. I think it's so neat how connected they are, both as a language and as a culture.
When you have already learned 1500 characters then it doesn’t make a difference if you have to learn a total of 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000. Or is all the same, because you already know the components.
While 目 means 眼 or 眼睛 (eye), 日 means 阳 or 太阳 (sun), 月 means 月亮 (moon), it becomes very interesting when you compound a word. For example, when compounding with 光 "light": We say 日光 and 阳光 and 太阳光, which means sunlight. We say 月光, which is moonlight, but we're definitely not going to say 月亮光. 目光, 眼光 and 眼睛光 mean differently. 目光 means the light of eyes; vision; view. 眼光 means "eye" (for fashion etc.). 眼睛光 is not a common word, and it might just appear when you refer to the light of the eye in computer photo editing etc.
2-syllable words are also prevalent in Cantonese. Its recently coined word "升呢” (rise level) is a typical one. Cantonese likes to combine Chinese & English words to make a new one. This "rise level" is made up of "升，sing” & the English “level”， but Cantonese thinks it's 3 syllables & cut it to 2 syllables, take the "le" of level. So creative & intelligent !!!
Your example is actually an irrelevant one and instead, Cantonese has preserved many single syllable word. First let's talk about the word 升呢, this word obviously is a slang originated in Hong Kong, so grammar rules do not neccesarily apply as in English, not even mention the word 升呢 already contains verb and object and technically isn't a word anymore. Kindly note it is not Cantonese who love to combine chinese and english, but Hongkongers. The Cantonese itself and Guangdong people rarely do this without the influence from Hong Kong. Second, prevalence of 2-syllable word clearly isn't the case in Cantonese. There are too many single syllable words from different parts of speech here, 企, 瞓, 屋, 床, 靚, 醜, etc. Most of the '2-syllable word' you see actually has a V-O within and can form a sentence itself in some cases. Appreciate that you have interest in the language, and hope this helps you understand more about it.
There is a major influence from JAPAN that resulted in a whole lot of 2 syllable words in today's Chinese. As result, people develop the habit of using 2 syllable words, even though some words function just fine as 1 syllable. Words such as 製造、革命、制度、議會、民主、自由 ... etc falls into such catagory. When Japan opened up to western world (way before China did), they translated countless books and found there were too many vocabs that does not exist in their kanji (漢字). As result, they created lots of those vocabularies through their own interpretation. These concept/vocabs were brought back into China through the students/scholars who studied in Japan, and they just become everyday Chinese vocab like nothing happened.
That's bullshit. That's an urban legend that I'm going to put a stop to it once and for all. 製造= manufacture = chế tạo (Vietnamese) I'm Vietnamese. That word is Chinese because it is in Vietnamese. Vietnamese is Chinese. It came from China.
A fun fact is that some of these words already exist in old Chinese texts prior to the translation. Existing Chinese words/term were picked by the Japanese scholars, for the modern idea, extending their original meanings. For example, the word "革命" is from I Ching or Yi Jing - "湯武革命，順乎天而應乎人". It says how the Tang of Shang and King Wu of Zhou's action, ending their previous overlords' rule and founding new dynasties, follows the mandate of heaven and people's heart. Its original meaning is more like "the change of mandate of heaven". If rulers became decadent and corrupted, a "革命" will overthrow them and new order will be established. I would say it's quite close to its modern meaning. I guess it's how good these tranlsations are, so people back then didn't feel like the new words were foreign?
the reduplication seems allot like how, in english, repeating a word intensifies it. Like, if I said to someone "gogo!" that would mean I want them to move very quickly as opposed to just moving(with added repetition intensifying further), or if I wanted to tell someone that I get what they're saying I might say "yeah-yeah" instead of just "yeah".
Amazing video, man. I like it a lot! Mandarin Chinese is indeed a fascinating language, I'm really enjoying learning it. Now, about 公共汽车, I like to think of it as a two two-syllable words that describes just one thing, like "public car", right? So for me it doesn't count as a "four characters word", hahaha ^^
@@ABChinese hey, can I ask you a quetion? When you make the ji/qi/xi sounds, do you place the tip of your tongue behind the bottom teeth or the gum under them? I mean, does that even make any difference for you?
@@ABChinese Infotainment = Information entertainment. Videos that teach stuff for the sake of fun, like Kurzgesagt, RealLifeLore and Oversimplified. I don't think you need to make it clear as people who are trying to learn Chinese will still watch the video for its purpose and it's a very popular genre so you attract people easily.
@@ABChinese That's a compound word, in English, infotainment informative and entertainment at the same time. Why don't you try to learn compound English words first. So you don't "ooo and awe" at Chinese compound words.
MANDARIN is obsessed with 2 syllable words due to the loss of tones and influence from Steppe languahes over the course of history. Other Chinese varieties such as Cantonese has several tones are more monosyllabilic as was Ancient Chinese.
Very useful thx bro, been learning Chinese since around December or January and was absolutely bad at pronunciations but you helped me so much and I'm very slowly become fluent 謝謝你！
Pronunciation is hard in any new language, Especially chinese. So don't worry if you can read or watch people talking and understand them, but can't speak yourself
I think it means "old" too! Like an "old friend" the "old" often doesn't refer to age, but length of acquaintance, which is why it implies endearment:) 老乡，老朋友，老外 等
@@ABChinese I searched it up and apparently "lao" can refer to anything/anyone that's old, not just someone who you are acquainted with--exactly like the English counterpart of "old". Calling your father "Lao ba" is similar to an English speaker calling their father "my old man."
i dont know if it is the same idea or not, but verbs in Chinese also tend to have 2 syllables, with their "objects" included. It's not always the case but, it's more common to say 吃饭，睡觉，走路，跑步 instead of just the verbs. Do you have any explanation on this?
@@kokolexx Well, it's not like words. It's more like a phrase. 吃means eat and 饭 means rice/food, so we use 吃饭 to say eat something. These are one-syllable words combined into one, so it's more like a phase
pfffffft 2 syllable words is such a mandarin thing. other dialects have tonnes of single syllable words. This is because mandarin has so few sound combinations and tones it is incredibly difficult to distinguish between just single syllable words.
All 2nd gen Momusu have different character names: Yasuda Kei(3 letters) Yasu-Ta-Kei Yaguchi Mari(4 letters) Ya-Kuchi-Ma-Ri Ichii Sayaka(5 letters) Ichi-Wi-Sa-Ya-Ka
That was a lot of information! Thanks! Do want to say太陽may not be a good example of modern compound word for 日。Also, it doesn't mean great sun! 太陽 is just another ancient alternative for 日。In ancient time, the sun 日 was also called 太（ultimate）陽（as the yang in ying/ yang)，as opposed to the moon 月 was also called 太(ultimate) 陰 ( as the ying in ying/yang)。
Early Chinese was indeed a Chinese character representing a thing. Later, there were more and more new things, especially many scientific and technological words were constantly updated. The past word formation was no longer applicable to the current era, unless new Chinese characters were constantly created. Therefore, combining Chinese characters into new words is cheaper, easier to accept and easier to learn than directly creating a new Chinese character.
U should explain one thing that every language (I'm Malaysian Chinese so... U understand) it's giving u a concept, picture, or idea. Translate directly from another language is not the best solution, u need to try to understand the culture. Best way is to watch their shows n talk to their ppl. Like 年轻，year + light "Light" is giving u a concept of low (kinda difficult to be understood by Westerners) like 短 is a idea of small, but in length；下 is a idea of low, but in hight. Same thing with 轻, 「low」in weight
Holy crap this is so true. I just realized how almost all Genshin Chinese names are 2 syllables: Liyue, Zhongli, Ningguang, Keqing, Ganyu, Xiangling, Xingxiu, Chongyun, Beidou Kinda different subject since they're names not words but I wonder if there's a correlation.
The only thing I know is that Xiangling's family name is Mao卯(because her father is Mao), so her full name should be Mao Xiangling 卯香菱. But Xiangling sounds more like a close friend I guess?
Thank you for the video. It’d be great if Chinese used in this video were in Traditional Chinese, even though China uses the recently-invented Simplified Chinese
@@zealop4728 I'm Vietnamese and is learning Chinese. I'll never use Simplified Characters. 1. Commie (Communism) 2. George Orwell 1984, read it. 3. They're ugly. My first exposure to Chinese is Chinese Chess. 車 = chariot That is a glyph of a chariot from an aerial view. 2 wheels, an axle, a box. What the fuck is this? 车
@@zealop4728 Things are valuable because they are rare, like rare metals. Traditional Characters will be more prestigious because they are rarer. Dummies like you are "a dime a dozen", as we say in America.
You can always find a bunch of single-syllable words sharing the same pronouncation. Conversations would be so much easier by using two-syllable words instead.
4:15 : There exsits a CJK character as reduplication symbol 「々」. In Japanese, 「正々堂々(せいせいどうどう)、人々(ひとびと)、日々(ひび)」contain reduplication symbol. However, Modern Mandarin Chinese does not use 「々」 leaving aside proper nouns.
Good question! I wouldn’t consider 4 character idioms as words, but rather, phrases. If you analyze them, you’ll find that most of the characters in idioms act independently.
I would like to see a video of the different spoken accents in china. Which accent sounds the best according to chinese people? :3 Love your channel and lovely greetings from Germany
I am a Hongkonger. I don't know which Chinese accent sounds the best but I can tell you which one sounds the worst - the news reporter / advertisement narrator accent. It's unnatural and too pretentious. No one speaks like that irl.
@@richardhartung1576 It's definitely a good way to learn Chinese as the pronunciation is absolutely correct. Yet you would sound like Google Translation speaking.
I like the standard reporting accent because it’s the clearest and easiest to understand. And no it doesn’t sound like a computer or google translate because it has proper inflection too.
interesting view！me Chinese notice it by your video！从我的角度来想的话，单个字的词表达出来的情感比较单一，两个单字组成的词更能表达对一个词语完整状态的描述。就像“手机”。the key word is 机，but how to describe it more precisely？add 手 to tell the 机 is in people’s hand
Your videos are really in-depth and help me appreciate the language I'm self-studying even more! I feel more confident having a more deep understanding of fundamental things. Also, this is such an ARMY thing for me to point out, but loved that a picture of BTS's Jin was used as an example for 老大 at 5:14，哈哈哈哈哈哈
by the way，老大 is more often to mean the boss of a group but not your eldest brother/sister. And the second often meaning of 老大 is your eldest son/daughter in 我家老大/你家老大(biggest one in my/your home). The only situation to mean the eldest brother/sister is in 排行老大（biggest ranking）and the context should be talking about brothers/sisters. If not in such context, it probably just to mean who is the boss.
Lots of short 2 syllable words + limited set of phonic sounds = a lot of similar sounding words. No wonder Mandarin has a bazillion homophones and homonyms. Great if you like puns, but hard if you want to learn the language.
There are also many characters recombined then imported back to China proper like 經濟 (economy)， 科學 (science) which were created by the Japanese during the Meiji Restoration as well as certain adjectives i.e. 邋遢 (lousiness) or 馬{馬虎}虎 (mediocre) that were phonetically loan sounds from the Manchu tongue.
Bullshit. They came from China. I know because I"m Vietnamese. Vietnamese is a branch of Chinese. ua-cam.com/video/LWH7vbWt5lE/v-deo.html That is doubtful. As Kanji (Han Writing) came from China, it doesn't seem likely that China would re-import them. Even without knowing Chinese, I can read them because I am Vietnamese. Those are Vietnamese terms. 政治 = chính trị = politics 經濟 = kinh tế = economy 資本 = tư bản = capitalism 電話 = điện thoại = telephone 哲學 = triết học = philosophy 雜誌 = tạp chí = magazine 幹部 = cán bộ = bureaucrat (rough translation). cadre. 自由 = tự do = freedom 社會主義 = xã hội chủ ghĩa. Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam (The official name of the current Vietnam.) 社會 = xã hội = society 主 = chủ = owner 主義 = chủ nghĩa = doctrine, -ism. 派出所. That's a weird one. Google Translate: police station = 警察署 (Japanese and Chinese). = sở cảnh sát = cảnh sát thự (Han-Viet) I don't think so. I've heard these Vietnamese words all my life. The fidelity from Chinese is 100%. 哲學 = philosophy? Give me a break. Japan gets its philosophy from China. Vietnamese too, got it from China. Let me give you a "Japanese" word. Shorinji Kempo = 少林寺拳法 = Shaolin Temple Hand Way Hmm. 社會主義 = xã hội chủ ghĩa = Socialism. That doesn't even make sense! Japan was never a "Socialist" country modeling itself after the Soviet Union. Communist Vietnam (models its flag after the Communist Chinese Flag [The REAL Chinese Flag is the South Korean Flag]). 社會主義 = xã hội chủ ghĩa. Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam. That's CHINESE, not Japanese. Japan = 日本 = Land of the Rising Sun. 日 is the glyph of the sun. It never called itself The Socialist Republic of Japan. 1. Misinformation from Japan. Japan thinks it invented things (that was already invented in China): Go, Geisha, naginata, Karate, Shogi, etc . . . 2. Japanese ass kissers from China.
Oral Chinese lost so many syllables in the path of evolution. If you compare Standard Mandarin, Jin Chinese, Cantonese and other variants, generally the more syllables a variant has, the more single-syllable words it features.
do chinese, to refer to cell phone, also use a pair of characters that when spoken sounds like "er-ji", which is a transcription of korean electronics brand LG?
I guess my favorite compound word, at least so far, is 东西, combine east and west and you get a "thing"
One possible explanation might be that in ancient china (possibly Tang Dynasty), governments restrict what you can sell, when you can sell and where you can sell. Merchants are only allowed to sell certain things at certain location.
For example, you might have to go to the east market to buy food and the west market to buy cooking utensils. And it is very troublesome to say that “ I have to get this and that from the east and west market” every single time you have to go shopping. So it was shorten to “ I have to buy east west “ 我去买东西
哈哈哈哈 so true
@@shanselena7373 东市买骏马，西市买鞍鞯（《木兰辞》）
Nice one
And when you call people "不是个东西", it's literally a fact that human is not thing. But somehow it turns into an insult.
As a native Chinese speaker, it's somehow really fun to watch those video targeting the people who wanted to learn Chinese. And surprisingly sometimes I actually learn something new from those videos
same here! it’s hard for us native speakers to explain all these because we grew up with the language so to us, it is what it is. i like watching these videos gain new insights
对不起 is very interesting bc "verb + 不起" means "can not afford doing smt". like 买不起 means "cant afford buying"
so 对不起 literally translates to "cant afford treating", which means "I'm sorry (for not being able to afford treating you well)"
A really interesting perspective even for a native like me, thank you.
I don't think this is accurate. 不起 by itself does not have anything to do with affording something in a monetary sense. It is closer to meaning 'not activating' or 'not moving'. So 买不起 means buy, not activating, ie cannot afford to buy. 烧不起 means burn, not activating, ie something is not flammable or cannot be burnt. 聚不起 means gather, not activating, ie cannot gather like in I cannot gather my thoughts / am distracted.
对 here means to face, eg, to speak to someone face-to-face. So 对不起 means to face, not activating, ie I cannot face you because I am too embarrassed / I have done you wrong, ie (implying) I am sorry.
@@MrFutarchy there's no clear definition for 不起. just depends on how u explain it
@@MrFutarchy 烧不起 and 聚不起 can be seen as shortened 烧不起来 and 聚不起来, different from 对不起 and 买不起 because u cant say 对不起来 or 买不起来
@@MrFutarchy also there are two interpretations for 烧不起. one is that u can say 纸烧不起来, meaning the paper can't ignite. if u say 我烧不起纸 it means "i cant afford burning paper"
阳 of 太阳 is actually yang of Yin Yang... The moon was called Tai-Yin before, but now it is called Yue Liang
Seems peoples didn't accept the idea of Tai-Yin(太阴) but accepted Tai-Yang(太阳). So we call sun in its formal name Tai-yin, but still use imformal name Yue-Liang(月亮) to say moon
Right,阳not mean SUN,阳mean hot,light. 太mean top,most.limit.
In Japanese it's written 陽. This is probably traditional chinese.
@@ge200099 yeah 阳/陽；阴/陰
FREE HONG KONG. FREE UIGHUR. SAVE MYANMAR ..
Love this! I have been studying Chinese now for a few years, just as a hobby really because I love language in general, and it is so fascinating. I keep finding new layers and ways of studying. I started with a simple app like Duolingo and now I’m getting into reading and recently writing which adds more pieces of the puzzle. My most recent addition is singing children’s songs. So much fun! All on my “hand machine!” 😂😂😂
It's definitely an awesome feeling to improve and discover new things about a new language!
加油！
@@ABChinese According to Wiktionary, both 垃 and 圾 mean “clod” (as in a lump of earth or clay). 坷垃 also means clod.
Also, the 2-syllable word thing is mostly just in Mandarin; most other Chinese dialects have more syllables/tones than Mandarin does, making it easier to distinguish between 1-syllable words.
Your explanation of this subject (etymology of two syllable Chinese words ) is the best.
太棒了，我觉得这是所有进入中阶的汉语学习者必须了解内容，能够理解得好的话，中文会有很大的进步，这样的构词法让这门古老的语言既能保留自己的特征，又能无限地适应时代的发展
;-;
确实，我很同意。（Yes, I agree.）
translate for the top comment: It's great! I think this is the thing that every middle-grade Chinese learner need to know. If they can understand it perfectly, their Chinese will be better. This kind of word building method can let this old language keep its properties and let it go on without the problem of time.
two character words make all the homophones clearer.
Chinese is such a beautiful language and your channel motivates me to keep studying, thank you for your videos!
Mandarin is such a fascinating language, I tried to learn it once but gave up because I felt overwhelmed, but I still love learning about it.
I really like the analogy of words as the ingredients. I think the changeble and interrelatable nature of the chinese language is what makes it so interesting to learn. I feel that this makes the language somewhat poetic in nature. Thanks for sharing this knowledge 老师!
Thank you! I started learning Chinese myself just for fun because I really the language, but I took a long break. 🤦♀️ I want to start back again and I find this channel extremely helpful. Please make more of these helpful grammar videos in the future :)
this video needs to be shown to EVERY chinese learner
It's funny but Japanese has a lot of 2 character (and longer) Chinese-derived words that seem to be slowly falling out of fashion in favour of multisyllabic words from English.
A good example is the names of most gemstones. Diamonds, emerald, and sapphire are usually called ダイヤモンド、エメラルド、and サファイア (daiyamondo, emerarudo, safaia).
Years ago the traditional names were still used: 金剛石、翠玉 and 青玉 (kongoseki, suigyoku, seigyoku).
I think part of the reason is that the English words being longer sound more distinctive whereas in Sino-Japanese there are dozens of characters all with the same pronunciations which must get confusing for the Japanese. (It certainly confuses me!)
I noticed the same by learning Japanese. Two-kanji compounds are almost all read in the Sino-Japajese reading and most of them are Chinese loanwords.
Three kanji compounds are mostly those words plus an affix, or four kanj compounds are two of them stuck together.
As a result using the Sino-Japajese reading is the default assumption when seeing words of two Kanji or more.
However, because verbs and adjectives usually are either mixed kanji/kana or full kana, this is mostly exclusive to nouns and other noun-like words there (which can still act as verbs and adjectives, but form classes of their own).
Derivative words are rarer but still work the same, like the "reader" example as 読者 (doku-sha).
"One four character word"
*Looks at my handbook of four character words*
The rise of disyllabic words in Mandarin mostly has to do with phoneme collapse in Middle Chinese. Many, many phonemic contrasts were lost on the transition to Mandarin, making many monosyllabic words now have many homophones. For example, the word for friend "Yu" 友, had no homophones in Middle Chinese, but by the Old Mandarin period, sound changes caused it to become homophonous with around 8 other words.
To clear up the ambiguity, a reinforcement term was added. Homophones were disambiguated by adding an extra syllable word. In this case a word with a similar meaning "朋" was added. Therefore the modern Chinese word "朋友", literally means "friend-friend".
Very informative thank you !! ☺️
Yes, that would be correct. Southern dialects such as Cantonese and hokkien, to a certain extent, preserve the middle Chinese structure of tones, which include the upper and lower yin and yang registers as well as the level, rising, departing, and entering types of tones. Consequently, those dialects do not have as many two-syllable words as Mandarin does. They use more one-syllable words because they have more phonemes to work with because there are more tones available (8-9 in Hokkien and Cantonese dialects as opposed to four in Mandarin) to distinguish meanings in those dialects.
“朋”指经常来往的人，“友”指心灵契合的人。“朋友”事实上是“朋”和“友”的上位词。“美丽”也类似，“丽”比“美“更加强调视觉，这样的例子还有很多。一部分是近义词合成，比如”朋友“；另一部分是合成词出现后的意义再分化，比如”美丽“。
I'd like to upvote "double root words".
It simply makes sense.
Thanks so much.
Also because of the adoption of Wasei Kango, that is, vocabulary created by the Japanese using Chinese characters. Lots of wasei kango that the Chinese adopted are two-character words.
For some reason, many Chinese deny this fact
@@reonarimPolitics is the driving force for people to say such nonsense, same with how Taiwanese deny the viability of Simplify Chinese and the pinyin system. Political stand points always wins over facts🫤.
Didn't know that history revisionism is denied 😂 it the other way around it Chinese adobtedtby japanese
Love the 幫助理解釋 graphic and your cooking analogy is just brilliant. Thought you’d be interested to know (indeed, likely you already do) the analogy used by Joseph Needham, the pioneering UK historian of Chinese science: "To the natural scientist approaching the study of Chinese, a helpful analogy is possible with chemical molecules and atoms-the characters may be considered roughly as so many molecules composed of the various permutations and combinations of a set of 214 atoms". I think your cooking analogy may be even better though, because more causal and fluid
It's the same damned thing in English. It is not something new, and not something to be discovered.
air + plane
我觉得中华文明的伟大之处在于，不是生搬硬套新的概念，而是用已有的词语根据自己的理解创造新的词语。比如“手机”“电脑”这种，还有一些科学概念，可以让我们迅速掌握其中的含义。
@@peterwang5272 科幻巨作《三体》里作者新造的概念”智子“便是典型，翻成英语时译者还得借用希腊语词根译成 sophon, 但是这个词对一般英语读者而言大概不能”望文生义“了。
Interesting! I'm Chinese but I just know why we always use two syllable words till today!
It is really important that you point out how language learners should perceive the way in which Chinese words are formed. It's not for the purpose to deduce the meaning of a word from the meaning of its component characters because no matter how many times you may succeed at deducing the right meaning of a word, you would definitely encounter equal, if not more, failures. There are just too many factors to be considered and Chinese native speakers themselves won't be aware of most of them. Those failures will significantly impact the passion of learners. (You will have a ton of questions like 'why can't it be this way?' with no answers. Cause even the Chinese don't know.) So, as described in the video, I don't recommend guessing the meaning of a word by its components. However, on the contrary, you should learn the right meaning of a word first, and then you may check on the meaning of its components to get a deeper understanding of the nuance of that word, which is really helpful for learners to shape their overall concept of the Chinese language.
Started last September taking a Chinese course as I love the language and culture. Really interesting video and thanks for adding Jin in there as well😄
Dude. You're epic! I've had a few teachers in the past who have told me not to think about etymology and just to memorize. But as my Chinese has progressed and I've come into contact with increasingly more words, shear memorization has become very difficult. I've found it much more useful to get the flavor of individual characters in order to understand more complicated words. Thanks for presenting this approach in such clear and succinct way. Excellent video!!
OMG! Are there still teachers out there asking students to memorize things? This is the 21st century, the century of AI - artificial intelligence. And even it doesn’t memorize too much. Yes, you’re right to try other ways. Any other way is better than memorization - unless of course the goal is to exercise your memory, which acan also be a good thing! Goodonya mate!
6:25 Just my opinion but in "楼上", I'd say 楼 is the modifier, just as in the English "top of the building", technically, the main concept is "top" and "building" acts as a modifier, a specifier. You can remove "building" and it's still the same concept, just less precise (top of what?) whereas if you remove top and keep building, you end up with a completely different concept (and the question becomes, what kind of building?).
That being said, I was under the impression that 楼 could also hold the meaning of "floor" (as in 1st floor, 2nd floor, etc), if only in specific compounds, in which case, then, one could argue that "floor" is the main concept in "upper floor", and "up/upper" is the modifier. But if 楼 is taken to mean "building", I think my argument above stands.
Not sure if the video was very clear on the meaning but 樓上 means upstairs, upper floor, not top of building.
You know, I learn a lot about Japanese, and why Japanese people do things the way they do from these videos because the written language(and most of the culture) comes from (Middle) Chinese. Like, the vast majority of people in Japan have two names composed of two characters, which I think is related to the last video. Some Chinese people have the family name 井, but Japanese people usually have a name like 石井 that mean the same thing, but just more clear. A lot of Chinese people have one character for their given name, like 美, but Japanese people usually have two, like 美子 or 美勝. I think it's so neat how connected they are, both as a language and as a culture.
我们中国人的姓氏跟你们不一样，远古氏族都能追溯得到，中华文明是唯一地球上没有中断过的文明，全人类的瑰宝
@@peterwang5272共產黨在1949年開始尊政之後就開始慢慢摧毀中華文明。請看看那些簡化字像用了近兩千年的漢子嗎？共產黨原本想將漢子羅馬化，幸好未成功！
You are a Genius ! Thank you so much for this video, your investigation, and all stuff
When you have already learned 1500 characters then it doesn’t make a difference if you have to learn a total of 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000. Or is all the same, because you already know the components.
The graphics are really helpful toward understanding the video's concepts
While 目 means 眼 or 眼睛 (eye), 日 means 阳 or 太阳 (sun), 月 means 月亮 (moon), it becomes very interesting when you compound a word. For example, when compounding with 光 "light":
We say 日光 and 阳光 and 太阳光, which means sunlight.
We say 月光, which is moonlight, but we're definitely not going to say 月亮光.
目光, 眼光 and 眼睛光 mean differently. 目光 means the light of eyes; vision; view. 眼光 means "eye" (for fashion etc.). 眼睛光 is not a common word, and it might just appear when you refer to the light of the eye in computer photo editing etc.
Thank you 💖 that's so helpful, it inspires me more to learn chinese
2-syllable words are also prevalent in Cantonese. Its recently coined word
"升呢” (rise level) is a typical one. Cantonese likes to combine Chinese & English words to make a new one. This "rise level" is made up of "升，sing” & the English “level”， but Cantonese thinks it's 3 syllables & cut it to 2 syllables, take the "le" of level. So creative & intelligent !!!
Your example is actually an irrelevant one and instead, Cantonese has preserved many single syllable word.
First let's talk about the word 升呢, this word obviously is a slang originated in Hong Kong, so grammar rules do not neccesarily apply as in English, not even mention the word 升呢 already contains verb and object and technically isn't a word anymore. Kindly note it is not Cantonese who love to combine chinese and english, but Hongkongers. The Cantonese itself and Guangdong people rarely do this without the influence from Hong Kong.
Second, prevalence of 2-syllable word clearly isn't the case in Cantonese. There are too many single syllable words from different parts of speech here, 企, 瞓, 屋, 床, 靚, 醜, etc. Most of the '2-syllable word' you see actually has a V-O within and can form a sentence itself in some cases.
Appreciate that you have interest in the language, and hope this helps you understand more about it.
@@brianligustavo not exactly, some people say 瞓覺，屋企，醜樣
There is a major influence from JAPAN that resulted in a whole lot of 2 syllable words in today's Chinese. As result, people develop the habit of using 2 syllable words, even though some words function just fine as 1 syllable.
Words such as 製造、革命、制度、議會、民主、自由 ... etc falls into such catagory.
When Japan opened up to western world (way before China did), they translated countless books and found there were too many vocabs that does not exist in their kanji (漢字). As result, they created lots of those vocabularies through their own interpretation. These concept/vocabs were brought back into China through the students/scholars who studied in Japan, and they just become everyday Chinese vocab like nothing happened.
Sadly, Chinese people in general don't want to recognize this big influence from Japan
That's bullshit. That's an urban legend that I'm going to put a stop to it once and for all.
製造= manufacture = chế tạo (Vietnamese)
I'm Vietnamese.
That word is Chinese because it is in Vietnamese. Vietnamese is Chinese.
It came from China.
Other things in Japan that come from China.
Kanji
Karate
Geisha
Go
Shogi
Naginata
Tea ceremony
etc . . .
A fun fact is that some of these words already exist in old Chinese texts prior to the translation.
Existing Chinese words/term were picked by the Japanese scholars, for the modern idea, extending their original meanings.
For example, the word "革命" is from I Ching or Yi Jing - "湯武革命，順乎天而應乎人".
It says how the Tang of Shang and King Wu of Zhou's action, ending their previous overlords' rule and founding new dynasties, follows the mandate of heaven and people's heart. Its original meaning is more like "the change of mandate of heaven". If rulers became decadent and corrupted, a "革命" will overthrow them and new order will be established. I would say it's quite close to its modern meaning.
I guess it's how good these tranlsations are, so people back then didn't feel like the new words were foreign?
the reduplication seems allot like how, in english, repeating a word intensifies it. Like, if I said to someone "gogo!" that would mean I want them to move very quickly as opposed to just moving(with added repetition intensifying further), or if I wanted to tell someone that I get what they're saying I might say "yeah-yeah" instead of just "yeah".
Great point !!
Amazing video, man. I like it a lot! Mandarin Chinese is indeed a fascinating language, I'm really enjoying learning it. Now, about 公共汽车, I like to think of it as a two two-syllable words that describes just one thing, like "public car", right? So for me it doesn't count as a "four characters word", hahaha ^^
I thought that too! It almost feels like a true English styled compound word or (1+1) + (1+1)
@@ABChinese hey, can I ask you a quetion? When you make the ji/qi/xi sounds, do you place the tip of your tongue behind the bottom teeth or the gum under them? I mean, does that even make any difference for you?
@@ivomoreira42 Just relax your tongue as much as possible, almost flat, so do the lips
@@ivomoreira42 maybe behind the bottom teeth, the gum is too low.
Thank you guys! I already figured it out, just behind the bottom teeth, in between the gum and the teeth actually, but it depends on the flow etc
It took me a while to understand this is an actual Chinese guide instead of another infotainment video.
What is an infotainment video? + how can I make it more clear?
@@ABChinese Infotainment = Information entertainment.
Videos that teach stuff for the sake of fun, like Kurzgesagt, RealLifeLore and Oversimplified.
I don't think you need to make it clear as people who are trying to learn Chinese will still watch the video for its purpose and it's a very popular genre so you attract people easily.
@@ABChinese That's a compound word, in English,
infotainment
informative and entertainment at the same time.
Why don't you try to learn compound English words first. So you don't "ooo and awe" at Chinese compound words.
so fun to watch, please make more of this kind of video! ;D
Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video.
MANDARIN is obsessed with 2 syllable words due to the loss of tones and influence from Steppe languahes over the course of history. Other Chinese varieties such as Cantonese has several tones are more monosyllabilic as was Ancient Chinese.
Very useful thx bro, been learning Chinese since around December or January and was absolutely bad at pronunciations but you helped me so much and I'm very slowly become fluent 謝謝你！
P.S. can you maybe do a video for free apps to learn Chinese if possible..
Pronunciation is hard in any new language, Especially chinese. So don't worry if you can read or watch people talking and understand them, but can't speak yourself
love your videos, so informative and in depth
🌹🌹🌹
I'm once again watching a video about a language I will never learn. Interesting anyway. (Might use this for a conlang tho)
6:53 I didn't expected to watch to "El Risitas" (Juan Joya Borja) in this video 😂😂😂
5:10 I’ve been speaking Chinese for 20 years and only just now realized that “lao” means endearment. I always thought it meant “old.”
I think it means "old" too! Like an "old friend" the "old" often doesn't refer to age, but length of acquaintance, which is why it implies endearment:) 老乡，老朋友，老外 等
@@ABChinese I searched it up and apparently "lao" can refer to anything/anyone that's old, not just someone who you are acquainted with--exactly like the English counterpart of "old". Calling your father "Lao ba" is similar to an English speaker calling their father "my old man."
I was born and raised in China, I’m now trying to learn my own culture in English lol
i dont know if it is the same idea or not, but verbs in Chinese also tend to have 2 syllables, with their "objects" included. It's not always the case but, it's more common to say 吃饭，睡觉，走路，跑步 instead of just the verbs.
Do you have any explanation on this?
You are so smart😏 That is literally the next /last video in this series!
@@ABChinese 😱😱😱
@@kokolexx Well, it's not like words. It's more like a phrase. 吃means eat and 饭 means rice/food, so we use 吃饭 to say eat something. These are one-syllable words combined into one, so it's more like a phase
pfffffft 2 syllable words is such a mandarin thing. other dialects have tonnes of single syllable words. This is because mandarin has so few sound combinations and tones it is incredibly difficult to distinguish between just single syllable words.
谢谢，老师你讲的是后很用心来教。
Thank you this is so helpful ❤
So this is how Japanese got kawaii... It's actually a loanword
All 2nd gen Momusu have different character names:
Yasuda Kei(3 letters)
Yasu-Ta-Kei
Yaguchi Mari(4 letters)
Ya-Kuchi-Ma-Ri
Ichii Sayaka(5 letters)
Ichi-Wi-Sa-Ya-Ka
This was so incredibly fascinating!!
That was a lot of information! Thanks! Do want to say太陽may not be a good example of modern compound word for 日。Also, it doesn't mean great sun! 太陽 is just another ancient alternative for 日。In ancient time, the sun 日 was also called 太（ultimate）陽（as the yang in ying/ yang)，as opposed to the moon 月 was also called 太(ultimate) 陰 ( as the ying in ying/yang)。
Great demonstration of Chinese words👍🏼
Japanese and Chinese are similar...
Chinese(meili)
Japanese(birei)
"Beautiful"
Early Chinese was indeed a Chinese character representing a thing. Later, there were more and more new things, especially many scientific and technological words were constantly updated. The past word formation was no longer applicable to the current era, unless new Chinese characters were constantly created. Therefore, combining Chinese characters into new words is cheaper, easier to accept and easier to learn than directly creating a new Chinese character.
Yeah, think about creating new Chinese character for "smartphone" instead of “智能手机” that we're using right now.🤣
U should explain one thing that every language (I'm Malaysian Chinese so... U understand) it's giving u a concept, picture, or idea. Translate directly from another language is not the best solution, u need to try to understand the culture. Best way is to watch their shows n talk to their ppl.
Like 年轻，year + light
"Light" is giving u a concept of low (kinda difficult to be understood by Westerners) like 短 is a idea of small, but in length；下 is a idea of low, but in hight.
Same thing with 轻, 「low」in weight
Like 卡
Look at the word carefully, it's like 上 n 下 but combined
Idea: can't up, can't down = stuck
对不起 direct translate: 对 correct 不 no/can't 起 up (make it up)
Joined meanings: can't make it up to you = sorry
Shout out to my boy 𰻞 for his guest appearance.
Excellent. Great stuff! Thank you 🙂
Japanese example
1 character(ka)
2 characters(isu)
3 characters(tanuki)
4 characters(kaminari)
5+ characters(esutonia)
Holy crap this is so true. I just realized how almost all Genshin Chinese names are 2 syllables:
Liyue, Zhongli, Ningguang, Keqing, Ganyu, Xiangling, Xingxiu, Chongyun, Beidou
Kinda different subject since they're names not words but I wonder if there's a correlation.
The only thing I know is that Xiangling's family name is Mao卯(because her father is Mao), so her full name should be Mao Xiangling 卯香菱. But Xiangling sounds more like a close friend I guess?
No, no any correlation at all. Just because single character of given name is deemed more classical and ancient
Thank you for the video. It’d be great if Chinese used in this video were in Traditional Chinese, even though China uses the recently-invented Simplified Chinese
很多人都有一种错觉，就是繁体字好像还是主流或者还有很多人使用，然而事实上，除了中国本土的13亿使用者外，新加坡和马来西亚的华人也是以简体中文为官方文字，这还没统计其他国家地区的华人社区和中文学习者。而繁体中文现在只有台湾和香港的3000多万人在使用了，而其他国家的华人地区也只有老一辈的港台移民中的第一代和第二代在使用繁体了，再往后的港台华裔可能都不会中文了，就算学，学校教的可能也是简体。毕竟简体是真的更易学易用，而且在国际上作为中国(Chinese)的唯一的代表，PRC官方文字也是简体，以PRC在国际上的地位，简体中文理所当然也是中文(Chinese)的正规版本。不打嘴炮说什么传统文化，那都是借口，我认识的许多繁体中文使用者在日常书写中也会经常使用简体，计算机打字就不说了，毕竟我也会打繁体字，没讨论意义。而且就算是在互联网上，中文互联网也是以简体为主流，毕竟繁体在中文互联网上真的没有什么内容和地位（毕竟人少），繁体在互联网上几乎只出现在西方的平台，而真正的中文(Chinese)互联网平台，大多都是简体中文使用者创造和使用，内容也几乎只有简体中文（PRC并不禁止民间学习和使用繁体，只是规定义务教育阶段教学简体，官方场合使用简体，民间书法交流还是会使用繁体的，也因为真正被简化的汉字比例其实没有特别高，同时有很多场合会出现繁体，包括字典上也会有繁体对照，大陆地区的人其实也认识绝大多数的繁体字，生僻字不算），而作为繁体中文使用者，港澳台以及其他地区的人，也都会访问使用中文互联网的内容（普遍但不绝对），明明自己平时也在使用观看简体中文互联网，还一直抨击简体中文，我真的看不懂，而作为与简体中文共存共生的汉语拼音，不也出现在了你的id中？
@@zealop4728 I'm Vietnamese and is learning Chinese. I'll never use Simplified Characters.
1. Commie (Communism)
2. George Orwell 1984, read it.
3. They're ugly.
My first exposure to Chinese is Chinese Chess.
車 = chariot
That is a glyph of a chariot from an aerial view. 2 wheels, an axle, a box.
What the fuck is this?
车
@@zealop4728 Things are valuable because they are rare, like rare metals.
Traditional Characters will be more prestigious because they are rarer.
Dummies like you are "a dime a dozen", as we say in America.
You can always find a bunch of single-syllable words sharing the same pronouncation. Conversations would be so much easier by using two-syllable words instead.
4:15 : There exsits a CJK character as reduplication symbol 「々」. In Japanese, 「正々堂々(せいせいどうどう)、人々(ひとびと)、日々(ひび)」contain reduplication symbol. However, Modern Mandarin Chinese does not use 「々」 leaving aside proper nouns.
Such a good video explanation. Made me subscribe to your channel to explore more 🙌🙌🙌👍👍👍
Could you please make a detailed Video about the reduplication of adjectives? It seems like an interesting concept especially to a foreign speaker~
I will next year! It might be a while though... maybe in summer 2022
@@ABChinese thank you, i really appreciate it!
Japanese doesn't use tones
Instead it distuinguishes Hashi(chopsticks) and Hashi(bridge) with accent marks
HAshi(bridge)
haSHI(chopsticks)
Another interesting insightful analysis of Chinese. Just curious, where do 4 character idioms fall in the system you describe?
Good question! I wouldn’t consider 4 character idioms as words, but rather, phrases. If you analyze them, you’ll find that most of the characters in idioms act independently.
成语是完全不一样的，每一个成语背后都有一个历史故事（典故），你需要上一堂历史课才能知道，并准确运用
That was awesome, thank you!
That was child's play. It's the same thing in English.
awe + some
thank + you
I would like to see a video of the different spoken accents in china.
Which accent sounds the best according to chinese people? :3
Love your channel and lovely greetings from Germany
I am a Hongkonger. I don't know which Chinese accent sounds the best but I can tell you which one sounds the worst - the news reporter / advertisement narrator accent. It's unnatural and too pretentious. No one speaks like that irl.
LOL I know exactly what you're talking about 😂😂😂
@@violetblues1768 thank you! I always thought its the most standard, so the best way. I was listening to a lot of cctv actually 😅 really good to know
@@richardhartung1576 It's definitely a good way to learn Chinese as the pronunciation is absolutely correct. Yet you would sound like Google Translation speaking.
I like the standard reporting accent because it’s the clearest and easiest to understand. And no it doesn’t sound like a computer or google translate because it has proper inflection too.
interesting view！me Chinese notice it by your video！从我的角度来想的话，单个字的词表达出来的情感比较单一，两个单字组成的词更能表达对一个词语完整状态的描述。就像“手机”。the key word is 机，but how to describe it more precisely？add 手 to tell the 机 is in people’s hand
Awesome, very insightful video. Thanks
It's the same damned thing in English. Check this out:
awe + some
in + sight + ful
stoo - pid.
i decided to learn chinese firstly because of this brilliant way of word construction
Your videos are really in-depth and help me appreciate the language I'm self-studying even more! I feel more confident having a more deep understanding of fundamental things. Also, this is such an ARMY thing for me to point out, but loved that a picture of BTS's Jin was used as an example for 老大 at 5:14，哈哈哈哈哈哈
Appreciate it! hahaha
by the way，老大 is more often to mean the boss of a group but not your eldest brother/sister. And the second often meaning of 老大 is your eldest son/daughter in 我家老大/你家老大(biggest one in my/your home). The only situation to mean the eldest brother/sister is in 排行老大（biggest ranking）and the context should be talking about brothers/sisters. If not in such context, it probably just to mean who is the boss.
”老大“中的”老“似乎有类似序数词标记”第“相似的功能。所以不管是哪个义项的”老大“本质上意思是相同的。”老大“始终只有一个意思，那就是”一些人中排在最前面的那个人“。
A great video. Even though Im a native chinese speaker. I didnt think about before.
Gee, I am Chinese, and I didn't realize it. Thank you for sharing.
Whatever you say, I oppose to the word “obsessed” .
Isn't 快樂 also means happy?
Yes it does. I would say it’s more closed to the meaning of joyful.
火 fire 箭 arrow -> rocket. 计算 calculation 器 device/machine -> computer…..Chinese is 4000 years language, but as you see, It has infinite life
1:38 what the heck? Is there a character even more complex than biang? :O
also they came from vernacular chinese because of homonyms
Lots of short 2 syllable words + limited set of phonic sounds = a lot of similar sounding words. No wonder Mandarin has a bazillion homophones and homonyms. Great if you like puns, but hard if you want to learn the language.
great video!
There are also many characters recombined then imported back to China proper like 經濟 (economy)， 科學 (science) which were created by the Japanese during the Meiji Restoration as well as certain adjectives i.e. 邋遢 (lousiness) or 馬{馬虎}虎 (mediocre) that were phonetically loan sounds from the Manchu tongue.
Bullshit. They came from China. I know because I"m Vietnamese. Vietnamese is a branch of Chinese.
ua-cam.com/video/LWH7vbWt5lE/v-deo.html
That is doubtful. As Kanji (Han Writing) came from China, it doesn't seem likely that China would re-import them.
Even without knowing Chinese, I can read them because I am Vietnamese. Those are Vietnamese terms.
政治 = chính trị = politics
經濟 = kinh tế = economy
資本 = tư bản = capitalism
電話 = điện thoại = telephone
哲學 = triết học = philosophy
雜誌 = tạp chí = magazine
幹部 = cán bộ = bureaucrat (rough translation). cadre.
自由 = tự do = freedom
社會主義 = xã hội chủ ghĩa. Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam (The official name of the current Vietnam.)
社會 = xã hội = society
主 = chủ = owner
主義 = chủ nghĩa = doctrine, -ism.
派出所. That's a weird one.
Google Translate:
police station = 警察署 (Japanese and Chinese). = sở cảnh sát = cảnh sát thự (Han-Viet)
I don't think so. I've heard these Vietnamese words all my life. The fidelity from Chinese is 100%. 哲學 = philosophy? Give me a break. Japan gets its philosophy from China. Vietnamese too, got it from China.
Let me give you a "Japanese" word.
Shorinji Kempo = 少林寺拳法 = Shaolin Temple Hand Way
Hmm.
社會主義 = xã hội chủ ghĩa = Socialism. That doesn't even make sense! Japan was never a "Socialist" country modeling itself after the Soviet Union.
Communist Vietnam (models its flag after the Communist Chinese Flag [The REAL Chinese Flag is the South Korean Flag]).
社會主義 = xã hội chủ ghĩa. Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam. That's CHINESE, not Japanese.
Japan = 日本 = Land of the Rising Sun. 日 is the glyph of the sun. It never called itself The Socialist Republic of Japan.
1. Misinformation from Japan. Japan thinks it invented things (that was already invented in China): Go, Geisha, naginata, Karate, Shogi, etc . . .
2. Japanese ass kissers from China.
Not that many
Very interesting your videos. ✔✔😎
Which dictionary are you using ?
Oral Chinese lost so many syllables in the path of evolution. If you compare Standard Mandarin, Jin Chinese, Cantonese and other variants, generally the more syllables a variant has, the more single-syllable words it features.
Actually, as a Chinese, I don't know why we using two-syllable word to often, may it's some sort of habit.
Nice Videos! Please let me know if you offer Chinese lessons? Thanks !
I do not, sorry!
awesome
How about compound words that both characters have the same meaning? Is there any reason for these?
E.g. 行走，站立，知曉
垃圾 is a funny word. In Taiwanese mandarin it is pronounced like it means garbage, basically the sounds of disgust.
Shit hole is the Chinese for "rock"? And Mao Ze is the Chinese for "hat"? Mao Ze Dun is "Hat Dun"?
The characters 垃 and 圾 are only used in 垃圾
It's balance.
早期是单字词比较多，后来慢慢变成双音节
No 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
do chinese, to refer to cell phone, also use a pair of characters that when spoken sounds like "er-ji", which is a transcription of korean electronics brand LG?
You must be thinking of 耳机, which is earbuds
Most entertaining to a Western writer in his toy-box. I want to read Catullus in Chinese.