The Chinese Language

When someone ask me what language I speak, I say Chinese just to simplify things. I don't say Mandarin or Cantonese unless that person asks me. I find that most people don't know the difference or really don't understand the difference. The people who do know the difference would ask and I would then take the time to explain.

However, I start to wonder what is 普通話 [pǔtōng huà] and 中文 [zhōngwén]. 中文 [zhōngwén] included all Chinese dialects. If you say 普通話 [pǔtōng huà], you are referring to Mandarin Chinese. 普通話 [pǔtōng huà] is the official language in China.

Internal curiosity: Why is it 普通 [pǔtōng]? 普通 [pǔtōng] means common. Is it that the everyday common people should know the official language of China? Is it because the Han people makes up the largest ethnic group in the world?

Eating in the Wild

Sometimes - well maybe a lot of the times - you look at a sentence in Chinese. You may know each character in the sentence but you still don't know what the sentence means.

I found this: 野餐

野 [yě] wild
餐 [cān] a meal, or to eat

What do you think this means? Eat in the wild? You have a wild game meat meal? You are surprised by some kind of strange meal you hunted? No, none of the above.

This means picnic. Strange, but I guess I can understand why these two characters are together.

Noisy

What do you think of  when you hear the word "noisy"?
If you hear the sentence - "It is New Year and it is noisy."
Do you think the speaker is talking about the event in a festive sense? In Chinese there are at least two ways to say noisy.


熱鬧 (T) /热闹 (S) [rènao]
The meaning of this is noisy, but has a joyful festive undertone.


On the other hand if you hear 
吵 (T/S) [chǎo] It means noisy.