Most Chinese prepositions are also verbs. For example:
在: to be (at) (verb), at (preposition)
跟: to follow (verb), with (preposition)
给: to give (verb), to, for (preposition)
etc.

For that reason, they do carry their verb features even when acting as prepositions. And for what I've seen since I started studying Chinese, the first verb is always the one that's negated and that's inserted in the V/A-not-V/A structure. Some examples:

你在不在中国学中文？/我不在中国学中文。
他跟不跟妈妈一起吃饭？/他不跟妈妈吃饭。
你给没给女朋友打电话？/我没给女朋友打电话。
他想不想去看电影？/他不想去看电影。
你比不比他高？/我不比他高。
你把没把书带来？/我没把书带来。
(if there are any mistakes in my examples, I'd appreciate if a native speaker could point them out)

As you can see, the "prepositions" are always negated.

You may negate other parts of the sentence, but the "neutral" negation is always negating the first verb in Chinese.

Hope this helps. Cheers


How many unencoded characters still exist?

GlyphWiki.org contains 580’000 characters. 92’856 are encoded. You can do the math. However, it will be wrong, as most of these characters are trivial alterations of those already encoded, and thus ineligible for a separate encoding.

So, instead let’s look at the pipeline of next encodings. Extension I (officially, Working Set-2017) is being finalized right now (and can be browsed at https://hc.jsecs.org/irg/ws2017/app/) to around 5’000 characters. Among these:

PRC has hundreds to offer, many of these Zhuang;
Taiwan is almost exhausted and sends only a small number of chemical characters;
ROK has hundreds, but much smaller number, of historical characters;
Vietnam still has some Nom;
However, the UK/UTC selection of scholars is still going strong, providing, say, data from dialect dictionaries.
To say nothing of Buddhist characters.

Most importantly, ROK and Vietnam offerings are approaching conclusion, and it is unlikely there will be substantial extensions thereof. Unless some new surnames or geographical locations are discovered, Japan and Hong Kong have no more intention for encoding.

I expect the following encodings after I to be in number of thousands, not tens of thousands, and the scholarly UK/UTC extensions be the lion’s part of it.


Poetry that deals with wanting to be rescued?

There are few examples I can think of that exactly match your request of wanting (the poet himself) to be rescued. I think the reason here is the Chinese culture, in which people usually express their personal hopes in a more euphemistic way.

Here I think of a few related example that may be closest to your need:

《茅屋为秋风所破歌》 by 杜甫. In the poem, he described his poor status and he want to rescue all the poors in the world -- this kind of universal love makes it a well-known poem. The most famous segments:

  安得广厦千万间，大庇天下寒士俱欢颜，风雨不动安如山。

《虞美人》 by 李煜, who is the last emperor of the Nan Tang dynasty. He wrote a lot of sad poems since his country is going to fall. His sadness mixed with his hope of returning to the old days.

  小楼昨夜又东风，故国不堪回首月明中。

《满江红》 by 岳飞. The poem express the feeling of the General Yue Fei, who wants to save his country (Nan Song) from being defeated by alien empire Jin.

  靖康耻，犹未雪。臣子恨，何时灭。驾长车，踏破贺兰山缺。


What is the difference between 傻瓜 and 笨蛋?

Literally 笨蛋 and 傻瓜 mean stupid and silly respectively. I would say, as a native speaker,  笨蛋 is used as a negative adjective for others while 傻瓜 is more teasing especially for the the speakers themselves. Also, it depends on the status of the speaker and listener, for example, we will call the kids 笨蛋, but call the wife 傻瓜 when they make the same mistake.


What's the difference between 舅舅 and 叔叔?

Uncles of mother's side are called 舅舅, while uncles of father's side if he's older than your father you have to call him 伯, and 叔 for younger ones. If you have more than one 舅 or 叔 or 伯. You need to add some prefix to specified them, like 大舅 for the oldest brother of you mother, the following are 二舅, 三舅... For 叔叔 伯伯 they apply the same, except there is no 大叔, and the 叔's numbering should inherit from 伯s(e.g., 大伯，二伯，Your Father，then 三叔,四叔).  There also have a word 大叔, but it's just a term to refer to some random older man...

For 叔叔, 伯伯 they can also refer to your parents' friends of their generation or your friends parents who are of same generation of your parents. Usually you won't use the term 舅舅 for this kind of acquaintances, but it happens when the guy is your mother's distance relatives, they might come from a same village with a same family name.

EDIT: 叔叔 is also used as a term of address for men (unrelated to you) who are roughly your father's age.


模 is mu2 (some people pronounce it as mo2, but that's incorrect in this instance)

模样 is a common word in Chinese means appearance, especially referring to one's look.

有模有样 means has the look.

In the first context, 有模有样 means vivid and seems-to-be-true.

In the second context,  it means the cat has the look of Harry Porter by waring the Uniform.

Another 成语 with 模样 is
人模狗样.
It means something looks good from outside, but indeed is bad from inside.


What is the difference between 于 and 以 to express "a certain time" or "a fixed date"?

As a preposition, 以(with)  and 于(at/ in) are very different.

我以三月一日返。(I take March the first come back)
It is plain wrong, the sentence make no sense.

The only way you can use 以 with a fixed date or period of time is:

In a [以 (A) 为 (B)] structure -- Example: "以三月一日为限期"  (take March the first as the deadline)

use '以' as preposition 'with' -- Example: "以三日时间完成这工作" (finish this job with three days time)

生于上海 (born in Shanghai) is correct
来信与十五日收到。There must be a typo. It should be "来信于十五日收到" (your letter arrived at the fifteen)

于 can be a preposition for date or location
Example:
"生于上海" (born in Shanghai) - location
"生于一九一二年" (born in 1912) - date
"于上午五点死亡" (died at 5:00 AM) - time


if 奥巴马 was a sentence in classical chinese, what would be its meaning?

Yes, if it is the way you interpret the characters, you can translate that into a sentence. However, you probably should not say this to an average Chinese user, it would not make any sense to them. Actually, if you would like to interpreted 奥巴马 to any Chinese sentence that makes some sense, it is nearly impossible. I personally do not see an modern Chinese sentence or often-used classical expression.

Firstly, one Chinese character could have many meanings. Here, all three characters have more than the meanings you have mentioned above. Thus you have a much bigger chance to find a sentence.

Secondly, it is less common in modern Chinese language to use one character for every single component of the sentence. So I would say the better way is to view the sentence the classical way. This has lead to another interesting point. The sentence pattern of classical Chinese are so different from the Chinese we are using now. Thus the chance of you to find a  sentence is even bigger.

Now I actually see a lot ways to interpreted 奥巴马 into a sentence. For example:

奥 - the Southwest corner of a room

巴 - to stick (v.)

马 - horse

Thus the sentence could mean "A horse is sticked at the Southwest corner of a room."


Name of strokes in Chinese character Heart

First of all, whether the stroke is a shu is out of the question -- it is not a vertical and long stroke, but typically tilted and short.

Regarding the difference between dian and pie, I must call your attention to CJKV strokes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJKV_character)

Note in stroke "d" (dian) there are two versions, left and right, but both have the stop(顿) at the bottom end. While in stroke "p"(pie) the stop is at the top. One can find fonts that goes either ways: my browser displays it as a pie, e.g..

But we can go one step further and ask: should that stroke be written as a dian, or a pie? Since different authorities may make up different standards.

According to the standard for mainland China: (character 0174)
http://www.china-language.gov.cn/doc/zb2009.pdf
we can see the stop is clearly at the bottom, therefore, this stroke should be written as a dian, in mainland China.

In Taiwan, there is a different standard, and according to them: (character 101305) http://language.moe.gov.tw/001/Upload/files/SITE_CONTENT/M0001/MU/mua12.htm it is also unambiguously a dian.

In Japan, they also have a different standard: (page 84, lower middle) http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kijun/naikaku/pdf/joyokanjihyo_20101130.pdf we can see it is also a dian.

The authority of classical chinese language, the Kang Xi Dictionary (upper right): http://tool.httpcn.com/Html/KangXi/Pic/375.shtml also prints the character with a dian.

While I don't know enough korean or vietnamese to look it up (edits welcome), I think we have enough evidence to conclude with great certainty, that the stroke is supposed to be written as a dian.

But feel free to write a pie instead, I'm certainly not going to judge or be confused which character it is.


How do I express the notion of "drama" in Chinese?

There are different kinds of drama, for example, 悬疑剧, 推理剧, 感情剧, 伦理剧. What you wanted to express is a specific kind of drama --

活剧 - Live drama

诙谐有趣而类似戏剧情节的真实事件 - humorous and interesting real events that resemble drama plots

~

闹剧 - Farce

一种喜剧; 2. 比喻滑稽夸张的事情 - 1. a comedy; 2. a metaphor of comically exaggerated event

Every day I come home to some drama. - 天天在家等着我的是一场又一场的活剧

I'm sick of all this drama. - 我再也受不了这些没完没了的闹剧

川普的整个总统任期就是一场活剧/闹剧- Trump’s entire presidency is a live drama/farce

Side note:
In Cantonese, there's a term 六國大封相 (an extravagant Chinese Opera title - a metaphor of chaotic, confrontational, or even violent scene). It may be a suitable choice in some contexts. Example: 成日六國大封相 (huge drama all day and every day)


How may "Donald" be rendered in Chinese?

I don't see any reason to rule out choosing 董 as part of a name. People may be impressed by your historical interest, which can be a good conversation starter.

As for more "conventional" options, one way to see different ways of rendering a name (such as "Donald") is to look at how names of famous (or infamous) people with the name are transliterated.

E.g. Donald Knuth (a famous computer scientist) is 高德纳 Gāo Dénà;

Donald Tusk (a Polish politician) is 唐纳德·图斯克 Tángnàdé Túsīkè

To make one's name sound more "Chinese", some people will try to keep 1 surname character, and then 1-2 given name characters, to have a 2-3 syllable name like most Chinese people. So Knuth's Chinese name will sound much more "Chinese" than Tusk's, comparing the examples above.


一 is pronounced in the first tone when it stands alone.
It is pronounced in the fourth tone when it precedes a first, second, or third tone. However, it is pronounced in the second tone when it precedes a fourth tone. 不 is a bit similar: It is also pronounced in the fourth tone when it precedes a first, second, or third tone. However, it is pronounced in the second tone when it precedes a fourth tone.

Some examples (from: http://web.mit.edu/jinzhang/www/pinyin/tones/index.html#1bu but I used simplified characters instead and corrected a tone which is incorrect on that website)

一万 (yíwàn)
(ten thousand)
一块 (yíkuài)
(one dollar)
一半 (yíbàn)
( a half)
不贵 (búguì)
(not expensive)
不对 (búduì)
(not correct)
不慢 (búmàn)
(not slow)
一天 (yìtiān)
(a day)
一生 (yìshēng)
(one's whole life)
不多 (bùduō)
(not many/much)
不吃 (bùchī)
(not eat)
一年 (yìnián)
(a year)
一群 (yìqún)
(a group of)
不难 (bùnán)
(not difficult)
不忙 (bùmáng)
(not busy)
一晚 (yìwǎn)
(one night)
一早 (yìzǎo)
(early in the morning)
不晚 (bùwǎn)
(not late)
不早 (bùzǎo)
(not early)

Since 个 has a fourth tone, the tone of 一 should become a second tone. Although in practice 个 is most often spoken as a neutral tone, the original tone is used for the tone sandhi.


In mathematics, how to express "两者不能同时成立"?

are you looking for "contradictory", in mathematic, it would be:

"contradictory opposite"　"矛盾否定"

"contradictory propositions"　"矛盾命題"

教育研究院, of taiwan has documentations of bilingual academic terms, the mathematical one is here, you may download it:

http://terms.naer.edu.tw/download/301/


How to say properly translate "circulation"?

circulation fan (空气)循环风扇

money circulation 货币流通

blood curculation 血液循环

the circulation of news, information, rumours, etc 新闻/信息/谣言的传播

She's been ill but now she's back in circulation. 她一直生病, 但现在又重新参加社交活动了.

a newspaper with a (daily) circulation of more than one million （日）销售量超过一百万份的报纸

circulation figures 销售数字.


伊 was used as 3rd person reference in ancient written Chinese.
In the beginning, it is equivalent to 他. But later on when Western books are translated into Chinese, sometimes "he" and "she" are confusing. The translator 郭赞生 suggested in his translation of a grammar book《文法初阶》that "he" should be translated as 他 and "she" translated as 伊. This is also guidance for original writings. The most famous literature that adopted this idea is from 鲁迅.
But later on, 刘半农（some say 钱玄同) introduced the character 她 which is used now in modern Chinese. The advantage of 她 over 伊 is that Chinese spoken language do not have a different pronunciation for different genders, so it is better to have the same pronunciation for all three 他 / 她 / 它, even though they are written down as different characters.
As a result, even though 伊 is not used now, it is still female related.
Reference: http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2005-07-26/04596526559s.shtml?from=wap


How do I determine whether to use 次 (cì) or 遍 (biàn) in these sentences?

From 《现代汉语词典》: (I'm omitting other unrelated descriptions of either word)

  次: 用于反复出现或可能反复出现的事情

  遍: 一个动作从开始到结束的整个过程称为一遍

Which is saying that 次 is used for things that (may) happen/appear/... repeatedly.
And 遍 refers to the whole process (from the beginning to the end) of an action.

The following explaination may be not that accurate:

次 seems to be saying that how many times you started to do something, but not quite care about how it persists.

In 2), the full action is required (from begin to end) so it is 遍。

In 3), the first blank, if he did twice consecutively, then it is 一次, but 两遍. Each 遍 is the full process from begin to end. If he did it once in the morning, but once in the afternoon, it is 两次. So maybe either is OK. For 下遍, it is not OK for me. But you can say 下一遍.

1), 4), 5) are all describing how many time a thing happened/happens/will happen, so they are all 次.


When 掉 is used as a verb complement (not a verb), it indicates that something disappears, is removed, is disposed of, etc. as the result of an action. Not really "falling" or "missing".

Some examples:

擦不掉：Something can't be removed or got rid of by rubbing or wiping. Maybe it's a stain on your shoes, and you're trying to rub it off with a cloth, but it can't be wiped away.

吃掉：To "eat something up". All of it is gone.

卖掉房子：To sell your house. After you sell it, it's gone. It's off your hands now.

忘掉：To forget something. After you forget it, it's gone from your memory.

忘不掉：To not be able to forget something, to be unforgettable.


叫门means knock the door or using other method to tell the people in room to open the door.


The meaning of 老 serving as an adverb is 总是.


I had a second (tenth?) listen, and extracted the sound to an mp3. Then I put this through Praat. I noticed something interesting:

This is the first occurrence of 來, around 72 seconds in:

齐家吃开晓来称赞

This is the second occurrence of 來, around 121 seconds in:

明星或歌星日日来帮衬

The first one is definitely [lɔi], whereas the second one is definitely [lei], and the sonogram confirms it. The second image, with the dense formation in the middle, trailing off into a lighter line is an [ei].

In this case it could be an influence from Cantonese -- Zhang is from Selangor -- where 嚟 is often pronounced lei.

Same around 2mn14 where 来 in 按好吃讲只只来帮衬 is [lei].
So it seems Zhang alternates freely loi and lei.

As for 歌 I had a look with Praat at only the first one (最近做歌星讲好难) -- it's getting late here :-) -- but this one is go1. I confirmed it by listening to it isolately, and looking at its sonogram -- it has the same profile as 近 and 讲). But listening to the full sentence it comes out a little weird, as if it were spirantized.

I'll have a deeper look tomorrow.

ADDENDUM 1

两 should be pronounced liong according to my reference, but here it is pronounced lioeng --> Seems like it indeed As you say, probable influence of Canto.
张惠妹 sounds like it's pronounced the mandarin way --> Yup.
你, in its last occurrence in the last repetition of part three, sounds like it's actually a 系.

That'd be at 4:41 thereabouts.

If you compare this sonogram with the second one, [lei], you see it's kind of similar -- the vowel is basically the same, except it doesn't weaken into [-i]. It's [e:].

Compare this with the 你 at 4:13:

No [e:] here. That's a nice [i:], quite long too. That's quite expected as 你 is ngi2.

As for the initial. In the suspicious 你, look at the initial in the sonogram, and compare it with the sonograms of [loi] and [lei], especially the latter. You have very similar patterns, albeit weaker for 你. I believe Zhang kind of reverted to Cantonese [lei]. The [l-] is there but devoiced (the lower dark line at the beginning of [lei] is barely there). I believe it's a voiceless [l], that can be heard as a [h].

ADDENDUM 2

Regarding Hakka tones, I used Dr Lau's PinFaa data to build a dictionary, which I added into my own little online tool. The tone contours are from [this page]:


Why does the grandma jump up and shout "杀了俺俺也不信！"?

there is some significance here I'm completely missing

well, you mis-interpreted the charatcter “打”  to price.

一亩地里能打三十万斤粮食

“打” is “打榖”, it means harvest
the quoted verse was a common “fake news” in china, during great leap forward (~1958-1962), roughly,
[in] one 畝 (about 667 sq meter) field, one can harvest 300,000 斤 (500 grams x 300000 —>  150,000 kg) grain.
the sad fact was, most people believed it.
btw, the highest record of such fake news is 130435 斤
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/放卫星


What is the role of 给 in this 把 ... 给 V construction?

There are two kinds of usage of 给。Let's use the three sentences A, B and C as example:

风把门给吹开了。(A)
门被风给吹开了。(B)
门给风吹开了。(C)

In the sentence C, 给 means "passive", 门给风吹开了 = 门被风吹开了。

For the two sentences A and B, 给 is used to highlight some emotion a little. If you remove the 给 in the two sentences, they are still correct but they will become the same thing with the sentence A.

For example, your mom told you to close the door, you did but the door was opened because of the wind. When your mom asked you: why didn't you close the door, you can say: 风把门给吹开了。With this sentence, you are telling your mom that it's not your fault.

Another example. Your friend is passing you some paper outside while the wind is blowing, he may say: 小心点，别让风把纸给吹跑了。It means that your friend is trying to warn you: be careful when you hold the paper, because the wind may blow it away.

As mentioned, 给 can highlight some emotion but just a little bit. So normally it's still fine if you remove it: 小心点，别让风把纸吹跑了。--- Totally correct.


What is the difference between 弯身, 弯腰, 俯身, and 屈身?

弯 (curve; bend) vs. 直 (straight)
弯身 = curve/ bend your body
Although bend your body from your waist (弯腰) is the most common way to bend your body, there are other postures that can be called 弯身.  For example, to get under and pass a police tape, you can curve your waist to one side (face sideway)
~
俯 (face downward)  vs. 仰 (face upward)
俯身 = body faces downward
Although bending your body from your waist (弯腰) does make your upper body face downward, there are other forms of 俯身. For example, you don't need to bend your waist when you 俯身撲向水池 (launch your body faces downward into the pool)
~
屈 (bend) vs.  伸 (stretch)
We use 屈 mostly for body parts that can be folded completely, e.g. 屈指一算; 屈膝下跪.
屈身 (bend your body) is similar to but not as commonly used as 弯身
~
弯腰 (bend your waist)
Since human's waist naturally bends forward. 弯腰 refers to this specific movement/ posture -- not bend sideways or backward


The Japanese character you're referring to is 貓. Currently, in China they use 猫. Although 猫 is considered the simplified character of 貓, 猫 is already mentioned as a variant form in the 廣韻 dictionary, which is now a millennium old (although of course, 豸 is used for felines and 犭for canines...)

The question about the sound is interesting, and you could note that the sound cats make, meow, is written with the character 喵, pronounced miāo. Looking at the Kangxi dictionary, we can see that the pronunciation of 貓 also used to be some sort of "miao".

Interestingly, dictionaries don't seem to comment on the fact that they named the animal after its sound. The only explanation of the name I see is: 鼠善害苗。貓能捕鼠，故字从苗。, i.e. "Mice damage crops (lit. "苗" miao, sprouts), cats can catch them, hence the character deriving from 苗", which of course seems a bit bullshit. :)


"constructor": "构造函数"
"framework": "框架"
"dependency injection": "依赖注入"
"content management system": "内容管理系统"

Instead of looking for a word table, you can refer to textbooks that cover programming languages (such as C++ or Java) in Chinese.


Translation for "ray of sunlight after rain"

How about 霽光? As in the Song Dynasty poem: 一夕輕雷落萬絲，霽光浮瓦碧參差。("after a night's worth of distant thunder and myriad raindrops / then the light after the rain shines shimmeringly on the blue-green roof tiles") Not sure there's a single character for this but can check 康熙 (standard classical dictionary).

霽 as a single character refers to the clearing of clouds/rain, but I don't think carries a strong connotation of "light" by itself.


羞辱: humiliate (v); humiliation (n)

Example:
加拿大隊在女子曲棍球世界杯中羞辱日本隊13-0  - Team Canada humiliates Team Japan 13-0 in Women Hockey Would Cup
成人被打屁股是一種羞辱 - An adult being spanked is a humiliation

侮辱: insult (v); insult (n)

Example:
不要用這種謊話去侮辱人們的智慧 - Don't use such lies to insult people's wisdom
把那人比作豬是對豬的侮辱 - It is an insult to the pig to compare that person to a pig
羞 has the meaning of 'shame' In a typical hockey game, the score total is around 3-4 goals by both teams, losing 13-0 is a humiliation/ shame. Only children would be spanked by adults, an adult being spanked is a humiliation/ shame
Both 侮 and 辱 mean 'insult'
侮辱 = 'insult'
Basically, an insult (侮辱) makes you feel offended/ angry; A humiliation (羞辱) makes you feel belittled/ humiliated/ angry
羞辱 (n) is similar to 恥辱 (n: humiliation; shame), but 恥辱 cannot be used as a verb
Being naked cause people to feel shame, to strip someone naked is more than a 侮辱. It is a 羞辱; Calling someone names is a 侮辱 but not always a 羞辱, e.g. I wouldn't consider '你這殺人兇手' (You murderer) a 羞辱, but I would consider '你這説謊者'(you liar) as one


Are the wiktionary definitions for 切 qiè correct?

From CantoDict Dictionary:

  http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/793/

  (jyutping) cit3, (pinyin) qie1

  [1] cut; slice; chop; mince; carve

  [2] (indicates that the previous two characters are 反切 notation)

  [3] [math] tangent

  (jyutping) cit3, (pinyin) qie4

  [1] correspond to; conform to; accord with

  [2] close to; near to

  [3] eager; anxious; keen

  [4] be sure to; must

  (jyutping) cai3, (pinyin) qie4

  [1a ]all; whole

~

From the question:

  to be close to

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [2]) close to

  to bite tightly

only work in idiom 咬牙切齒, which literally means 'bite and cut with teeth, therefore, 切 itself doesn't contain the meaning of 'bite'  only contains the meaning of 'cut' here

  to clench

切 doesn't have the meaning of to 'clench' . The editor might have confused  by the expression '切齒',  which literally means 'cut with teeth'  and this action results in you shut your jaws tight, thus extend to the meaning of 'clenching jaws'

  to correspond to

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [1] correspond to)

  to match (traditional Chinese medicine) to feel the pulse

to feel the pulse is 搭脈; 切脈 means 'hack the blood vein' which is a martial art term, the editor made a mistake again

  eager

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [3] eager)

  ardent

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [3] keen)

  urgent

only work in compound word '急切' which means ' urgently close'. '切' in '急切' doesn't mean urgent, it means 'close' or 'near'; only '急' in '急切' means urgent

  pressing

only work in compound word '逼切' which means 'pressingly close'. '切' in '逼切' doesn't mean 'pressing', it means 'close' or 'near'; only '逼' in '逼切' means 'pressing'

  all

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [1a])but it only work in compound word '一切', '切' itself doesn't mean 'all' - Even the CantoDict dictionary made the same mistake

  entire

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [1a])- 'all' extended to mean 'entire'

  must

(Match pinyin /qie4/ [4] must)

  by all means

the editor was confused by the expression '不顧一切' which literally means '不顧'(not care), 一切 (all); Only the idiom '不顧一切' means 'by all means', '切' doesn't

  main point

'main point' in Chinese is '要點', the editor might have confused by a common phrase '切中要點' which literally means '切中'(cut correctly into) 要點(the main point).

  (phonetics) Short for 反切 (fǎnqiè, “fanqie”).

(Match (pinyin) qie1 [2])

  (chiefly women's speech, colloquial) An interjection conveying a slight sense of disdain or dissatisfaction.

'啐' sounded like '切'. It is a phonetic loan word for an exclamation that express disdain or dissatisfaction


How to proceed after forgetting to include time-when/location/adverb phrase before main verb?

It's totally valid and common to add adverbial modifiers after your main clause.

In conversation, rules are breakable. In writing, there is 倒裝句(Inversion), yeah, that means putting adverbial modifiers at the end of the sentence is grammatically correct, if you follow the inversion rule.

  I'm living in Chicago (pause) Well only currently.

我住在芝加哥, 呃, 只是目前

  We're watching TV (pause) At my grandmother's house, that is.

我們正在看電視, 在我奶奶家.

  I donated some chairs (pause) Which was yesterday actually.

我捐了些椅子, 昨天捐的.

People usually say something like this in my hometown:

你做什麽了, 昨天?

What were you doing, yesterday?


I believe xiāo is the correct pronunciation, although xuē can also be correct in certain regions; it depends on how you pronounce 削 in its "shave" meaning.
削 has two pronunciations depending on usage, although both can mean "shave":

削 xiāo 　ㄒㄧㄠˉ
　1. 用刀斜着去掉物体的表层。～苹果皮。～铅笔。
　2. 打乒乓球时用球拍平而略斜地击球：～球。
削 xuē 　ㄒㄩㄝˉ
　1. 义同削（xiāo），用于一些复合词：～铁如泥。～足适履。
　2. 减少；减弱：～减。～弱。
　3. 除去：～职为民 。
　4. 搜刮；掠取：剥～。

xiāo is the pronunciation used for the "shave" verb, but as you can see, xuē also means "shave" in certain phrases, like 削铁如泥. Apart from that, xuē is usually used in the "pare" or "reduce" meaning, as in words like 削减.
Since 刀削面 is supposed to mean "knife-shaved noodles", the pronunciation should be based on the one for "shave". This is usually xiāo, but in some dialects it is xuē.


I Want to Switch Baidu to Pinyin from Simplified

After reading around I realized my error. There are some browser addons that display the Pinyin but I had assumed wrong. Pinying is mostly used for pronunciation and typing but Chinese sites like Baidu normally display in simplified and there is no way to switch them. Simplified is for reading.

Hopes this helps anyone from feeling as dumb as me.


These four are all authentic expression while the first one is the best choice if you are introducing your teachers to someone.
他们是我的老师
他们是我老师
他们是我的朋友
他们是我朋友

1.老师 or 朋友
Both are acceptable. But it's usually more natural to call your teachers 老师 instead of 朋友 because it sounds more polite and formal.
2.我的老师 or 我的老师们
It's more natural in the Chinese language to say 他们是我的老师 instead of 老师们 even though "teachers" make more sense than "teacher" when understanding the sentence in the way of English grammar. It's hard for me to provide a reason for that.
3.我的老师 or 我老师
我 and 我的 both mean "my". The omission of 的 makes it more colloquial. It's common to hear people say 我... to a friend. But again I guess 我的老师 would suits better because it sound more formal.


十天半月 or 十天半個月 means 十天～半個月 (10 days to half a month).

我長大以後喜歡往城裏跑，常常是十天半月不回家。
After I grew up, I loved going into the city, often not returning home for about a fortnight at a time.

For reference, both the Baidu Zhidao answers say approximately the same thing. 上中下旬 means the first, second, or third period of a month, with a period of a month being a 旬 (10 days).


Why is 于 needed after 不屑 (but sometimes not)?

不屑于 is a set phrase.
Check out《现代汉语规范词典》's distinctions:

不屑
1 动 不值得
不屑一切 | 不屑与之争辩
2 形 形容轻视的样子
一副不屑的神情。

and

不屑于
动 认为不值得做或不值得理睬
他很自负, 好像不屑于做这种具体工作。

《规范》defines the two slightly differently while treating 不屑于 as a separate independent word and not a construct.


It's Kong Lin's birthday, but she hates birthdays: is it okay to write 孔琳宁愿发现来月经而整天肚子疼，也不过今天?

I would say 孔琳宁愿一整天经痛，也不愿度过今天。


要；yào；want, want to (想要), need to (須要), going to (將要).

需要；xūyào；need

We can use 要 instead of 須要 when we want to express need to + verb. However, we might not always want to replace 需要 with 要, because the meaning of 需要 is clearer: it always means 'need', while the meaning of 要 might cause confusion, as it can mean 'want to, need to or going to'.
On the other side, we shouldn't use 要 in place of 需要 when we want to express need + noun, such as in:

为什么人类需要氧气才能生存?
Why does mankind need oxygen to be able to survive?

氧气 is a noun; '需要氧气' (need oxygen) cannot be changed to 須要氧气 (need to oxygen), 想要氧气 (want to oxygen) or 將要氧气 (going to oxygen).
If the sentence was '須要有氧气' (need to have oxygen), then it can be changed to 要有氧气 because 有 is a verb.


"Disgusting" as the Chinese would say it

for the word "disgusting" A simple search can yield many results:

肉酸 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1431/
肉麻 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/2054/
反胃 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/13997/
嘔心 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/15164/
鶻突 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1310/

However,

about the defilement of a nation's culture & traditions

I think the word you are looking for is "shameful"

可恥 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/46203/


Neutral tone and erhua (儿化) working as a word distinguisher

Are there any erhua-ed words that has a different meaning from the not "erhualess" word?

Yes, many, categorized as follows:

Nominalization (convert to noun), e.g. 盖 (to cover) -> 盖儿 (lid), 尖 (pointy) -> 尖儿 (tip)
Generalization, e.g. 眼 (eye) -> 眼儿 (hole),
Derivation, e.g. 白面 (white flour) -> 白面儿 (drug)
Word simplification by replacing the last character with 儿, e.g. 把手 -> 把儿 (handle), which is different from 把 (to hold).
Changing tone, e.g. 脸蛋 (cheek, neutral tone) -> 脸蛋儿 (cheek, loving tone)

  Is there any list with these neutral/non-neutral and erhua/non-erhua (if they do exist) pairs?

Not aware of any. I am curious to see a comprehensive one, too.


What is a polite way to ask to 打包 (dǎbāo) "take away" my meal? Is 我想打包 acceptable?

No, just say

"Hello! Waiter! I need (my food to be) taken away, is that ok?"
你好，服务员，我要打包，可以吗？

or

"Hello! Waiter! Can you help me package (my food)?"
你好，服务员，能帮我打包吗？

I don't know how you talk about this in English-speaking country, but I will use that sentence in China.

打包一下 is ok. This action only happened once, once it's done, you'll take away your food, the waiter knows about that. This putting your food into a bag action will not last very long.


colloquial idiomatic translation of: "beating a dead horse"?

'Beating a dead horse' implies 'on and on, endlessly debating or citing a same tired subject' (doesn't matter if the subject is settled or not)"

I think it can be described as '沒完沒了' in Chinese. To be specific 'beating a dead horse' is "沒完沒了地重複相同的話題 " (endlessly repeating the same topic)


How come 東/东 has a second meaning 'owner/master' or 'host'?

東: 主人。由於古時主位在東，客位在西，所以稱主人為「
　　東」。如：「房東」、「店東」。

Translation: In ancient times, the host was seated to the east and the guest to the west, so the host was called "East".

reference:
http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/yitia/fra/fra01875.htm

Personally I have also heard it is because the Sun rises from the east, thus east is seen as the 'emic', or the 'theme'


In all the news reports in Mainland China, "中东" refers to Middle East. This can be seen as a convention -- as a native speaker, if I hear "中东", I will definately think of the Middle East. You can take a look at the Wikipedia Page of 中东, and the Baidu Baike Page of 中东. Only one meaning is referred on both pages -- Middle East.
If anyone wants to refer to Eastern China, they will say "中国东部（地区）". The dictionary lists Eastern China for "中东", which looks like a result from translation software... So the dictionary makes a mistake.

I don't know if 中东 has any other meaning in Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. But when I search for 中东, I also noticed that in Japanese, the combination of these two Characters also refers to Middle East.


Both 你说的对 and 你说得对 could be valid.

你说的对 means 你说的内容对：what you said is right.

你说得对 means either 'you said it right' or 'it's right/correct for you to say it'. 得 here is an effect or result complement.

However, 'you are right' should be interpreted as '你是对的'. Specially for "You are right in terms of xxx": 在xxx方面，你是对的 or 从xxx角度(来看/来说), 你是对的.

For example, you are right in terms of time or money: 从时间或金钱的角度来说， 你是对的。


筋 means muscle or tendon. The 筋 in these phrases is short for 脑筋, which literally means "brain tendon", but is used to mean "(line of) thought" or "idea".

You can see examples of this word, in phrases like

动脑筋: literally: "to move one's brain tendons", means: "to think hard"
伤脑筋: literally: "to hurt one's brain tendons", means: "a headache" (in the sense of difficult to think about)


There is difference between 店 and 馆. Actually, it is likely be the convention of Chinese expression.

茶馆: a place where you can drink tea.

茶店: a place where you can buy tea, usually called 茶叶店.

咖啡馆=咖啡店，旅馆=旅店，理发馆=理发店

but 饭馆≠饭店，酒馆≠酒店


According to "互动百科", it's said that during China's ancient times, a general on horseback was on its way to perform an important task, but he was interrupted midtrip when a messenger caught up to him bringing him a message, which stated that the emperor was deathly ill. He immediately turned around and rode back to see the emperor without alighting from his horse (note: riding in the Forbidden City was strictly forbidden), hence the word "马上" to mean "immediately".


In this context, 'note' means "註". More precisely, it is a "附註" in the example

附註
appended note; annotation
[synonym] 註解 (comment)

Note: these findings were based on a first draft and may be updated later.

註: 这些调查结果基于初稿，可能会在以后更新

附註: 这些调查结果基于初稿，可能会在以后更新


You should say 回___去. And usually you can omit 去.

e.g:

回家去。/回家。
回火星去。 /回火星。

There're only some subtle differences in tone and emotion depending on the context.

While some would suggest that 回去___ is grammarly correct, usually it is phonetically strange.

As a native speaker, I would prefer 回家去吃饭 over 回去家吃饭. The logic (if there are any) behind this is that both 回家 and 吃饭(or anything you go home to do) can be used standalone. Connecting them with a single 去 sounds smoother than split 回家 and insert a 去 in the middle.


In what circumstances can 呢 be interchangeable with 吗？

吗 and 呢 are not interchangeable.

你是同学 means: "you are a classmate"
你是同学吗？ means: "are you a classmate? "
你同学 means: "your classmate"
你同学吗？ means: "is (he/she) your classmate?"
the final particle 吗 here denote 'interrogative' or 'inquisitive'. It short, it always turns a sentence into question form

~

你同学(呢)? depend on context, it can mean: 1. "(where) is your classmate?" or 2. "(how about) your classmate?"
the final particle 呢 here denote "alternative questions, affirmative negative questions (as stated in  user60651's comment).

你是同学呢! is a different thing. The final particle 呢 in this sentence serve no interrogative function. Which mean it doesn't turn  "你是同学" into a question. It serves to emphasize the sentence itself and/or the speaker's emotion (e.g. annoyed, determine) with the tone itself


What is "一" doing in "事情一开始进展得很顺利，但后来我们遇到了困难"?

一 in this construction has the meaning of ”once”.

Once the business got started it was very successful, but later on we encountered difficulties.

Another example: 一看他的样子就知道他是个骗子。


How to say "To end" when the verb is not a simple V + O

Just put 完 at the end of the verb will do the job. Examples are as follows:

培训完之后，我们去吃饭吧！
锻炼完之后，我们去吃饭吧！
冥想完之后，我们去吃饭吧！
蹲起完之后，我们去吃饭吧！


First, let's look at why 沙 (sand) is related to 水(water)

Sand is found mostly on 滩岸 (beach and shore), close to a body of water  (ocean, river, etc.)

Sand is created by water eroding rock

like water, sand can 流動 (flow)

漠: 北方流沙也。——《说文》 (漠 = flowing/ moving sand in the north)

A desert is in effect, an ocean of sand. Therefore, it is closely related to sand, and sand is closely related to water.
One interesting fact -- 莫 means 'without', so you can think of 漠 as 'without water'. The person who coined the word '漠' for 'desert' might have that in mind too
Side note: 少 means 'little', I suspect the word 沙 might be coined with the idea of 'made little by water' too


What is the difference between 星心相印 and 心心相印？

There is no such phrase in Chinese as "星心相印"。

However, as the comment says, there is a song called that and it is definitely a romantic one. It expressed an admiration to the 'one' who gives the singer great comfort and warm feelings.

Besides, the gift is a "star"fish right?  "star" = "星", and the shells may look alike with the shape of heart. And I wonder if there is any "星" in any of your names.

My point of view, if it is a hand made (or wrote) by herself, it is 100% percent romantic, you have my words. Otherwise if it is only some cheap product(no offense) from a workshop of god-knows-where, than you have to consider if you had misread the signal~


What is the difference between 星期日 and 周日?

周日 is formal(on TV news) and oral, 星期天 is mostly oral. 星期日 is what Cantonese use orally(Hongkong, Canton), mandarin hardly.
We also use 礼拜天(mandarin)礼拜日(Cantonese) orally a lot.
Most possible combination of is above. btw There is no 周天.


What does this woman say in Chinese? (From the new Daredevil tv show)

有些人的手，永遠是染著他人的鮮血，會冷的。

Some people's hands are always bathed* in the blood of others. They get cold.

  這些人，他是偷貨給自己的，還是把你們弄成大傻瓜？

Did these people steal the products for themselves, or did they turn you guys into idiots?

*染 = to dye, but, in the context 染著(someone's)鮮血, the more accurate translation would be bathed in the blood.

By the way, in my opinion, this woman's pronunciation is not accurate.


Resource request: Hainanese dictionaries

The 海口方言词典 (Haikou Topolect Dictionary) is the go-to for Hainanese dictionaries. Part of the venerable 现代汉语方言大词典 (Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects) series, it was published in 1996, and can be accessed in libraries around the world. The transcription of sounds is done in IPA with Chao tone letters.

For Wenchang specifically, there is the 方言 chapter of the 文昌县志 (Wenchang Annals, I suppose), published in 2000 and also found in libraries. The related dialect of Qionghai is also recorded in part 25 of its Annals (琼海县志).

Otherwise you will have to glean vocabulary items from scientific journals and websites. E.g. the 海南闽语的语音研究, a study from 2006.


What is the difference between words that mean "to throw": 摔, 扔, 投

When 摔, 扔, 投 mean 'to throw':

摔 is a more forceful throw. For example, '把杯子摔在地上' (you throw the cup onto the ground with considerable force)
扔 is a more generally directed throw. For example, '把垃圾扔在地上' (you just throw the garbage onto the ground, doesn't matter which direction)
投 is a more specifically aimed throw. For example, '把篮球投入篮中' (you aim and throw the basketball into the basket)


What is the difference between the suffixes 面 and 边?

If solo 边 means the side of something.
Solo 面 means surface of something.

前面 and 前边 has no difference because it comes from different accent like beijing or sichuan accent.

前面 is more hand-writting and 前边 could be used more in some cities like sichuan for accent use . All in all , both are ok in spoken language and writing . Just like 'Hello' and 'Hi' , and a little bit similar to 'old' and 'auld'

Any more questions?


(This is not an answer per se, but definitely too long to be in the comments)
Don't get me wrong, both 馮雪盈 and 方雪盈 sound very nice to me. The ci is equally aesthetic. However, in this ci, it is often said that Xin Qiji had a deeper overtone than to merely describe the many sightings (people included, as in your quoted verse) of the Lantern festival. His pursuit of 'that person' 那人 standing well away from the crowds in the last verse is said to be a reflection of his patriotism (to Northern Song), which, at that time (Southern Song), is sadly largely forgotten by his contemporaries who found complacency in this kind of life. In a way, he was contrasting his motive with these very glamorous descriptions of the festival.
In light of this, it would be perfect if 雪 and 盈 are found in other sources of poetry that provide a better justification (without the historical connotations above). Perhaps the Book of Odes or other ci works. I leave that for others who are more familiar with poetry to answer. However, do keep in mind sometimes 雪 itself (not as part of a compound word like 雪柳) may confer a different, perhaps lonely imagery, such as 江雪. I only felt obliged to inform you the way this ci can potentially be interpreted.


In which parts of Asia do they speak Hokkien Chinese?

Though Hokkien = 福建 or Fujian，a southeast coastal province facing Taiwan. Hokkien Chinese actually means 闽南语 which is originated from south part of 福建, and also commonly used in Taiwan Island, Southeast Asia and many other Chinese societies overseas.

In fact people living in north part of Fujian speak a totally different dialect, which is almost not understandable to Hokkien-speaking Chinese.


Could somebody explain the meaning of the sentence to me?

I think you are meant to fill something like this：

  今天的菜非卖掉不可， （否则）到明天就没有人买了。

到明天就没有人买了 here implies that the vegetables might go stale and no body wouldn't buy it. That's why you have to make sure you sell them all out today -- 今天的菜非卖掉不可.


When used as measure word, 匹 always has very specific and narrow matches with it

  一匹马、一匹骡子、一匹狼、一匹布、一匹绸子

Above is pretty much all you would see with 匹 as a measure word.

For 条，except for dog, it always refer to animals that are long, thin and with no legs, like

  一条蛇、一条鱼

Also, it refers to general long objects like

  一条绳子、一条河、一条腿、一条烟（lots of boxes of ciggrets purchased together）

Moreover, 条 could refer to human body related concepts

  我们几个是一条心、一条人命


Why is the 車 in Chinese chess pronounced jū?

It is an ancient pronunciation of that Chinese character. Because Chinese chess has been created for more than 2000 years. During this period of time, pronunciations of many characters have changed, "車" is one of them. But because this game has been widely spread, this ancient pronunciation has been retained.

This pronunciation is only used in this game.


As far as I know, in Mainland China:

廿 is only used in written lunar calendar. It is very rarely used in spoken Chinese. However, it may be used in some dialects such as Cantonese.
卅 is not used in spoken Chinese, except for representing the 30th day of a month in naming a few historical events and telegraph (popular in early 1900s but rarely used today).
卌 is nearly extinct and should be considered obsolete.

In conclusion: 二十 ("two tens"), 三十 ("three tens") and 四十 ("four tens") are enough.


People like variations in word order. The word order is not fixed forever. I don't think a proscriptive approach to grammar is helpful. In the end, natural language will win.

Like Marko commented, "as in the things need to study, which is obviously not the intended meaning of the sentence"

The basic sentence is:
我有东西。
【】is then an adjective.
我有【（我）要学习】的东西。
I have things I want to/must study

This below works because we know 东西 don't study, people study.

我有很多东西（我）要学习。
I have many things (that) I want to study.

Put a noun like 学生 in there that can study and the student is no longer 我:

我还有很多学生要学习（这门课程）。
I still have many students (who) want to study this course.


How can it be single characters for new chemical elements like 鈽 and 鈾?

You're right. We did invent a bunch of characters for chemical elements in 20th century.

We made it just one character by combining different radical(偏旁) together,  but people can associate them with the English words simply by their pronunciation.

You can read more about it from this Wiki article: Chemical elements in East Asian languages


Although it is a potentially valid to use the slightly derogatory "cute" nickname, it is much more likely to be a more standard-sounding given name, for example 佳寧 or perhaps 嘉寧, both pronounced Jiāníng in Mandarin and Gā-nìhng in Cantonese. To my ear, both are female names. A quick Google returns quite a few profiles with this exact given name, overwhelmingly female.


How do I ask for a refill for my acrylic nails?

Refill 修补

Saw this talking about gel nails, but the concept should be the same:

H.K. Gel Nails F&Q

  ...要注意在啫喱甲Refill(修补)过程中...

Edit: I have a hunch that acrylic nails are called 水晶甲 but I could very well be wrong....


What is the missing character on the seal?

跟進此問題，題中之印

圖略

  Ｘ是何字，解之有難。僅看字形，個人釋之爲「亘」，而@水巷孑蠻釋之爲「亙」，因漢朝既無「亘帝」也無「亙帝」，二解都有問題。

nice try, just some corners of vernacular chinese. practise more, you can master the writing of literary chinese :)

may i suggest:

緣前題雖解．而一疑尚存．固起此問求真

斯印存六字．其五已釋．惟漢後皇前之刻．亘乎．亙乎．眾說紛紜．未審孰是孰非．再者．漢世無亘．亙之諡．益添困惑

back to basic, a seal is for authentication, to make a stamping that other can recognised the stamped document as authentic, from a individual, or an entity.

the seal in question just declare "descendent of a particular emperor of 漢 dynasty".

any mr 劉 can make such claim, so?

next, the text "漢ｘ皇帝後裔" is redundant & ugly. "漢室宗親"; 4 characters are enough for this purpose.

last, 亙 (u+4e99) is suggested, well, because the 漢語多功能字庫 do not has 亘 (u+4e98)

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=亘

and, the 國語辭典 claimed 亘 (u+4e98) as variant of 亙 (u+4e99)

http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/cgi-bin/cbdic/gsweb.cgi?o=dcbdic&searchid=W00000070331

i need to read more, before making any sound judgement :(

last, relax, treat it as a "hello kitty stamp" :)

what i want to say is, hello kitty is based on a cat, it does not have a line to represent a mouth, and, it's "tail" is a circle only.


To me, as a native speaker, my intuition is that it is not something from old Chinese. Not all those sentences or phrases that use very few words come from old Chinese.

In this case, they just want to briefly summarize the current preference on urban construtation that people focus more on things above the ground rather than below the ground.

Actually, it is quite common to say “重A，轻B” in formal situations. It is also very common that people summarize some key characteristics in a brief way, making it looks like old Chinese. You can find a lot of them in some political files or slogans, such as “兴国之要，兴国之魂，立国之本，立党之本”。


There are 3 mistakes in this puzzle.
First, idiom 17 should be 不甘人后, idiom O should be 人之常情, it is an error on design.
Second, idiom 12 should be 人非草木孰能无情, 孰 is different from 熟.
Third, idiom 2 should be 性命攸关, 攸 is different from 悠.
The completed puzzle is as follows.


You can think of it as two words 很搭 but it generally means very compatible, suitable, a good match.

The 很 is used as an adverb. ex: 很帥, 很酷, 很好
The 搭 is used as slang for being compatible.
You can also change up the adverb and use 滿搭

It's usually used for clothing, 你穿這件還滿搭的. This clothing matches you.


Have I understood the joke 男：我一直就很爱你啊！ 女：那不直的时候呢？ correctly?

直 could mean heterosexual(informal).

This comes directly from "straight" in English.


What does the word 'field' mean in this context?

I'm not sure if this is the case here, but in some theories of linguistics, 'field' is a technical term that refers to the way a text represents reality (or our experience of reality). I don't know what 'inner' and 'outer' fields would be, unless they could be referring to 'within the clause' and 'outside the clause'. If this is the case, the general idea is 'context', i.e. you can work out the tense from the context (e.g. 明天，昨天）

Who is the original author of the text? Knowing their background could be helpful in understanding what framework they were using.

Okay, based on further info it looks like this answer is completely off-base.


How do you translate "place" in an address into Chinese?

In English, as we all know, there are many ways of saying a "way", like road, avenue, street, boulevard and place of course. They all have different and specific meanings. However, in Chinese, we do not use that many different words. Therefore, what you would basically do is to just translate "place" into "街" or "路" and that is it!

Also, as the rule says, in Chinese, address is written from biggest to smallest, thus as for yours, it would be translated to

  美国，纽约市，古斯塔夫·L·利维街一号，邮编：10029

Though the name of the street can be translated into Chinese by its pronunciation, it is suggested to include the English name of the street in order for people to locate the address easier.

For your curiosity, please refer to this link for Chinese correspondence of many types of "way" in English.


Simplified Chinese Stroke order animation

This is the first result on google:
https://github.com/chanind/hanzi-writer


There are books specifically designed for learners, such as the Chinese Breeze Graded Readers. These books are small, have constrained vocabulary, and relatively simple stories, but not so basic that you don't feel some sense of accomplishment after reading one. I read the book 错，错，错！ which features police officers investigating a suspicious suicide. The plot would make a terrible movie but it was still fun to read.


元宵節

  亦稱為上元節、小正月、元夕、小年或春燈節。
  時間是每年的農曆正月十五。
  佛教有在正月十五點燈供佛的習俗。
  而道教中，上元節乃天官華誕，故燃燈以慶。

元：上元 (農曆正月十五，the 15th of the 1st lunar month)
宵：夜晚 (night, evening)
元宵：the evening of the 15th of the 1st lunar month

Lantern: 燈
Festival: 節
Lantern Festival: 燈節

元宵節的由來英文介紹

  The Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, usually in February or March in the Gregorian calendar. As early as the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 25), it had become a festival with great significance. This day's important activity is watching lanterns. Throughout the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), Buddhism flourished in China. One emperor heard that Buddhist monks would watch sarira, or remains from the cremation of Buddha's body, and light lanterns to worship Buddha on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, so he ordered to light lanterns in the imperial palace and temples to show respect to Buddha on this day. Later, the Buddhist rite developed into a grand festival among common people and its influence expanded from the Central Plains to the whole of China.

  每年農曆的正月十五日，春節剛過，迎來的就是中國的傳統節日--元宵節。元宵節主要的活動就是看燈。東漢明帝時期，明帝提倡佛教，聽說佛教有正月十五日僧人觀佛舍利，點燈敬佛的做法，就命令這一天夜晚在皇宮和寺廟裡點燈敬佛，令士族庶民都掛燈。以後這種佛教禮儀節日逐漸形成民間盛大的節日。該節經歷了由宮廷到民間，由中原到全國的發展過程。


Help translating instructions since English website has been shut down

Two options:

Press the power button for more than three seconds. This is what instruction says: 电源开关长按3秒以上开机.
According to this Belorussian guy, you can take a needle and press the reset button inside the round hole near the SD card slot. (This method is not on the manual.)

These methods might not do an actual hardware reset, though. No guarantees here.


目的: goal/ purpose (intention of reaching an outcome)
Example: 目的是杀死比尔 = the goal is to kill bill (kill Bill is an intention and desire)

~

目标: goal/ objective/ target (intention of accomplishing something)
Example: 目标是杀死比尔 = the goal is to kill Bill (kill Bill is an intention and also an achievement)

目标 can mean "target" ; 目的 cannot
Example:目标是金牌 (the target is the gold medal)
You cannot say 目的是金牌 (the goal is the gold medal), you have to say 目的是夺取金牌 (the goal is to take the gold medal) and you have to state an action that would lead to the outcome, e.g 他每天训练8个小时, 目的是夺取金牌 (he trains 8 hours a day, the goal is to take the gold medal)
One more example:

目标是创造一百万个新工作 (the goal/target is to create one million new jobs)
一百万 is the targeted number; 创造一百万个新工作 is an achievement

~

"政府向小公司提供十亿美元的补贴, 目的是创造新工作"
"The government offers one billion dollars subsidy to small companies, the goal is to create jobs"

Edit:
After reading the OP and others' comments, I would try to make it as simple as possible for the OP to understand the difference between 目的 and 目标

When using 目的 (intention/ goal)  you need to state specific means  that would lead to the fulfillment of the goal. Many examples have been stated by me and the others. e.g. 每天训练8个小时 (train 8 hours everyday) is a specific mean.

When using 目标 (target/ goal) You can omit the action. e.g. 我的目标是金牌 (my target is the gold medal). It implies you would achieve this goal by all means in general

Just remember 目的 = intention (need to state specific action before it); 目标= target (don't need to state specific action before it, it implies using 'all' or 'any' mean by default.)

You can still state specific action when using 目标, but it would just be one of many actions you specifically state. e.g. "我每天训练8个小时, 我的目标是夺取金牌"  can almost be treated as unrelated, separate sentences; while "我每天训练8个小时" and  "目的是夺取金牌" are definitely related


我一個晚上開銷就不只三萬了. What's 了 doing?

It really depends on the conversation context. The difference is too subtle to describe to people from different cultures.

It is hard to use your sentence directly to build an example. Suppose a client is bargaining/discussing some expense or price with you.

When there is no "了", you are probably just stating the fact.

When there is a "了", it is likely your tone is dropping during talking, you could be rolling your eyes too. You are indicating the client is too ignorant about the real expense you need and his estimation is way too low.

Or you could say it with a "了" in a tone of something close to "撒娇", indicating the client should pay a bit more than what he offered. In this case, you could probably or will intentionally choose to use "啦" instead of "了".


How to interpret a sentence with two clauses but no conjunction?

But the sentence above doesn't use a conjunction. In this case, is the sentence valid in grammar?

Conjunctions are often omitted in Chinese and English. The example sentence is valid.

不得到领导的允许，你不能走。
(如果)不得到领导的允许，你(就)不能走。

These two sentences express the same thing. Just the first one omitted 如果 and 就.

You can also omit only 就 and write "如果不得到领导的允许，你不能走。" ; or you can omit only 如果 and write "不得到领导的允许，你就不能走。" . Both sentences are valid.

If you want to express "You couldn't get the permission of the leaders, so you cannot go." the conjunctions would be different- (因為) 你得不到领导的允许，(所以) 你不能走

You can omit 因為 and write "得不到领导的允许，所以你不能走" ; or you can omit 所以 and write "因為得不到领导的允许，你不能走"

but you cannot omit both and not affect the sentence's meaning.

The point is:

You can omit conjunctions if it doesn't affect the sentence's meaning.
When a conjunction is needed to clarify the sentence, leave it un-omitted.

Side note:

Beside conjunctions, you can also omit subjects and objects. As long as it doesn't affect the meaning of the sentence. For example: The full reply to "你認得我?" should be " 我認得你" since it is a Q and A between two people, the subject and object can be omitted to make it cleaner, just reply: "認得" is enough.


How is my sentence? 我以为我没有工商卡，可是，我顺便找到了。

It sounds weird using 顺便 here. I think you should use 无意中 (by accident/undesignedly) instead, e.g. 我以为我没有工商卡，可是（or use 结果 instead to emphasize the opposite result）我无意中找出来一张。

Note that 顺便 is intentional. e.g. 今天我去见我导师，顺便去大学图书馆借本书。The action that going to the library by the way is still intentional, it's planned. But for this case, the result that finding out the card is unmeant, undesigned. As you said 我以为我没有工商卡, so you won't try to search the card intentionally.

PS: 工商卡 is valid, but we use 工行卡 or 工行的卡 more because 工商银行 is abbreviated to 工行 ususally. Similarly, you can say 招行/建行/中行/农行 etc.


How to write "BiángBiáng麵" using pinyin?

Phonetic Substitution

Although the character cannot currently be typed into a computer, wikipedia notes that one may use a phonetic substitution. I doubt that most people would recognise this 58 stroke original character in any case but at least this may be a usable substitute.

  The Chinese character for "biáng" cannot be entered into computers.
  Therefore phonetic substitutes like Chinese: 彪彪面; pinyin: biāobiāo
  miàn) or Chinese: 冰冰面; pinyin: bīngbīng miàn) are often used.

(Wikipedia, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biángbiáng_noodles#Mnemonics)


Personally, I find Mandarin rather unsuitable for a sentence like this.

(Note that the sentence "gimme yo cheese!" sounds ridiculous in English.)

When I think about the formal nature of standardized Mandarin, I can't help but dream up a sentence like: 请把你的奶酪都给我吧

Of course, this sentence sounds pretty silly, and the 请……吧 pattern has an effect opposite of what you wanted. Ending a sentence with 啊 (or one of its similar sounding particles, e.g., 哎) would do the trick.

As suggested above: 交出你的奶酪啊！ is good.

That said, I think you'd end up with better results if you resorted to a dialect (just like "gimme" is not standardized English).

As a more aggressive alternative in Mandarin, you could try: 赶快把(所有的)奶酪都给老子交出来！

This basically sounds like you are robbing someone for their cheese, which would have had the humorous effect you intended (judging by your described context), but it'd be tough to imagine an appropriate real-life scenario in which to employ this vocabulary.

...Unless you were really trying to rob somebody: 把值钱的东西都给老子交出来啊！

Disclaimer: Don't steal! Don't rob! 构建和谐社会！


嘛 has 2 functions.

The first translates as showing something's obvious, much like an "of course" would on the end of sentences in English. An example would be 「你的妹妹很漂亮嘛」if you're taking it as obvious their little sister is pretty (I assume you're using 繁字體). Clearly not the case here, as your example is in the middle of a sentence.

The second function is to signal a topic for emphasis. For example

  大熊貓嘛，孩子們都很喜歓。Pandas ah, children all like them"

嘛 is used to provide emphasis. In this case, "台灣都嘛" emphasizes that "As for Taiwan, it makes nothing but low cost movies about the humanities". It's not a perfect translation, but as with all particles, finding an English equivalent isn't always easy, or possible. If you know any Japanese, the particle は can be used for similar effect in many sentences.

Most importantly, 嘛 is emphasizing 台灣都. It marks it out as a topic, and is a small break in the sentence, like a comma in English. You could take your example sentence as

  台灣都嘛、是做小成本人文電影

which we can take in English as along the lines of "Taiwan, it just makes low cost humanities movies" or maybe better "Ah, Taiwan, it just makes low cost humanities movies"


Academic explanation for rhyming fillers with irrelevant meaning in doggerel

Regarding "The point won't hold after translation", maybe the words in this poem are relevant:

See you later, alligator!

After while, crocodile!

In an hour, sunflower!

Maybe two, kangaroo!

Gotta go, buffalo!

Adios, hippos!

Chow, chow, brown cow!

See you soon, baboon!

Adieu, cockatoo!

Better swish, jellyfish.

Chop chop, lollipop.

Gotta run, skeleton!

Bye-bye, butterfly!

Better shake, rattle snake.

Our school day now ends.

So, good-bye, good friends!


The earliest texts with 乒乓 I can find is vernacular novels of Ming dynasty.

《西遊記》 Journey to the West as an example:

如此二三日，又聽得後宰門乒乓乒乓，磚瓦亂響。——Chapter 10

他掄槍舞劍，一擁前來，照行者劈頭亂砍，乒乒乓乓，砍有七八十下。——Chapter 14

乒乒乓乓，好便似殘年爆竹；潑潑喇喇，卻就如軍中炮聲。——Chapter 16

“乒” and “乓” are used together as onomatopoetic in history. :)


上午, 下午 has the same logic as 上週, 下週. 上 is a prefix meaning previous, before, and 上午 means before noon.
If you must assign a meaning to 上 in 早上 and 晚上, I would interpret it to be a suffix meaning at, during, in, or within. 早上/晚上 means during or in the morning/evening.

用在名詞後。表示一定的處所或範圍。(Used after a noun, indicating a specific location or [within a specific] range.)

《孟子・梁惠王上》：＂王坐於堂上，有牽牛而過堂下者，王見之曰：＇牛何之？＇＂
《戰國策・秦策一》：＂人生世上，勢位富貴， 蓋可忽乎哉！＂
《醒世恒言・三孝廉讓產立高名》：＂有一人姓許名武，字長文，十五歲上，父母雙亡。＂
巴金　《探索集・懷念老舍同志》：＂在他們的心上、在他們的筆下，他至今仍然活着。＂


客, guest, visitor. For a shop, it is customer.

顧客, customer. (顧, look back -> visit and revisit.)

客户, customer account, a customer with account. (户, the front door -> household -> account). Some ignore the concept of account.

客人, 人客. guest / visitor (of human).


呐，是崇尚繁体的某些人撰的文字游戏，嘲讽简体字失去了“内涵”。版本很多，摘其一如下：

親（亲）不見，愛（爱）無心，產（产）不生，廠（厂）空空，麵（面）無麥，運（ 运）無車，導（导）無道，兒（儿）無首，飛（ 飞）單翼，湧（涌）無力，...有雲（云）無雨，開關（开关）無門，鄉（乡）里無郎，聖（圣）不能聽也不能說，買（买）成鈎刀下有人頭，輪（ 轮）成人下有匕首，進（进）不是越來越佳而往井裏走，只有魔，還是魔……（下略）

另外，此文传到大陆以后，亦有人作文反驳：

党（黨）内无黑，团（團）中有才，国（國）含宝玉，爱（愛）因友存，美还是美，善还是善，虽丑（醜）无鬼，只不过台（臺）无吉，湾（灣）无言! 穷（窮）不躬，权（權）不佳，巩（鞏）不革。车（車）不行田，坚（堅）不称臣。无鹿亦能丽（麗），无巫亦能灵（靈），无水亦能灭（滅），无火亦能劳（勞），无曲亦能礼（禮），无手亦能击（擊）。办（辦）事左右不辛苦，垦（墾）荒何必靠豺狼。

实际上跟文字源流关系不大，就是两岸挖苦罢了。


Should you ever repeat the subject "我“ in a sentence?

Unnecessary.
In spoken language it is acceptable and actually quite common. In written language it should be avoided.
Depends on the context. In your example it doesn't sound awkward at all.

Side note: As pointed out by this article, in Chinese, using the same word again and again is not as awkward as bad repetition in English and sometimes it's the only way to satisfy grammatical requirements. Not directly related but similarly, unnecessary repetitions in general have more appearances in spoken Chinese than in English and sound less awkward. You should not feel bad about it.


I'm leaving is rather ambiguous; going from English to Chinese, it is either

I'm getting ready to leave (我在準備出發)
I'm going to leave (我出發了)
I'm in the process of leaving (我正在出發, e.g. if you're waiting on a plane ready to take off)

我出發了 is also ambiguous; going from Chinese to English, it is either

I'm going to leave [now] (我［現在］出發了)
I've already left (我已經出發了)

Context is essential; if 我出發了 is translated to I'm going to leave, then「了」is used as a function where it is put at the end of a sentence to declare (to a listener) the beginning of an action. In this sense, we have:

我走了 (declaration: I'm leaving/going [to go somewhere])
我（去）吃飯了 (declaration: I'm going to have food)
我（去）讀書了 (declaration: I'm going to study)

It is mandatory to drop「去」in verbs which involve going/leaving anyway, such as「走」and「出發」. In other verbs, including「去」is optional, but it reveals the sentence structure better. You can see that in the written language, without explicitly writing「去」, it is hard to see that 我吃飯了 is a declaration of I'm going to have food, but in spoken language the context should be clearer.

  How would the meaning change without「了」?

It is ungrammatical to say just 我出發, like it is ungrammatical to only say in English I leave.


What do these four phrases mean in English?

Here is the OCR & translation, with thanks to user3306356 for pointing me at the Chinese OCR


Should the term 廁所 (bathroom) be used for both a home and public toilet?

You can definitely say "廁所" even it is in your house. There are more than one way to say it. The word "廁所" and "衛生間" probably are most common ones. Other than that "洗手間" is pretty common too. "盥洗室" is not very common in daily uses. You normally will see this in the hospital or kindergarten. The word "浴室" might not be the best one for bathroom because it focus more on the cleaning part. It usually indicate the place that you take a bath. In some area in China "浴室" normally means public bath place.

Again, different place in China has different language habit but "廁所" is definitely ok.


Sorry I don't know this word's etymology. But maybe understand the synonym helps to remember.
As far as I know, 周到 has nearly the same meaning as 面面俱到（miàn miàn jù dào）.
周 (zhōu) is like 面面（miàn miàn）, meaning in almost all aspects; and 到 (dào) means taking care of it. So that 周到 means taking care of all aspects, that is thoughtful.


会议 is used to refer to meetings generally, which is perfectly fine in this case.

If you want to stress on a particular type of meeting, for example in your case, you could say 讨论会, which is an interative meeting where people expression their opinion and communicate their thoughts with others freely.


I'll just talk about my own understanding here.

家 says that someone is so professional and experienced, and may have reputation so that he/she can be regarded as a master or authority in his/her field, e.g. 武术家, which means a martial art master.

师 often emphasizes occupation or job, compare 画家 and 画师.

员 is usually related to staff or crew.

者 is formal, as Mike says, and also general.


美妝would be the all encompassing term. It's a general term for beauty and cosmetics, with beauty being things like hair accessories, makeup applicators, etc.
If it is a department store you're designing, you'd likely break it down into more specific categories such as cosmetics, hair care, and so forth.


What does 也 mean in the dialogue: A: 他迟到了。B: 这也难怪。 今天地铁坏了。

也 here is an adverbial particle that implies "understandably"

Without 也, the sentence would be:

  " 难怪他迟到, 今天地铁坏了。" - "Since the subway is out of order today, there's no surprise that he was late."

Adding 也 to emphasize it is "understandable" , the sentence would become:

  "这也难怪(他迟到), 今天地铁坏了。" - "Since the subway is out of order today,  it is understandably  no surprise (that he was late).

In the second example sentence, the topic "他迟到" is omitted, and "这" replaced it as a pronoun. it is the same as 也难怪他迟到, 今天地铁坏了。"*
也 means " too" or "also" - " this too is no surprise ". implies it is the same as other common events, so it is "understandable".


I think translating 铁饭碗 as "guaranteed lifetime employment" gets the point across quite well. There's also a phrase, "cradle-to-grave socialism" -- it's a little more political than guaranteed lifetime employment, but it accurately reflects the use of the word in Chinese history.

Neither phrase has the English resonance of the Chinese original, but I think both are acceptable choices if you are seeking a short explanation.


Actually neither of them is correct [technically speaking]. Also in the link you provided, that does sound like /i:/ as in "see", but that is not the sound actually made. Maybe the one provided such pronunciation might put her tongue a bit close to the teeth and create a bit confusion, or the recording is not authentic enough.

Acceptable way: let the position of your tongue ready for pronouncing /r/ in English. Then to pronounce "sh", just keep this position and let the air out of the mouth. When you do that, the air should pass through the small gap above your tongue.  Now for the full "shì", do the same thing and let your voice box vibrate at the same time.

In Standard Mandarin or "Putonghua" [普通话], "i" after "s/sh, z/zh, c/ch, r" are never pronounced like "/i/" as in "bit" or "/i:/" as in "see". In these cases, you could think of them as an extension of the sound in the front of "i".

If someone pronounces "shì" as "shè", then maybe s/he is used to pronounce "shì" for a short time then immediately s/he let his/her mouth open and relax before completing the pronunciation. Technically speaking, they actually pronounced "shì e", but not as much explicit, thus many native speakers would accept such a sound as well.

The phenomenon "儿化" truly exists, but not all words end by sound "i" are acceptable to  be "儿化" i.e. add a little /ər/ [IPA] at the end. The word 博士 should not be "儿化" in general [although some people may make this mistake because of the influence of their dialect].

P.S. "sh" in mandarin is not the same as /ʃ/ in English.

P.P.S. when referring to IPA symbols, I had used / / to wrap, while to Chinese Pinyin, I had used quotes "" instead.

UPDATE

For safety, I am here to paste useful explanations I made in comments.

When I said that

  you could think of the "i" as an extension of the "s/sh, z/zh, c/ch r" sound in the front of "i"

I meant that, e.g. when you pronounce "shi", you just need to hold the position of your tongue that produces "sh" and let your air out for a bit of longer time. Equivalently the "shi" sound would sound like prolonging the shhhh sound as @TomSofty33 understood.

When I said

  they are actually pronounced "shì e", but not as much explicit

The "not as much explicit" here is referring to the /i/ sound being not to explicitly pronounced as @TomSofty33 understood.
And the "e" in "shì e" does sound a bit like /ə/ in english IPA as in the word "her".

The pronunciation in the 1st link provided in the OP does not soun awkward to me as a native Chinese speaker, but might not be clear in the records. Personally I do not recommend. Some people might pronounce 博士 like that in the link. But technically speaking that is not the correct or standard one, however acceptable.
I am a native chinese speaker with satisfying TOEFL grade. So when I write the description starting with an English sound /r/, you could totally do as I explained, you do not need to worry about something like I may pronounce the English words in a wrong way, which would lead you to mistake if you do take what I have written in my answer.


针一 and 针二 are just names of materials. They refer to different kinds of cloth. (Those words are quite professional. Even native speakers don't know that.)


I highly doubt it's a good idea to rely on such apps. Try to mimic high quality recordings or even record yourself for comparison purposes.

Forvo is good for words and phrases, textbooks with an audio CD like Integrated Chinese, Učebnice čínské konverzace and such for whole sentences.

You can also try if some machine translators will get what you're saying by voice, but only for the lulz.


How do Chinese people feel about the term 非中国人 to express non-Chinese people?

In my opinion, 非中国人 sounds more exclusive. 非 stresses 'are not' (they are not Chinese)
外国人 sounds more neutral. 外国 indicates 'where ones came from ( they are from outside of this country)'

非我族类(其心也异) is not a friendly phrase

外賓 is a welcoming term

To me, 非中国人 (non-Chinese) VS. 外国人 (foreigner) is like 非会员 (non-member) VS. 访客 (visitor/ guest)
老外 is an informal nickname for 外国人. Sounds casual and friendly.


What is the appropriate response to "Your Chinese is so good!"

是嗎？ (or 有嗎？ or 真的嗎？) 我覺得沒有很好吔。
Really? I do not think it's very good.
Really? I don't think my Chinese is very good.

or

沒有啦！謝謝你。
No. Thank you.
Not at all. Thank you.

You don't have to worry about this.
It's just like somebody asks a foreigner, "Where are you from?".


微 should be an adverb here. The sentence means "如果没有管仲的话, ..." (if there was no 管仲, then ...), and 微 is not an action here.

  微 wēi

  〈副>

  要没有,要不是 [but for;if it were not for]

  微斯人,吾谁与归。——宋· 范仲淹《岳阳楼记》


An expression found in a short story by contemporary writer Han Shaogong

Han Shaogong uses a lot of topolect phrases in his writings. This could be one of those.

Apparently 赶马驭树的人 means "people who pass by" in context. 赶马驭树 doesn't make literal sense, especially the 驭树 part, but a lot of things in language make no literal sense.

A similar, but more widely know case could be 偷鸡摸狗. It's just a general term of thieving. You don't need to steal a hen and touch a dog to be called a 偷鸡摸狗的人.

The story background is at Jiangxi, Han Shaogong himself is from Hunan. Perhaps someone from those regions could explain it a bit more.


Why is a measure word not required in 一年有三百六十五天?

Some nouns need a classifier, some don't; 月(month) needs one but 天(day) doesn't.

一年有十二個月 - 月(month) needs a classifier

一年有十二個月份 - 月份(month) needs a classifier

一年有五十二週 - 週(week) doesn't need a classifier

一年有五十二個星期 - 星期(week) needs a classifier

一年有三百六十五天 - 天(day) doesn't need a classifier

一年有四季 - 季(season) doesn't need a classifier

一年有四個季節 - 季節 (season) needs a classifier

一小時有六十分鐘 - 分鐘(minute) doesn't need a classifier

一分鐘有六十秒 - 秒(second) doesn't need a classifier

Generally, if a noun can be a classifier itself, it usually doesn't need a classifier. 週, 天, 季,  分鐘 and 秒 can all be classifier

Example: 三週工資, 兩天比賽, 一季收成, 幾分鐘路程, 幾秒時間


When to use 于 and not 於 in traditional Chinese?

This answer details a bit of history of the development of「于」and「於」, and addresses why they overlap. It is purely meant to be a complement to @user3306356's answer, which has responded to the question directly.

In the Modern Chinese language shared across all Chinese-using regions,「于」and「於」largely represents the same overlapping preposition/adposition function. For this function only*, any proposed "rules" specifying the difference in usage between the two are very unlikely to be accepted across all Chinese-speaking regions, mainly complicated by the fact that PRC has made「於」obsolete and Taiwan has a habit of using「於」and not「于」. This is also why you wouldn't find「于」on all but the most thorough Taiwan-Chinese input methods.

「于」and「於」are both phonetic loans; they both originally represented something else.

  Glyph origin of 于

  「于」was originally a picture of a wind instrument:

  It was later simplified to

  then further simplified to「于」. The original sense of the wind instrument is now written「竽」after「于」became extensively used for its grammatical function meaning and had lost its original meaning.

  Glyph origin of 於

  「於」and「烏」were originally the same character, but have been graphically differentiated. For reference, their development looked something like

  There was absolutely no difference between the characters「於」and「烏」before the Qin dynasty, and「烏/於」was used for its current grammatical function long before they became different characters.

The historical usage of「于」and「於」goes in accordance to something like the following timeline:

Western Zhou

Only「于」is used for the grammatical function.
During the same period,「於」is used as an exclamation.
This is especially obvious when both「于」and「於」appear simultaneously:

Late Western Zhou to end of the Spring and Autumn period:

「于」sees an additional use of a filler syllable to match rhythms across commonly used phrases.
「於」gains the grammatical function of what was previously「于」, but「于」still sees higher usage frequency for this function, and there is no difference between the two in this context.
「於」still kept its previous meaning (as an exclamation).

Warring States and later:

「於」overtakes「于」in frequency in the grammatical function sense, but both were still used and neither was permanently dropped.

See also 從“于 / 於”用法上的變化看複合詞“於是”的產生.

*There are differences between「于」and「於」when they're not used in the grammatical function sense, which this answer touches upon but doesn't explain thoroughly - detailed dictionaries will provide a more comprehensive explanation.


Some self-sufficient Chinese phrases. Help me?

Here you go. Kudos to @S.Rhee and @nacho.

1) How do I say this word in Chinese?

这  个  词 怎  么  念?
zhe ge ci zen me nian?

2) How do I say this phrase in Chinese?

这  话   用   汉  语  怎  么  说？
zhe hua yong han yu zen me shuo?

3) What is the most standard way to say X in Chinese?

用    最  标   准   的 普  通   话  怎  么  说   X？
yong zui biao zun de pu tong hua zen me shuo X?

4) verb, 动词 (dong ci)

noun, 名词 (ming ci)

adjective. 形容词 (xing rong ci)

Is word X an adjective?

X 是  形    容   词  吗？
X shi xing rong ci ma?

5) If I say something unusual or pronounce something unusually, can you do me a favor and correct me?

如果  我  用词    不当    或   发音   异常，    你 帮    我  改正      一下    好吗？
ruguo wo yongci budang  huo fayin yichang, ni bang  wo gaizheng  yixia  haoma?

6) Since I am trying to learn Chinese, can you give me some useful phrases to say in Chinese everyday?

因为    我   想      学习    中文，     您   讲      给   我  一些   日常用语      好吗?
yinwei  wo  xiang   xuexi  zhongwen  nin  jiang  gei  wo yixie  richangyongyu haoma?

7)How do I use Chinese to say X?

用    汉语   怎么   说   X？
yong hanyu  zenme shuo X?

Can you provide me an example sentence?

请    给  我  说   个  例句  好吗？
qing gei wo shuo ge liju haoma?

Can you use the word in a sentence?

请   用    这 词  造  个 句  好吗?
qing yong ze ci zao ge ju haoma?


Asking close friends what they like as souvenirs/gifts

Edit:

user3306356 wrote

  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure 手信 doesn't work globally in Mandarin.

You are correct, 手信 is a Cantonese term, Don't think all Mandarin speakers know this term.

Edit 2:

紀念品 (Souvenirs) or 土特產 (native products) from other place that you give to your friends as gift is known as  "手信" in Cantonese
Since there's no equivalent in Mandarin, we can only use either 紀念品 or 土特產 in Mandarin sentences

Edit 3:

chouhy suggested '伴手禮' is the equivalent of '手信', although 手信 must came from far away place, and '伴手禮' can be locally bought, I do agree "美國帶回來的手信" in Cantonese could be translated as "美國帶回來的伴手禮" in Mandarin, because the sentence indicated the gift is from 美國, not from a local store .

~

  What/do you like anything from (Japan)?

Mandarin:

"想要什麼紀念品/ 土特產?" - "what souvenirs/ native products gift you want?"

"想要一些(日本的)紀念品/ 土特產嗎?" - "Do you want some souvenirs/ native products gift (from Japan)?"

Cantonese:

"想要乜嘢手信?"

"想唔想要啲(日本嘅)手信?"

Beside "紀念品" (souvenirs) 手信 are mostly "土特產" (native products/ local  products)

If you visit Toronto, the 手信 (gift) you take home for friends would be either a Maple Lefts Hockey team T-shirt (souvenirs); or a bottle of maple syrup (native products)

手信 can also be souvenirs/ native products from your home town. For example, if you are from Toronto and you are visiting Hong Kong, the gifts you give to your Hong Kong friends would also be (多倫多的)手信


"defining character by common compound word"
there are frequency lists for both words and characters
Wenlin, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Mandarin_Frequency_lists 等等
In practice, one just uses a common and distinct word, not necessarily the most common word (书记 in the case of 书)


热情：enthusiastic, warm
多情：affectionate, loving
热情 is fine, but 热恋 (fiery love) is better for your sentences. An alternative is 激情 which literally means passionate with a sense of excitement.

The two of them are passionate lovers. 他们是热恋中的情人。
They are very passionate in bed. 他们在床上充满激情。
She gave him a passionate kiss. 她给了他一个热情的吻。


It's the transliteration of the French word salon. It is equivalent to the English word saloon or salon (alternative spellings). The French word probably is derived from the Italian word salone meaning a large living area in the house or more generally a place where people gather to socialize. In China, the hairdresser's is often an unofficial social gathering place for especially neighbours, so it's not surprising that the word has been extended to mean hairdresser's in Chinese.

Note that 沙龙 doesn't always have to refer to a hairdresser's. It is also used in the way salon is used in English and French, i.e. a gathering place for socialization. For example, a 英语沙龙 is a place for people to gather and practise their English. No hairdressing involved there!

As to why people would borrow a term from a different language when there is already an existing one in the source language, there could be many reasons - fashion, western influence and convenience are just some of them. A good example is the word for a (train/subway) station in Japanese. The Japanese term for it is 駅 (えき, eki), but there are many places, even on official maps, where it is replaced by ステーション (sutēshon). I can't tell you the exact reason without doing some major research into the phenomenon.


Please, help translate the text and stamps on this painted silk screen to identify the artist and date?

《彎弓騎射圖1》
昔曹將軍畫馬骨肉兼善2，今觀劉貫道之作3，人馬精神皆善，御衣局使4不靈傳矣
乾隆乙丑5吳郡王寵6識7

Outstretched Bow of a Horseriding Marksman
In the past, General Ts'ao was skilled in painting both the bone and flesh of a horse. Now as I peruse the work of Liu Kuan-tao, seeing the spirit of both the man and horse are equally fine makes me lament his skill as a lost art.8
Wu Chong of the Wu Commandery, the year Yichou of Qianlong

啚 is sometimes the variant character of 圖, meaning 'drawing'.
General Ts'ao (曹將軍) refers to Ts'ao Pa (曹霸), a skilled horse painter in the Tang dynasty. This expression alludes to Tu Fu (杜甫)'s poem On Seeing a Horse-painting by Ts’ao Pa in the House of the Recorder Wei Feng (韋諷錄事宅觀曹將軍畫馬圖).
Liu Kuan-tao (劉貫道) was a painter in the early Yuan dynasty. The work this inscription refers to is possibly Kublai Khan Hunting (畫元世祖出獵圖). Specifically, this work bears resemblance to the horse-rider on the left.
Commissioner of the Imperial Wardrobe Bureau (御衣局使) is a title earned by Liu for his portrayal of Emperor Yuzong in 1279. 史 is possibly a phonetic loan character of 使.
The year Yichou of Qianlong (乾隆乙丑) is the tenth year of his reign (or 1745).
Wang Chong (王寵 1494-1533) was a calligrapher in the Ming dynasty. The Wu Commandery (吳郡) was frequently used by Wang to denote his origin, the Wu County of Suzhou (蘇州吳縣). The fundamental contradiction of dynasties between the year and author, together with the fact that Wang was not a painter, makes this painting a possible forgery.
識 is a phonetic loan character of 記 in 款識, or inscription.
This is also likely to be a saying of self-effacement, especially considering the painting is an imitation of Liu Kuan-tao.


How to describe something as a 'work in progress'


Phrase said thirty seconds to mars from yesterday

He says 明天的声音 (Míngtiān de shēngyīn), which literally means "the voice of tomorrow". I think it's a symbolic answer. The two mandarins ask to the emperor what he desires, whether the fire of the sun (太阳的火, tàiyáng de huǒ) or the ice of the stars (星星的冰, xīngxīng de bīng), and he answers "the voice of tomorrow" (明天的声音). I think it represents innovation: the emperor wants a new, dynamic kind of music.


Why did my friend write 发发发 on her note?

发：Short for 发财，make a fortune，become rich。

Chinese people like to use reiterative locution to emphasize the strong meaning or wish. Other cases like: 好好好、 旺旺旺、棒棒棒、赞赞赞。
Sometimes you will also see 888 instead of 发发发，because 888(bababa) has similar pronunciation with 发发发(fafafa) and much easier to write/type.


门风，门派的风气。
The rule of certain 帮派（gang，gaction）


Does (western) humor exist in Chinese culture? How do you use the language to make friends with Chinese?

A difficult question! In China, people of different ages, doing different jobs, having different hobbies may all find their own senses of humor. Many that the young finds laughable may not sound funny at all in an elder's ears.

There is, however, cultural gap between China and the West in the sense of humor.

We don't think clumsiness, backfiring, trouble making, etc. are funny, as in many 'try not to laugh challenge' on YouTube. On the contrary, they are boring even annoying.
We sense humor in quick wit response, contradiction of words and action (in a funny way), unexpected turning of a story, etc. We call a piece of organized passage aiming at making people laugh 段子. 段子 are often based on something heated on the Internet, which is called 梗 (originating from 哏). People will laugh when you cleverly use a 梗, which is called 玩梗, but they are short lived, once they lost popularity, you seem silly to 玩老梗 (using an old fashioned 梗 to make a joke). And netizens will banter you with something like: “日本投降矣！” “北京申奥成功了！” “你也在网上冲浪？” (They are all very old events or old fashioned wording.)

It s not easy to define the criteria of funny or not. Arhh, it has been so long since I last laughed at mere text. Nowadays jokes are all in the forms of pics, gifs, and videos mixed with texts. In daily life, people don't talk jokes to ease the atmosphere, instead they talk about funny things they experienced, or funny news they heard.


Since Putonghua is a standard English word, why do people use Mandarin for standard Chinese?

Why should they? People don't rely on dictionaries when they speak. “Putonghua” may be in dictionaries, but it is still not a commonly used word.
As for why “Mandarin” is used and not “Putonghua”, I believe that “Putonghua” was only recently included in English dictionaries. In China, 普通话 only became a commonly used term during the 20th century. (This is confirmed by Wikipedia.) So it seems likely that one reason “Putonghua”is not commonly used is that it hasn't had enough time to become adopted in English. I also think that another reason “Putonghua” isn't used much is because of phonetics: it doesn't sound like an English word, so people may find it hard to remember and to use.
It could be argued that it is more correct to use “Putonghua” rather than “Mandarin” when referring to standard Chinese. It is conceivable that changes in culture, geopolitics and education may lead to the term “Putonghua” eventually becoming the standard, commonly used term in English for “standard Chinese”. But I don't think it will happen soon. Not before at least a decade I think.
The majority of English speakers do not have much knowledge about the different Chinese languages.
Here are some comments on the usage of the terms Mandarin, Chinese and Putonghua.
Chinese: noun in common use in spoken English. It usually means standard Chinese, i.e. Putonghua. (口语)
Mandarin: noun also used by the general public, but seems a little more formal. (书面语)
Putonghua: not in common use. In general it is only used by someone with a little specialised knowledge of China and/or Chinese languages. Interestingly, in Wikipedia “Putonghua” is a "redirect" to the "Standard Chinese" entry. The article is well worth a look.


Is there a difference between 杀害 and 杀死?

害 in 杀害 (kill; murder) means 'victimize'. You can only victimize creatures that have emotion, capable of feeling pain. '杀害' mostly refer to murder of human; And only killing of human can be deemed 'murder'

Note: only human intentionally killing other human is called 'murder' . A tiger killing a human is not a murder, but a killing

杀死 (kill someone/ something dead) can apply to any living organism, from single cell bacteria to human


Best way to express a change of subjects in a succession of events

Actually the second one is quite natural.

她跟朋友打网球以后，她去吃饭。

This is actually the most legit you can get for this case, otherwise you will have to alter the meaning of your sentence a bit. Like:

她在网球场和朋友约好了， 然后再去吃饭。

Which means, she had a plan to go to tennis with her friends, and then dinner.


it means bananas (香蕉)! But if people say "食蕉" to you in a foul way, it means "eat shit", because a banana and shit are similar in shape i guess...

i am from HK and i speak Cantonese
.


Xue can be broken down into three components:

X, ipa: ɕ, similar to the English ‘sh’ in sheep but with the tongue placed closer to the teeth.
u, ipa: y, not to be confused with ipa letter: u, similar to German: ü; or the u in French: tu
e, ipa: e, similar to the “e” in English: yes.

——

Tone: second tone in Mandarin, which 学 is, is a 35 on the tonal scale - meaning you need to start kind of high-pitched to begin with and then rise it even higher. It’s often compared to the English intonation of asking a question, with a rise at the end.

——

The biggest pitfalls for foreigners: most westerns end up pronouncing 学 more like 水 - I’m not totally sure why because the initials and finals are completely different. Try finding audio to imitate and only treat pinyin as a guide because it won’t match up with English in the way you might imagine it should.


If nostalgia means "longing for something past", the translation I can think of is:

  这首歌勾起了我的怀旧情绪


Youth, young, youngster, teenager, youthfulness

年轻人 refers to people younger than the speaker, usually people under 30.

少年 refers to people around 13-18.

青年 refers to people around 18-29.

青春 means the time period of or the experience of the age between 12-29. Often it is retrospective, as when you are in mid-age, you might say:回忆青春岁月/悔不该青春虚度, etc. Newspapers may write: 祖国今日之富强有赖于上一辈人挥洒青春. So perhaps it is the reason you get 80s photos


What is the difference between 这个 and 此?

这 is more colloquial, usually followed by a classifier

此 is more literary, it does not need classifier, and more often followed by a single character word

See Examples:
此人= 這個人
此事= 這件事
此地= 這個地方
此物= 這件東西
此時= 這個時候
此刻= 這個時刻
此心= 這顆心
此案= 這宗案
The classifier after 這 can often be omitted. For example: 這個地方--> 這地方; 這件東西-->這東西.
Since classifiers work with counting words,  we can write 這一個地方; 這三件東西.
But we don't usually use counting word with 此
'此一地方' , '此三東西. just sound unnatural.


Why 干菜类 was mistakenly translated to Fuck Vegetables?

In traditional Chinese, 乾 means "dry", 幹 means "to do", and has the slang meaning of "f**k". Both words are simplified to 干.


Is the symbol in the images a chinese letter?

I saw this image on Walt Disney's tie in a picture of him.  It is not a Chinese character, rather the letters S, R and T, according to : http://www.quora.com/Saving-Mr-Banks-2013-film/What-is-the-logo-mark-on-Walt-Disneys-tie .


Chinese phrase for 'stripped of one's rank'

免职：removed from position;

降级: demoted;

免级: remove ranks (though not necessarily "stripped" of ranks)


This may be a failure of editing. 啰 is actually discussed in the 1986 Jianhuazi zong biao. According to the 1986 zong biao, 罗 was included in the first list of simplified characters, but 囉 was not. The 1986 zong biao deletes 囉, and makes 啰 its official replacement "by analogy". Your dictionary seems to fall right in this period. Could be the entry you cite with 囉 was written before the 1986 list came out, and the entry with 啰 was done after. Or perhaps both were originally 囉 and in the editing they did after completing the dictionary, they missed the one entry.


I think you can use 'for real' as 真的要, as it have the meaning for really or actually.


Wubi is indeed very fast, but the cost and benefit makes it less worthwhile. In fact, I'd like to argue most of the professional typewriting systems aren't worth learning. You get AI support on major sound-based IMEs and AI advances a thousand miles a day, soon they will be at least as fast as Wubi and its peers. I'd like to think Wubi is as dead as all those stenotype systems. You shouldn't use them if you want to be some sort of professional.

Also Wubi is a copyrighted system, though the copyright owner, 王江民, reluctantly gave out an earlier version for free (after losing a copyright lawsuit, which is kind of ridiculous because he should have won), the later versions are again copyrighted. No software company takes interest in buying the copyright and develop an IME for it, which means you're stuck with the so-called classic version which only supports a subset of simplified Chinese characters(it can support a bigger charset, but you have to work around a lot of issues, making it less of a choice for traditional Chinese). 王江民 made IMEs with his own company, but apparently he knew neither software nor business. Last time I checked, the company had only 2 part-time employees maintaining the website, nothing else.

The business is later transferred to 王's daughter-in-law, but she has her own business to take care of. Last year I wrote a tirade on the status of Wubi. She said she will do something about it, but nothing happened since then.

By comparison, the Cangjie inventor had made it to the public domain, and now it has a livelier ecosystem.

In general, Wubi takes less strokes to form a character, but Wubi's rule has more exceptions and therefore more difficult to learn.


"Seems to [...]": how to express tha indirect object?

"那个人看起来"(that man seems) is perfectly fine
You can omit "看起来"  in "我觉得那个人看起来" and just write "我觉得那个人"

There are other choices:

對我來說，那個人 ( to me, that man)
在我看來，那個人 ( from my point of view, that man)
我看那個人 ( I see that man/ that man, to me)


What is the difference between 费电 and 耗电?

Simply, 费电 means waste the electricity, 耗电 means consume the electricity.


儿 in this case indicates the application of 儿化 (er2hua4) or 'r-coloring' to the previous syllable.

To input 哪儿 using a typical Pinyin IME, you would have to type naer or na'er, because nar would be segmented na r, and the IME would then expect further input for a second Pinyin syllable beginning with r.

Outside of keyboard input, however, the correct Pinyin for 哪儿 is nǎr, because 儿 is not being used to represent a full syllable. Where it represents a full syllable, it would be represented as ér in Pinyin.


What’s the difference between 二五 and 二十五?

the members were counting without 十 between numbers.

This is exactly where the "十" can be completely omitted, when one is counting. It is quite normal to omit the "十" after passing 20 when counting, especially when one is counting fast.
I cannot recall other circumstances when the "十" can be omitted.
Also, one might drop the hundred part completely after 100, starting from 一 again. The hundred part is may be only included when a whole hundred is reached. E.g. 九七, 九八, 九九, 一百, 一, 二, 三, 四, ......, 九七, 九八, 九九, 二百, 一, 二,  三, 四, ...... The hundred part is memorized instead of spoken out. (Sometimes one might use fingers to keep track of the number of hundreds)
Disclaimer: I am a native Chinese speaker in Beijing. This may differ in different regions or in different dialects.


What's the technical term for "cryptography based on elliptic-curve pairing"?

Pairing is either 配对 or 对, even in cryptography. 椭圆曲线对 is used in the SM9 standard. But 椭圆曲线配对 is also in common use.
There's a book entitled 《基于配对的密码学》.
Using "对" alone sounds more technical, but also (in my opinion) phonetically confusing or inelegant in certain contexts.


What comes after 不愁 is it negative or positive?

不愁 basically means "not worried", to answer your question, I think you are looking at it the wrong way.

First of all, I think the confusion is between the using of "不" and "没", you are thinking that by adding the word "不" or "没", the sentence becomes negative. But it all based on the context you are using it in. Lets compare the examples you provided:

不愁找不到工作 vs 不愁找工作

"不愁找不到工作(Not worried about not finding a job)"

"不愁找工作(Not worried about job searching/job hunthing)"

The two sentences may translate into different meanings, but it all comes down to the same general idea, that is "Not worried, I can find a job(or maybe I don't need a job)". And that is why the sentences basically means the same thing.

Similarly with

不愁没钱 vs 不愁钱

"不愁没钱(Not worried about not having money)"

"不愁钱(Not worried about money)"

The two sentences also have the same general idea "Not worried, I have money/I don't need money)", so they mean the same thing too.

So theres no negative or positive words that you need to follow with "不愁", but instead it all based on the context. For example, if you are paying for someone and they are reluctant for you to do so, you could say "啊呀，不愁钱(lets not worry about money)" instead of "啊呀，不愁没钱(lets not worry about not having money)" as it is abit more informal.

I know this all might seems confusing, but 加油，咱不愁，会越来越好.


What's the role of 了 in this sentence: 你要是喜欢我就给你买了

I think the key is the usage of 了. In my opinion, 了 here works like a result complement,  which indicates the status changed.

Semantically, they(with or without 了) denote the same meaning.

我买 vs 我买了:

我买 is like saying "I will buy" in English.

我买了 is like "I will have/get it bought. The status changed from not bought to bought.

Another example is 我走 vs 我走了. 我走 is I am going. 我走了 is I will be gone. The status changed from staying here to be gone.

Hope this could help you out.


What is the meaning of the last phrase here? 但上涨的部分又被不断上涨的成本抵消

Let's go through this part piece by piece.

压力主要体现在皮鞋出口数量与金额上 = The pressure is mainly seen in the number and price of exports.

曾有数据统计显示 = Statistics have shown clearly that

维持反倾销税的一段时间内，中国对欧盟的鞋类出口增幅明显下降 = after maintaining the anti-dumping law for some time, the growth rate of China's shoe exports has a noticeable decline.

单价却显著上升 = However, the price of the shoes kept increasing.

So up till now, we have one part that is increasing (the shoe price) and one part that is decreasing (the growth rate of the shoe exports).

Now let's look at final part:

There are 2 nouns phrases that we need to figure out.
上涨的部分 = The part that is growing. As we noted above, this is the price of the shoe.

不断上涨的成本 = The ever increasing costs of making/exporting the shoe.

Then it becomes:

但 [上涨的部分] 又被 [不断上涨的成本] 抵消

抵消 means "canceled out" and "又被" means "have been" and 但 means "but."

Then putting all this together it means:
Yet, the growing price is being canceled out by the rising costs of making/exporting the shoes.


把握 means seize; grasp; hold. It's rarely used in its literal sense but the metaphorical sense is just that.

把握住今天。Seize today.
他对成功很有把握。Success is within his seize.

To have 把握 in something you need both confidence and ability, although when people say 有把握/没有把握/失去把握 they are actually emphasizing on the confidence side, e.g.

我有把握拿满分。I have confidence in getting full marks in the exam.

失去把握 can also mean lose control, though not necessary 'lose control over oneself'.
In your first sentence, "她的把握全失去了", there are two possible interpretations.

She lost her 'seize' (confidence or leverage) in the affair.
She lost her 'seize' (control) over herself.

From the limited context in your question I am unable to tell which one is it. In addition to the plot, it also has a lot to do with the author's language style.
Similarly, the second sentence has two possible meanings "她现在是个自主、有把握的女人。"

She has become a woman of determination and confidence (she has general confidence in her own actions and decisions).
She has become a woman of determination and means (she has a lot of levers/maneuvers in the things she does).

That again depends on more context to nail down.


How did the compound 莫 + 非 semantically shift to mean "can it be/is it possible + that"?

Both 莫 and 非 denote the sense of not.  The combination 莫非(a double negative) is a set phrase to mean 难道. It's often used to initiate a rhetorical question.
E. g.  莫非你不知道？ / 难道你不知道? // Don't you know it?


Not very well known. I lived in Taiwan for a year in 2015, and there were times where I had asked a few Taiwan natives to type words I couldn't understand on my phone. When they saw my phone keyboard input, which was pinyin, they couldn't understand it. Almost all Taiwanese still use bopomofo to type Chinese on their phones. Honestly you don't have to learn bopomofo. Pinyin is easier to learn and the majority of Chinese speakers use it. Just focus on using pinyin, memorizing characters, and speaking to Chinese speakers.


Is there something about 是在 that is meaningful in 让任意的值是在一个上下文当中?

The article in the first link is clearly machine-translated from the original version in the second link with some partials not even translated. A lot of the sentences are difficult to understand, if they make any sense at all. 让任意的值是在一个上下文当中 is just wrong in Chinese. One proper translation might be 把任意值放到上下文当中.


偏见 is bias of opinion or concept on different groups, like race groups or religion groups.

偏心 is bias of love on different persons, like children.

偏私 is more used in ancient Chinese and it means bias on people or group to which the subject belongs.


I tried the 漢語方言大辭典, and there are many places with the fu pronunciation in the southwest mandarin area, for example 佛豆 (= 蠶豆, fava bean) is pronounced fu tou in 畢節; 佛瓜 (瓠瓜 gourd) is pronounced fu gua in 自貢, etc. Not really surprising; 弗 is fu in Mandarin.