There's no real special phrase for this situation, unlike English's "I beg your pardon". Therefore, anything conveying the sense of "please repeat" or "I didn't hear" works. For instance, as is increasingly the case in English as well, normally you could just say "what?", 什麼?.

To be a little more preciser, as well as polite / less familiar, you could say 對不起, 我沒聽清楚, "Sorry, I didn't quite catch that." And then you can ask them 可以再說一遍嗎?, "Could you repeat that?"

Really, just about any translation of what you'd say in English would work. Since there's no specific phrase, as long as the sentence is grammatically sound and makes sense, you'll be understood just fine.


把 ([介] 1) means 将.

  (1) 表示处理、处置的意思。(treating) 如：“把门关上”、“把脸洗净”。

  (2) 表示致使、导致的意思。(leading) 如：“把他惹恼了”、“把你气哭了”、“把我急疯了”。

把 or 将 is used in front of the object when we move the object to the front of the verb.

它把“灵魂塑造”看得和“学问”同等重要。

把...看得 = 视

它视“灵魂塑造”和“学问”同等重要。(The verb is in front of the objects.)


How is 那还用说！translated as "Of course!" or "That goes without saying!"?

The point is 用 doesn't mean "use", but "need" here.

  （多用于否定: 需要） need:

There's no need to turn on the light.
不用开灯。

I don't think you need to worry in the least.
我看你一点也不用着急。

And 还 is used for emphasis,

  （用以加强语气）:

That goes without saying.
那还用说!

This is the limit!; This is simply atrocious!
这还了得!

那还用说 is a rhetorical question (echo question), it literally means ”need to say that?!", i.e. "no need to say", then "of course" or "that goes without saying".


Which is "with" and which is "and" in 与,和,就,跟,同,并,及

Some characters need to have the meaning in combinations

与,和,同 is similar, you can say "我与你一起去"， or "我和你"， "我同你"
"和" is most frequent. "与" is slightly formal.
"同" sounds like literature or ancient Chinese, but you can still use it.
Here "一" also means "together" but you can only use it in "一起"， "一同"
unless you are writing ancient Chinese.

"跟" means follow. "我跟你去" you can think it as "and", but it's more like follow.
It's also used as together orally, but "follow" is the source of the meaning.

也，亦 are more used as conj. mainly for "same".
You can use "你去，我也去" or "你去，我亦去", but "亦" sounds very ancient

"而且" is usually used together as prep. or conj., to connect facts:
"这杆笔便宜而且好用" "这杆笔便宜而好用" "这杆笔便宜且好用"

就，乃，共 is mainly used in ancient Chinese as "and".
Frequently in ancient Chinese， 就 means approach and 乃 means then
They are still uncommonly used as "and" even in ancient Chinese
共 usually means share or total， it's sometimes used "and"
but "共同" is used in modern Chinese as adv.， usually formal: "我和你共同前往"

兼 is mainly used as prep. to connect titles in modern Chinese, meaning "also".

及 is usually formal, and used as prep. in third person: "李雷（以）及韩梅梅参观了学校"

To make it short:
和 -> and prep.
而,且 -> and conj.
兼,也,亦 -> also
跟 -> follow
及,与 -> with
同,一,共 -> together


It literally means differ. 差一刻九点 means a quarter to nine. 差 in the phrase 差一点 and 差几块钱/几个月 means the same, that is, adding the amount missed will turn the current situation into the target situation (could be better or worse).


Why is 开 written within a 门 in this sign (without being written 開)?

BabelStone wrote a Proposal to Encode Obsolete Simplified Chinese Characters which also contains a lot of history and other important information.
Under the heading 2.2 we find:

Table of First Batch Simplified Characters
The table below lists all 324 first batch simplified characters in the order that they occur in the published table of simplifications. The reference number is prefixed “DJ” for Dìyīpī Jiǎntǐzì. Mappings to the corresponding standard simplified and traditional character forms are given in the columns marked “Simp.” and “Trad.” respectively. Characters that are proposed for encoding are given a Unicode number of U+XXXXX and printed in red. Unicode points marked with an asterisk are for CJK-D characters, and as of writing are still provisional.

Here we find:

DJ‑89  U+2B52D*      开   開   kāi

Background about these simplifications also on the BabelStone proposal explain under 2.1

First Batch Simplified Characters (1935)
Background
In January 1934 at the 29th meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of the National Language (Guóyǔ Tǒngyī Chóubèi Wěiyuánhuì 國語統一籌備委員會) of the Ministry of Education, Qián Xuántóng 錢玄同 (1887–1939) submitted a draft table of simplified characters (Sōucǎi gùyǒu ér jiào shìyòng de jiǎntǐzì àn 搜採固有而較適用的簡體字案). These were approved by the committee, and Qián Xuántóng was delegated to edit a table of simplified characters for publication. In August 1935 the Ministry of Eductaion published a first batch of 324 simplified characters (see Appendices A and F), with the intention of publishing a series of further batches of simplified characters. However, in February 1936 the Ministry of Education issued a directive halting the simplification program, and no further batches of simplified characters were issued. Although this first batch of simplified characters was not widely used, it was historically very important as it represented the first centralized attempt to promote the use of simplified characters in China, and was a precursor to the simplification movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the People’s Republic of China.
Fig.1 Jīngběn Tōngsú Xiǎoshuō 11:2a

DJ‑228:  (錢)
The simplifications in this table were based on commonly used vulgar form characters (e.g. 宝 for 寶), ancient forms of characters (e.g. 无 for 無) and cursive form characters (e.g. 为 for 為). Most of the 324 first batch simplifications are identical to modern standard simplified characters or Japanese simplified characters, but some are different to a greater or lesser extent; and those characters that are not currently encoded need to be encoded in order for scholars to discuss this pioneering episode in the history of Chinese character simplification. Moreover, some of the currently unencoded “first batch” characters are commonly found in early printed texts (see Fig.1), so it would also be useful to encode these characters for scholars of such texts.

Most likely the building was founded during Aug '35 - Feb '36 by some forward thinking intellectuals who were keeping up with the times.
As in your picture we can see that 學 is also simplified but 現 is not.
We can find 學 as the 38th character on BabelStone's First Batch Simplified Characters table:

DJ‑38  U+05B66     学   学   學   xué

So it stands to fit in our timeline here.
Funnily enough the same character can also be found in the BabelStone proposal under 3.2

Table of Singapore Simplifications
The table below lists only those 77 characters in the 1969 table of 502 simplified characters that differ from standard PRC simplifications (see Appendix D). The reference number is prefixed “SJ” for “Singapore jiǎntǐzì”). Characters that are proposed for encoding are given a Unicode number of U+XXXXX and printed in red. Unicode points marked with an asterisk are for CJK-D characters, and as of writing are still provisional.

SJ‑26  U+2B52D*      开   開   kāi     Also DJ‑89

This, in all likely-hood, has nothing to do with Nankai - a university established 1919 in Tianjin.

Slightly unrelated: Another funny thing is that these "aborted" characters can sometimes also be seen from the Second Round of Simplified Chinese Characters .
There's this fun blog post from Sinoglot called Park that simplification - but it seems that it hasn't been maintained very well since it was posted in '10 seeing that the original image is now missing, which mentions:

I stumbled across this No Parking sign*…
IMAGE_300 [can't load]

here's probably what it looked like:

… 禁止仃车 (jìnzhǐ tíng chē), in which the third character is 仃 instead of the proper 停, I immediately assumed it was an uneducated mistake propagated by one of society’s fringe characters.
But it turns out to be a fringe character of a different sort.
I asked Sinoglot’s Kellen Parker if he’d run across 仃 used this way. where is my ip ask edd Not only had he run across it, he had the Wikipedia reference! According to that article (which has some fascinating-looking references — I just expanded my Amazon wishlist) 仃 was used for a few years as a completely legitimate simplification of 停 in the so-called “second round” of character simplifications. The simplifications didn’t stick and were repealed in 1986, but it’s possible, if our No Parking writer was educated between 1977 and the mid-80s, that 仃 was simply how they learned to write it.

There is this image in one of the comments though:

with the comment:

I snapped this down the street from where I live. One second-round character (亍 for 街) and one non-standard simplification (柚 for 楼). The community across the street has attractive building signs with the inside of 源 written as 元, which you’d think would be a second-round character, except that the standard was in no way systematic: 原 became [厂+元], but 源 was overloaded on 沅.
I think I first became aware of the characters when I noticed a simplified version of 部 (卩 whose top stroke extends further to the left) cast into some of the iron benches in Jilin’s Longtanshan Park. Or maybe when a friend wrote 量 as 旦 over 力. Fun stuff.

another comment wrote:

The ones I’ve seen most commonly in the wild are 歺 (on hand-lettered breakfast stall signs) and 伩 (in a handwritten note from someone who teaches at Beida). I’d be curious to know how many of these existed previously as folk simplifications: I have no problem believing in 伩 and 歺 (餐 really is a pain in the ass to write by hand when you’re hungry and all you want is some cheap and cheerful 歺); 亍 existed previously as part of 彳亍. 旦 over 力 is just weird.

and another interesting one:

Great post. I am actually doing research on “Second Round Simplifications”. My favorite is 氿. Even as a Mandarin learner rather than a native speaker, this character (meaning of course good old 酒) looks just absurd to me.

A second Sinoglot post Wut if ur kid’s skool thot this wuz fine spelling? attacks this in more detail - but the pics are missing (again!). Shame.
Wikipedia's page of Second Round of Simplified Chinese Characters has quite a bit of explanation too, of how it began:

In 1975, a second round of simplifications, the Second Scheme, was submitted by the Script Reform Committee of China to the State Council for approval. Like the First Scheme, it contained two lists, one (comprising 248 characters) for immediate use and another (comprising 605 characters) for evaluation and discussion.9 Of these, 21 from the first list and 40 from the second also served as components of other characters, which caused the Second Scheme to modify some 4,500 characters.10 On 20 December 1977, major newspapers such as the People's Daily and the Guangming Daily published the second-round simplifications along with editorials and articles strongly endorsing the changes. Both newspapers began to use the characters from the first list on the following day.10

and ended:

The Second Scheme was received extremely poorly, and as early as mid-1978, the Ministry of Education and the Central Propaganda Department were asking publishers of textbooks, newspapers and other works to stop using the second-round simplifications. Second-round simplifications were taught inconsistently in the education system, and people used characters at various stages of official or unofficial simplification. Confusion and disagreement ensued.[11]
The Second Scheme was officially retracted by the State Council on 24 June 1986. The State Council's retraction also emphasized that Chinese character reform should henceforth proceed with caution, and that the forms of Chinese characters should be kept stable.[12] Later that year, a final version of the 1964 list was published with minor changes, and no further changes have been made since.6

Sometimes these things caught in "time warps" are easy to come out.


I assume you are talking about the origin and evolution of characters, as opposed to the origin and evolution of the words they represent.  These two are complementary, but not identical.

Analyzing characters and tracing their forms from the oracle bones through Zhou bronzes on into the forms used over 2000+ years of dynastic history is a huge job, and there is no standard work that covers all of this.

Standard dictionaries such as 漢語大字典 are not specialist works, and will have gaps and weaknesses that you must be careful of, just as the OED is not an authoritative source for tracing the indo-european roots of English.

Rather than look for something that gives you random explanations chosen from unspecified sources, I would recommend that you read Qiu Xigui's book 文字學概要. This has been translated into English as Chinese Writing by Mattos and Norman, and is the best book on the subject in English, by far. This will help you to better understand and evaluate the claims you read.

If you get through that and really want to try reading Chinese works, the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 of Xu Shen 許慎 remains the indispensible work on the origins and analysis of Chinese characters, and the starting point for all studies of Chinese characters.

Qing dynasty studies of the Shuowen are indispensible adjuncts to raeding Shuowen.  The Shuowen jiezi gulin 說文解字詁林　of Ding Fubao 丁福保 is the most convenient compilation of Qing research. This is pure classical Chinese, with a huge number of special terms and idiosyncratic written forms. I don't think there is a version of this in simplified characters. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)  It does not include all Qing dynasty work on the Shuowen.

Analysis of the original forms of characters also demands knowledge of oracle bone, bronze vessel writing, and the bamboo and silk works that are regularly excavated by archaeologists.

There are several dictionaries of the oracle bones and bronze characters, but many of these are simply compilations of forms (organized under Shuowen's classification system!), and don't have the kind of explanations you are looking for.

There is less on the Warring States materials that are now a large and important field of research; there are one or two textbooks I believe, but I'm not familiar enough with this area to recommend anything.

A number of journals, such as 考古 and 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 publish research articles on Chinese characters that try to analyze and identify unfamiliar forms in new works.  These articles regularly overturn long-accepted explanations.

Archaeological document finds are also a major topic for Ph.D. dissertations, both in China and Taiwan.  It generally takes a while for new discoveries and theories from these to work their way into the current literature.

The point of this reply is that character etymology and evolution is a very large area where important work that revises earlier ideas is frequently published.

I don't think there is one work that can be totally relied on to always have the most current information.  In addition, there are many cases where interpretations are still sharply disputed, so any claims about forms, meanings, or readings should specifically state whose views they are following.


Do you change your voice when you're surprised, unsure etc. in Mandarin?

Well in China,we use the same way to pronounce words in sentences.We may speak louder with angry tone when we are angry or quarrlling with someone.

For if changing tone may at the same time change the meaning,I want to say that it doesn't matter when you try to understand the meaning of the whole sentence.If you pick the emphasized word out of the sentence,it may sound very strange or just mean another meaning.Well in most cases,it's also recognizable because there are only four tones in chinese and the possible combination is limited,and to express common meaning,the quantity is even decreased to an easily counted number.So most time,we can get what the speaker said.

Well there is another question,that is the accent!It's not in the range of mandarin while I still want to say some.In China there are a large number of different areas.So sometimes even the pronunciation may be changed totally.It's common in China that people in one area can't understand what people in another area radically for historic and territorial reasons.Very interesting for the fact but bothered for communication,isn't it?


《國語辭典》

  急火攻心
  因情緒太過激動，而造成身心一時的不適。
  Because the emotion is too excited, and cause physical and mental discomfort.

There are 50 example sentences on the ichacha site.


https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B7%A8%E6%97%A0%E9%9C%B8/1226195

巨无霸 (巨毋霸) was a historical character who was famous for being a giant. Later people commonly use '巨无霸' as a nickname for something that is 'giant size'. For example, compare to modern dragonfly's modest 1-4 inches length, the dragonfly- like Meganeuropsis was no doubt a 'giant'(巨无霸) with it's 18 inches long body

Meganeuropsis- 青蜓中的巨无霸 (giant among dragonflies)

巨无霸 is not a translation of 'Big Mac', it is a Chinese name for 'Big Mac' . Someone gave 'Big Mac' this Chinese name because the selling point of 'Big Mac' is "it is BIG"

'Big Mac' is 'giant' among hamburgers


How do game and program developers solve the pinyin input problem in their programs

This question does not belong in Chinese language section, nevertheless.

What you're talking are Chinese language input tools. There is actually nothing to solve here for game developers. Any game user can use Google pinyin, Sogou, Baidu input tools in a full screen application for Chinese input. A user types Chinese words in pinyin and gets a list of corresponding words. Some games may independently implement different language input switches via os IME API:

On Linux machine a user may use scim, fcitx or ibus input tools which work in the similar manner.


Can 孩子们 (háizǐmen) = "children (plural)" belong to the same family?

Sure.

You can look up a phrasing like 我们家(的)孩子们 and you will quite a few results. Here are some snippets of titles and phrases for example:

看看我们家的孩子们
《家教之我们家的孩子们》
我们家的孩子们真棒!

孩子 can be both plural and singular without 们, depending on the context. You'd be more likely to find a combination of 我们家 and 孩子 to encompass all the kids in the family without especially stating "们."


Are there any resources for learners of Chinese dialects that are close to Mandarin?

There is not much of this available even at bookstores within China. There is even much less for non-background speakers in English.

I personally have been lucky enough to get a book from Peking University Press titled "Practical Suzhou Dialect" which also includes English. I tried searching online however this appears to be a one-off. However, you could try contacting one of the major universities or even going to a university in Henan to see if they have resources available.

There is also this book listed on Amazon Henan dialect of Luoshan but this is not a text book. I have tried seeing if I could find the contents of this online, but only found a site listing an index of what is inside.

I also suggest asking on Chinese social media sites to see if anyone can help.


What's the origin of the Hong Kong colloquialism "I go to school by bus"?

It was a troll response commonly used in the Hong Kong Online Forum "HKGolden". The line was originally from a Primary School Textbook's dialogue and was usually being used as a ridiculous and nonsense reply to English-related questions on the forum.

Check here for the Hong Kong Local Encyclopedia page on this phrase.


What resources can I use for learning character decomposition?

you may try the 拆字字典:

http://www.kaifangcidian.com/han/chaizi

eg:

【彎】 wan1    〖絲 言 弓 彎〗〖糹 言 糹 弓 彎〗

http://www.kaifangcidian.com/han/chaizi/彎

have fun :)


What is the difference between 夜(yè) and 晚 (wǎn)?

Originally,  晚 could be written as 莫 (in ancient form): 艹（草, grass）+ 日 (sun), referring to when the sun is below the grass -- sunset.

In modern Chinese, we can understand or memorize it in this way: 日 (sun) + 免 (cancel), without the sun, sunset.

Then its meaning extends to night and evening. So 晚 does mean night and evening, and they are its original meanings!

Originally, 夜 could be written as 亱 (in ancient form): house (dot + horizontal) people (人, Throw away + vertical) + day (旦), referring to (people, sun) stop and rest. It means the time period from dusk till dawn.

Just as 晚，its meaning extends to night and evening.

晚 is more focused on "being late" (at night or in the evening), which is later used as "late".
夜 is more focused on "dark and dusk" (at night or in the evening).

Therefore, “夜晚” can be understood in 2 ways:

(1) in Modern Chinese, night or evening, together as a noun;

(2) as noun+adj: the night/evening is late → the time at night is late.

晚 means:

Noun.

(1) (形声。从日,免声。本义:傍晚;黄昏)

(2) 同本义 [evening]

晚,莫也。——《说文》

晚,暮也。——《广韵》

四时失序,则辰星作异。…政急则出蚤,政缓则出晚。——《汉书·李寻传》

一屠晚归。——《聊斋志异·狼三则》

(3) 又如:晚曦(晚霞);晚夕(傍晚,晚上);晚半天儿(晚夕,晚晌,晚间,晚上);晚钟(傍晚的钟声);晚寒(傍晚的寒气);晚晴;晚饷(晚餐);晚阴(傍晚时的阴霾);晚来(傍晚) [evening]

(4) 夜晚 [night]

晚星没。——庾信《对烛赋》

(5) 又如:晚吹(夜晚的风);晚头(晚上);晚月(夜月);晚炬(夜间的火炬);晚漏(晚更);晚魄(月亮);晚逻(夜间巡逻) [night]

(6) 晚年 [old age;one’s later years]

晚出榆关逐北征,惊沙飞迸冲貂袍。—— 温庭筠《塞寒行》

(7) 又如:晚运(晚年。运指时期);晚涂(晚年);晚境(晚年的境遇;晚年);晚悟(晚年觉悟) [old age;one’s later years]

(8) 秋季 [antumn]。如:晚菘(秋末冬初的大白菜);晚造(秋季作物);晚果(秋天成熟的果实);晚热(秋天的炎热)

(9) 旧时官场后辈对前辈、下级对上级称晚生,简言曰晚。多用于书信 [pupil (often self-reference in writing or speaking to teacher)]

恕治晚不能躬送了。——《儒林外史》

(10) 时间靠后。属于或关于时间上或发展上的后期阶段的 [late;far on in time]

兴尽晚归舟。——宋· 李清照《如梦令》

事之晚矣。——《资治通鉴·汉纪》

土气有早晚。——宋· 沈括《梦溪笔谈》

(11) 又如:晚唐;晚父;晚母(后母;继母);晚爷(后父);晚妻(后续之妻);晚嫁(再嫁);晚伯母(伯父后来续娶的妻子);晚进(后进;后辈);晚婆(晚娘,继母) [late;far on in time]
Adj.

(1) 迟,在规定的、通常的或恰当的时间以后来的或做的 [late]

大器晚成。——《老子》四十一章  Chapter 41.

(2) 又如:晚达(显达较迟);晚日(近日;最近几天);晚歇(〈方〉∶过一会儿);晚转身(〈方〉∶第二次嫁人);晚客;晚茶(迟采摘的茶叶);晚麦(迟熟的麦);晚代(近世);晚禾(晚稻);晚甲(迟发的芽)

(3) 衰;老 [old]。如:晚叶(晚年;老叶);晚谬(年老昏愦);晚暮(年老)

夜 means:

Noun.

(1) (形声。金文字形。从月,亦声。本义:从天黑到天亮的时间) [Origin: The time interval from dusk till dawn]

(2) 同本义 [night]

夜,舍也。天下休舍也。——《说文》

夜,暮也。——《广雅》

昨夜见军帖。——《乐府诗集·木兰诗》

三日三夜。——《世说新语·自新》

(3) 又如:夜游子(爱在晚上游荡的人);夜里个(昨天);夜合钱(妓女接客所收的报酬);夜行人(夜间秘密行事的人,如盗贼、侠客之类);夜不收(夜间侦探;亦指夜晚淫乐者);夜叉婆(凶暴貌丑的女人);夜消(夜宵);夜里(昨天晚上);夜台(长夜台。墓穴);夜夫(更夫);夜漫漫(黑夜漫长。喻指苦难的岁月);。又如:夜艾(夜深深);夜永(夜深);夜定(指夜深人静之时) [night]

(4) 黄昏,天黑 [dusk]

岂不夙夜?谓行多露。——《诗·召南·行露》

行者怏怏自退,看看日色早已夜了。便道此时将暗,也寻不见师父,不如把几面镜子细看一回。——《西游补》

(5) 凌晨,天快要亮的时候 [in the small hours;before dawn]

郑玄注:“夜,夜漏未尽鸡鸣时也。”
Adj.

(1) 晦暝,幽暗 [dim;dusky]

是故索物于夜室者,莫良于火;索道于当世者,莫良于典。——《潜夫论》

(2) 又如:夜室(黑暗的房间;墓穴);夜台(夜庭。坟墓。亦借指阴间);夜府(犹夜台,墓穴)


What's the difference between 入(root) and 人 (men)

You can put them side by side on MDBG:

Where is the difference? Have a look:

You can see on the two circled parts that the right side of 入 actually slants a little to the left, where as 人 is generally left is left and right is right.


How do I use the character 当, pronounced as a 4th tone?

According to《规范》one of the meanings of

  当

  dàng

is

  以为

and they give the sample sentence:

  我当你不来了呢

So it seems the difference between 当 and 以为 is minimal at best.

As for other example sentences, here's a gloss of the PLC dictionary provided by Pleco:

  ADJECTIVE

  1 proper; right; appropriate

  以上意见当否, 请批示。
  Yǐshàng yìjian dàng fǒu, qǐng pīshì.
  We are awaiting your comment on the proposals set forth above.

  2 that very (day, etc.)

  当李的产量
  dàng lǐ de chǎnliàng
  the output of that season

  3 of the same; of one's own

  当村的小伙伴们
  dàng cūn de xiǎo huǒbàn men
  little friends of one's village

  VERB

  1 match; be equal to

  他一个人能当两个人用。
  Tā yī ge rén néng dàng liǎng ge rén yòng.
  He can do the work of two persons put together.

  2 treat as; regard as; take for

  不要把支流当主流。
  Bùyào bǎ zhīliú dàng zhǔliú.
  Don’t take minor aspects for major ones.

  3 think

  我当你不知道呢。
  wǒ dàng nǐ bùzhīdào ne.
  Well, I thought you didn’t know.

  4 pawn

  当衣服
  Dàng yīfu
  pawn one’s clothes; put one’s clothes in pawn

Hopefully that gives you a better idea of how it's used.


Translation: Feng Guifen's comments on English (1861)

the internet archive is your friend :)

it's in the book "校邠廬抗議", 卷下﹒采西學議 (p66, p69)

https://archive.org/details/02092023.cn

There are many brilliant people in China; there must be some who can learn from the barbarians and surpass them

中國多秀民﹒必有出於夷而轉勝於夷者

These men are generally frivolous rascals and loafers in the cities and are despised in their villages and communities,

其人率皆市井佻達游閒﹒不齒鄉里

it seems that your book "age of ambition" is quite interesting :)


You can translate them as:

力大如牛/像牛一样强壮
像狐狸一样聪明
像石头一样木讷
像小丑一样好玩
胖得像个气球
像军人一样勇敢
像母亲一样善良
像僧人一样冷静
像路灯一样高
像蚂蚁一样

11.像蝙蝠一样丑陋

In most cases, you can use "像". "如" is more literal and formal than "像".
But be careful. Some of the analogies do not make sense in the Chinese cultural context. For example, "bat" is neutral in the Chinese cultural background and does not carry a cultural implication of ugliness so that it does not make sense to say something is ugly like a bat.


How do you use translate “You can't miss this opportunity"?

That would mean: I would not miss this opportunity.

Change the 我 to a 你, and remove the 哦.

This will result in: "你不能错过这个机会"


See https://read01.com/zh-hk/4DDkPPQ.html:

當詢問老闆，這個麵館為什麼要把店名取為「曱甴 (sic) 曱甴 面 館」時，老闆說這兩個字讀「Ga ga」，就是當地方言「肉」的意思。
通過公開資料顯示，老闆提到的「gǎ gǎ」實為「朒朒」。

Either the store owner made it up, or it's a very localised usage of those characters. The pronunciation is 「嘎嘎」 (「朒」 is a variant of 「嘎」), which is a colloquial Sichuanese word for meat.


Town

The city is "运城" ("運城" is its traditional Chinese writing). That is a well-known city in 山西.

Date

Year: 己酉 (1909, 1969, 2029, ..)
Month: 二月 (2nd Month in Chinese Calendar, or February in Gregorian)
Day: 廿四日 (24th)

My guess is that date is a Chinese Calendar date. Since you said it was around 1910, so the year should be 1909. Thus, 己酉年二月廿四日 was March 15, 1909.

However, I am not familiar with history and their convention in those years, so I am not 100% sure if the date is in Chinese Calendar or Gregorian Calendar.

Note that if this is Chinese Calendar, 己酉 doesn't align exactly with the year of 1909. A Chinese year starts from the Chinese New Year (a.k.a Spring Festival) and ends before the next, which means the tail of 己酉 might be in 1910. However, since it is 二月 (second month), it should be still in 1909.


Does "太 + adjectival verb + 了" mean the change?

The full form of 你高了! is 你变高了！. So, there is an omission here. you can also see the similar expressions: 你（变）瘦了， 你（变）胖了，你（变）漂亮了... ...

‘太 + adjectival verb + 了’ has no omission of 变 there, so it doesn't convey a change. If you really want to indicate a change with this structure, you could add '现在'(now) in it. Like 你现在太聪明了!, it implies that you were not as smart as you are. It indicates you are getting smarter compared with the past.


I am from Taiwan, and 閩南語 is one of my mother language.
I think "na tang"(那通) is simplified from "na e dang"(怎麼可以).
The translation of“那通失去希望 每日醉茫茫” should be
"How can you get drunk all the day after losing a hope."
I found a blog which explains this song clearly, though it was written in Chinese.
http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/s/blog_4e97365d0100b7c1.html

I am curious why you don't ask the translation of 照起工來行...
It is so strange.
Give you a reference: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict_new/iongji/pdf/annesia311pdf.pdf&gws_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=3ZLSWbfqI4TO0gS9jquQAg


Usually people just say 你好 because, well, it's just the common way. I don't think there are any reasons.

你好啊 sounds like talking to babies, or if you are greeting someone who is some distance away and you want yourself to be heard. 你——好——啊——

你好吗 is a direct translation of "How are you?" It is only used by Chinese when one really wants to know what is going on with the other, or it may be used with English speakers to make them feel less culturally alienated.


你比兔子跑得还快 is a common expression, since we all know 兔子 are fast.

他爹 is acting like a 'damn' without cursing.

You run even faster than a damn rabbit.

Another meaning:

Rabbit are fast, the father of rabbit would be treated as faster, this similar expression are very common in Chinese.

Compare 你比老母猪还能吃. to 你比猪还能吃.

A pig mom sounds like 更能吃.


There are some examples like that, but it's actually not that common, considering there are thousands of commonly used characters, and there's no name for this too (won't call it a phenomenon either).

熱 & 熟: I remember these words from my childhood. I thought they look so similar at that time. Notice I was a native speaker and already speaking Chinese fluently. This is just a part every Chinese learner must learn, and you will certainly get better at recognizing the differences as time goes on.

Those differences may be in a certain stroke (e.g. one character has an extra stroke 大 & 太, or a difference in length 士 & 土, or a difference in angle/order of strokes 千 干), or there are parts of those characters that are different (e.g. 熱 & 熟).

It might help to learn the basic strokes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJKV_character)?oldformat=true#Basic_strokes

Stroke orders matter too. Notice the first strokes of 千 and 干.

check stroke order here: https://www.chineseconverter.com/en/convert/chinese-stroke-order-tool

Here's a list of similar characters if you're interested: http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/


How to translate "something separates me from other people" in Chinese?

Nice try, but not that correct.
Let’s disassemble this sentence.
The subject is: something / (1)什么东西
The verb is: separates / 分离，(2)将 ... 分离
The object is: me / (3)我
And the adverbial is: from other people / (4)从 其他人
So to re-assemble it in the Chinese way should be like:
(1)什么东西 (2)将 (3)我 (4)从 其他人 (2)分离
To clarify it: 什么东西将我从其他人分离。


无论是在生活还是救援等工作中，无人机都立下汗马功劳。

it’s very bad, the assumption & consideration behind the sentence.
even if we think of personification (擬人), treat a drone as a human being. then,

do we glorify a train in daily transportation?
a rocket in space mission?
a pen / typewriter in award-winning novel writing?

these’re tools. the quoted sentence only praises the drone, ignoring the factor-workers who made them, the operators to control on site.
it’s these people who make contributions & achievements.
stop of rant :)


Cantonese called white language by mainland chinese

Standard Cantonese speakers like myself sometimes call '广东话' as '白话', which literally means "plain speech",  in contrast to all other regional dialects (方言) and local dialects (鄉下話) within Canton province.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese
in Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, the language is referred to as "Guangdong speech" (广东话; 廣東話; Gwóngdūng wá)

"Guangdong speech" (广东话; 廣東話) is "plain speech"(白话) to us.


Are `sh` and `x` really different phonemes, or just different realizations of the same phoneme?

This is a classic problem with defining phonemes. Looking for "complementary distribution" of sounds does not uniquely determine a phonological analysis. In Mandarin (I'll use pinyin here), the palatal set of consonants (j,q,x) is in complementary distribution with all of the following sets:

zh, ch, sh
z, c, s
g, k, h

This gives you three different options on which things to treat as the "same" phonemes. And you can go in the opposite direction too: Pinyin distinguishes all these consonant-sets, but then it merges the written form of the front-vs-back vowels. You could do a phonological analysis like that too, or at least, you almost could, as /u/ and /y/ contrast when following /n/ and /l/.
And indeed it's the case that different romanization systems make different choices about how to do this. To quote from Wikipedia:

The Yale and Wade–Giles systems mostly treat the palatals as allophones of the retroflexes; Tongyong Pinyin mostly treats them as allophones of the dentals; and Mainland Chinese Braille treats them as allophones of the velars. In standard pinyin and bopomofo, however, they are represented as a separate sequence.
The palatals arose historically from a merger of the dentals [t͡s, t͡sʰ, s] and velars [k, kʰ, x] before high front vowels and glides. Previously, some instances of modern [t͡ɕ(ʰ)i] were instead [k(ʰ)i], and others were [t͡s(ʰ)i] . The change took place in the last two or three centuries at different times in different areas, but not in the Jianghuai dialect used at the imperial court. This explains why some European transcriptions of Chinese names (especially in postal romanization) contain ki-, hi-, tsi- or si- where a palatal might be expected. Examples are Peking for Beijing, Chungking for Chongqing, Fukien for Fujian, Tientsin for Tianjin; Sinkiang for Xinjiang, and Sian for Xi'an.


我爱去饭店吃饭。我想去饭店吃米饭，可是我觉得我会去家吃苹果: Does this make grammatical sense?

我饿死了！ - I am so hungry (O)
我饿死了！ 我爱去饭店吃饭 - I am very hungry! I love to go to restaurant to have a meal (X)
The two clauses do not seem to be related

~

我饿死了！我想去饭店吃饭 - I am very hungry, I want to go to restaurant to have a meal (O)
The first part is the cause/ reason and the second part is the result/reaction. The two clauses are related

~

我饿死了！我想去饭店吃饭，可是我觉得我会回家吃苹果。(O)

米饭 specifically means 'cooked rice', 吃米饭 in this sentence should be changed to '吃饭' (having meal)
去家 should be 回家 (go home) unless it is "去 someone's 家"


"I'll be back in 5 minutes" is the only correct translation for this sentence.

"I came back 5 minutes ago" is

  我5分钟前就回来了。


What is the difference between 种类，类型 and 品种?

They can all be translated into English as variety or type. Their differences are:

種類

Has a slight emphasis on the differences between compared things, and it is slightly more often used to construct categories to sort different objects into.
Also occasionally used as a synonym for 種族 (race or ethnicity) in older texts (pre-Qing).
Example from Pleco: 不同種類的刀具 (different kinds of knives)

類型

Has a slight emphasis on the similarities between compared things, and it is slightly more often used to group things which share similar properties into the same category.
Sometimes used as a word to categorise tropes, imagery, or genres in the field of literature.
Is a term imported from Wasei-kango.
Example sentence: 魯迅 《偽自由書ㆍ前記》： “然而我的壞處， 是在論時事不留面子， 砭錮弊常取類型， 而後者尤與時宜不合。” (Lu Xun: "My problem is that I don't spare any sensibilities when discussing current affairs, and often use literary tropes when criticising harmful traditions; the latter may be extremely inappropriate in contemporary society.")

品種

Very often used in the field of biology for the meaning animal breed, species, bacterial strain.
Otherwise used to describe the assortment variety of products e.g. in a shop.


How to translate "The Dreams that Stuff is Made of " into Chinese?

From Google Translates
The dreams that stuff Is made of = 这些东西是由这些梦想组成的

"东西是由这些梦组成的" (literal translation)
or
"物质是由这些幻觉组成的" / "物質是由這些幻覺組成的" = "Matter is composed of these hallucinations" (descriptive translation)


Has the iPad been genericized in Chinese?

I think in this case, it's true

"iPad" is more famous, most people (at least in mainland) aren't familiar with digital devices. People maybe don't know what tablet computer is, but they know "Oh it's Apple's iPad".


What are these unusual characters alone in seals?

I think the first one is 夻 and the 3rd one is 䨜
I don't think those are so much unusual characters as an atypical font face.  Characters drawn for a seal tend to be drawn idiosyncratically like that.


Translation/Colloquial Equivalents: “There's More Than One Way To Skin A Cat”

各施各法

Each person does (it) his own way. It comes from a longer phrase:

八仙過海，各施各法

Which is about eight fairies in Chinese mythology. When they needed to cross the ocean, each did it his/her own way.


What characters belong together as words in ...连日来人气火爆...?

据了解，这些特色餐馆连日来人气火爆，前来就餐的多数是结伴而来的年轻人
  I would break this sentence into this:
  据/了解，这些/特色/餐馆/连日来/人气/火爆，前来/就餐/的/多数/是/结伴而来/的/年轻人

In 连日来, "连日" means "few days", with a emphasis in succession; suffix "来", short form of "以来", can be translated as "for the period of".

In "人气火爆", "人气" actually means popularity instead of people; "火爆" literally means "fire and explosion", it was usually only used to describe a living thing, or the temper thereof, meaning he/she/it has a strong temper. Nowadays, "火爆" is adopted to describe popularity too, meaning very high popularity; and for this usage, an closely related term with the same meaning being "很火", literally "very fire".

However, take note that both "人气火爆" and "很火" are somewhat slangy terms, and I would not consider them as standard Chinese.  And "很火" is usually used in mainland China and other Mandarin speaking countries. In Hong Kong, where the main spoken language is Cantonese, "很火" is not used at all.


What phrases in Cantonese are thought to be colloquial but are actually used in Mandarin?

唔該 has two meanings:

"Please" as in 請 (e.g 唔該你幫我開門 -> 請你幫我開門 -> "Would you please open the door for me?")
"Thank you" as in 謝謝 (e.g 唔該晒 -> 謝謝 -> "Thanks so much!")

Other terms are colloquial in Cantonese I can think of off the top of my head:

發夢 is written as 做夢 (dreaming)
老闆/老板 (interchangeable, means boss/owner) is usually written as 上司 (boss) and/or 東主/店主 (owner, usually referring to small business owners), though 老闆/老板 is also in use in Mandarin/written Chinese
行街 is normally written as 逛街 (literally means walking on the streets, usually means shopping)
餸 is normally written as 菜 (means cooking ingredients/cooked dishes here, not vegetables) e.g. 買餸 is 買菜 in Mandarin (grocery shopping), 煮餸 is 做菜 (cooking), 隔夜餸 is 剩菜 (leftovers)
餐牌 (dining menu) is normally written as 菜單
Umbrella is called 遮 in Cantonese, but written as 傘
Jacket/coat is generally called 䄛 in Cantonese, but usually called 衣 in Mandarin

䄛/大䄛 is 大衣/外衣 (outer jacket/coat)
雨䄛 is 雨衣 (raincoat)
皮䄛 is 皮夾克 (leather jacket)

衫 means tops in Cantonese but also used as the general term for clothes, whereas 上衣 is normally used for tops in Mandarin, and the general term for clothes is 衣服
波 is in general written as 球 (e.g. 乒乓波 -> ping pong/table tennis)

In particular, most ball-type of sports use 球 in the name of the sport in Cantonese, such as 足球 (football/soccer) and 網球 (tennis), the act of playing them still use 波: 踢波 (play soccer, literally translates to "kick ball"), 打波 (play ball, the specific type is generally inferred in the context).  In Mandarin, these would normally be 踢球 and 打球.
日 is almost exclusively used in Cantonese when referring to "day", whereas in Mandarin/written Chinese 天 and 日 are used more interchangeably:

今日 (today) -> 今天
尋日 (yesterday) -> 昨天
聽日 (tomorrow) -> 明天
前日 (the day before yesterday) -> 前天
後日 (the day after tomorrow) -> 後天
大前日 (the day before the day before yesterday, i.e. three days ago) -> 大前天
大後日 (the day after the day after tomorrow, i.e. three days later) -> 大後天

There are also many newer terms and names (from the last 100 years or so) where the Cantonese name is phonetically adopted from a foreign language (normally English), or even left as English in Cantonese, but the Mandarin term is either adopted from meaning, adopted phonetically differently due to differences in pronunciations.  For example:

cab/taxi is 的士 in Cantonese, 出租車 (Mainland China) or 計程車 (Taiwan) in Mandarin
bus is 巴士 in Cantonese, 公車 in Mandarin
wrench is 士巴拿 (from British English "spanner") in Cantonese, 扳手 in Mandarin
tie (as in necktie) is usually called 呔 or 領呔 in Cantonese, 領帶 in Mandarin
tire/tyre (as in car tires) is called 呔 (yes, same as above) or 車呔 in Cantonese, 胎/車胎/輪胎 in Mandarin


Translation for "sorry" as in "I am sorry to hear that"?

Sorry has many meanings in English while 对不起 doesn't do that in Chinese. Most of the case, you can use 不好意思 - it'd be more easy-going and it's a little like "sorry" in English sometimes.

So for different context you need to say different words. Some examples for you:

不好意思 - It's very general and can fit many situations. I recommend use it when you're not very sure.

  不好意思，我不知道你们已经离婚了。I'm sorry that I didn't know about your divorce.

抱歉 - feel bad when you mention something that your listener don't want to hear

  抱歉，我刚知道你父亲去世的消息。I'm sorry I just knew that you father passed away.

难过 - feel sorrow about something (stronger emotional than the two above)

  听到这个消息，我很难过。I'm sorry to hear that.

伤心 - feel rather bad about the loss, especially someone loses his a family member. But it's a little formal than 难过. You can use it in a letter or e-mail

  得知你要离开这个城市，我真的很伤心 It's so sad to realize that you're leaving this city.

遗憾 - it's a little formal and official, I do not suggest use this in a daily conversation. Chinese people seldom say it.

  听说你不打算加入我们了，我感到很遗憾 It's a pity to know that you're never gonna join us.

惋惜 - the same like 遗憾, it's very formal and seldom used in daily conversations.

  关键时候没能坚持住，真令人惋惜 What a pity that you did not hold on at this crucial moment.

悲恸 - it's much more formal and official, for example when some "big brother" in the gov is dead the media will use this word to report

  毛泽东逝世后，举国上下沉浸在极其地悲恸之中无法自拔。 Every single person in this country has broken his heart after knowing Chairman Mao has passed away.


No. The words have different meanings.

Let's look at your first sentence:
他十分坦率地[给]我讲了他的故事 : He openly told me his story.

If we were to replace 给 with 替:
他十分坦率地[替]我讲了他的故事: He openly told his story for me (implying that I was supposed to be the one telling the story).

If we were to replace 给 with 为:
他十分坦率地[为]我讲了他的故事: He openly told his story to me for my sake.

In general I'm not too sure how you got the idea that they are interchangeable.


太阳 Tàiyáng, Sun: pronounced "Tie Yang"

太 Tài：highest; greatest

阳　yáng：sun

You may find some reference yáng as 5th tone (轻声 qīngshēng) because it's easier to pronounce in spoken Chinese. The character 阳 yáng by itself is always 2nd tone.


Should words like 一般 or 平时 be put before or after the time reference?

Tl;dr: There is inherent adverbial order in Chinese (point 2.). Sentences with the same adverbs ordered differently can have different meanings (points 3. to 6.).

The correct order is 你平時/一般什麼時候做作業？.

We know for a fact that the 'natural' (perhaps even grammatical) ordering of adverbs depends heavily on the language. Consider the following pair of example:

Sentence
Adverbial order

I travelled to Japan last year.
adverb of place > adverb of time

我去年到日本遊玩。
adverb of time > adverb of place

平時/一般 is an adverb of frequency (not time). Usually we place it right after the subject and before adverbs of time in Chinese, because it is the most generalisable. But do consider the following:

Sentence
Adverbial order

我經常在週末到公園做運動。
adverb of frequency > adverb of time > adverb of place

我在週末經常到公園做運動。
adverb of time > adverb of frequency > adverb of place

*我經常到公園在週末做運動。
adverb of frequency > adverb of place > adverb of time

By point 2., only the first two sentences are grammatical. But think closely and their meanings differ. Considering the fact that 經常, 在週末, and 到公園 are all preceding adverbs (狀語), they modify ALL that follows (even the adverbs after them). In a way, whatever you say first limits the scope of the sentence most.
So in the first sentence, it seems that the speaker is commenting on their habit in general, which involves exercising in the park at weekends. But in the second sentence, it seems that the speaker is commenting exclusively on their habit at weekends, which is that they exercise in the park. (Implying the speaker's habit at weekdays may be different.)

Likewise, if you say 我平時/一般在晚上做作業。, you are commenting on your habit in general. If you say 我在晚上一般做作業。, you are commenting exclusively on your habit during nighttime. Perhaps you are deliberately contrasting this to others' nighttime habit, or what you routinely do during daytime.

In the above example, it seems particularly odd to place 平時, which already specified the generality of time, after a specific point of time in the day. 一般 is relatively weak in temporality, so it is permissible.

Back to your question: in *你什麼時候平時/一般做作業？, it is illogical to knowingly limit your scope of discussion to an uncertain period of time (i.e., 什麼時候) when in fact you are supposed to ask others' habit as a general inquiry.


How can I express the concept "There's nothing of which I'm absolutely sure" in Chinese?

1) (对)任何事情我都没有绝对的把握.

There is nothing wrong in this sentence, but it focuses on personal belief, a little bit inclining to the speaker's subjectiveness.

If we want to state something that describes a general belief, which focuses more on objectiveness, then we can say:

  2) (对)任何事情 我们 都没有绝对的把握.

  3) (对)什么事 我们 都 不可能有 绝对的把握.

Sentence 2 generalizes the idea expressed in sentence 1 by replacing 我 with 我们. 我们 covers not only the speaker, but also the readers and listeners.

Sentence 3 makes it even stronger, which emphasizes on the impossibility of having, while in sentence 2 没有 just describes the fact of not having.

Note: 任何事情 in sentence 2 is same as 什么事  in setence 3, no differences at all, they are interchangable.


Is 是 being used as a measure word in this sentence?

Not a measure word. Just the usual meaning of "be".


Is it OK to use the word 了 on 很 + adjective phrase, to emphasize?

很...了 is not that common. When you say 俄罗斯女人很漂亮了, it could mean either 俄罗斯女人确实很漂亮(truly beautiful) or 俄罗斯女人已经很漂亮了(beautiful enough already).

But if you add 已经， it will be natural. 俄罗斯女人已经很漂亮了，which implies 俄罗斯女人 is beautiful enough already, (and you might not have to look for other women.)

Maybe, you could take 已经很...了 as a structure, meaning it's already ... enough. For example, 已经很好了(it's already good enough)，已经很强了(It's already strong enough)，已经很喜欢了('I' already liked it enough)，....


Does 差不多 (chàbùduō) imply "slightly less than" when comparing quantities?

差 = 相差 (difference) ;差距 (gap)
不多 = not much

差不多 :
(adj) not much difference/ not much gap between
(adv): almost / about

Example of 差不多 as adjective:
味道差不多 (not much difference in taste) - could be slightly better or slightly worse
價格差不多 (not much difference in price) - could be slightly higher or slightly lower
Example of 差不多 as adverb:
差不多到了 means "we're almost there" (not quite there yet, but close to)
差不多死了  means "almost died" or "about to die" ( not dead yet but will be soon)
When A ask B how much is the book,  and B said: "差不多50块", it mean "it is almost 50 yuan" (= not quite 50 yuan)
When A found out the actual price is 52 yuan, he has every right to accuse B of lying.
And B's excuse: "52块, 50块 差不多吧?" (52 yuan and  50 yuan is not much a difference right?) is using 差不多 in a different way.

Does 差不多 (chàbùduō) imply “slightly less than” when comparing quantities?

When 差不多 is used  as an adverb (is almost) + quantities, it dose imply “slightly less than”, But when 差不多 is used as an adjective (not much difference), then it only mean the objects are similar in some form of comparison.

A 比 B 差不多

The correct form:
A 跟 B 差不多 = not much difference between A and B
A 比 B 差不了多少 = Compare to B, A is not much worse
A 比 B 差不多 is not grammatical


What does 都 mean when added to 主 here: 主都知道，主都不在乎

都 (dou1) means "all" here. It is a separate word with 主, and its meaning unrelated to 主.
主都知道：主 knows all.
主都不在乎：主 does not care about anything.


It's a loan word from Japanese Kanji word "御姉".

It's wildly used in ACG subculture. ACG is short for Anime (not animation), Comics (Manga actually) and Games. Now it has become ACGN with the addition of "Light Novel" which holds similar market niche in Asia like Twilight does in western.

Anyway, in those subculture, popular characteristics of "ideal" image of Asian girls are cuteness and petiteness. "御姉", in contrary, is used to describe females that can be characterized as sexy, mature.

To gain a more vivid impression, you can google pictures for 御姐/御姉 and compare the result with the result of 蘿莉/ロリ.

!! Warning !!

I just know these stuff based on my intellectual curiosity. Don't blame me if people call you a pervert if you keep saying these stuff to them.


Role/Grammar of 找 and 跟 in "他找白如玉跟他在師大附近走走"?

他找白如玉跟他在師大附近走走, 試試地圖好用不好用。

让她(ask her) is implied in this sentence. So, it can be reworded:

  他找白如玉让她跟他在師大附近走走, 試試地圖好用不好用。

他找白如玉: he looks for 白如玉; 跟他: with him; 在師大附近: near/around shida; 走走: have a walk;

Put all pieces together:

  he looks for 白如玉 to/and ask her to have a walk with him around Shida.

You should be aware that sentence order between English and Chinese is quite different sometimes.

Hope this could help you out.


Why are the words 戒 and 戎 written similarly?

The characters resemble each other because 「戒」 was subject to a slight amount of structural shuffling and the original lower-left component of 「戎」 is of a simple shape, so most people won't recognise what it actually is.

As far as I can recall, the only other place that the lower-left component of 「戎」 occurs in is the top of 「古」.

「戒」 and 「戎」 aren't the same character, they don't descend from the same character, and the morphemes they represent aren't related (except in the sense of semantics - both are pictographs containing 「戈」, dagger-axe).
It follows that they sound completely different, whether as individual characters or as part of a phonetic hint function in other characters.

商甲乙657合集7060西周金戒叔尊集成5856秦簡為33睡虎地秦簡今楷
「戒」 depicts two hands 「廾」 holding up a dagger-axe 「戈」, indicating the meaning to warn/caution. 「廾」 later migrated to the lower-left of the character and no longer appears to be holding up the weapon anymore; the structural analogy to the original form is 「」.

商甲拾9.12合集6890西周金班簋集成4341今楷
「戎」 depicts a dagger-axe 「戈」 together with a shield, indicating the meaning armaments.

Shield is now written as 「盾」. The original character doesn't exist individually anymore, but remains as the top component of 「古」 (solid, sturdy, now written as 「固」).
商甲林2.24.6合集16347西周金秉毌父乙爵集成8871
This character was later replaced by the new character 「盾」, which depicts a side view of the shield with an eye looking straight 「直」 peering from underneath the cover of the shield.
西周金五年師簋集成4216秦簡效3睡虎地秦簡今楷

As for 「賊」, it doesn't actually contain 「戎」. 「賊」 (Baxter-Sagart OC: /*k.dzˤək/, to ruin/damage/destroy) is comprised of semantic 「戈」 (dagger-axe) and phonetic 「則」 (/*[ts]ˤək/). The 「刂」 part was later corrupted into a 「」 shape, causing the right hand side of 「賊」 to be misinterpreted as 「戎」.
西周金散氏盤集成10176秦簡法76睡虎地秦簡東漢隸韓勑碑陰　今楷


今日娱乐节目in plain English means 'Today's entertainment programmes' '节目'usually means TV Programmes.


What is the correct measure word for 问题 (question)?

These are the standard measure words for 问题:

Normally you would use 个.
If there is a stream of questions you can use 串, for example 一大串问题.
If there are a couple of questions, you can use 些
If you are talking about kinds of questions, you have to use 类, for example   这类问题 (this kind of problem)

件 is used, but not very often, even in writing. 项 is not a standard measure word for 问题, but it can be used when talking about problems (for example software problems), not when talking about questions.


Is the sentence 他原来什么都不知道 grammatically correct?

Strictly speaking, the adverb 没 does not negate events that happened in the past, rather it is used to express negative completed actions. When we say completed we mean that the action indicated by the predicate it's finished, it doesn't necessarily mean that is a past tense. 没 is the negative counterpart of 了 (when it is the aspectual particle).

Both 了 and 没 should only be used if the predicate in your sentence expresses a true action, in other words, if the verb does something to an object, acts directly upon it or changes it in some way. The predicate 知道 (to know) doesn't indicate an action, because the object of your knowledge doesn't undergo or suffer any change at all. In these situations should use 不 instead.

Of course, if you use 不 you should express the time through some adverb, if you want to keep the notion of past tense in your sentence. The word 原来 can be used as an adverb (originally) or as an adjective (original, initial) and it describes an original condition. If the meaning you had in mind was "At first he didn't know anything", then your translation (他原来什么都不知道) is perfectly fine. However if you wanted to say "He didn't know anything before." (which is a little bit different from the previous one), you should consider using the adverb 以前. So, the sentence

  他以前什么都不知道。

is correct too. It certainly indicates a past tense and you don't put 没 because of the nature of the predicate. But, again, it depends on the interpretations.


Idiomatic expressions for attitude (agreement or disagreement)

tentatively agree: 没问题，我试试看
tend to disagree: 应该可以
certainly disagree: 再看吧

Native Chinese here, at least for me when I heard 考虑考虑 I won't take it as "maybe", rather it sounds a disagreement to me.


How is 青 and 苍 used in classical Chinese to denote colors?

As a native Chinese speaker, I can tell the color of the word with 青 almost at once.

As 青 is a word of a certain color name between green and blue, most of the word with 青 is described as this color.

For the word like 青草 or 青苔, it's often means the plant as 草 and 苔. The color of these plant can be determined by last character.

In terms of other words like 青 for black in 青布 and 青衣, they are the old usage of word maybe just used in poems. At least in the daily life of mine, I don't used it in that way.

For 青鳥 in your example, it mostly used like the color of 青 itself.
As the ref of 青鳥, you can take a look at this link http://baike.baidu.com/subview/5674/5502935.htm . And I think the hummingbird is just a kind of 青鳥.


“他换了1，000美元” is not clear; which denomination became what?

他用人民币换了1，000美元。（He changed RMB, bought $ 1000)

他把1000美元换成了人民币。（He changed $ 1000, bought RMB)


Can you 离开 a person? (as in physically separate from them?)

Yes, but I probably would use 分开 in your example if I wanted to emphasise the fact that we separated (and that it was a mutual act). For instance:

我们在那个地铁站分开，因为他要去医院而我要去百货商店。
We separated at the train station, because he needed to go to the hospital, but I needed to go to the department store.

But saying 离开某人 can also work. For instance, when the separation is more "one-sided" (in terms of how it's described), it makes sense to use 离开. For example:

我离开我妈妈之后，我去了加拿大读研究生院。
After I left my mother, I went to Canada to attend graduate school.

At the very least, this usage makes sense to me as a semi-native speaker of Chinese. Notice that the connotations of 离开 and 分开 are somewhat different. Moreover, 分开 wouldn't be used with an object to state A left B - rather, it would be used to state A and B separated.
I could also use 离开 in the original setting as well, but mostly in situations similar to the one I described above. For instance:

在地铁站离开他之后，我去了百货商店。
我在那个地铁站离开我朋友，因为我要去厕所。

But 我离开他 (as a sentence in itself) sounds odd without any appropriate qualifications to the statement. Moreover, using 离开 to state something like 我在地铁站离开他，因为我们坐不同的地铁线 sounds odd to me (because the subordinate clause focuses on 我们）.


What's distinguishes a chengyu (Chinese idiom) from a 4-character expression?

From

成语 versus 俗语 versus 谚语, what is the difference?

  成語 (idiom) include "situation description" , "common sense", and "words of wisdom". Mostly came from known historical references, like poems, classical literature or famous quotes by historic figures .

4-character expressions are common phrases from unknown origin, just happen to have four characters, they are "idiomatic expressions" but they are not true idioms.


In 这个跟那个不(是)一样 and 我们不(是)一样, is 是 totally redundant?

'不一样' (is not the same) is a set phrase, functions the same as '是不一样的' therefore 是 is redundant in '不是一样'
Either '这个跟那个不一样' or '这个跟那个是不一样的', but not '这个跟那个不是一样'


Are Sinitic languages mutually comprehensible?

Strictly speaking, the official spoken language in Chinese mainland is known as "Putonghua" (普通话) or "Modern Standard Chinese" (MSM, 现代标准汉语), while the official spoken language in Taiwan is called "Mandarin" (國語).

Both Putonghua and Taiwanese Mandarin are dialects of Pekingese (北京話). While there are differences among them, people who speak these three dialects can practically understand each other without difficulties. When no distinction is needed, English speakers often simply refer to all these three dialects as "Mandarin".

As you have pointed out, there are many other Sinitic languages apart from Mandarin. In practice, many of these languages are mutually unintelligible. So, yes, similar to your example of French vs Italian, Mandarin, Min, Hakka, Cantonese etc. are different spoken languages.

That said, since Putonghua is the official language in Chinese mainland and it is the teaching medium in schools, most Han Chinese people in Chinese mainland now speak Putonghua.

Ethnic minorities are also forced to learn Putonghua in schools. This policy has created some very serious tension between some ethnic minority groups and the Chinese government. But politics aside, many non-Han "Chinese" people do speak Mandarin nowadays as their first or second languages.

Foreigners tend to think that almost all people in China speak Mandarin, but in reality this is far from being true. If I remember correctly, according to official figures from the Chinese Ministry of Education, about ten to twenty years ago, only 58% of all "Chinese" people spoke Mandarin. The figure I read a few years ago was slightly lower than 70%, but I don't remember the precise number.

In Macau and Hong Kong, the majority populations are Cantonese speakers. Owing to close economic/cultural ties between these two cities and the Chinese mainland (and also Taiwan), many people in these two cities do understand Mandarin to various degrees. But there are also people who don't speak or comprehend Mandarin at all.

So, to answer your question, if a foreign learner of Mandarin goes to Shanghai and Taiwan, the chance that he can understand and speak with the locals is close to 100% (assuming that he speaks Mandarin well). But if he goes to Hong Kong, the chance that he can communicate well in Mandarin with the locals is significantly lower (I would say 50-50). Since the de facto official languages in Hong Kong are English and Cantonese, I would suggest him to speak English instead.

As for written languages, practically what Han Chinese people write are all dialects of each other, and is (IMHO) more appropriately called "官話" (also called "Mandarin" in English; now you see that there are many loaded meanings for the word "Mandarin"). While there are recognisable regional differences between the styles, vocabularies and grammars of these written dialects, such differences are not large enough to justify calling those dialects different "languages". Nevertheless, as in the case of English accents, the differences between dialects of written "Mandarin" are often large enough to alienate these dialects among themselves. For instance, suppose you ask an average Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong how he would classify his written language, and three choices are given: (a) 官話, (b) 國語 or (c) 普通話 (all these three terms can be called "Mandarin" in English). It is very unlikely that one would pick (c).


Why is 了 placed after the object in "你回英国了吗?" and “我去上海了"?

In those sentences, it's a modal particle, in which case it expresses a change of state. The page you linked has a link to it.
A change of state doesn't necessarily mean an actual physical change. It could be implied, or it could be a change in one's assumptions.
In your example sentences.

你回英国了吗

Here the change implied is from a state of being in England to a state of not being in England. Yes, it is backwards (!). You have to interpret the sentence from the point of view of the speaker. The first character Ma Dawei is seeing Lin Na after a long time, and he thinks: "I haven't seen her in a long time, she must have gone back to England". But obviously she's not in England anymore, since Ma Dawei is seeing her right now.
So the change implied by Ma Dawei is that Lin Na used to be in England and now she's back to Beijing.
Lin Na then replies:

我去上海了

This change could be relative to two things:
One, it is relative to Ma Dawei's assumption. Lin Na says: "I didn't go back to England, (instead/actually/in fact) I went to Shanghai". Using 了 here stresses the fact that the actual situation isn't what Ma Dawei thought.
Or two, it is relative to the change in location, i.e. she was in Shanghai but she is now back in Beijing. The reasoning is similar to the previous sentence uttered by Ma Dawei.
I interpret Lin Na's sentence as the latter possibility, but one could make a case for both.


Zhuyin: Are both ㄧㄨㄥ and ㄩㄥ correct renderings of "yong"?

Duke University hosts a: Character Conversion Table that may be of good reference for you.

ㄧㄨㄥ = yi + weng
ㄩㄥ = yong

I'd highly recommend not using yellowbridge.


Does 没有办法 have the same idiomatic meaning in Chinese that "No way" does in English?

In short, no. Except a selected few idioms such as 'killing two birds with one stone', where it is directly translated from English to Chinese (一石二鳥) and means exactly the same, literal translations usually do not carry any idiomatic meaning with them.

Shaw provided accurate translations to the three listed definitions of 'no way'. To supplement, 沒(有)辦法 (lit. 'no means/method') as a stand-alone phrase is used when you can't help with or do anything about something. 沒(辦)法 as a preceding adverbial phrase, however, is synonymous to 不能 (cannot; incapable of), as in you are unable to perform a certain act.

我把功課弄丟了。沒辦法之下，只好重新寫一遍。I lost my homework. There was nothing I could do but to rewrite it once more.
鄰居昨晚開派對，我沒法睡。My neighbours threw a party last night; I was unable to sleep.


What do you do when the dictionary doesn't give you a meaning that fits your sentence?

If dictionaries give various meanings, I always return to breaking down the word/phrase into its components and see if they make sense given your context:

  直 Zhí = straight, direct

  接 Jiē = meet, connect, join

So, it would seem that 直接 (direct connect) could mean both straightforward and relevant (hence why dictionaries give both as results).

But to remove all ambiguity, I would try searching other better fitting words... In this case, I would use 相关 xiāng guān = interrelated

Again,

  相 xiāng = mutually

  关 guān ＝　to involve, to concern

Some examples:

这些事情是特别相关 (Zhèxiē shìqíng shì tèbié xiāngguān) - These things are particularly relevant
相关任务间的重叠时间 (Xiāngguān rènwù jiān de chóngdié shíjiān) - Related tasks overlap time

More examples here


What is the average number of words necessary to read classical Chinese?

According to 二十五史的字数是多少？, most of the classics contain five to six thousand unique characters. 《辽史》(Liao history) contains as few as 4071; 《清史》(Qing history) contains as many as 8080.

《史记》93 BC contains 5122 unique characters;

《汉书》83 AD, 5833 unique characters;

《新唐书》1060 AD, 6346字;

《清史》1927 AD, 8080字.

According to this site, the first dictionary 《说文解字》which was finished in 121 AD contains 9353 characters; another one which was created in 1716 AD contains 47035 characters.

Han dynasty's《说文解字》 finished in 121 AD, contains 9353;

Song dynasty's《集韵》(1034AD) contains 53525;

Qing dynasty's《康熙字典》(1716 AD) contains 47035;

《中华字海》published in 1994 AD contains 85000.


You are right about 心理 and 活动 and 心理活动.

The key to understand this sentence is 就...而言, which means with regards to/in terms of/based on.

  就一般心理活动而言 = With regards to the general psychological process, ...

The verbiage is not very precise in Chinese. My understanding is 'general' here refers to people in normal mental state.

The whole sentence means 'From psychological standpoint, (normal) people are not accepting praise at all time'.


Result complement follow a single character verb to provide 'result' of the verb

Example of 开 as result complement:

跑 = run

跑(开) = run (and get away)

~

放 = release

放(开) = release (let out)

~

拆 = break

拆(开) = break (open)

Example of 给 as result complement:

供 = provide

供(给) = provide (and give)

~

補 = replenish

補(给) = replenish (and give)


These are called ideogrammatic compounds. I remember my teacher said about 10% of Chinese characters are ideogrammic compounds, which means there are more than 5,000 of them.

This Wiktionary page lists 270 of them.

This lesson took from an elementary school book analyzes about 10 characters whose original forms were ideogrammic compounds.

You can find some other information on Baidu Baike .


What do you mean by "not support Chinese"? You can't input Chinese characters into the generator, or Chinese characters become gibberish, or something else? I tried the website you mentioned, but it requires Flash, so I can't try myself.

Anyway, I typed "webcomics generator" in Google and found a lot of promising results. For instance, https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/ seems like a really good one. Easy to use, and supports Chinese. Here is a comic I made in one minute. Have fun!


Fonts that compose Ideographic Description Characters into one character

The question you are asking is basically, "how do I shape ideographic description sequences (IDS's)"? Text shaping is how the Arabic word خ‌ط ا‌ل‌ع‌ا‌ئ‌ل‌ة becomes خط العائلة.
It is technically possible. I am working on a proof-of-concept that can shape any IDS with a recursion depth of 2 or less. The recursion depth is needed due to limits of the number of glyphs possible in a SFNT-based font.
An SFNT-based font can contain 65535 glyphs. There are 26 presentation forms of a radical shaped in an IDS:

口_Plain.
⿰: 口_Left; 口_Right.
⿱: 口_Above; 口_Below.
⿲: 口_LeftOf3; 口_HMiddleOf3; 口_RightOf3.
⿳: 口_TopOf3; 口_VMiddleOf3; 口_BottomOf3.
⿴: 口_Surrounding; 口_Surrounded.
⿵: 口_SurroundingFromAbove; 口_SurroundedFromAbove.
⿶: 口_SurroundingFromBelow; 口_SurroundedFromBelow.
⿷: 口_SurroundingFromLeft; 口_SurroundedFromLeft.
⿸: 口_SurroundingFromUpperLeft; 口_SurroundedFromUpperLeft.
⿹: 口_SurroundingFromUpperRight; 口_SurroundedFromUpperRight.
⿺: 口_SurroundingFromLowerLeft; 口_SurroundedFromLowerLeft.
⿺: 口_OverlaidA; 口_OverlaidB.

If you take the 216 radicals and draw them in all 26 presentation forms, you have 5,616 glyphs. (You can prune the list some by remembering that not all radicals make sense in all presentation forms; for example, 辶 can never be Surrounding or Overlaid.)
You can then use contextual alternates (GSUB) and contextual substitution (GPOS) to begin shaping. Wherever possible, to reduce the number of needed glyphs, you want to merge where possible. So, to shape 務, you want to shape ⿰矛务, not ⿰⿹予丿⿱夂力; even if this means that you need more "radicals".
This is a broad overview; I am working on a proof of concept, and also font standards which would make things easier for font authors. I also wrote a paper on the subject for the Text Shaping Working Group:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NYKsNOjkOamIRdfMReZfxAhtOUMiHNm_TIidb0Daob4


Proper way to address a waiter or waitress

From what I have learned, the most proper and respectful is to use 服务员. There are many people that find 小姐 not appropriate or too traditional, I met several people who feel that 小姐 has some sexist note. The same goes for 美女 that many people use but not everyone feels comfortable to hear. 帅哥 for male 服务员 is less a problem as long as they are at the same age or younger and people definitely get served more quickly if they use this expression. After all you wouldn't use 美女 on somebody that is obviously older than you. Not to forget about the term 阿姨 that is a term of respect for a woman that is older than you, though not common in a restaurant, but you sure can use it in a small street noodle store (along with 叔叔 for male) where it can get more personal. I myself also often just use 你好 to address a service person.


How to start a letter with self introduction to a friend you haven't seen for ages?

你好，我是 Ivan Gerasimenko。
Hello, I am Ivan Gerasimenko.

我们之前在XXX的比赛第中见过一次面， 你还记得吗？
We met once before at the XXX sports competition, do you still remember?

距离上次见面已经很久了，你现在过得怎么样？
It's been a long time, how are you getting on these days?

(PS: Are you from Serbia? We just found out, Chinese people can go to Serbia without a visa.)


Why 说的 and not only 说 in 你要按照我说的做并且要做好?

In Chinese, noun phrases in the form:

nominal modifier + 的 + noun

may drop the noun when:

it's clear enough from the context
it's a term very generic in meaning

Clear from the context
This is the case where a noun is dropped to avoid unnecessary repetition.

这本书很有意思，谁写的（书）
This book is very interesting, who wrote it? (Who wrote the book)

Very generic in meaning

你要按照我说的 (话）...

As in your case, the generic nature of the noun may be given by two factors:

it's actually a generic term, as 事情 (matter)，东西 (thing), sometimes 人 (person, guy). It can be translated in English as a relative pronoun, e.g. "what":

他建议的（事情 / 东西 / 意见），我不太了解
I don't really understand what he's suggesting

昨天我遇到的（人）就是陈杰最好的朋友
The person / Whom I met yesterday is actually Chen Jie's best friend

it's the object of a separable verb (because it has a generic unspecified meaning)

我每天吃的（饭）是我娘做的（东西）
The food / What I eat every day is what my mum prepares


Is 捞 only used for grabbing something out of liquids？

It could also be used metaphorically. You can 捞好处, 捞钱, 捞名声, 捞官职, etc. In this usage, 捞 implies selfishness.

  If you are grabbing something out of the water is there a difference between 捞 and 拿？

It's common to see a foreign language having specific words for something that's not so specific in your native tongue. In English you "wage war", but in Latin and other languages you simply "do war". Like "wage" for wars, 捞 is more colloquial when it comes to grabbing from water.

  （Does 捞 imply a bowl like structure like “Ladel”？）

Any tool could be possible, a bowl, a fishing net, or even bare hands, as long as it does the job. 捞 doesn't imply anything specific.


"Please hold the handrail during the whole journey" in Chinese/Cantonese? (As heard in Hong Kong airport trains)

In the video the Mandarin is:

請沿途緊握扶手

This Google webcache also says:

九巴的勸喻，貼在車廂扶手左右：「 上 車 後 請 沿 途 緊 握 扶 手 」，英 語「 Please hold the handrail during the whole journey. 」為 九 巴 的 愛 心 ，我 不 能 不 長 嘆，釋放善意。

It seems like a common saying on public transportation in HK.


What is the meaning of 奴 this poem from 红楼梦？

It is kind of 谦称 of a woman in ancient China, there are others of course

妾 or 妾身 or 奴婢 for you being the wife
奴 or 奴家 for you being the wife or general cases
小女子 for general cases
老身 for older ladies

And for men of course, their 谦称 could be

小人 for you being the servant
鄙人 for general but unofficial use
在下 for you being in a relatively lower social hierarchy
晚生 if you are younger to your friend
不才 for proposing suggestions
不肖 for referring yourself with respect to your older relatives
愚弟 or 愚兄 for closer relationship


Where did the words for various colours originate from?

Colours are an abstract concept, and ancient Chinese largely used words for objects with the colour to describe the colour itself.

紅, 綠 originally referred to silks dyed in those colours, hence the use of the 糸 semantic component;
藍 originally referred to a plant used to make blue dye, hence the use of the 艹  semantic component;
黑 originally referred to a punishment called 黥面, in which a criminal had the name of their crime tattooed on their face in black, and was originally a pictogram depicting this;
青 originally referred to the colour of grass/plants, and the top was originally 屮 or 生, indicating this meaning;
赤 originally depicted a person (大) being scorched (火) maybe as a form of punishment, indicating the colour of burnt skin.

Sometimes characters were used as a phonetic loan for colours, and had no connection to the original meaning, e.g. 黃, 白. 粉紅 and 咖啡, as you've pointed out, are modern terms, but they reflect the same idea of using things that have the colour as a word for the colour itself.

Although it did appear with the meaning colour, the use of 色 was unnecessary in ancient texts. However, in a general trend of words evolving from single syllables to double syllables, 色 came to be used in conjunction with the above characters to form a combined meaning of X (colour).


(熬夜)晚起毀上午，早起(學習)傻一天

熬夜晚起毀上午
晚起毀上午
Getting up too late will lose a morning.

早起學習傻一天
早起傻一天
Getting up too early will have no spirit all day long.


Do all one-syllable words need to be followed by a 子 to make it colloquial?

Modern Chinese loves disyllabic words, that's why often you find seemingly meaningless "affixes" added to characters to sound "nicer".

Prefixation:

老 (老虎),
小 (小李),
初 (初一)

Suffixation:

子 (椅子),
頭 (木頭)

are just a few that are commonly used. Other ways of turning monosyllabic words into disyllabic words includes:

Compounding: putting together 2 roots with lexical meaning in forming a new word. E.g. 菊 (Chrysanthemum) -> 菊花 (Chrysanthemum flower)
Reduplication: duplicating a character or multiple characters. E.g. 爸 (Dad) -> 爸爸 (Dad)

So when you speak, try to observe how others usually collocate words. However, it is totally acceptable to use monosyllabic words when surrounded by enough sounds to make sense of it. So if they are just words used on their own, others may not totally understand them without context, since there are many homonyms.

In your example, 鋸 (beware the tool "saw" has a 金 radical) and 鏟 may match up with 子 to form 鋸子, 鏟子. These are good on their own. Or by making them compounds with description: 電鋸 (electric saw = chainsaw) and 鐵鏟 (metal spade) is also fine.

I believe the reason disyllabic words are more commonly used is simply because speaking in monosyllabic words may not convey the meaning well enough even with tones, so people tries to collocate characters together for making conversations easier. Despite all this, using monosyllabic words aren't "wrong". They are just rarely used and may make a sentence seem weird if used inappropriately.


To what degree is 戈 used in common Mandarin?

It seems also that it means (or used to mean) "Dagger"/"Sword", however the only references I can find to this character says that that is an old, defunct usage.

戈 as a noun, simply mean 'dagger-axe or halberd'
The reason that it is an old, defunct usage, is no one are using it in modern warfare. Therefore the term 戈 as a weapon had disappeared from common vocabulary

  So, to what degree is this character used in common Mandarin? Is it just thought of as a radical, or does it have some other usage in speech?

戈 beside being a common radical, is also part of some 'warfare' related compound words and idiom.

Example:

干戈  = warfare

同室操戈 = infighting; fight between family members, partners or allies (
Two athletes from the same nation fighting for the Gold medal can be described as 同室操戈)

  止弋為武

  toes + dagger-axe = advance with weapon = 武 (force);
  止(stop)+ dagger-axe = stopping war = force

  #1 is the more likely origin of 武

戈 is often used as a transliteration word, for example: 戈壁 in 戈壁沙漠 is a transliteration of Gobi; 探戈 in 探戈舞 is the transliteration of Tango


Any ideas on the origin of the 绍 character?

The real way to describe characters should only utilise a surface level, not recursive, decomposition.

「紹」originally meant to continue. The meaning introduce is a semantic extension from to continue > to bring two things together > to introduce.
「紹」is made from semantic「糸」(silk threads) and phonetic「召」(zhào or shào).

「糸」as a semantic component, sometimes in an abbreviated form「幺」, appears in many characters to do with linking, continuation, such as「繼」(to continue),「續」(to join together),「系」(to tie, link > system, series), 「斷」(to break),「胤」(offspring).
「召」is comprised of phonetic「刀」(dāo) and semantic「口」(mouth), and originally meant to beckon, call, summon. There was originally no meaning connection between「召」and「紹」; any connection between to call and to introduce is coincidental, but you can utilise this connection as a mnemonic.
Other characters using「召」as a phonetic component include 招昭炤沼詔邵韶.「召」, like many other components used as a phonetic, may not contribute any semantic value to the whole character.


妙手: magic hands is a metaphor for skilled person (painter, writer, doctor, etc). There is a phrase '妙手仁心' magic hands and kind heart which is used to praise good doctors. '妙手医心' means the same.

少惹为: you're missing a character, it should be 少惹为好 er 少惹为妙, meaning the less provocation the better. The whole sentence means better not provoke the boss.

魔天记: 魔 generally means devil, 天 means sky or heaven, 记 means diary or story. Without reading the book (suppose it is a book), the exact meaning of 魔天记 isn't clear even in Chinese.


Reasons for Chinese changing from monosyllabic to disyllabic?

The Phonology of Standard Chinese by San Duanmu (端木三) has an entire chapter devoted to this topic (The Word Length Problem):

  In this section I review six previous approaches to the disyllabic phenomenon in Chinese. For convenience, I call them (a) the homophone-avoidance approach, (b) the speech-tempo approach, (c) the grammatical approach, (d) the rhythm approach, (e) the morphologization approach, and (f) the stress-length approach. These approaches are not all proposed by different people. For example, Guo (1938) suggests that both (a) and (b) play a role, Lü (1963) suggests that both (b) and (c) play a role, and N. Li (1990) suggests that both (c) and (d) play a role. I argue that none of the approaches, nor combinations of them, can explain the disyllabic facts adequately.

In my own readings, I found that the homophone-avoidance approach (which @user58955 explained in his first point) to be the most common explanation. It feels true too because phonological changes since Old Chinese have merged the pronunciation of many words that were once distinct, and modern Chinese languages that have been more phonologically conservative tend to retain more monosyllabicity (such as Min and Cantonese). The book points out several issues with the homophone-avoidance explanation though:

  ...as Lü (1963) points out, most increase in disyllabic words took place in the past 100 years or so, during which period there has been little change in the phonology of Chinese.

However, this objection could be partially explained by the rapid incorporation of modern concepts (which @user58955 explained in his second point).

There is another interesting point concerning the homophone-avoidance approach:

  ... many proponents of homophone-avoidance ... assume that classical Chinese mostly consisted of monosyllabic words. However, when Chinese characters were created ... Chinese already had numerous homophones. ... In other words, there must have been many homophones from the beginning. This raises the question of why people did not create disyllabic words to avoid ambiguity then. The answer, as suggested by Guo (1938), must be that classical written texts did not reflect the spoken language, in part because of the scarcity of writing materials, and in part because characters offer more distinctions than speech. ... In any case, there is no clear evidence that classical spoken Chinese mostly consisted of monosyllabic words.

Anyway, the chapter is an interesting read. The conclusion eventually states:

  I have also argued that, unlike a popular belief, homophone-avoidance does not play a clear role in the increase of disyllabic words in Chinese. Instead, the increase is mainly due to an increase in new words...

  Finally, I have argued that word lengths are constrained by metrical structure, in that some positions prefer a disyllabic words and other prefer a monosyllabic word. ...


Is "Year of the Goat/Ram/Sheep" due to the Chinese language?

The Chinese 羊 is more an equivalent to the Caprinae subfamily than to a single species inside this subfamily, to which both the sheep and the goats belong.


Did some people only have names like 张三?

Were some people in the past actually known just by names like 张三?

Yes. It is the official name of some people, not just one. Some female even names as 张三妹. Bu the way 刘三姐 is a very famous movie.

张三, 李四, etc. are not nicknames, they are real names, they are also used as a "any one" placeholder, as in the answer of other question. For example, 你到那儿去，认识谁是张三，谁是李四啊. Going to that far, you do not know whom to contact.

Add more: (How are those names now?)

My father has a very close relative who is 李四 officially. He would be 80 or 90 now.

On my mom side, there are two brothers having names 大水, 二水. The man 大水 was born the year of a huge flood. It is smart to use 大 for big/huge and also for the first son. In Chinese 老大 means the eldest son.

Ha, you will see, 老大 is the head of an criminal gang. Haha, again, you understand the joke, Xi DaDa.

By the way, check out sons of 赵紫阳, from 赵大军 to 赵五军, (at least five).


The development of rhotic vowels in Mandarin

BTW, I have Schuessler's book, and the transcription shown in parentheses after the character indicates the Middle Chinese rather than Old Chinese pronunciation, so ńźi refers to MC rather than OC pronunciation.

Back to your question, it's important to note that initial ńź- is being used as a transcription rather than an indication of the actual pronunciation.  According to A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, p. 55, Karlgren chose ńź- to transcribe this sound in order to reflect the fact that it evolved into a voiced fricative in descendants such as Mandarin (pinyin r- is often analyzed as IPA /ʐ/, a voiced retroflex sibilant); however, the book notes that "for Early Middle Chinese, however, it is widely agreed that it was simply a palatal nasal (IPA: /ɲ/)."

As you noted, this Early Middle Chinese /ɲ/ became /j/ in Cantonese, and /n/ in Japanese.  Such phonological changes are not too hard to imagine occurring, though EMC /ɲ/ changing to Mandarin's retroflex /ʐ/ may be a little harder to imagine.  However, it is interesting to note that in Late Middle Chinese, all palatal sibilants merged into the retroflex sibilants (e.g., /tɕ/ -> /ʈʂ/, /dʑ/ -> /ɖʐ/, etc.).  At this time the palatal /ɲ/, while not a sibilant, also got carried along with this change and became retroflex in LMC.  After that, metathesis occurred which changed /ʐɨ/ to /ɨʐ/ (see 《北京音系解析》, p. 24), which is realized as [əɻ] (pinyin: er) in modern Mandarin.

As an interesting aside, phonological changes often have exceptions, so a few words continued to retain the initial nasal in their modern descendants, the best example being 爾/尔 (MC: ńźje, Mand.: ěr, Cant.: ji5), whose colloquial pronunciation retained the nasal initial and became modern 你 (Mand.: nǐ, Cant.: nei5).


I am not sure about your teacher's opinion, it seems like she would want to use 呀 for the desired pronunciation yà.

Though, 啊 does have many tones, it can express feeling of surprise in first and third tone, it can express the meaning of asking in second tone, it can express meaning of adorable, getting it or surprise in fourth tone.

It can also mean a lot in its light tone.

You would be able to find all those in a dictionary, but keep in mind, it is not that strict, so use your intuition.


洗 means being washed or flushed thus becoming clean or bare.
一 could mean "whole/wholly", "full/fully", or "all" similar to that in 坐了满满一车人.
I copied this from Google's Dictionary, which uses information from Oxford Dictionaries.
一
/yī/
1.
数词
数字，最小的正整数。
2.
数词
指同一或一样。
 「咱们坐 一趟车」
3.
数词
指满、全或整个。
 「坐了满满 一车人」
4.
数词
指专一或单一。
 「一心 一意」
5.
数词
指某一。
 「一天晚上」
6.
数词
指每一。
 「一组八个人」
7.
数词
指另一或又一。
 「乌贼 一名墨斗鱼」
8.
副词
表示猛然发出某种动作或突然出现某种情况。
 「往起 一站」
9.
副词
与「就」「便」等副词相呼应，表示前一动作或情况一旦发生，紧跟着就要出现另一动作或情况。
 「一叫就来」
10.
副词
用在重叠的动词之间，表示动作是短暂的或尝试性的。
 「跳 一跳」

一
/yī/
名词
我国民族音乐中传统的记音符号，表示音阶上的一级，相当于简谱的「 ₇̣」。


歇后语
KEY

≪xiehouyu≫, witty folk simile (popular witty or humorous simile consisting of two parts, of which the second is the "punch line" and is often left unsaid because the listener is assumed to be familiar with it)

We have this in English as well:
•Make like a banana—and split
•Make like a tree—and leave
(Although I'm not sure what we call these in English)
A Chinese-English Dictionary

a two-part allegorical saying, of which the first part, always stated, is descriptive, while the second part, sometimes unstated, carries the message, e.g. 泥菩萨过河-自身难保 like a clay idol fording a river-hardly able to save oneself (let alone anyone else)

The Chinese Wikipedia entry for xiehouyu has a 粤语常见歇后语 and 客家话歇后语 sections - so while some xiehouyu certainly are regional - and every topolect has them -  the ones in dictionaries or that are "well known" will be understandable everywhere.


Are Characters customized in different provinces due to dialectal differences?

Wikipedia has the following pages:

Sichuanese characters & 四川方言字

Written Cantonese & Cantonese characters

Written Hokkien & 台閩漢字

Wu characters

Here you can find characters that solely belong to topolects.
There is also an introduction to topolectical characters:

方言字

Many topolectical characters are also still being prepped for Unicode encoding. If you're curious you can go through BabelStone Han PUA to get an idea of whats to come for CJKV extensions.
You will also notice that topolectical characters are not just simply written in simplified. Most historical documents are written in traditional and oftentimes the simplified characters that do arise are just simply 類推 (simplified characters by analogy).


Is 你是哪个人 the correct way to ask where you are from in China?

No, "你是哪个人" doesn't make much sense here. It translates into "Which one you are?".

Instead, you shall say "你是哪里人" as you have put.

If you are looking at the picture and you cannot recognize which one is your friend. You will probably ask "哪个人是你" literally means "Which one (in the picture) is you?"


Wikipedia is right.

Sun Wukong disguises himself as Bull Demon King to deceive Princess
Iron Fan and takes away her Banana Leaf Fan. The real Bull Demon King
visits Princess Iron Fan, who then realises she has been tricked. Bull
Demon King disguises himself as Zhu Bajie to trick Sun Wukong and
retrieves the fan.

From the novel:

好大圣，即现本象，将金睛兽解了缰绳，扑一把跨上雕鞍，径直骑出水底。到于潭外，将身变作牛王模样，打着兽，纵着云，不多时，已至翠云山芭蕉洞口，叫声：“开门！”那洞门里有两个女童，闻得声音开了门，看见是牛魔王嘴脸，即入报：“奶奶，爷爷来家了。”那罗刹听言，忙整云鬟，急移莲步，出门迎接。这大圣下雕鞍，牵进金睛兽；弄大胆，诓骗女佳人。罗刹女肉眼，认他不出，即携手而入。
The splendid Great Sage then reverted to his original form, untied the
golden-eyed beast, leapt into the carved saddle, and rode straight up
from the bottom of the water. Once out of the pool he made himself
look like the Bull Demon King. Whipping on the beast he set his cloud
moving and was soon at the mouth of the Plantain Cave in Mount
Turquoise Cloud.
“Open up!” he shouted, and at the sound of his voice the two servant
girls inside the gates opened them for him.
Taking him for the Bull Demon King they went in to report, “Madam, His
Majesty's come home.” At the news Raksasi quickly neatened her hair
and hurried out on her little lotus feet to meet him. Climbing out of
the saddle the Great Sage led the golden-eyed beast inside. He was
bold enough to try to deceive the beauty, whose mortal eyes failed to
see who he really was as she led him inside, hand in hand.


What character might ler1 be for "不渗汤的面条"?

Both of the words are correct. 干溜儿/干熘儿 is a kind of noodle in Chongqing. It's "real" name is 干溜面/干熘面, as you can see in this recipe. It seems that the locals like to call it 干溜儿/干熘儿, as you can see from this page or this page.

A search for both terms returned the same kind of noodles.


Does 以安倍的自民党为首的联盟 use the 以 ~ 为 pattern?

Yes, [以][安倍的自民党][为][首][的联盟] fits the pattern of [with][A] [as] [B]

"首" is short for "首领",

[A - 安倍的自民党] = [B - 首领]

'为'+'首(领)' simply means 'as leader' (preposition + noun)
'为首' as a set phrase, is a common adjective "leading/ top ranked"

Example:

'在这次会议上, 为首官员是北京市长'-- 'In this meeting, the leading (top ranked) officer is Beijing mayor'


Is the description for components of 条 correct?

That decomposition is incorrect.

「条」is shorthand for「條」(Pinyin: tiáo, Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese: /*[l]ˤiw/, /*lˤiw/), which is composed of phonetic「攸」(Pinyin: yōu, Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese: /*liw/) and semantic「木」(wood).「木」sometimes looks like「ホ」when written on the bottom of characters; exact shapes vary between the standards of different regions.

The appearance of「夂」is a writing convention;「夂」doesn't contribute any semantic or phonetic function in「条」. At most, it can be seen as an abbreviation of「攸」.


助人 = help people
助人者 = those who help people
人助= people's help
得人助 = get people's help

者 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/591/
[1] he who; those who
[2] a particle combining with some words to form adverbials

Some example terms with 者
死 = dead; 死者 = deceased (person)
長 = elder; 長者 = elderly (person)
偽善 = hypocritical; 偽善者 = hypocrite (person)
違抗規則 = defy the rule; 違抗規則者 = those who defy the rule (person)
Edition:
Example for  [2] a particle combining with some words to form adverbials-
"兵者，凶器也" 。
兵者=(definition of) army;
凶器也 = is instrument of destruction


衬= to match; to complement
托= to lift; to support
衬托:(v) to complement and enhance ;(n) a complemental contrast
~

set off
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/set%20off
show up by contrast


Can anyone translate this Seal Script into english for me?

Draft decipherment:

告鹿右Ｘ各　ＸＸＸ以金
瓜孔豕Ｘ亞　受Ｘ止而弟
豆Ｘ月勒子　Ｘ水東君者

　 - Uncertain characters
Ｘ - can't read

Neither of the tattoos say something legible, in my opinion. The characters are for artistic flair.


Can anyone identify these characters? (Characters identified: 照菜科)

The characters look like 照菜科. I’m unable to make sense of that without more context.


This question really surprises me. Since you mentioned 李白 and 杜甫, clearly you were talking about classical Chinese poetry. Classical Chinese poetry is so into rhymes and rhythms that it is almost unhealthy. There are volumes of books written on rhymes and rhythms of classical Chinese poetry. Asking 'Are there poems in Chinese that rhyme?' is like asking 'Does Facebook have users?' or 'Does Bill Gates have money?'

Many ancient poems do not rhyme today because Chinese pronunciation has undergone many changes over time. They did all rhyme at the time written.

Here is an example of a poem in which every sentence rhymes. This kind of poem has a special name called 柏梁体. This poem I'm quoting rhyme at the end of every sentence even today:

曹丕《燕歌行》

秋风萧瑟天气凉，
草木摇落露为霜。
群燕辞归鹄南翔，
念君客游多思肠。
慊慊思归恋故乡，
君何淹留寄他方？
贱妾茕茕守空房，
忧来思君不敢忘，
不觉泪下沾衣裳。
援琴鸣弦发清商，
短歌微吟不能长。
明月皎皎照我床，
星汉西流夜未央。
牵牛织女遥相望，
尔独何辜限河梁。


Dictionaries generally only show the 'standard' heteronymic readings of a Han character, rather than including all its contextual variations. This is the unwritten standard on Wiktionary as well, on which I am an admin.

As you have precisely discerned, both pronunciations are acceptable in this particular phrase; however, the 'standard' reading of zhe0 would be used in a dictionary for this particular phrase instead as it applies to a wider range of contexts, whereas zhao1 is restricted to this particular context (怎么着).

See the Wiktionary entry for more information: 怎么着


How can one get away with saying a noun before a description?

警察是一个人。。。一个追逐犯人的人。 is also ok, but as you know, they are not very Chinese style.

The bad news is you can not put an attribute clause after your noun.

The good news is there are many other ways.

警察是一种专门抓犯人的人.

警察的工作是专门抓罪犯

You can use 是 to start your description, the description can be started over and over, the subject part would stay there.


Is there a good monolingual learner's dictionary for Chinese?

i would recommend the 國語辭典. it’s authoritative, maintained by the 教育部, of taiwan:

http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/cbdic/search.htm

further, you can download it freely (cc 3.0 licence):

https://resources.publicense.moe.edu.tw/index.html


I cannot make the connection between the literal translation of "all not suspicion many" and actual translation "never too much".

The literal translation of 都 and 嫌 seems not exact, especially 嫌 doesn't mean suspicion here.

都

  3.（表示强调） even:

He didn't even look at it.
他连看都不看它一眼。

Even a child knows all this.
这种事连小孩都知道。

嫌

  动词
   （厌恶; 不满意） dislike; mind; complain of:

get oneself disliked;
讨人嫌

not want to take the trouble; think it troublesome;
嫌麻烦

Everybody disliked him because of his hot temper.
大家都嫌他脾气太急。

You don't mind us smoking here, do you?
你不嫌我们在这里抽烟吧?

She always complains of the food.
她常常嫌菜不好吃。

The article is good in content, only it's a bit wordy.
这篇文章内容不错， 只是文字略嫌罗唆。

Then 怎么爱你都不嫌多 could be literally translated as However I love you (I) won't even mind (it's) much.

Could you make the connection now?


What is the difference in usage between 以后 and 之后？

之后 means after that (something said earlier) which requires a context as the reference point of time. 以后 can be used with or without context. When standalone, 以后 means from now on, in future.
In general, 之后 refers to a shorter time period than 以后. The difference is akin to that between after vs. since but weaker. In imperative sentences you may want to use 以后.
之后 can also mean geographically behind though this usage is not common. 以后 cannot be used in that way. Example: 围墙之后是一排小树。
In colloquial language they are pretty much interchangeable. People don't pay much attention to the differences in #1 and #2. In other word, 之后 can also be used without a context and means from now on, etc. In writing and formal speech, however, they should be used with precision.


娷

“娷”字的【字海】释义
㈠拼音zhui4。
①推委。
②饥声。
㈡拼音shui4。
①古女子人名用字。
②姓。

Two readings here. The first is zhui4, which comes with the meanings: to shirk responsibility/to blame others and sound of hunger. The second is shui4, which was just a character used in feminine names.


How to pronounce 翁 in Mainland China and Taiwan?

This concerns a mid-back vowel pair of [ɤ]/[o] (in IPA symbol), where [ɤ] is unrounded and [o] rounded. In today's mandarin in China, it's unrounded; in taiwan, it is sometimes rounded and sometimes unrounded, depending on the preceding consonant. If the preceding consonant is labial then pinyin o is the rounded [o], otherwise the unrounded [ɤ]. The Taiwanese pronunciation was also the older mandarin pronunciation and can still be heard in many regions' accents in China, but not in today's standard mandarin any more.


What is the meaning of 晦 in the phrase 韬光养晦?

晦 means some place which is dark.

韬光养晦 means hide one's talent and keep a low profile


How can I change the icon used for a keyboard input type in Mac

you can click on the icon, it should provide a drop-down menu with a bunch of preferences and options.

Select "Show Input Source Name" - then select your preferred keyboard language.
It should come up with the icon, PLUS something like "Pinyin - Simplified".

This worked for me, hopefully works for you too!


Was Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字 originally written in the seal script 小篆?

Baidu Baike says "《说文解字》是首部按部首编排的汉语字典。原书作于汉和帝永元十二年（100年）到安帝建光元年（121年），现已失传，传至今日的大多是宋朝版本，或是清朝的段玉裁注释本。原文以小篆书写，逐字解释字体来源．全书共分540个部首．收字9353个．另有“重文”（即异体字）1163个．共10516字。《说文解字》是科学文字学和文献语言学的奠基之作，在中国语言学史上有极其重要的地位。"

But I can't guarantee it is true.


I'd like to know any resource to check the Measure Word for a given word

"measure word" is called "classifier" in days gone by. the most completed list that i know, is in "中西譯語妙法" (page 4 - 26); 43 classifiers, with 370+ examples. this book was printed in shanghai, in 1893. you may download it from internet archive (which was blocked in xxxxx nowadays; well,  guess where?)

first lessons in chinese

though this book talked about english and shanghai dialect, i think that most of these classifiers are valid and appropriate, in modern usage.

have fun :)


Are there any differences between these Chinese terms for "French fries" / (hot) "chips"?

马铃薯 (commonly known as 土豆 in Northeastern China) is the general term
for potato.
(炸/马铃)薯条 is commonly understood as French fries (hot chips). By default, both 炸
and 马铃 are redundant.

土豆条 and 炸土豆条 are the less common terms for French fries.

Other related terms:

薯片 - potato chips / potato crisps / packet chips
薯泥 - mashed potato
薯餅 - hash brown
烤马铃薯 - baked potato
薯角 - potato wedges
土豆丝 - shredded potato


Is "贪得无厌" the best choice for this sentence?

贪得无厌 -and/or- 贪得无餍 can be found in almost any dictionary.
ABC defines it as:

be insatiably greedy

Oxford defines it as:

have an insatiable greed

So we can kind of see where Google Translate's insatiable came from.
MDBG has a rather unique translation too that you can consider:

avaricious and insatiable (idiom); greedy and never satisfied

Wiktionary

(idiomatic) greedy, avaricious

I'm not sure where your Chinese excerpt came from but it's not written particularly well to begin with.


The dictionary takes extra caution and says it's the membrane in the ear, because 鼓膜 literally means "drum membrane", which might be taken by someone as the membrane on a real drum.

In real usage, however, 鼓膜 is just the eardrum. The membrane on a drum instrument, or the drum head, is called 鼓皮.


You must know that the character 豫  means being caution， being extremely careful;
兮 is modal particle， like 啊.

So,the whole sentence means (他)犹豫小心，就如同冬天过河一样，不敢贸然下水似的. Being extremely caution so that he dare not cross the river in winter.


Base on urban dictionary's definition, a baller is:

  A thug that has "made it" to the big time.

当屌丝逆袭成功之后，他就成就屌丝之王了，又称：“屌王“， ”屌霸“， “逆袭屌”


This is not an easy question. But I think here is an answer.

It originated from the Chinese water clock or clepsydra in the ancient time (刻漏 or 漏壶, http://baike.baidu.com/view/41631.htm). 刻漏 or 漏壶 was a leaky water container, where the water level represents time. 商 was originally the scale plate on this type of water clock. The scale first had 100 grades (later 120 grades). So it roughly meant 'percentage' at some point and then the word 商数 or 商 began to mean 'quotient'. Because its ancient meaning (a scale plate on a water clock) is definitely deprecated, it is hard to see why 商数 means quotient. It has nothing to do with dividend or business numbers. :D

Some reference is below:

《集韵·阳韵》：“商,刻也.”《正字通·口部》：“商乃漏箭所刻之处.”《仪礼·士昏礼》解题引郑玄《目录》：“日入三商为昏.”贾公彦疏：“商为商量,是刻漏之名.故《三光灵曜》亦日入三刻为昏.”准此,可以断定,商之本义是古代滴漏上计时的刻度.商的其他字义皆由此引申而来.《说文》：“漏以铜受水,刻节,昼夜百刻.”《汉书·哀帝纪》：“漏刻以百二十为度.注：“旧漏昼夜其百刻,今增其二十.”可知刻箭上的度数有以百为率.每支刻箭一百度,每一度都是相等的,等于说把一支刻箭用一百来除,得出每一度的长度,这就叫商.算术中除法运算的得数叫商,是由漏箭的刻度引申而来.《广雅·释诂》：“商,常也.”《广韵·阳韵》：“商,常也.”常即经常,恒定不变,其义来自漏箭的刻度是一个恒定的常数.做生意,做买卖叫商,如“商品”、“商业”,此义也由商为漏箭刻度引申而来.《广雅》：“商,度也.”《汉书·沟洫志》：“能商功利”.颜师古注：“商,度也.”商有度量义,商量义,人与人之间的买卖关系要遵守等价交换的原则,交换双方都要度量对方货物的价值与己方货物的价值是否相当,所以,商又用为商业、商品、商人,仍为漏箭刻度的引申义. (http://zuoye.baidu.com/question/6b86ea97bf3190c0c06615f0b9c852cb.html?fr=iks&word=%B3%FD%B7%A8%BD%E1%B9%FB%CE%AA%CA%B2%C3%B4%BD%D0%C9%CC&ie=gbk)


What’s the difference between 円 and 月 as character components?

円 and 月 are both graphical corruptions. The original form of the character did not have those components.

靑/青 was originally comprised of 屮 (sprouting plant) and 井, which gave the sound. The bronze script form looked like

In ancient scripts, 井 as a component was frequently interchanged with 丹. The graphical form of 丹 originated as 井 plus a small horizontal stroke in the middle. See, for example, the oracle bone forms

井:

丹:

In 靑/青, this happened as well:

On the bottom part, the form which came from 井 morphed to 月, while the form which came from 丹 morphed to 円.

Note that the top has actually been written with several similar components; you may find 青 variously written with 屮/生/木 on the top in ancient times. For clarification, the bronze script forms shown here actually contains 生, but 生 ultimately comes from 屮 with the addition of two horizontal strokes.