#china in other languages

[latestnews69]

China's otherworldly mountains that inspired Avatar

Zhangjiajie, China's first national park, also features glass-bottomed bridges, a mountain elevator and a food court complete with a McDonald's for those inclined to take it easy.

Shy was not an impatient person, but even she struggled to keep her cool when I whipped out my phone to take what must have been the 100th photo of the same view. Shy – short for Shen Hong Yan – was my guide through Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in central China, and she knew there were better viewpoints up ahead. But I couldn't bring myself to move on just yet; the soaring sandstone quartz pillars of this forest were unlike anything I had seen anywhere else in the world.

Located in the north-western corner of Hunan province, Zhangjiajie is China's first national park, established in 1982. This forest is part of the larger Wulingyuan Scenic Area that was included in Unesco's list of World Heritage sites in 1992 and later given Global Geopark status in 2001. The name may be a tongue-twister, but there is an easier way to remember it – as the inspiration for the Hallelujah Mountains that featured in the blockbuster movie Avatar. In fact, before I visited Zhangjiajie, that was the only fact I knew about this place. Shy confirmed what I had suspected: that Zhangjiajie used to be an underexplored destination even among Chinese tourists before the movie catapulted it into their consciousness Read more

[ask2ps]

I love 2p japan

CHINA: 日本さえ恋がしたいということ、考えられないことではないねぇ。(It’s not unthinkable that even Japan would want love, right?)

JAPAN: 闭嘴。(Shut up.)

[damthosefandoms]

I love when you tell teacher stories because im an English teacher in Spain and i relate so hard to everything you say

(Also Wednesdays are my worst day as well haha)

English is a hard fucking language to learn and it’s even harder to teach! especially because even teaching colleges don’t prepare you and you’re thrown in the deep end and expected to know what the hell stuff like phonics is. And the problem is that by the time you start teaching you don’t remember learning any of it.

if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my job is that reading is very, very hard. props to you anon for doing it. teaching isn’t for the faint of heart.

[ladyimaginarium]

from mikjikj-mnikuk/turtle island to inuit nunangat to kanata to kalaallit nunaat to anahuac to abya yala to alkebulan to the levant to moananuiākea to sápmi to éire to bhārata to zhōngguó to nihon to aynu mosir to siberia to niugini to nusantara to bandaiyan to aotearoa, from coast to coast to coast to coast, from sea to sea to sea to sea, none of us are free until all of us — men, women, enben, children, queer people, disabled & neurodivergent people, elders, animals and the land and the sea and the sky — are free!!!!

[codename-adler]

i was doing some spring cleaning (lie)(i watched the bear S2E4 - got sad - went on denmark’s insta - got emotional - opened pinterest for fic research - got teary again - checked under the sink for pads bc surely it’s coming - rummaged af - found it??) and remembered i was given this by a Chinese exchange student who lived in the same student building as me, after i’d help her out with a lost necklace.

it just occurred to me that i could google translate with a photo, so i could read what the writing was on the box, but i’m not very trustful of the accuracy and the literal translation rather than a native one. even with the google translation, i am not sure what it is meant to mean, if the specific design on the porcelain keychain has a specific meaning, etc.

any help and reblogs would be deeply appreciated!

and to you, friend, i don’t know where you are in the world right now, but know that everytime i pick up your gift (bc silly me keeps changing its place) i think of you very, very fondly, and even many times you randomly pop into my mind and it makes me feel a little better 💙 thank you for your gift, and for the thought, and for the reminder. i hope everything is going, and always will be well 💙

(yes, i am now crying over this porcelain piece of art and this friendly & sweet stranger)

[maodun]

while we're talking about north korean defector industry being part of the [western - including south korean] media agenda to smear, vilify, and discredit the DPRK,, (particularly how specific defectors seriously make serious bank from selling these lies through books and media appearances, although, this is quite the exception and not the norm)

consider Operation Yellowbird. a short background:

Operation Yellowbird was a collaborative effort between British HK, MI6, CIA and other actors to smuggle persons wanted for their dissident actions during the 1989 protests in Beijing.

known CIA regime change agents were spotted (and reported by western media sources!) in the area during the protests in Beijing, on and near Tiananmen Square in summer of 1989.

for those of you who still believe in the "Tiananmen Massacre" narrative, and are skeptical about official Chinese accounts, here is a reading list, including accounts and news articles from western journalists who were there on the ground, about what actually happened. available here (hint there was no mass killing of civilians)

These evacuated "dissidents" were quickly admitted to Ivy league and other high-prestige academic institutions in the west, some even awarded honorary degrees. Some of the most prominent people relocated by Operation Yellowbird are now business and tech execs, venture capitalists/financial managers, NGO founders living comfortable lives in the west.

Their exaggerated (and inconsistent) recollections of the protests that ended with June 4th, recounted to western media years later while living in the west, has built up the myth of a massacre of civilians by an "authoritarian and totalitarian" Chinese government. They're still making documentaries and media appearances and testifying to US Congress. The mischaracterization of the events in summer 1989 that feeds into sinophobic narratives about Chinese people and the Chinese government are built on hyperbolic recollections and outright lies, and ritualistic recounting every year by these people keeps this narrative afloat in the minds of westerners. Concern for "human rights violations," especially when exaggerated or even built on towers of lies, are a common sympathy-garnering tactic for manufacturing thirst and support for "intervention" (read: war) by portraying “enemies” as monsters, and also works to muddy the waters about actual human rights violations regularly committed by the United States, both foreign and domestic.

Yeah we should absolutely dunk on the Yeonmi Parks. But we should also very much also dunk on "What we are looking anticipating is bloodshed, and only when the square is filled with rivers of blood will Chinese unite, but how could I tell my followers that I need them to sacrifice their lives [for "our" cause]?... But I cannot continue on in square, I'm different from them, I'm on a blacklist, I don't want to die." Chai Ling

[chicago-geniza]

Mila and Tain won't stop flirting outrageously and ostentatiously in public at a big Space Soviet People's Festival and Tolan is like "for fuck's sake I cannot take you two ANYWHERE" lmfao

[unforth]

I was today years old when I learned that the word for Mandarin in Mandarin is 普通话 and now I'm lmao because it is the most Chinese thing ever for the Middle Kingdom around which the world revolves to call their language "ordinary talk" in contrast to everyone else.

And to be clear I don't mean this disparagingly, I think it's fascinating as an example of how history and language frame word creation, how cultures see themselves, etc. I think it's so cool. I will never forget this word. It will be on my slowly fomenting next list of more of my favorite words in Chinese. It's absolutely intriguing and neat.

But I was also extremely "wut" at first because I know all the characters individually and didn't realize that TOGETHER they meant Mandarin so I just thought DuChinese was being weird about comparing Cantonese with other Chinese dialects (the reading was about dialects). 🤣🤣🤣

[mathmusicreading]

@yummysuika @ospreywhite I really appreciate your translation work; can you explain more about shichen timekeeping to me? Because I know a tiny bit of modern Mandarin Chinese, but I can't recognize the shichens as the zodiac animals:

Zi (I don't know "rat", so I actually can't make any argument here.)

Chou (I don't know "ox", but I reasonably could have expected "niu" for "cow".)

Yin (I know "tiger" as "hu".)

Mao (I don't know "rabbit", but to me "mao" is "cat".)

Chen (I know "dragon" as "long".)

Si (I don't know "snake", but now I find it interesting that it sounds like death, like snakes could be seen as evil in Chinese culture similar to how they are seen in the Christian world.)

Wu (I know "horse" as "ma".)

Wei (I know "sheep/goat" as "yang".)

Shen (I don't know "monkey", but I would have expected "Sun" or "Wu" or "Kong" because of "Monkey King".)

You (I know "rooster/chicken" as " ji".)

Xu (I know "dog" as "gou".)

Hai (I don't know "pig/boar" unless "pork" and "pig" are the same "siu".)

I tried asking my parents, but they just starting talking about how the Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle with the 12 animals and the 5 elements. So are these shichen names the "Pre-Han dynasty semi-descriptive terms"? Is it kind of like the difference between "midday" and "noon" in English? The former is a "descriptor", the latter is a "name", but they "mean" the same thing?

(I tried checking the etymology for "noon" on dictionary.com, so to be fair "ninth hour" is a descriptor, but in Modern English it's not really recognizable as such and so for the sake of my shichen question, I'm calling "noon" a "name".)

Or is this another language/dialect or due to the evolution of language (changing words and pronunciations)?

I was also looking up the Dragon Boat Festival being on the unluckiest day of the year, and it says, "The Chinese name of the festival is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages. Duanwu (端午) literally means 'starting horse'—i.e., the first "horse day" of the month according to the Chinese zodiac." so I was able to get the exact character for "wu". I think it's interesting that Wikipedia says "literally ... horse" but putting 午 into Google Translate yields "midday, noonday, seventh earthly branch, 11 a.m.-1 p.m." It's unfortunate that Wikipedia only says "different Chinese languages" for "Duanwu" instead of specifying them or time periods, but I appreciate it listing different romanizations by country for Cantonese.

Would you say there's any pattern to Chinese writers or English translators using the above terms vs. using "hour/time/head/body/tail of the (insert zodiac animal here)"? Like if one sounds better for a historical fantasy setting, or choosing to use the pinyin in English instead of translating to not be translating literally? ETA: I should have gotten onto a computer sooner. I asked my parents and then you guys because searching "shichen" in Wikipedia just resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement. But further digging took me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping. I'll probably get answers there (Maybe I'll even be able to explain to my dad why he was thinking of ten stems and not matching mathematically with "60 is from 12 times 5, not 10 times 6" when he was trying to lecture on the 60-year cycle for the Chinese zodiac, lol.), so my apologies for bothering you. I'd still appreciate your thoughts on what was formerly the last paragraph about writing and translation choices!

[villain-in-love]

Taking into account that chinese and russian are considered to be the most difficult languages to learn, it would be fun to see Liang and Zero trying to learn each other's languages.

I wonder which one of them would be better at teaching the other...

No, I think they both would be awful.

Liang is impatient and, well, simply not the most understanding person. I bet he would get annoyed if Zero doesn't immediately get something that he considers to be “easy”. Meanwhile Zero just doesn't have enough fucks to give. Also she won't be able to clearly explain the rules of her language as she herself learned it purely intuitively. It is most likely that she will just confuse Liang even further. (Wait, it's obvious that Zero never went to school, but what about Liang? I got the impression that he haven't either...)

Luckily, they are not so bad at studying. If Liang would be willing to apply at least half of the diligence and determination he displays in sports to his language studies, that is. Anyways, I think that's not going to be a problem as long as he acknowledges this skill as useful. As for Zero, she has always been a quick learner and a great imitator. So they will basically learn it all by themselves, maybe sometimes just asking each other for clarifications.

But trying to decipher cursive handwriting would be a whole other challenge.

Liang, giving Zero a note handwritten in russian cursive, after staring at it for five minutes: Hey, can you tell me what is written here?

Zero, after staring at the note for ten minutes: ...I have zero fucking clue.

[mynameis-a]

i hate how sometimes i’ll just think to myself “it would be so cool to learn another language. but what one to choose..”

because every time i ask myself that i always land on something like german. or japanese. or mandarin.

…

i am spanish.

i do not speak spanish.

if theres any language i should be learning, its spanish.

[lanotteviene]

tell me why did I trust how much of these hills is gold even after knowing it had blown up on TikTok....

[chinesebarbie]

Korean is such a humongous ass language because even if I know all or almost all the words thats connected to a sentence there’s like fifty different iterations of it an extra Chinese and English loan version and maybe atleast 10 topic markers and many more conjugations for that word… like lord when I’m fifty I couldn’t even be on the same level as a three year old (but I’ll be fluent or atleast ok soon / eventually 화이팅)

[temporal-acquiescence]

lydia davis

[headspace-hotel]

Y'all

Im not on tiktok and never have been, but I downloaded RedNote just to see what is up, and I am witnessing something truly amazing

The Chinese user community is giving the American tiktok refugees an overwhelmingly warm welcome, meanwhile the American users seem to have collectively agreed that not only will they not let the app be taken over with English and they will provide Mandarin subtitles for everything, they are LEARNING MANDARIN. Ive scrolled through so many videos of Americans offering greetings in Mandarin to try to acclimate to the new environment and be respectful, and speakers of both languages are posting lots of tutorials on language basics and internet slang in Mandarin

My God, there is an AMAZING outpouring of curiosity and delight among everyone to learn about each others cultures and daily lives. People are posting videos of landscapes, cities, towns, and natural areas in USA and China, posting recipes and traditional foods, vlogs of everyday life, and reaching out to find people with similar hobbies.

And it's not just young people! There are loads of videos from middle-aged American guys who have come to post about fishing or motorcycles and are now happily chatting with Chinese users sharing the same interests using Google translate

One American guy who was like. in his 60's had a comment on one of his videos that was like "Red Neck?" and he replied "Yes!" and I just about fucking lost it

Also the Chinese users love, and I mean LOVE, Luigi Mangione. He is apparently broadly adored in China. There is SO much fanart and SO many edits.

There are many threads initiating Chinese users to ask questions of American users about the USA, and vice versa, and everyone on both sides is clearing up a lot of misconceptions. Some of the questions I saw a lot from Chinese users were: "Is it true that American parents kick you out of the house as soon as you turn 18" (not often, but sometimes) "Do you all really wear shoes in bed" (NO!!! Apparently a lot of characters in American sitcoms are shown lying in bed with shoes on which I never noticed before!) and "are there really guns everywhere" (yes).

For the most part Chinese content creators seem just overwhelmed by the sudden influx of hundreds of followers that are super enthusiastic about what they're doing. A lot of them have made posts about how initially they thought the uptick in follower count was some kind of error, or that there was some kind of joke or prank, but then they realized the interest and enthusiasm was genuine and now they're welcoming all the newcomers.

I found several posts by Chinese users saying that this felt like a really profound historical moment, where these previously separated worlds are suddenly smashing together and suddenly there is freedom to learn about each other's cultures and connect. One of them said something along the lines of "This is a 21st century Tower of Babel and even though I'm an atheist I hope God lets this tower stand." OUGH MY HEART.

The app itself works a little bit like a video-based version of Pinterest. It's not really my thing so I probably won't be on there long term but it's been amazing to see what's happening.

[grumfy]

One of my roommates is from China and neither of us speaks the other’s language but lately when she’s in a chatty mood she comes into our kitchen and shows me these douyin Matt Damon x Ben Affleck RPF videos and puts her theories about how Ben has been pining for Matt into google translate for me to read. fujoing out transcends language barriers