Word of the Day: Limousine

English: Limousine

Chinese: 加长车

加 (jia) is "to add." 长 (chang) means "long." 车 (che) is "car." So the word for 'limousine' in Mandarin literally means "add length car." Easy.

Grammar of the Day: When all is said and done...

You ask your friend if he or she wants to go get a bite to eat. After 15 minutes of listening to him or her debate with himself or herself about whether he or she has time to go eat, what he or she wants to eat, and if he or she is even hungry, you start getting fed up. You finally interrupt him or her and forcefully remark, "do you want to go eat or not!" 

There is a simple method in mandarin for conveying this same 'fed up' sentiment whenever your question isn't being answered quickly or clearly. Just add the following to the beginning of your question:

到底 - Dao Di

到底 is generally translated as "when all is said and done" and "in the end." Adding it to the beginning of your question helps to emphasis frustration and anger. More natural ways to translate, in English, this change in emphasis when adding Dao Di, using our original example above, are as follows: "Look, do you want to go eat or not?" "Just tell me if you want to eat." "Dude, come on! Do you want to go with me to eat? I'm starting to go crazy here."

Here's how to say the question in a normal tone: 你想去吃饭吗? Do you (你) want (想) to go (去) eat (吃饭) ? (吗)

And with the addition of Dao Di: 你到底想吃饭吗? When all is said and done (到底) do you want to go eat?

Other examples include...

你到底爱谁? Who do you love?!?

你到底什么时候给我钱? When are you going to give me money?!?

你到底买不买? Do you want to buy it or not???

So if you're frustrated, and you want the other person to know you're not playing around, simply add 到底.

"Let Shenzhen Be Respected For Its Reading Crazy"

One of a series of ads around Shenzhen touting the city's livability. Window of the World metro station. Nanshan, Shenzhen.

iPhone Tip: built-in Chinese dictionary

One of the complaints I've always had with the iPhone is the lack of built-in Chinese dictionary. Any time I'm not sure I'm writing the correct Mandarin character, I end up having to copy the character, close the app I'm in, open my Chinese dictionary app, paste the character into the app, look up the definition, and then go back to the original app. This is tedious and frustrating, especially when I'm having to do this multiple times a day.  

Thus color me surprised when this afternoon I had the same problem as above and was not sure if the Chinese character I was typing was the correct one. As I copied the character, I also hit the right arrow button to see if I had any other options and there appeared a button labeled 'define.' Previously, this option only existed if I selected an English word. I clicked 'define' and the iPhone's native dictionary opened. I was then asked to connect to Wifi and download the dictionary, which I did. I then tried highlighting the character again, pressed 'define,' and what appeared was a new built-in Mandarin language dictionary! After looking on the web, this seems to be a new feature of iOS6.

Understand that this dictionary is entirely in Chinese, but for me it is still useful as I can now quickly check if I've written the correct character without having to switch to a 3rd party app. Great. In addition, it looks like my iPhone can now read me my Chinese messages. 

Looking up '你' ('you') in Apple's new built-in Mandarin dictionary.

Looking up '你' ('you') in Apple's new built-in Mandarin dictionary.

WOTD: Promise

The Chinese word for 'promise' is one that I want to use often but seem to easily forget. So this time, let's try to remember it for good. 

Simplified Characters: 发誓

Pinyin: fa shi (1st and 4th tone)

The easiest way to use it? Just say, "I promise." In Chinese this translates to "我发誓" (wo fashi). You can then add any action onto the end of this phase to make a longer promise. For example: "I promise to treat you to dinner tomorrow." "我发誓明天请你吃晚饭" (wo fashi mintian qing ni chi wanfan).