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Faux Pas Derived From Chinese Pronunciation
The following ''faux pas'' are derived from homonyms in Mandarin and Cantonese. While originating in Greater China, they may also apply to Chinese-speaking people around the world. However, most homonymic pairs listed work only in some varieties of Chinese (for example, Mandarin only or Cantonese only), and may appear bewildering even to speakers of other varieties of Chinese. Certain customs regarding good and bad luck are important to many Chinese people. Although these might be regarded as superstitions by people from other cultures, these customs are often tied to religious traditions and are an important part of many people's belief systems, even among well-educated people and affluent sectors of society. Clocks Giving a clock () is often taboo, especially to the elderly as the term for this act is a homophone with the term for the act of attending another's funeral, "to send off for one's end" (). In 2015, a UK government official, Susan Kramer, gave a watch to Taipei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homophonic Puns In Mandarin Chinese
Standard Chinese, like many Sinitic varieties, has a significant number of homophonous syllables and words due to its limited phonetic inventory. The Cihai dictionary lists 149 characters representing the syllable "yì". (However, modern Chinese words average about two syllables, so the high rate of ''syllable'' homophony does not cause a problem for communication.) Many Chinese take great delight in using the large amount of homophones in the language to form puns, and they have become an important component of Chinese culture. In Chinese, homophones are used for a variety of purposes from rhetoric and poetry to advertisement and humor, and are also common in Chinese loans, for example phono-semantic matching of brand names, computer jargon, technological terms and toponyms. This article is intended to present a list of common or representative homophonous puns in Mandarin Chinese, though many of the examples given are often homophones in other varieties as well. Asterisks be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faux Pas
English words {{Short pages monitor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susan Kramer
Susan Veronica Kramer, Baroness Kramer PC (''née'' Richards; born 21 July 1950) is a British politician and life peer who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond Park from 2005 to 2010. A member of the Liberal Democrats, she was their Treasury Spokesperson from 2015 to 2017 and 2017 to 2019. Born in Holborn, Kramer was privately educated at St Paul's Girls' School before studying at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford and the University of Illinois. Prior to entering the House of Commons, she pursued a career in infrastructure finance and in 2000 was a candidate in the London mayoral election. She served as Minister of State for Transport in the Cameron–Clegg coalition. Early life and career Susan Veronica Richards was born in Holborn, London, on 22 July 1950. She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School, an independent school in London. She then read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford. She served as the Presid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etiquette
Etiquette () is the set of norms of personal behaviour in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practised by a society, a social class, or a social group. In modern English usage, the French word ' (label and tag) dates from the year 1750. History In the third millennium BCE, the Ancient Egyptian vizier Ptahhotep wrote ''The Maxims of Ptahhotep'' (2375–2350 BC), a didactic book of precepts extolling civil virtues, such as truthfulness, self-control, and kindness towards other people. Recurrent thematic motifs in the maxims include learning by listening to other people, being mindful of the imperfection of human knowledge, and that avoiding open conflict, whenever possible, should not be considered weakness. That the pursuit of justice should be foremost, yet acknowledged that, in human affairs, the command of a god ultimately prevails in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tetraphobia
Tetraphobia () is the practice of avoiding instances of the digit . It is a superstition most common in East Asian nations. __TOC__ Rationale The Chinese word for "four" (, pinyin: sì, jyutping: sei3), sounds quite similar to the word for "death" (, pinyin: sǐ, jyutping: sei2), in many varieties of Chinese. Similarly, the Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese words for "four", shi (し, Japanese) and sa (사, Korean), sound similar or identical to "death" in each language (see Korean numerals, Japanese numerals, Vietnamese numerals). Tetraphobia is known to occur in Korea and Japan since the two words sound identical, but not at all in Vietnam because they carry different tones (in the case of the word for "four", whether it is the Sino-Vietnamese reading ''tứ'' or the more common non-Sino-Vietnamese reading ''tư'', neither sounds like the word for "death" which is ''tử'') and Vietnamese does not use Sino-Vietnamese numerals as often in the first place. Sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Unlucky Symbols
Bad luck is an unpredictable outcome that is unfortunate. This is a list of signs believed to bring bad luck according to superstitions. List *Breaking a mirror is said to bring seven years of bad luck *A bird or flock of birds going from left to right ( Auspicia) (Paganism) *Certain numbers: **The number four. Fear of the number four is known as tetraphobia; in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, the number sounds like the word for "death". **The number 9. Fear of the number 9 is known as enneaphobia, in Japanese culture; this is because it sounds like the Japanese word for "suffering". **The number 43. In Japanese culture, maternity wards numbered 43 are considered taboo, as the word for the number literally means "still birth". **The number 13. Fear of the number 13 is known as triskaidekaphobia. **The number seventeen. Fear of the number seventeen is known as heptadecaphobia and is prominent in Italian culture. **The number 39 is known as the curse of 39, in Afghan cultur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umbrella
An umbrella or parasol is a folding canopy supported by wooden or metal ribs that is usually mounted on a wooden, metal, or plastic pole. It is designed to protect a person against rain or sunlight. The term ''umbrella'' is traditionally used when protecting oneself from rain, with ''parasol'' used when protecting oneself from sunlight, though the terms continue to be used interchangeably. Often the difference is the material used for the canopy; some parasols are not waterproof, and some umbrellas are transparent. Umbrella canopies may be made of fabric or flexible plastic. There are also combinations of parasol and umbrella that are called ''en-tout-cas'' (French for "in any case"). Umbrellas and parasols are primarily hand-held portable devices sized for personal use. The largest hand-portable umbrellas are golf umbrellas. Umbrellas can be divided into two categories: fully collapsible umbrellas, in which the metal pole supporting the canopy retracts, making the umbrella sm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fan (implement)
A handheld fan, or simply hand fan, is any broad, flat surface that is waved back-and-forth to create an airflow. Generally, purpose-made handheld fans are folding fans, which are shaped like a sector of a circle and made of a thin material (such as paper or feathers) mounted on slats which revolve around a pivot so that it can be closed when not in use. Hand fans were used before mechanical fans were invented. On human skin, the airflow from handfans increases evaporation which has a cooling effect due to the latent heat of evaporation of water. It also increases heat convection by displacing the warmer air produced by body heat that surrounds the skin, which has an additional cooling effect, provided that the ambient air temperature is lower than the skin temperature – which is typically about . Fans are convenient to carry around, especially folding fans. Next to the folding fan, the rigid hand screen fan was also a highly decorative and desired object among the higher cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cantonese People
The Cantonese people () or Yue people (), are a Yue-speaking Han Chinese subgroup originating from or residing in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang), in Southern Mainland China. Although more accurately, "Cantonese" refers only to Han Chinese with roots from Guangzhou and its satellite cities and towns, rather than simply and generally referring to the people of the Liangguang region. Historically centered and predominant in the Pearl River Basin shared between Guangdong and Guangxi, the Cantonese people are also responsible for establishing their native language's usage in Hong Kong and Macau during their 19th century migrations within the times of the British and Portuguese colonial eras respectively. Cantonese remains today as a majority language in Guangdong and Guangxi, despite the increasing influence of Mandarin. Taishanese people may also be considered Cantonese but speak a distinct variety of Yue Chinese, Taishanese. Terminology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ko Wen-je
Ko Wen-je (; born 6 August 1959), also known by his nickname, Ko P (), is a Taiwanese politician and physician. Ko was mayor of Taipei from 2014 to 2022, and Chairman of the Taiwan People's Party since 2019. Before becoming mayor, he was a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital. He was also a professor at National Taiwan University College of Medicine, and specialized in fields including trauma, intensive care, organ transplant, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), and artificial organs. Due to his profession, he has been nicknamed Ko P or KP (which stands for Professor Ko, and is how he is customarily referred to within National Taiwan University). Ko was responsible for standardising organ transplant procedures in Taiwan, and was the first physician to bring ECMO to Taiwan. Apart from his practice, Ko is known for his numerous media appearances and interviews as a social and political commentator. In the 2014 Taipei Mayoral Election, Ko ran as an independent cand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taipei
Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the northern port city of Keelung. Most of the city rests on the Taipei Basin, an ancient lakebed. The basin is bounded by the relatively narrow valleys of the Keelung and Xindian rivers, which join to form the Tamsui River along the city's western border. The city of Taipei is home to an estimated population of 2,646,204 (2019), forming the core part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, which includes the nearby cities of New Taipei and Keelung with a population of 7,047,559, the 40th most-populous urban area in the world—roughly one-third of Taiwanese citizens live in the metro district. The name "Taipei" can refer either to the whole metropolitan area or just the city itself. Taipei has been the seat of the ROC central government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clock
A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia. Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered as "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with the sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels., pp. 103–104., p. 31. Traditionally, in horology, the term ''clock'' was used for a stri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
