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Xiehouyu
''Xiehouyu'' is a kind of Chinese proverb consisting of two elements: the former segment presents a novel scenario while the latter provides the rationale thereof. One would often only state the first part, expecting the listener to know the second. Compare English "an apple a day (keeps the doctor away)" or "speak of the devil (and he doth/shall appear)". ''Xiēhòuyǔ'' is translated as "enigmatic folk simile; truncated witticism; pun" (''Wenlin'' 2016). Puns are often involved in '. In this case the second part is derived from the first through one meaning, but then another possible meaning of the second part is taken as the true meaning. To create examples in English, one can say "get hospitalized" to mean "be patient", or "small transactions only" to mean "no big deal". Thus a ''xiēhòuyǔ'' in one dialect can be unintelligible to a listener speaking another. Valuable linguistic data can sometimes be gleaned from ancient ''xiēhòuyǔ''. The origin of Xiehouyu Xiēhòuy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anapodoton
An anapodoton (from Ancient Greek ''anapódoton'': "that which lacks an apodosis, that is, the consequential clause in a conditional sentence), plural anapodota, is a rhetorical device related to the anacoluthon; both involve a thought being interrupted or discontinued before it is fully expressed. It is a figure of speech or discourse that is an incomplete sentence, consisting of a subject or complement without the requisite object. The stand-alone subordinate clause suggests or implies a subject (a main clause), but this is not actually provided. As an intentional rhetorical device, it is generally used for set phrases, where the full form is understood, and would thus be tedious to spell out, as in "When in Rome o as the Romans" or " If the mountain won't come to Muhammad uhammed will go to the mountain" Anapodota are common in Classical Chinese and languages that draw from it, such as Japanese, where a long literary phrase is commonly abbreviated to just its condition. For ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proverbs Commonly Said To Be Chinese
Many Chinese proverbs exist, some of which have entered English in forms that are of varying degrees of faithfulness. A notable example is " A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", from the ''Dao De Jing'', ascribed to Laozi. They cover all aspects of life, and are widely used in everyday speech, in contrast to the decline of the use of proverbs in Western cultures. The majority are distinct from high literary forms such as xiehouyu and chengyu, and are ''common sayings'' of usually anonymous authorship, originating through "little tradition" rather than "great tradition". Collections and sources In the preface and introduction to his 1875 categorized collection of Chinese proverbs, Wesleyan missionary William Scarborough observed that there had theretofore been very few European-language works on the subject, listing John Francis Davis' 1823 ''Chinese Moral Maxims'', Paul Hubert Perny's 1869 ''Proverbes Chinois'', and Justus Doolittle's 1872 ''Vocabulary and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chengyu
''Chengyu'' () are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 ''chéngyǔ'' in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over 20,000. ''Chéngyǔ'' are considered the collected wisdom of the Chinese culture, and contain the experiences, moral concepts, and admonishments from previous generations of Chinese. Nowadays, ''chéngyǔ'' still play an important role in Chinese conversations and education. Chinese idioms are one of four types of formulaic expressions (熟语/熟語, ''shúyǔ''), which also include collocations (惯用语/慣用語 ''guànyòngyǔ''), two-part allegorical sayings (歇后语/歇後語 ''xiēhòuyǔ''), and proverbs (谚语/諺語 ''yànyǔ''). They are often referred to as Chinese idioms or fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Proverbs
Many Chinese proverbs exist, some of which have entered English in forms that are of varying degrees of faithfulness. A notable example is " A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", from the ''Dao De Jing'', ascribed to Laozi. They cover all aspects of life, and are widely used in everyday speech, in contrast to the decline of the use of proverbs in Western cultures. The majority are distinct from high literary forms such as xiehouyu and chengyu, and are ''common sayings'' of usually anonymous authorship, originating through "little tradition" rather than "great tradition". Collections and sources In the preface and introduction to his 1875 categorized collection of Chinese proverbs, Wesleyan missionary William Scarborough observed that there had theretofore been very few European-language works on the subject, listing John Francis Davis' 1823 ''Chinese Moral Maxims'', Paul Hubert Perny's 1869 ''Proverbes Chinois'', and Justus Doolittle's 1872 ''Vocabulary and Ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
An Apple A Day
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is a common English-language proverb that appeared in the 19th century, advocating for the consumption of apples, and by extension, "if one eats healthful foods, one will remain in good health and will not need to see the doctor often." Origin A variant of the proverb, "Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread" was recorded as a Pembrokeshire saying in 1866. The modern phrasing, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away", began usage at the end of the 19th century, with early print examples found as early as 1887. Scientific background A 2013 study using computer modelling compared eating apples with taking a common daily cholesterol-lowering drug to estimate risk of cardiovascular diseases. The computer model estimated that eating an apple a day was generally comparable for people over age 50 years to using a statin drug to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, concluding that eating an apple a day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speak Of The Devil
"Speak of the devil" is the short form of the English-language idiom "Speak of the devil and he doth appear" (or its alternative form "speak of the devil and he shall appear"). The form "talk of the devil" is also in use in England. It is used when an object of discussion unexpectedly becomes present during the conversation. It can also be used about a topic that quickly becomes relevant, such as the onset of rain or a car breaking down. Used in this sense it can be seen as an alternative to the phrase "tempting fate". The phrase may be traced back to the 16th century and for a long time it implied the prohibition of mentioning the devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t .... In the modern times it has lost its sinister meaning. References {{DEFAULTSORT:Speak O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wenlin Software For Learning Chinese
Wenlin Software for Learning Chinese () is a software application designed by Tom Bishop, who is also president of the Wenlin Institute. It is based on his experience of the needs of learners of the Chinese language, predominantly Mandarin. It contains a dictionary function, a corpus of Chinese texts, a function for reading and creating Chinese text files, and a flashcard function. By pointing the cursor at a Chinese character the software looks up an English word, and vice versa, working like a dictionary. The software recognizes files in Unicode, GB 2312, Big5, and HZ format. Functions Dictionary function The dictionary contains an electronic version of the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary by John DeFrancis and the Shuowen Jiezi seal character dictionary. The current version (4.3.2) contains more than 300,000 Chinese-English entries and over 60,000 English-Chinese entries. It allows users to search for Chinese characters or words by inputting either Chinese characters or pinyin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Working People
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colour") include blue-collar jobs, and most pink-collar jobs. Members of the working class rely exclusively upon earnings from wage labour; thus, according to more inclusive definitions, the category can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies, as well as those employed in the urban areas (cities, towns, villages) of non-industrialized economies or in the rural workforce. Definitions As with many terms describing social class, ''working class'' is defined and used in many different ways. The most general definition, used by many socialists, is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour. These people used to be referred to as the proletariat, but that term has gone out ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huaxia
''Huaxia'' (華夏, ) is a historical concept representing the Chinese nation, and came from the self-awareness of a common cultural ancestry by the various confederations of pre-Qin ethnic ancestors of Han people. Etymology The earliest extant authentic attestion of the concept ''Huáxià'' is in the historical narrative and commentary Zuo zhuan (finished around 300 BCE). In Zuo zhuan, Huaxia refers to the central states (中國 '' Zhōngguó'') in the Yellow River valley, dwelt by the Huaxia people, ethnically equivalent to Han Chinese in pre-imperial discourses. According to Confucianist Kong Yingda's "True Meaning of '' Chunqiu Zuo zhuan''", ''xià'' () "grand" signified the "greatness" () in the ceremonial etiquettes of the central states, while ''huá'' () "flower" or "blossom" was used in reference to the "beauty" () in the clothing that those states' denizens wore. History Origin Han historian Sima Qian asserts that Xia was the name of the state enfeoffed to lege ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word ' () literally means "Han language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloss (annotation)
A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal one or an interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different. A collection of glosses is a ''glossary.'' A collection of medieval legal glosses, made by glossators, is called an ''apparatus''. The compilation of glosses into glossaries was the beginning of lexicography, and the glossaries so compiled were in fact the first dictionaries. In modern times a glossary, as opposed to a dictionary, is typically found in a text as an appendix of specialized terms that the typical reader may find unfamiliar. Also, satirical explanations of words and events are called glosses. The German Romantic movement used the expression of gloss for poems commenting on a given other piece of poetry, often in the Spanish style. Glosses were originally notes made in the margin or between the lines of a text in a classical language; the meaning of a word ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long March
The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Red Army, Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Revolutionary Army, National Army of the Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP/KMT). Strictly speaking, the Long March was a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. However, the most famous began in the Jiangxi (Jiangxi) province in October 1934 and ended in the Shaanxi province in October 1935. The First Front Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi province. The CCP, under the eventual command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over over 370 days.Zhang, Chunhou. Vaughan, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
