We are celebrating the new year 新年. Do you know how 年 is from? #年year #人man #收割harvest #禾grain
At the end of the year, people harvest ripe crops. 年 came from the image of a man carrying grain on his back. Learn more about 年.
Author: Decode Mandarin Chinese
How is 夏 from？
夏 originally meant ”people in the central state” and later was used to mean “summer” in the sense
that it looks like a person with bare foot and exposed arms.
Homophonic Rhetoric in Chinese
In Chinese, homonyms are applied to produce very interesting rhetorical speech. As the Chinese New Year of the Sheep 羊 yáng is drawing near, you will hear one or some of the following greetings with homophonic rhetoric.
Radical bone 骨 gǔ
The radical bone denotes ” bone or human body”, so characters with 骨 express meanings related to bone or human body. Continue reading “Radical bone 骨 gǔ”
English words borrowed from Chinese
There are plenty of English words borrowed from Chinese language. In the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (second edition in 1989), there are more than 1,300 English words with Chinese as the source. Continue reading “English words borrowed from Chinese”