23 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
Chinese Books Lack an Index
Yet even if some technological fix were to be devised to solve the problem of character entry, the non-alphabetic nature of the writing system still results in other serious and long-standing “invisible” problems. For example, the inclusion of a standard index to books, manuals and reference materials is made orders of magnitude more difficult by the Chinese writing system. The result is that to this day, the vast majority of non-fiction books published in China do not have an index, or a...23 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
提笔忘字
The most astounding example I encountered back in my early days studying Chinese was during a lunch with three graduate students in the Peking University Chinese department. I had a bad cold that day, and wanted to write a note to a friend to cancel a meeting. I found that I couldn’t write the character ti 嚔 in the word for “sneeze”, da penti 打喷嚔, and so I asked my three friends for help. To my amazement, none of the three could successfully retrieve the character ti 嚔. Three ..."Forget the word Pen"
14 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Mandarin Curses from the Show "Firefly"
Cow Sucking吸牛 ・ Shee-niou - xī niú
A Baboon's Asshole狒狒的屁眼 ・ FAY-FAY duh PEE-yen - fèi fèi de;dì;dí pì yǎn
Extraordinarily Impatient Buddha (True Patience of Buddha)真沒耐性的佛祖 ・ Jen mei NAI-shing duh FWO-tzoo - zhēn méi;mò nài xìng de;dì;dí fú;fó zǔ
Dog Fucking狗操的 ・ Go tsao de - gǒu cāo de;dì;dí
Panda Piss熊貓尿 ・ Shiong mao niao - xióng māo suī
Frog-Humping Son of a Bitch青蛙操的流氓 ・ Ching...Not prurient, but funny and fun to practice.
27 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
回饋
The Chinese characters here are 回饋 (made out of black and white sesame seeds). You should recognize 回 if you have been following me on Facebook.回 means return. 饋 means ‘offering food to someone’ or ‘gift’. It is made out of 食 and 貴. 食 means ‘to eat’ or ‘food’. 貴 means something precious or expensive. 回 (return) 饋 (gift)= 回饋 (to give back)回饋 is normally used to express someone returning something good to the society. In this case, I am trying to ...Returning good to society.
27 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
加油 as a Term of Encouragement
The Chinese characters say 加油 (Jia1 you2).加 is composed of 力 (power) and 口 (mouth). It means 'to add'油 is made out of 水 (氵, water) and 由(from/ due). It means oil.加（to add） 油（oil）= add oil or make an extra effort
加油 is a terribly common phrase in day to day life. If you want to encourage someone to carry on great work, or in a sports competition, you say 加油! A bit like 'go on!' in English.
Of course another literal meaning of 加油 is to refuel.ShaoLan explains how the symbols break down.
09 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
Wubizixing
At one time, Chinese had a serious "keyboard problem", but it's been largely solved by keyboards like Wubizixing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubizixing [wikipedia.org] ) and Wubihua. At the simple end, Wubihua assigns 5 keys to the most fundamental strokes used to write Chinese: horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling/dot, and hooked/complex. You press the keys corresponding to at least the first 4 strokes, then press the key corresponding to the last, and it presents you with a ... 1 
notes
notesKeyboard method for typing Chinese characters.
21 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
Mandarin Character for Electricity
电 is used in many words relating to modern, electrically-powered things. For example, 电影 (electricity - shadow) means "film", 电视 (electricity - to look at) means "TV", and 电脑 (electricity - brain) means "computer".1 
notes
notesDescribes interesting interactions with people in how the word is used in "film," "television," and "computer."
Is a combinations of the characters for "child" and "palace."
26 SEP 2012 by ideonexus
The Naming of the Monkey King
The Patriarch smiled and said, "Though you have rather a base sort of body, you look like one of the rhesus
monkeys that eat pine seeds, and I ought to give you a surname that fits your appearance and call you Hu
('Macaque'). The elements that make up the character Hu are 'animal,' 'old' and 'moon'. What is old is ancient,
and the moon embodies the Negative principle, and what is ancient and Negative cannot be transformed. But I
think I would do much better to call you Sun ('Monkey'). Apart f... 1 notes
notesSun Wukong, which means 'Monkey Awakened to Emptiness'
"Word" plus "to get lost"; thus, a riddle is words that you become lost within. The word "to get lost" is also interesting, a combination of "path" and "rice", which reminds us of leaving breadcrumbs to find our way back.
