Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ; 华语/華語, Huáyǔ; or 中文, Zhōngwén) can be considered a language or language family. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is controversial . As a language family Chinese has an estimated nearly 1.2 billion speakers; Mandarin Chinese alone has around 850 million native speakers, outnumbering any other language in the world.
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Idiomatic expressions in Chinese

The English language contains many common quotes, sayings, aphorisms and other idiomatic expressions of different sorts. In the Chinese language such expressions are most commonly referred to as "chengyu", i.e. "ready phrases".

The chengyu can be divided into sub-groups such as true chengyu, proverbs, aphorisms and "after-the-pause expressions". Sometimes common expressions and freer quotes are included among chengyu, but rarely mere metaphors, slogans or modern slang. True chengyu usually consist of four characters that can be seen as titles of centuries old classical stories, hearsays or historical recordings. In this glossary I've include expressions of most of the mentioned categories of chengyu.

Chinese idioms often appear to be written with a special type of compressed grammar, and may therefore be difficult to interpret. However, it's one thing to learn to understand these expressions in Chinese text, but a completely different thing to learn to actively use them in your own phrases. If you don't have the knowledge of a large number of Chinese idioms (and preferably the stories behind them!), it can be difficult to spontaneously find suitable expressions for different occasions. My intention with this glossary is to help solving this problem for students of Chinese - or at least to open a door for those who want to become more fluent in Chinese.

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A Glossary of Idiomatic Expressions in Chinese

With this glossary, I've made it possible to search idiomatic expressions in Chinese simply by specifying a subject, keyword or feeling in English, single Chinese characters or entire idioms in Chinese.

Try entering words like "selfish", "free", "waste", "fool" or "help", to see what idioms are listed. You can also search by Chinese syllables/characters according to Mandarin Pinyin-transliteration such as "chu1", "yang2", "hu3", "xiao3" or "da4". The soft "y"-sound is transcribed with "yu" (e.g. "nyu3" and "lyu2" that are not to be mixed up with "nu3" and "lu2").

Babylon Pro version 4.0 will not show more than twenty matches per search -- older versions of Babylon will not show more than eight matches. In older versions of the software, you will also have to enter a blank space before the first letter of the syllables "mi1", "mi2", "mi3", "mi4", "dong1", "dong2", "dong3" and "dong4".

The Chinese characters are written in simplified Chinese (GB-coded) and pronunciation is specified according to Mandarin Pinyin. There are no explanations of the histories or stories behind each expression, since that would call for a lot more work, and the result wouldn't bee as easy to scan through as it is now.

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