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Xiehouyu
''Xiehouyu'' are a type of Chinese proverb consisting of a former segment that presents a novel scenario, and a latter provides the rationale thereof. One would often only state the first part, expecting the listener to know the second. ''Xiehouyu'' are examples of anapodota, a class of rhetorical device found across different languages. Compare English '' an apple a day (keeps the doctor away)'' and '' speak of the devil (and he shall appear)''. The Chinese word may be literally translated as 'truncated witticism'. 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. Some analogous examples in English might sound like "get hospitalized" to mean "be patient", or "small transactions only" to mean "no big deal". Thus, a ''xiehouyu'' in one dialect can be unintelligible to a listener speaking another. Valuable linguistic data can sometimes be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chengyu
''Chengyu'' ( zh, t=, s=, first=t, p=chéngyǔ, tr=set phrase) are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four Chinese characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Literary Chinese and are still common in written vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 ''chengyu'' in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over 20,000. ''Chengyu'' are considered the collected wisdom of the Chinese culture, and contain the experiences, moral concepts, and admonishments from previous generations of Chinese speakers. ''Chengyu'' still play an important role in Chinese conversation and education. ''Chengyu'' are one of four types of formulaic expressions (), which also include collocations (), two-part allegorical sayings called '' xiehouyu'', and proverbs (). While not the only idioms in Chinese, and not always four characters long, they are often referred to as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Proverb
Many Chinese proverbs (yànyǔ 諺語) 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proverbs Commonly Said To Be Chinese
Many Chinese proverbs (yànyǔ 諺語) 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 ''V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Proverbs
Many Chinese proverbs (yànyǔ 諺語) 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anapodota
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" Anapodota are common in Classical Chinese and languages that draw from it, such as Korean and Japanese, where a long literary phrase is commonly abbreviated to just its condition. For example, Zhuangzi's phrase "a frog in a well cannot conceive of ... [...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 the United Kingdom. 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. A cognate of this phrase appears in the 15th century Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' () is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 184 AD and ... as 说曹操，曹操到 or "Speak of Cao Cao, Cao Cao arrives". In many cultures a different, dangerous, person or character is referenced in the phrase. In Serbian, the phrase transla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloss (annotation)
A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal or 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 o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Li (unit)
''Li'' or ri (, ''lǐ'', or , ''shìlǐ''), also known as the Chinese mile, is a traditional Chinese unit of distance. The ''li'' has varied considerably over time but was usually about one third of an English mile and now has a standardized length of a half-kilometer (). This is then divided into 1,500 chi or "Chinese feet". The character 里 combines the characters for "field" ( 田, ''tián'') and "earth" ( 土, ''tǔ''), since it was considered to be about the length of a single village. As late as the 1940s, a "li" did not represent a fixed measure but could be longer or shorter depending on the ''effort'' required to cover the distance. This traditional unit, in terms of historical usage and distance proportion, can be considered the East Asian counterpart to the Western league unit. However, in English '' league'' commonly means "3 miles." There is also another '' li'' (Traditional: 釐, Simplified: 厘, ''lí'') that indicates a unit of length of a ''chi'', but i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long March
The Long March ( zh, s=长征, p=Chángzhēng, l=Long Expedition) was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from advancing Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War, occurring between October 1934 and October 1935. About 100,000 troops retreated from the Jiangxi Soviet and other bases to a new headquarters in Yan'an, Shaanxi, traversing some . About 8,000 troops ultimately survived the Long March. After the defeat of the Red Army in Chiang Kai-shek's Fifth encirclement campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet, Fifth Encirclement Campaign, on 10 October 1934 the CCP decided to abandon its Jiangxi Soviet and headquarters in Ruijin, Jiangxi. The First Front Red Army of some 86,000 troops headed west, traveling over the rugged terrain of China's western provinces, including eastern Tibet. The Red Army broke several of Chiang's blockades with heavy losses, and by the time it crossed the Xiang River on 1 December had only 36,000 men left. Its lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marco Polo Bridge
The Marco Polo Bridge or Lugou Bridge () is a stone bridge located 15 km southwest of Beijing's city center in the Fengtai District. It bridges the Yongding River, a major tributary of Hai River. Situated at the eastern end of the bridge is the Wanping Fortress, a historic 17th-century fortress, with the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression inside. The Marco Polo Bridge is well known because it was highly praised by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo during his visit to China in the 13th century (leading the bridge to become known in Europe simply as the ''Marco Polo Bridge''), and for the 20th-century Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). In recent years, the water of Yongding River has been diverted to different areas of Beijing, so there is often no water under the bridge. Names The name "Marco Polo Bridge" derives from the appearance, before its reconstruction, ... [...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 lists common homophonous puns in Mandarin Chinese, though many of the examples given are homophones in other varieties as well. Asterisks before the entry denote near-homophones. Terms in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
