缘分
yuen-FEN
The pull that brings two people together, or does not
Used for lovers, friends, teachers, anyone.
If a friendship ends people say the yuanfen ran out, which puts the blame nowhere and lets both sides keep their dignity.
The archive
Chinese (simplified)
Not one language
Chinese is a family. Mandarin and Cantonese are as far apart as Spanish and Romanian, and share a writing system instead of a sound.
FamilySino-Tibetan › Chinese
ScriptSimplified Han characters
Speakers1.2B 941M native · 239M second
Weeks to a working level88 Counted from English. It is the Foreign Service Institute's figure for someone starting from English and from nothing.
The first hundred words cover46.8% and the first thousand 72.3%
- Mandarin and Cantonese speakers cannot understand each other's speech. They can often read each other's writing.
- Verbs never change. No tense, no person, no number. Time is a word you add, not an ending you attach.
- Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral one, and the tone is part of the word, not decoration on it.
- Simplified characters were introduced in the 1950s to raise literacy. Around 2,200 characters were changed; the rest were left alone.
- You need roughly 2,500 characters to read a newspaper and about 3,500 for comfort, and each one has to be learned as a shape as well as a sound.
- It has more native speakers than any other language on earth, and almost all of them live in one country. That is why it pays inside China and travels badly outside it.
- It is where the chain of blame stops. Chinese does not name another country for something unintelligible: the marks were drawn by a ghost, 鬼画符, or the sound is bird language, 鸟语, or it is writing from heaven.
A billion speakers and a grammar with no conjugations, no plurals, no tenses. The mountain is the writing; the walking is easier than anyone tells you. Career-wise it is the single highest-leverage language alive: the second largest economy still runs its deals, factories and group chats in it.
Words with no translation
道
DAO
The way things move when nothing is forced.
Dao: the way. The path everything follows and the flow you can move with or against. The Daodejing opens by warning that any dao that can be spoken is not the eternal one, and then speaks anyway.
無為
woo-WAY
Acting without forcing. Effort that does not strain against the grain.
Wu wei is doing by not forcing: the effortless action of water finding its way downhill. Daoism's answer to the try-harder culture, two characters that undo a whole productivity industry.
撒娇
sah-JYAO
Acting small and sweet on purpose, so that someone who loves you will indulge you
Not manipulation and not childishness, though it borrows the manners of both.
It is a recognised move between people who are close enough for it, and it only works because everyone knows it is happening.
热闹
ruh-NOW
The good kind of noise: crowded, loud, everybody talking at once
A Western dinner party aims for conversation. A Chinese one aims for renao.
The word is a compliment: a restaurant, a wedding, a night market can have it, and a quiet room is missing something rather than resting.
Next to its neighbours
Where Chinese (simplified) parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.
Where to practise it
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Chinese (simplified) with.
The Chinese (simplified) Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Stories in Chinese (simplified)
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.