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 (traditional)
The characters that were never cut
The same language as the mainland standard, written with the character forms that were never simplified.
FamilySino-Tibetan › Chinese
ScriptTraditional Han characters
Speakers25M 22M native · 3M 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 cover45.2% and the first thousand 71.0%
- Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau kept the older forms. The mainland, Singapore and Malaysia use the simplified ones.
- Some simplified characters merged several older ones into a single shape, so traditional text carries distinctions that simplified text has lost.
- Taiwan teaches pronunciation with Bopomofo, a phonetic alphabet of 37 symbols, rather than with the Latin letters of Pinyin.
- Traditional characters have more strokes on average, which matters when you are writing by hand and not at all when you are typing.
- Reading across the two systems is a matter of weeks once you know one of them, not years.
The characters as they were before the 1950s reform, still standard in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Learn these and the simplified set comes almost free; the reverse is not true. Taiwan's night markets, Hong Kong cinema, classical poetry as it was carved: the deep end of the character tradition, kept intact.
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 (traditional) 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 (traditional) with.
The Chinese (traditional) 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 (traditional)
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.