I have puzzled over, and been intrigued by, something a Chinese friend in Beijing friend wrote a long time ago, when she was describing a tagline she’d come up with for our encyclopedia business. She said the last character had the “implication” of water–and thus of abundance. An appropriate meaning, she said, for a company […]

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I enjoy the fact that the word gung-ho comes from Chinese, because when I lived in England I was more than once called, disparagingly, a “gung-ho American.” Liz tells me that ping-pong, too, is a Chinese word. Here are a few others, from a Chinese language website, zhongwen.com.

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A kind reader, Joseph Adler of Kenyon College, has helped me out:
Here is a pretty good Wade-Giles to Pinyin conversion table. The “major differences” listed at the top should really be enough.
http://oclccjk.lib.uci.edu/wgtopy.htm
A rule that could be added is that the apostrophe indicates aspiration. Since the only difference between the k and g sounds in […]

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The book I’m reading, published in 1932, mentions two famous temples near Beijing, Chieh T’ai Ssu and T’an Chueh Ssu. While it’s easy to translate from one language to another along (even English to various forms of written Chinese), I’m having a hard time finding something that will translate the Wades-Giles in my book to […]

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Survived my first lesson. Liz (Steffey) is a gentle teacher, and does not perceptible flinch at my pronounciation. She’s our young project assistant for the GUANXI newsletter and a tremendous enthusiast for what we’re doing. Besides that, she’s quite confident that I–and everyone else on staff, over time–can learn Chinese. And she is determined to […]

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This is the day I start, seriously, to learn Chinese, and I’m scared. I am really not sure I can do it. This is a tough admission, because I speak Spanish fairly well, and can converse a little in French and Italian. I can read those three languages and also some German. Linguistically, you see, […]

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