Day 73 Sàiwēng shī mǎ I - The Horse Proverb
From this week we are going to take a little different perspectives .We are going to incorporate Chinese idioms into our Chinese learning. These idioms are very causal. Each one has a history and story behind it, and we use this very often in our daily communications. Sometimes instead of describing an event with many wordy sentences, we just use one idiom. I choose this one because this is a kind of related to my experience, and is my favorite idioms. It is called 塞翁失马 (Sàiwēng shī mǎ). 塞 means the north board of China. 翁 means an old man. 塞翁 means a person’s name.
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E.g.
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Chinese: 塞翁失马
COE: Saiweng lost horse
Pinyin: Sàiwēng shī mǎ
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Chinese: 很多马
COE: Very many horse (there is no plural form on the lexical level)
Pinyin: Hěn duō mǎ
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Chinese: 有一天
COE: Have one day
Pinyin: Yǒu yìtiān
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Chinese: 下雨了
COE: Down rain-le (le is a past tense marker)
Pinyin: Xiàyǔ le
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Chinese: 一匹马
COE: A horse
Pinyin:Yì pǐ mǎ (pǐ is a measure word)
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A：你的什么？（Nǐde shénme?）
[What are yours?]
B：我的笔。(Wǒ de bǐ.)
[My pencil.]
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A：什么颜色？(Shénme yánsè?)
[What color?]
B：兰色。(Lán sè.)
[Blue.]
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A：Kate，你的呢？(Kate, nǐ de ne?)
[Kate, how about yours?]
B：白色的笔记本。(Báisè de bǐjìběn.)
[White color notebook.]
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A：失去（Losing） 一匹马是好事还是坏事？（Shīqù yì pǐ mǎ shì hǎoshì háishi huàishì?)
[Is losing a horse a good thing or a bad thing?]
B：坏事。（Huàishì.）
[Bad thing.]
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A：你呢，布鲁斯？（Nǐ ne, Bùlǔsī?）
[What do you think, Bryce?]
B：坏事。(Huàishì.)
[Bad thing.]
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A：明天见。(Míngtiān jiàn.)
[See you tomorrow.]
B：明天见。(Míngtiān jiàn.)
[See you tomorrow.]
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Posted by stephen on October 18th, 2007 filed in Podcasts
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