The second character, shàng (上) is a very common character with many meanings, but usually means ‘on’ or ‘next to’ (for example, the city in which I live, Shànghǎi (上海), means “next to the sea”). I never gave much thought to the word until I learned the characters: 马上. One of these was the word mǎshàng, which means “soon”. Recently, having started learning Chinese characters, a few realizations have hit me. Sure, it’s not as literal as saying hónglǜdēng (红绿灯) for “traffic light” (literally “red green light”), but there’s a certain degree of poetry to the words. The strange thing is, both of these combinations make a certain amount of sense. It’s a word that I still often use, and so do most Chinese people. My first few months in China were plagued with me pointing at food and other objects in shops, and not knowing the word for that object, asking the shopkeeper “Zhège dōngxi shì duōshǎo qián?” (这个东西是多少钱) – “how much is this thing?”. Onto the second example – the individual words dōng (东) and xī (西) mean “east” and “west”, but together they form a multi-purpose word for ‘thing’. For example, when Chinese people ask me how long I’ve been living in China, I reply “Yī nián zuǒyòu” (一年左右) – “about one year”. Put them together, however, and you get the word for ‘about’ or ‘around’. On their own, zuǒ (左) and yòu (右) mean “left” and “right” respectively. Two good examples of this actually concern combining words with opposite meanings: zuǒyòu (左右) and dōngxi (东西). However, Chinese also mixes together everyday words to bring a new meaning to the combination. Likewise, a computer – 电脑 (diànnǎo) – is an “electric brain” and a helicopter – 直升机 (zhí shēng jī) – is a “straight-rising machine”. For example, Mandarin for ‘train’ is 火车 (huǒ chē), which literally means “fire car”. The age of the Chinese language means that it has to adapt itself to new concepts and ideas. A much earlier post touches on this, discussing how Chinese has to combine ideas to give names to modern concepts like the computer: One element I find especially interesting is the way Chinese combines words to form new words or phrases. It is, however, a very satisfying language to learn, as it’s almost impossible to learn to speak Chinese without learning a little about Chinese culture. As someone who is currently learning Mandarin, I find the language very challenging – both to speak and to write – as well as extremely quirky.
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