第六十三天

[nnozomi]

第七天！一个星期怎么这么快。No grammar points today, post something you like in Chinese (a song, a poem, a drama quotation, a useful study thing, a painting, something funny, you name it).

Mine: since someone brought up Chao Yuen Ren last week, here is one of his many interesting quotations (this one both Chinese linguistic-related and a bit 耽美-avant-la-lettre, although he didn't mean it that way).

In Dora Black's lectures [in 1920 in China], she mentioned the problem of marriage. At one of her lectures she mentioned "those young men and women who are not married." Since "to marry" in Chinese takes a different word whether it's a man or a woman, I had to translate by different verbs. But I twisted them around using the wrong verb and came out with something which would sound like "those young men who have no husbands and those young women who have no wives," and the audience, of course, roared with laughter. When Miss Black asked me what they were laughing about, I told her [whispered] "It'll take too long to explain; I'll have to explain to you afterwards." Ch'ü is the verb literally "to take," to marry by a man, and chia, literally "to go home," is a verb to marry on the part of a woman.

(Thank goodness we can just say 结婚 these days. I think the first verb must be 娶, which I had to look up, and the second one 嫁...)

Starting around tomorrow I hope to institute a slightly new format, adding some vocabulary along with grammar (so people can choose to practice either or both as preferred) and maybe doing one masterpost/review and one "share something fun" 第七天 on alternate weeks. Keep letting me know how it looks. 辛苦了或加油！

Comments

[nnozomi]

Alas, 娶 and 嫁 are still in use these days ... though as Wiktionary reminds me, there's also the non-matrimonial meaning of 嫁祸, i.e. to put the blame on someone.
Japanese also still uses 嫁ぐ with the same meaning, although it's a bit old-fashioned (maybe the concept rather than the word...). Likewise 責任転嫁, the same as 嫁祸.

郑云龙（aka The Other 龙哥 XD）的水调歌头！Lyrics from the Su Shi poem of the same title
aka The Other ZYL lol. Yes, I remember your link to the poem, and that's a perfect setting for it!

[presumenothing]

Oh hey that reminds me, I did notice 花嫁 having… well, 嫁 LOL… at some point but didn't actually connect it to whether the word was otherwise in use!