4 ms·
The Mandarin word literally means "relationships" and the concept is well established in English. When you describe somebody as "connected", that's what you're
by thaumasiotes 2y ago
The Mandarin word literally means "relationships" and the concept is well established in English. When you describe somebody as "connected", that's what you're saying.
It's an incredibly poor example of an "untranslatable" phrase.
- _as_text 2y agoThe first and only time I've ever felt like I really know Chinese was when I came across the phrase '洋汽扑鼻' in "Fortress Besieged" by Qian Zhongshu. It literally means 'the breath of the sea assaults the nostrils". It's a joke on how fashionable and in demand everything Western was in China in the 1920s. For me it's just laugh-out-loud-for-10-minutes funny. I've tried to explain it to literal dozens of my friends and now I know not to even try.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoProbably worth noting that while 洋 does literally mean "sea", it also means "foreign".