Chinese Language, Culture, Society → First Chinese Lesson – 第一堂汉语课
Language:
Almost all Chinese words are made up of a combination of two single monosyllabical characters. By considering each single character in a Chinese word, one can analyse these words and find out some interesting things about how the Chinese people view or used to view certain things. Here is a list of some names of countries in Chinese:
中国 Middle Country (China)
中文 Middle Language (Chinese language)
汉语 Language of the Hans (Chinese language)
法国 Country of the Law (France)
德国 Country of the Moral (Germany)
法语 Language of the Law (French)
德语 Language of the moral (German)
旧金山 Old Golden Mountain (San Francisco)
美国 Beautiful Country (U.S.A)
美洲 Beautiful Continent (America)
非洲 Bad Continent (Africa)
亚洲 Subcontinent (Asia)
The majority of the names for countries in Chinese are simply transliterations using the Chinese script, without any real meaning. For example, Canada is spellt 加拿大 (jia, na, da/add, hold, big); Chile is spellt 智利 (zhi, li/wisdom, advantage). It is not possible to translate these names. Russia is called 俄罗斯 (e luo si: sudden, net, this).
