Black sheep....or horses?

      If you want to say that someone is the bad person in a family or in a group you can say he or she is the black sheep, right?

or you can call him or her "rotten apple"

   But how do you say all this in Chinese? 

   In Chinese, the idiom that indicates the bad element in a group does not present any sheep, instead, we find a horse, but it is not black at all. Let's see it:

In the first line you can find the characters, in the second line the pinyin (phonetic transcription), in the third the translation of the single characters in English, in the last line the translation of the single characters in Italian.

For those that are interested in the grammatical structure of the idiom, it is a name (horse) determined by a verb phrase. In English it would be "The horse that harms [its own] herd". In Italian it would be "Il cavallo che fa del male alla propria mandria". If you want to explain it in Chinese it is 危害马群的劣马.

    See you next time, if you have any comments please feel free to write it in the comment section!

Chinese Idioms Special 4: One horse takes the lead

  The year of the horse has just begun: Happy new year of the horse to everyone!

 

   And here it is: another Chinese Idioms Special:

yī mǎ dāng xiān

   This four-characters idiom  means "to gallop at the head", "take the lead", "be in the forefront", "to be the first to take the enemy or to do work". It is used to indicate that this time it's the turn of the year of the horse. 

   But, this idiom is part of a eight characters saying:

yī mǎ dāng xiān, wàn mǎ bēn téng

And here is the full idiom with pinyin and word by word translation:

   It means that, "when one single horse takes the lead in battle, ten thousand horses follow, going full-steam ahead".

   I hope you like this content, feel free tu make suggestions! ^_^

   See you next post!

Chinese Idioms 7: How often do you change your mind?

"Change one's mind constantly"

   This four-character idiom's structure is an apposition: the first part (sanxin) is parallel to the second (eryi). If your heart is three and

Chinese Idioms special 2: may the year of the horse bring riches!

  

 As promised in the previews post (see here), a new idiom regarding the year of the horse.
    Also this one is

Felice anno nuovo del Cavallo!

(per la versione in inglese clicca qui)

   Come tutti sappiamo, il 2014 è cominciato; ma secondo il calendario tradizionale cinese, che è un calendario lunare, il nuovo anno comincerà tra circa un mese: il 31 gennaio 2014.

"Calendario lunare": il primo carattere (yue) significa "luna", il secondo (li) significa "calendario".

Il nuovo anno sarà l'anno del Cavallo: "ma"

Chinese Idioms Special: Happy new year of the horse

(for the italian version of this post see here)

   As we all know, the year 2014 has begun. But according to the Chinese traditional lunar calendar the new year is going to begin within almost a month (on the 31st of January 2014).

   The new Chinese Year is going

Chinese idioms 6: golden chickens

Ever heard of a chicken standing on one leg? Chinese language does in fact have an idiomatic saying that describes this situation:

金鸡独立 jīn jī dú lì [listen]: standing on one leg like a golden rooster.

    This expression deriving from

Chinese idioms 5: imaginary fears

Hi everyone! Back from summer break, I am going to present some four-characters Chinese idioms  (chengyu) that express in a metaphorical way the concept of imaginary fear.

  The first one is 杯弓蛇影 bēi gōng shé yǐng.

    This chengyu refers to the episode of the Han Dynasty (30 - 220 AD) where the shape of a bow hung on the wall, which is reflected in a cup, is mistaken for