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!

Dragonboats and Zongzi

   This year, the 2nd of June was Duānwǔ Jié: the Dragonboat Festival, which is a traditional festivity day in China. It occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, which is why it is also called 双五节Shuāng wǔ jié (Double-fifth festival).

On this day people eat a traditional food, called Zòngzi 粽子(sticky rice treats wrapped in bamboo leaves),








 and lóngzhōu 龙舟 (dragon-boat) races take place. 

Confucius says

jǐsuǒbúyù wùshīyúrén

This is a saying from the Analects of Confucius. If you want to know more about it, here's the sentence explained. The first column is the text in classical Chinese, the second column (the coloured one) is the translation of the single characters in modern Chinese, and the third is the translation in English.

"Do not do to others

 what you do not like done to yourself"

                                                    (Confucius, Analects)

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 3: The year of the horse brings a lot of good luck!

This is the third special post dedicated to the soon beginning year of the horse. If you lost the previews ones, you can find them here and here.

mǎnián xíng dàyùn   jíqìngyǒuyú

Today's idiom can be translated as: "May the year of the

Is this bamboo lucky?

Yesterday I went to the supermarket. I saw this very Chinese-appearing thing and decided to buy it:

My new lucky bamboo

What do you think? does it seem to be Chinese enough? 

   

    Well, not only it is not Chinese, but it is not even

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