I’m a Chinese student and my very favourite Chinese word is 休息 (xiūxí) which means “to rest”.
On February, I even got a tattoo with it!
This was one of the first verb my Chinese teacher taught me when I was at University.
According to her explanation, the meaning:
休: should represent a man resting under a tree
息: the upper part represents the nose (or, in this case, the breath) and the lower part is the heart. This is because when we rest, our heart and our breath are coordinated.
This word not only means “to rest”, but it also means being in peace with yourself, so that your heart and you breath can go together.
So now I’m curious to know if you have any favourite word in the language you’re learning!
Japanese has some beautiful sounding words because of the regular consonant-vowel combinations.
I love tokidoki 時々 which means sometimes and also otokonoko 男の娘 which means boy.
One word I love in Chinese is 够 meaning enough, but not for it’s sound or meaning.
It’s because the simplified and traditional versions are the same - but just mirrored which I found so bizarre, if not fascinating!
够 夠
Also ironic given how one is called simplified, yet they are essentially the same, but just mirrored.
In Italian, some words just roll off the tongue and have a wonderful flow to them. So it’s kind of odd that my favourite word is simply - boh!
I always found this word funny because I hear it so often with Italian natives and whilst the language sounds so nice on the ears, this is one of the most used words, and yet one of the more uglier ones!
It basically means “I don’t know”, coupled with a shrug of the shoulders and a pushed out lower lip
I think mine would be 舒服 (shūfu), meaning “comfortable”. However it can also express comfortable as a feeling, which in French doesn’t really translate.
I also like 尴尬 (gāngà) meaning “awkward”, which is the first word I learned only from context by watching a Chinese TV show!
I like the word “心疼” in Chinese. It’s hard to find the English equivalent, literally it means “to feel heartache”, but it’s mostly used to describe the feeling of caring or loving someone dearly
Are there similar words to 心疼 in other languages? In Indonesian, there is a word “sayang” which means to care for someone dearly / deeply, but it’s not the same as love, which is “cinta”.
Another word I found fascinating is “磨”. This one character itself means to polish / rub. But when another character is added, it creates so many other meanings. 折磨 (torment / suffering); 推磨(turn a millstone) - 有钱能使鬼推磨 (Very famous phrase - Money can make the devil turn the millstone / Money talks); 琢磨 (think it over / ponder); 磨合磨合(accomodate each other or learn to get along) and many more!
That’s what I really like about learning languages! Some words have a very interesting meanings and I wish we had that in French too, because oftentimes we have to make long sentences to explain one feeling/thing
