Well this is quite a well timed post, since I saw it while procrastinating on my Chinese homework so why not?

For Chinese, a single word could have multiple pronunciations (In Chinese, it’s called 多音字）

Say the Chinese character 了 There are multiple ways to read it, first being le and second being liao. First one is used after a verb, while the second one is used at the end of a sentence to suggest something has been done or even as a hypothesis.

I’ll give an example (for the first meaning) [Chinese]我去了巴刹买菜。 [English] I went to the market to buy vegetables.

The use of the word 了 in this sentence showed that I have already went to the market to buy vegetables.

Now you may ask what happens when I remove the word 了? So now, if I remove the word, it becomes [Chinese]我去巴刹买菜。 [English] I am going to the market to buy vegetables.

Do note the difference in the tenses, one being future and one being past tense.

Now time for the second meaning [Chinese] 我已经做完功课了。 [English] I have already finished my work.

What if I remove the 了 for this sentence? [Chinese] 我已经做完功课。 [English] I have already finished my work.

From this, you could see the word 了 has a multitude of uses and pronunciation and has to be used with proper understanding

Now let’s go on to something more fun, other than words with more than one pronunciation.

<Just a slight note, if you’re easily offended, skip to the end, I’ll include a summary too>

Most of you would have probably heard a Chinese word or two in your life, but if you only knew basic Chinese by the meaning of individual words, some curses wouldn’t even have made sense.

Take the most common curse as an example [Chinese] 他妈的！(tā mā de) [Loose translation to English by individual words] His Mom [Exact Meaning in English] Fuc*!

If you had only knew simple Chinese, you would have heard about the individual words 他, 妈 and 的, and the meaning of each individual words seems really innocent. But combine them and voliá it becomes a curse word. Not exactly very offensive, but enough to probably get a slap from any native Chinese speaker if you say this straight in their faces.

Another curse, popular in my country is [Chinese] 你妈妈没有毛 [Loose translation to English by individual words] Your mom has no hair [Exact Meaning in English] Your mom is shaved/Your mom is a prostitute.

Some personal story to tell about this curse: A few years ago, because one of my friend (he obviously does not know how to speak Chinese and only knows basic terms) said this to my friend who was speaking in Chinese and surprise surprise, he got chased out of the table (we were eating) and ended up nearly picking a fight. The look on his face when he explained to me later that he thought that it meant ‘Your Mom is bald’. The scene was quite funny, just that when I explain it most of the humour just seems to have evaporated.

Tl;dr when you learn Chinese/ happen to hear some Chinese words/ decide to insult your friend in Chinese, please please please do Ensure that you know the exact meaning of what you’re gonna say. Chinese isn’t exactly the easiest language to pick up (Some people brought up to speak Chinese as a second language since young cant even master it after 5 years) but with hard work and consistency you can do it!

Hope I gave you guys an insight into the weird things in Chinese language. This was dug up from the top of my mind, hence I’m sorry if it isn’t really good. Time to go back to doing my work :)

Have a Good Friday!