That "Thing" Over There...
A super useful word in Mandarin is dong xi (literally "east west"). It means "thing" or "stuff" as in "na ge dong xi" (that thing) or "zhe ge dong xi" (this thing).
东 = dong = east
西= xi = west
You can go to a store and point at something, saying "na ge dong xi..." and then the person behind the counter will usually respond by handing it to you and telling you the name of it. If you say something in Chinese, people will start talking to you and everything usually works out, but it helps to say something that they are used to hearing..."yeah, that thing over there, uh huh, right, that thing..." Somewhere in the mix, you will hear a noun that you studied before and everything will start rolling.
There is a great cartoon show in China called "kuai le dong xi" or "Happy Stuff" that gives a nice slice of ironic Beijing life and lots of use of the word "dong xi".
东 = dong = east
西= xi = west
You can go to a store and point at something, saying "na ge dong xi..." and then the person behind the counter will usually respond by handing it to you and telling you the name of it. If you say something in Chinese, people will start talking to you and everything usually works out, but it helps to say something that they are used to hearing..."yeah, that thing over there, uh huh, right, that thing..." Somewhere in the mix, you will hear a noun that you studied before and everything will start rolling.
There is a great cartoon show in China called "kuai le dong xi" or "Happy Stuff" that gives a nice slice of ironic Beijing life and lots of use of the word "dong xi".
posted by Popping Pandas at
3:34 AM
2 Comments:
What a useful blog!
Could you add tone numbers to posts like this? It would be very helpful for pronunciation.
This one is dong1 xi1.
Just a note to let you know that our flash cards all have tone marks. Actually, I hadn't thought about using tone numbers (they are unnecessarily confusing for kids) for parents who read the blog, so thanks tons for that idea! If I can't get tone marks to show up properly on the blog (I've been struggling a bit because they don't come out properly on some people's computers, but they look fine on mine), I shall use numbers!
Our blog is moving to
http://montessorichinese.blogspot.com/
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