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It’s the Chinese there/their/they’re, but even worse. There’s also 地

Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #37

因yīn果guǒ

Literally: “cause + effect”

Figuratively: “karma; cause and effect”

We’re back! Again! Finally our fans get a follow up to a previous cliffanger post from the stone age.

In my experience Buddhist phrases are usually just transliterated into Chinese, but this word got its own calque, which doesn’t even seem like it’s based literally on the Sanskrit kárman “act”, instead loosely based on the religious meanings hetú, “impulse, cause” and phala “fruit, result” (but also “kernel” 🤯).

So if 果guǒ meant “fruit”, surely 因yīn means “seed” or something like that? No, why would it? Originally it meant “underwear”, then drifting to “rely on” and “cause” and “inherit”. A far-fetched one, for sure.

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*得

维基百科? more like 危机百科 amirite?

Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #36

马mǎ上shàng

Literally: “on horseback”

Figuratively: “right away; soon”

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you could also just use the player hotkeys to cycle through subtitles and secondary subs

felt lazy, might post details later

Yeah I should have explained it a little more in depth, haha. It’s hard to reduce these words to simple translations. All parts are weird enough on their own.

如rú means “follow” more in the sense of “follow orders”, go along, comply, accord, be like, as if, etc. 果guǒ means fruit in a very broad sense as the “effect” of a tree or seed, think like “bear fruit”, “fruitless”, “the fruits of one’s labor”, etc. So in combination they mean, what happens if the results of a situation are according to some description.

The other variant I think is a bit simpler. 要yào means “ask for”, “demand”, “request”, “want”, “need”, “must”, sort of the inverse of the above 如rú here. So a hypothetical demands that a situation 是shì be a certain way. It places a restriction on the possible outcomes.

Sorry if this is nonsense, I might post other compounds with 果guǒ and delve deeper … whenever I feel like™ 😎

Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #35

如rú果guǒ / 要yào是shì

Literally: “follow fruit / need be”

Figuratively: “if”

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Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #34

粉fěn笔bǐ

Literally: “powder pen”

Figuratively: “chalk”

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Don’t thank me, thank our gigachad devs

I have a confession to make. I am actually basedcringe cringebased.

WE HAVE RUBY?

这zhè极端jíduān基于jīyú

Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #33

忐tǎn忑tè

Remember 上shàng and 下xià (up and down)? If your 心xīn (heart) was going up and down, how would you feel? Perhaps perturbed, fidgety, upset, on edge, uneasy, nervous?

This is a 2-syllable word where neither 忐tǎn nor 忑tè make sense on their own, they are strictly parts of this word. I’m also 99% sure that the characters were invented specifically for this word.

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Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #32

脑袋

(nǎo dài)

Literally: “brain bag”

Figuratively: “head” (informal)

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ඞ

Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #31

庸人自扰

(yōng rén zì rǎo)

Literally: “mediocre person self disturb”

Figuratively: “worry about nothing / create trouble for oneself”

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Chuck in shock, choked on chunky junk

Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #30

上 + 下

(shàng + xià)

Iconic characters: one “arrow” up and one down! And if you feel some sense of déjà vu from last time, that’s because we’re doing more time analogies. If you had to choose between “up” and “down” to mean past or present, which would you pick? In any case, Chinese settled on …

 
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