Vehicle Vocabulary

[Ailuo]

I work teaching Chinese. In my program there are 5 Chinese teachers. I am the only non-native speaker. We were working on curriculum and got stuck on the Chinese words for cars. The teachers (who are from all different parts of China) could not agree on the words we should use for the following.

Car

Vehicle

Bus

Our textbook, that we use for the class uses 汽车 for bus, but I had always used that for car. Can it also be used for bus? I would have used 公共汽车 for bus and 车辆 for vehicle. One of the teachers wanted to use 小汽车 for car.

and then where does just plain 车 fit in to all of this? I have always thought of it as a catch all for vehicles.

Does all of this simply depend on what region of China you are from?

[fanglu]

Google images is always a good way to see what the most common meanings of words is.

[Ailuo]

True. I was just wondering if the meaning was different in different regions of China and Taiwan because the 4 different teachers could not come to an agreement.

[Tyler.zhang]

Car

Vehicle

Bus

In my opinion,Car is used for a few persons（equal or less than 4 ）,and the "Bus" is used for more than 4 persons.

Vehicle likely is a academic words, normally, "Vehicle" have the meaning of"Car" and "Bus", and it is a general word including all kinds of Che(Vehicle),but It can't be used for replacing any kind of them.

[jasoninchina]

This is what I learned at school and also what I hear people use:

汽车 Automobile (formal usage)

车 Car (this is normally what I would hear on the street)

公共汽车，巴士，公车 Bus, stagecoach, etc.

车辆 Vehicle

小汽车 Small to midsize vehicle (I saw this on my drivers test to refer to a car, in order to differentiate between it and a van or bus.)

[tooironic]

Don't forget the common colloquial term for car, cart or bicycle - 车子.

[Silent]

I don't know about regional differences, but I've the impression the chinese can be quite fluid in how they call things.

From the limited experience I have the impression 车 refers to all vehicles and 汽车 refers to all motorvehicles. Where 汽车 is most often taken as a family car comparable to the english car that can be any 4 wheeled motorvehicle but mostly refers to a family car. I've 汽车 also seen used as a lorry.

I don't know a word that refers specific to a family car, however google says it's 家庭轿车. Knowing the chinese that would become 家车 but google translates that to 'cars'. I guess the context has to make clear what kind of (汽)车 one is referring too. To me that makes sense. First there was 车, then 车 was diversified with new inventions to 马车， 火车，电车， 汽车 etc to distinguish between the new inventions. Likewise ，types and models of 汽车 were created and new words were invented to refers to the different types 汽车。

[Ailuo]

I am starting to wonder now if the teachers' problem was that they did not understand the English use of the words car and vehicle. They are fairly fluid in English as well. I mean, I always say that there are "a lot of cars on the road" even when I am talking about cars, trucks, buses, and everything in between. Maybe the issue was that the words are a little interchangeable in both languages and they were not sure what to do. Their English is not always the best. I will have to ask them tomorrow about it in our meeting.

[Gharial]

Maybe consider getting something like the fully bilingual (E-E-C) edition of the Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English (郎文多功能分类词典), which arranges vocabulary in a very western, Roget-like way, in plenty of superordinate to subordinate and/or conceptually-similar detail. Could beat asking teachers or peers to help reinvent the wheel!

[Ailuo]

@Gharial I have never seen that book before. I will have to see about getting a copy. It might help a lot in our curriculum talks. We are always getting stuck vocabulary. Thanks!

[Gharial]

Heh, you're welcome. Yeah, it's quite an oldie (English edition first published by Longman in 1992, bilingualized by SFLEP in 1997), but was still available on Amazon.cn the last time I looked (a few months ago). I'll try to scan some of the relevant pages and post them shortly.

[Gharial]

Here they are:

[jkhsu]

I've realized that there are often several ways to say the same thing in Chinese based on the region that you are in; especially when comparing mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Hong Kong. Sometimes, the same words may even have different Mandarin pronunciations. Additionally, words can change with time as well. I know that some of the terms in the older books I'm using are no longer what's being used now. Therefore, my suggestion would be not to stress an "exact" term for a word but rather explain to the students that they might find different Chinese words to describe the same thing. I think @jasoninchina's post #5 has a pretty good summary of vehicle terms.

By the way, here's a link to another post called "Same thing, different names" that might be of an interest to you.

http://www.chinese-f...ifferent-names/

[hdpxx]

Can anyone help me with the meaning of 轿车?