Are these these idioms comprehensible for an average educated Chinese?

[rezaf]

I have a vocabulary list based on a frequency list and words that my Chinese classmates have chosen for me from a dictionary. That's why they are mostly words and phrases that everyone can understand but recently in discussions that I had with two Chinese they didn't understand the meaning of two idioms that I used. I am wondering wether it was because they were not common or because I didn't use them in the proper context.

1-抱殘守缺：We were talking about the relatively high expectations of the parents of a Chinese girl from her boyfriend for 聘禮 . I said this old custom is looking down on women as objects that can be purchased and used that idiom to describe the parents of the girl.

2-並行不悖：Someone told me that I shouldn't focus too much on studying Chinese because it gets in the way of studying TCM(my major). I told her that I need a very high level of Chinese for studying TCM as well as communicating with patients and that 學中醫和中文並行不悖。

[jkhsu]

@rezaf, I just asked my native speaker friend and she said those idioms are not common (she didn't know them). So that's one data point for you.

[Kenny同志]

Both of them are common 成语. And you used them correctly (but perhaps you should use them sparingly in spoken Chinese so as not to give others the impression that you are trying to show off your learning).

It doesn’t surprise me though that your friends failed to understand you because the Chinese education system seems to be putting a higher value on English than on Chinese, which eventually leads to a rapid, overall degradation of Chinese skills of the whole nation. I can even safely say that many Chinese who completed their higher education during the past ten years write no better than a 12-year-old schoolboy in the 1920s.

I agree with you that learning Chinese isn’t incompatible with studying TCM. Indeed, most great practitioners of TCM have a strong command in written Chinese, or rather, classical Chinese.

[roddy]

Save 'em for when you're writing an essay or giving a speech. Peppering casual conversation with vocabulary like that is either going to make people think that you don't realize how obscure it is, or as Kenny says, that you're showing off.

[skylee]

I can even safely say that many Chinese who completed their higher education during the past ten years write no better than a 12-year-old schoolboy in the 1920s.

What a comment. This is a sweeping generalisation (using "many" does not make it sound better), and very opinionated. It is not good to look down at other people like this. You should also compare the number of 12-year-olds who could write back in the 1920s with the number nowadays.

[xiaocai]

Well I understand them. Maybe I can't write as good as a 12-year-old school boy back in the 1920s could but I think I will not have too much problem understanding what he'd written.

[rezaf]

Thanks, honestly it's very difficult for me to know which idioms can or can't be used in conversations. I guess I should stop using them for a while.

[xiaocai]

If you are having a serious discussion then I think it is fine to use them, or it would be better to avoid otherwise.

[navaburo]

Although I agree that Kenny's comment was a bit rash, I can't help but wonder if the depth of language knowledge suffers in multilingual communities. (Now, maybe the opposite is true?)

[Hofmann]

I'd rather think language knowledge suffers in monolingual environments, as I think a language is like a cage, where you never get to see what the whole cage looks like unless you go outside.

[Kenny同志]

It is not a generalisation, let alone a sweeping one. For the definition of the word please refer to the dictionary.

If you like to gild this shameful fact, do it. I will not object if you say all of them can write way better than a 12-year-old schoolboy in the 1920s.

By the way, if a native speaker cannot comprehend 抱残守缺 or 并行不悖, I do not think he/she is really well-educated, though he/she might be a holder of a PhD.

“今天是上海地铁有史以来最黯淡的一天，无论最终原因和责任怎样，给市民乘客造成的伤害和损失尤感愧疚。全力抢救伤员；尽快恢复运营；接受和配合有关部门对事故的调查和追责；坚决整改举一反三；再多致歉比起实际损害也显苍白，但还是要深深道歉。” – quoted from the official microblog of Shanghai Subway

Without a doubt, this is an excellent piece of writing, which really looks as if it were written by an educated person.

[Kenny同志]

I am not fond of 抬杠, but you seem to always disagree with me for nothing. Don’t you think you are wasting your time doing so?

[renzhe]

I can't judge whether the level of Chinese is deteriorating, but I find it interesting that the exact same topic shows up in every country I've lived in, with every single language I come across -- people everywhere complain that the kids can't use the language properly, and blame the school system.

It doesn't seem to be restricted to Chinese, in any case.

[roddy]

Education systems collapse the minute we leave them. It's an undeniable subjective fact, and always has been.

[WestTexas]

Neither one of them is in the top 50000 of the frequency list I use, so they aren't common in that corpus. It would seem to me that if native speakers don't understand them, and they aren't among the fifty thousand most common words, they can't be very common.

[roddy]

I bet they would have understood the written formal vocabulary in a written formal context.

[gato]

Thanks, honestly it's very difficult for me to know which idioms can or can't be used in conversations. I guess I should stop using them for a while.

You probably shouldn't use more than the most common idioms in everyday speech.

See here for a possible list:

http://www.plecoforu...topic.php?t=516

You also have to be especially careful with the pronunciation. Since the words aren't as common, there's a good chance that you won't be understood if you just mispronounce one character.

[Kenny同志]

抱残守缺 has 14, 800 hits on 百度新闻 and 93, 600 hits on Google Books.

并行不悖 has 43, 800 hits on 百度新闻 and 122, 000 hits on Google Books.

Compare them with 三心二意 which has

28,100 hits on 百度新闻 and only 42, 800 hits on Google Books.

Perhaps they're not that uncommon.

[xiaocai]

Is this something new? I thought the story of 阳春白雪 and 下里巴人 was told more than two thousand years ago. Now I don't think the proportions have changed much, but those who were disadvantaged, who preferred 下里巴人 also get to enjoy resources like education and entertainment which were still considered luxury just a hundred years ago, as well as the freedom of speech (well maybe not so much in China in certain ways) and right to express themselves. And look at classics like 诗经, some of the poems might be regarded as crude and primitive then and there could be many others which didn't even get recorded, but now they have become one of cornerstones of our language. I think as long as the language is still alive and prosperous, good things will eventually survive and shine through.

[skylee]

I am not fond of 抬杠, but you seem to always disagree with me for nothing. Don’t you think you are wasting your time doing so?

Did you mean me? Anyways, I do not disagree with you for "nothing". I usually object to harsh words. I have not disagreed much with renzhe,for example, I think. Kindness is a quality that I value highly.

I have been "wasting" my time on this website for so many years. I don't really mind wasting my time objecting to what I don't agree.