Learning Chinese Idioms

[tomblack]

As a more advanced learner of Chinese, I've learned the importance of Chinese idioms as an essential part of learning Chinese. Having lived in China, I've also learned that being able to use Chinese idioms correctly in conversation really sets your Chinese apart from others and you start to sound more native. I worked for a Chinese company for a summer and during that time I was taught many Chinese idioms. However, for me, they proved to be fairly difficult to commit to memory and even more difficult to know how to use. I often got overwhelmed and really only probably remember about 10 or so of those idioms. I've been thinking about a good system to learning and retaining idioms and I've researched to find a service that would help make the learning of them more simple. From what I've seen, there really isn't a whole lot out there besides Chinese idiom dictionaries.

I just wanted to get a feel to see if anyone would find a Chinese idiom service useful. For example if there was a service that took just one, commonly used, idiom each day, provided by a native Chinese speaker, with examples, a breakdown of the characters, and several sentences to know how to use them correctly, would that be something that any of you would be interested in? If so would you be willing to pay a small fee per month to keep that service going? I'm just curious because I would like to see a service like this. I feel that it would help my Chinese a lot.

[Scoobyqueen]

I have been proactively practising such idiom through audios. Listening to them again and again and then applying them in speech and see how they are received. To me this was a useful exercise and they stuck after a while.

I would not be prepared to pay for such a service though. For me it is just an additional aspect to the language that I do not necessarily need but it is just something that goes down well in a guanxi 饭局 situation. It makes them remember you if you like. So it is more important to master the formal language first if you use Chinese for business like I do is my opinion. Therefore those typical colloquial idioms, though nice to have, are not a priority hence paying for them would not be an option I would be prepared to entertain..

[roddy]

Do a Google for "Chengyu of the day" or "Daily Chinese Idiom" or similar. I'll bet there are dozens of sites doing something similar for free. Now you could no doubt better their offerings - clearer explanations, more convenient delivery, etc - but can you persuade people to pay for it? I was going to say it might work as a cheap app, but it looks like that niche is already pretty heavily occupied.

[tooironic]

What kind of Chinese idioms are you referring to?

If you mean 成语 I would say never mind. They can be interesting to pick up from time to time if they come up in reading or conversation but personally I wouldn't go out of my way to learn large numbers of them by rote. It's just not that practical.

If you mean 俗语, 习惯用语, 流行语, etc., then I would say go right ahead. These can be fun, practical and easier to remember than 成语. Just be sure to keep in mind that some of them can be region-specific, e.g. Beijinghua, Shanghaihua, etc. Chinese expression books like these can be a good read.

[Scoobyqueen]

I took it the OP was referring to 习惯用语。

Actually to me 成语are more useful. I spend more effort learning these.

[tooironic]

Is the OP really referring to 習慣用語? Those are usually not too hard to remember IMO (compared to 成語 anyway), since they tend to be more interesting, vivid and practical.

Some examples off the top of my head: 放某人的鴿子 (literally "to release someone's piegon", meaning "stand someone up"), 帶綠帽子 (literally "to wear a green hat", meaning "to be the victim of an unfaithful lover; to be cuckolded"), 吃軟飯 ("to eat soft food", meaning "to live off a woman"). These all use every day words in an idiomatic way to express an interesting concept.

[skylee]

It is hard for me to understand some learners' view that 成語 is not that important. I think it is very important, and whether or not one (Chinese or foreigner) can understand and use 成語 tells a lot about one's proficiency level. But they are not easy for foreigners as many 成語 are history-related and understanding them requires learning their stories. Sometimes I wonder if anyone has counted the number of 成語 that are related to 史記.

Sorry OP I have no input for your questions.

[tooironic]

Not really. Being able to memorise hundreds of chengyu in fact tells you as much about linguistic proficiency as being able to memorise hundreds of Shakespearean quotes. A knowledge of chengyu is, more than anything else, an indication of education and studiousness than fluency.

[li3wei1]

Except that chengyu appear with great frequency in almost all real-world texts. If you don't know them, you can't fully understand the text.

[tooironic]

But so do other types of idioms (俗語、諺語、流行語、俚語、even 歇後語), not to mention the complexity of Chinese verbs, a high understanding of which is essential to understanding any real-life text. I still don't see why chengyu have to be singled out as the golden beacon of Chinese fluency, especially considering they come up about once in every 1,000 conversations you're likely to have with a Chinese speaker.

But then again the OP hasn't really clarified what they meant by "idioms".

[Angelina]

成语 are not that common in conversations. However, if you write without using them, you will look semi-literate. There is a huge difference between spoken Chinese and written Chinese.

Shakespearean quotes, such as all that glitters is not gold, are used more often than you think.

[li3wei1]

Most Shakespearean quotes can be understood without knowing which play they're from, or even that they're Shakespearean quotes. In fact many people using them may not be aware that they're from Shakespeare. 成语, on the other hand, often (not always) have a meaning that is not clear from the individual characters, and therefore have to be learned just as much as any two-character word whose meaning is not clear from the characters. All those other 语's too; I'm not singling out 成语's. Maybe they don't occur very often in conversation, but there's a word for people who can talk but not read, and it's not 'proficient'.

[Scoobyqueen]

成语 are not that common in conversations

Really? I would have thought that some chengyus are more used in conversation than in writing/or are just as much used in conversations eg

理所当然

无所作为

一无所长

脱颖而出

每况愈下

不足为训

to name a few where I think this might be the case.

With regards to Shakespeare/other authors/stories/proverbs there a also few where you need to know the story to understand in the cases where only half the story/diom is used

"he can't see the wood "

"He is crying wolf"

"Emperor's new clothes"

"a bird in the hand"

Just hearing these phrases for the first time, you would not necessarily be able to work out what they meant.

Then there are a number of sports analogies which, whether we like them or not, are widely used without people knowing why it is called that:

sticky wicket

rain check

knock someone for six

Aren't these examples similar to chengyus? There is a story or a situation behind them. You may know how to use these expressions just because you have heard them so much, but it is sometimes not necessary to know the background to use them correctly. If this is the case, then it is obviously better to learn chengyus through exposure.

[Guest realmayo]

Definitely agree with that. Also:

A knowledge of chengyu is, more than anything else, an indication of education and studiousness than fluency.

Aren't these terms fairly conflated when it come to how attainment of Standard Chinese ability is seen in China? So can we say that using a few chengyu correctly in conversation will make your Chinese ability seem substantially higher to Chinese people than if you never use them? It doesn't matter if you think that's fair or unfair, but if it's true, at some point it makes sense to learn the wretched things!

[Scoobyqueen]

So can we say that using a few chengyu correctly in conversation will make your Chinese ability seem substantially higher

Would someone really pause and think your level was high just because you used a couple of chengyus? Would that not imply natives were paying exact attention to how foreigners were speaking? I think when you speak with a native it is the lack of grammatical errors, choice of words in general (where chengyu are a part), rather than if you happen to throw in a couple of chengyus. Think of someone's English. If they have perfect grammar and a good choice of words yet terrible pronunciation. I think everything has to come together.

[Guest realmayo]

Well, you'd need to ask more native speakers -- Skylee seems to think they are important.

I'm not asking you to compare someone with bad pronunciation & good chengyu with someone who has good pronunciation & no chengyu.

I'm talking about someone with good pronunciation & good chengyu, versus someone with good pronunciation & no chengyu.

Personally I think that Chinese people often feel their language is a big part of their culture, tied up with Chinese history, and using chengyus is a nod towards that history, also perhaps fosters a little bit of a connection between Chinese listener and foreign speaker.

[creamyhorror]

On another forum, someone was complaining about the preponderance of flowery, high-flown chengyus in Chinese writing as compared to the relative lack of an equivalent in English writing. In response I made the observation that chengyus are the equivalent of eloquent turns of phrase and allusions in English; they don't correspond to folk idioms in English (which the complainer was thinking of).

There have been criticisms of what is considered good style in Chinese writing - it's too flowery, too abstract, too imprecise, too filled with literary allusions - but for better or worse, chengyus and other bits of 文言 phrases are an essential part of "proficiency in Chinese" and advanced learners should build up a stock of them. (Unless by "Chinese" you only mean everyday conversations, but that's a basic level of fluency.) As realmayo said, studiousness and proficiency in the language are perceived as (highly) linked, and in the case of chengyus, knowing the language is literally knowing the culture's history.

[Scoobyqueen]

Realmayo - I was thinking in general. How do you judge someone's English when speaking to them? I think one does not pause if someone uses a posh word or a complex contruction. It is more several factors coming together. Sometimes a terrible pronunication (and I guess bad tones) can take away from eloquent use of the language.

[li3wei1]

If you're reading a text and you come across a chengyu you haven't seen before, is there any reason you shouldn't treat it the same as any two-character word you haven't seen before, and add it to your list of things to learn? If you know all the component characters, and the meaning is clear from the meaning of the characters, fine, ignore it, just as you would with a similar 2-character word. But if not, then the fact that you've encountered it means it is, as far as you know, as common as any other new word you encounter. Not knowing it will be as much of an obstacle to understanding as not knowing any other word.

[Guest realmayo]

How do you judge someone's English when speaking to them?

Scoobyqueen: If they speak like English people do, I'm impressed. Given that Chinese people use chengyu then,....

is there any reason you shouldn't treat it the same as any two-character word you haven't seen before

li3wei3: I'm sure you're right. In the past if I was reading and came across a four-character expression I tended to skim past it on the basis that it would probably be rare and less important than "normal" vocab. When I finally forced myself to sit down and go through a list of the most common 200 or so I found lots that I'd never learned. Having learned them, I came across them all the time.

Plus because Chinese has no word boundaries there's often nothing to tell you that a four-character phrase isn't two words of two characters each, neither of which you know. So sometimes if reading quickly you don't realise that you've just read a chengyu that you don't understand, you think it's just two words you don't understand.