As we prepare for Thanksgiving Day celebrations here in the United States, I’ve been thinking about expressions of thanks in Chinese culture and language. The most common way of expressing thanks in Chinese is xie xie (谢谢). But there is another word: gan’en (感恩). I love that en means “grace.”
I conferred with others …about the idea of creating a free website designed to help translators of theological materials have a common resource from which to determine the best translation of theological terms and names. Ten years later, Shenxuecihui.com came online.
Guardian visas for parents of young children studying abroad have opened another education opportunity for Christian families in China.
Last month I had the opportunity to meet Shuguang Wang, the author of a new textbook called Chinese through Scripture. I looked at the book and my first thought was, “I sure could have used this in 1990!”
I’m not the tidiest or most organized person in the world, so the expression luan qi ba zao (乱七八糟) was one I learned and took to heart early. A direct translation is “chaos seven eight in a wretched state.”
Official and popular attitudes towards the written language vacillate between shame (characters are too awkward, slowing China’s development) and pride (characters are China’s unique cultural heritage) …China’s place among the nations rises in tandem with the development of her language, revealing the intimate relationship between linguistic modernization and the modernization of the nation itself.
It may seem like a lot of things about China are not very clear these days. But . .
Language learning must be useful to be effective. What phrases and vocabulary were essential in years gone by, aren’t making it into the language textbooks of today.
The key question in language learning was answering a simple question: How do I maximize contact time with the language?
Mandarin students spend years learning the basics of daily language and only scratch the surface when it comes to spiritual and theological vocabulary. Here's a resource to help.
In this interview, Rev. Man, the Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Chinese Church in Villa Park, Illinois, tells of the growth of the church, how Chinese immigration has affected it, and the challenges it has faced.
The pitfalls of semantics in cross-linguistic communication.