Hard As Hell

Here’s another example of how important the tones are in Chinese.  Suppose you’re a tourist here for the Olympics and you want to go to Tiananmen Square to see the sights.  If you get in a taxi and say “Tiananmen” the way that we say it in the west he won’t have a clue what you said.  Consider this page, where I searched for the individual words tian, an, and men.  The translation, if I remember correctly, is something like “Doorway to Heavenly Peace.” However, look at how many different meanings are represented by tian alone.

1.  sky, heaven; god, celestial
2.  field, arable land, cultivated
3.  fill in, fill up; make good
4.  append, add to; increase
5.  quiet, calm, tranquil, peaceful
6.  prosperous; good; protruding
7.  heaven; sky
8.  turbulent
9.  a place in Xinjiang province
10.  to end; to exterminate
11.  till land, cultivate; hunt
12.  to manipulate; a pricker for a lamp-wick
13.  sweet, sweetness
14.  cave; hole
15.  fill in, fill up; make good

You see my point.  These are all possible definitions to the word tian, and they’re all dependent upon two things, context and pronunciation.  This shit ain’t easy.

Ever look at the different meanings for “dude”? That totally depends on context and tone.

How ironic that Tienanmen square could be partly translated as “to end, to exterminate”

Interesting that the word can mean both “quiet, calm, tranquil, peaceful” and “turbulent.”