MC Ren

Following up on this post from yesterday, here’s another cool little Chinese language factoid.  As I explained, “China” in Chinese is Zhongguo, which means “Middle Country.” Here it is in characters, zhong and guo.

To refer to a person as being Chinese you add the word ren as a suffix.  Ren means “human,” so to refer to a Chinese person you use the word Zhongguoren.  Here it is in characters.

Note that the character for ren looks like a pair of legs walking.  Many Chinese characters look like the object they describe.  The word for “door” looks like a door, the word for “house” looks like a house, and so on.

I also mentioned that America is Meiguo, and that you refer to an American person as Meiguoren.  Here are the characters.

Here’s the cool thing.  The word mei (pronounced like “may") means “beautiful.” So “America” in Chinese, literally translated, means “beautiful country.” And “American” means “beautiful country human.”

Absolutely fascinating.  Seriously, I love learning this stuff.

Very cool.  One of my chinese friends at work told me that the Chinese phrase for San Francisco is “Nay Fong Pay”.

And France is Fa Guo, 法国, Law and Country. We are the country of the law.

But in fact, Chinese take the word that sounds more like the original, as you said it previously. Mei is what sounds more like America, and Fa sounds like France.

Anyway, it’s still cool for them to have chosen 美because they could have chosen 腜 which is pronounced also Mei and means quickening of the fetus.

And thank you for your chinese blog, it is really cool.