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"When Western products are transliterated into Chinese, the results can range from poetic to the metaphysical." Includes 12 Chinese translations of English brand names. (e.g. Nike is "Nai Ke," or "enduring and persevering.")

"More than many nations, China is a place where names are imbued with deep significance. Western companies looking to bring their products to China face a problem not unlike that of Chinese parents naming a baby boy... And so the art of picking a brand name that resonates with Chinese consumers is no longer an art. It has become a sort of science, with consultants, computer programs and linguistic analyses to ensure that what tickles a Mandarin ear does not grate on a Cantonese one. ... Precisely why some Chinese words are so freighted with emotion is anyone's guess. But Denise Sabet, the vice general manager at Labbrand, suggests the reasons include cultural differences and the Chinese reliance on characters for words, rather than a phonetic alphabet. "

Award-winning, Chinese contemporary artist, Xu Bing, has created _Book From the Ground_, a text that speakers of any language can "read." His interest in pictorial storytelling was heightened by a bubblegum wrapper he happened upon-a series of three images connected by two arrows that instructed the chewer to put the gum back into the wrapper after chewing and throw it in the trash. This became Xu's inspiration for _Book from the Ground_. Xu's book reflects cultural literacy and modern tools and technologies, rather than traditional literacy. The author predicts that the younger generation is likely to find his icon language easier to "read" because they've been exposed to these images for as long as they can remember on the Internet. "I think it can be seen two ways," says Robert Harrist, a professor of Chinese art history at Columbia University who has taught a semester-length course on Xu's work. "It's great that everybody can communicate now and stay in touch constantly through one medium or another, a kind of shared, plugged-in visual world." But at the same time, with the "flattening and evening out in communication so much is lost," especially when it comes to tense or nuance. "The real surprising thing here and the challenge and the thing I love about it is he makes you ask yourself: What is writing?" adds Harrist, who describes Xu as "the greatest living Chinese artist, simple as that.... Everything he does is profoundly thoughtful."

In order to evade government censors blocking free expression, Chinese social media posters utilize homophonic (same sound) and logographic (character) resemblances in order to voice controversial/politically-charged content.

This Wikipedia article details several categorical contexts, e.g. Internet posts, text messages, Chinese New Year, in which Chinese homophonic punning is used.

Chinese honorifics (尊稱zūnchēng) and honorific language (敬辭jìngcí，謙辭qiāncí，婉辭wǎncí，客套語kètàoyǔ，雅語yáyǔ), are words, word constructs, and expressions in the Chinese language that convey self-deprecation, social respect, politeness, or deference

This is a thesis paper exploring the various theories regarding the evolution of Chinese characters. It is highly unlikely that the Chinese took inspiration from the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, which may have formed at around the same period in time. The author makes the claim that while it is true that Chinese characters may have started off as drawings or pictographs, in the most ancient form of the script, the characters are far from any recognizable images of items. It is very likely that the Chinese script went through a similar evolution process as to the Mesopotamian cuneiform, but no such archeological evidence for this theory has been found.

This article describes how learning Chinese can help to learn Japanese and vice versa, as well as how knowing both makes it easier to be a good educated guesser due to the shared characters.

Top universities in China are beginning to drop the English requirement test. This shows that English in losing its dominance internationally and Chinese may indeed be the language of the future.

An interesting (if crass read) about how Chinese Internet users have circumvented governmental censorship via homophonic, sometimes cross-lingual puns, often taking the form of Internet memes, in order to talk about forbidden topics, use taboo words, or criticize the government.

With demand for Chinese literature growing in the English speaking world, translators have rarely been so in demand. One of the most acclaimed translators from Chinese to English is Julia Lovell, who has translated Chinese authors including Lu Xun, Han Shaogong and Zhu Wen for Western audiences.

An interesting article about the difference in language between Western languages and Chinese. While Western languages differentiate between sheep and goats and rams, Chinese do not distinguish this within their language. The article discusses how this has caused interest ad debate in what to call this Lunar Year.

At the heart of the current friction between Hong Kong and mainland China isn't just Hong Kong's autonomy and political freedoms. It's the territory's language. Though they share many of the same Chinese characters, Mandarin and Cantonese use them in such divergent ways-in terms of both grammar and vocabulary-that they constitute two different writing systems. China's government has tried to insist that Cantonese isn't really a language, and to suppress its use. But as with Bengali in the independence movement for Bangladesh, and the Soweto uprising against the imposition of Afrikaans in apartheid South African schools, Cantonese is beginning to take on a central role in Hong Kong's resistance to the authority of mainland China.

For more on the historical divide between Mandarin and Cantonese language speakers, see this article: http://www.chinese-lessons.com/cantonese/difficulty.htm

On Thursday nights near the Brooklyn, N.Y., waterfront, an old firehouse turns into a schoolhouse, where the drills are in Chinese. About a dozen firefighters, EMTs and paramedics are taking the first Mandarin classes, funded by the New York City Fire Department Foundation. New York City boasts the largest Chinese population of any city outside of China, therefore "first responders" want to communicate with more of the New Yorkers they serve. The founder of the language program also states that "It's also to show the communities that we embrace them as citizens of this city, that we are in acceptance of their culture and the transition that they're going through," he says.

Taiwanese-American writer Esme Wang reflects on the untranslated use of other languages in literature which is otherwise written in English. By making the linguistic choice to use untranslated Chinese in a novel geared for an English-reading audience, she hopes her readers will be able to relate to characters, yet also experience the nuances and complexities of inhabiting a space where difficulty in communication is its own kind of trauma.

It's traditional during Chinese New Year to offer good wishes: positive language sets up the new year for happiness. This page provides some classic 4 word idioms （成語）to ensure good luck.

Chinese love proverbs and four character idiomatic expressions, which are also known as "chengyu" 【成語】。Idioms can reveal a lot about a culture. Here's a fun one: 行尸走肉 xíng shī zǒu ròu. Literally, this means "walking corpse and running flesh"--said of someone who's zombie-like due to workaholism.

This article is about a chinese man who started learning english at the age of 93 despite his age. He says that its never too late and currently he can semi speak the language. I think this article was unique because we have been talking about how one needs to learn a language when they are young but this man is showing that it is never too late to do it!

This article talks about linguistic diversity in China and the many different dialects that exist in China. Before the coronavirus, China promoted Putonghua to eradicate poverty and improve the labor force. This is because, in China, not everyone speaks the standard variety of Chinese Mandarin and have to learn this standard version. However, the coronavirus has changed this fact and China started developing language resources to help those that don't speak standard Chinese Mandarin. Especially, because the outbreak was especially bad in Hubei, where residents speak Hubei Mandarin. Now, it's especially important for healthcare workers that don't live in Hubei but were sent down to help, to understand healthcare workers to be able to converse in Hubei Mandarin. It also touches on English being the global medium for scholarly articles, instead of any other language, such as Mandarin. Read this article to learn more about how the coronavirus is affecting the different dialects in China and how English is regarded in Chinese scholarly articles.