old mega 
bendan
joined 2 years ago
Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #27
无产阶级
(wú chǎn jiē jí)
Literally: “[un-] property class”
Figuratively: “proletariat”
产 is sneaky as it usually means “production”, but that’s obviously not the case in this context.
阶级 is in turn composed of “stairs” and “rank”, respectively.
help i misspelled Brendan oh man i am not good with computer pls to help
i can’t believe duolingo would do this to me 
My guess, pandas are also named this way, 熊猫 xióngmāo “bear cat”, but that could be because it’s a rare animal people weren’t talking much about, or that it historically was found in or beyond the southern regions that spoke different dialects or languages. But owls actually exist literally everywhere except the ice caps 🤷
Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #23
猫头鹰
(māo tóu yīng)
Literally: “cat head hawk”
Figuratively: “owl”
We love our owls don’t we folks? 
we have to close the doge gap
Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #29
前 + 后
(qián + hòu)
The pair “front” + “back”. While of course both interesting in many ways, I want to focus on their time meaning. In modern English, we usually think of the future as in front of us and the past as behind us, but it’s the opposite in Chinese, and get this, in historic English as well! We can see traces of this in the words “before” and “after”!
@ProletarianDictator@hexbear.net