Learner-friendly language in some ways: 04 (Numbers: Chinese vs English)

"Numbers are the most basic in one's life, being used all the time, yet the most difficult to master in a foreign language."  This was what a visiting scholar from mainland China said to me in the 1980s.

    I'm only using a small handful of examples, for illustrating my point, otherwise it'll be too long a blog.

1. one / 一 (yī)
2. two / 二 (èr)
3. three / 三 (sān)
4. four / 四 (sì)
5. five / 五 (wǔ)
6. six / 六 (liù)
7. seven / 七 (qī)
8. eight / 八 (bā)
9. nine / 九 (jiǔ)
10. ten / 十 (shí)
11. eleven / 十一 (shí yī / "ten one")
12. twelve / 十二 (shí èr / "ten two")
13. thirteen / 十三 (shí sān / "ten three")
14. fourteen / 十四 (shí sì / "ten four")
15. fifteen / 十五 (shí wǔ / "ten five')
16. sixteen / 十六 (shí liù / "ten six")
17. seventeen / 十七 (shí qī / "ten seven")
18. eighteen / 十八 (shí bā / "ten eight")
19. nineteen / 十九 (shí jiǔ / "ten nine")
20. twenty / 二十 (èr shí / "two ten")
21. thirty / 三十 (sān shí / "three ten")
22. forty / 四十 (sì shí / "four ten")
23. fifty / 五十 (wǔ shí / "five ten")
24. sixty / 六十 (liù shí / "six ten")
25. seventy / 七十 (qī shí / "seven ten")
26. eighty / 八十 (bā shí / "eight ten")
27. ninety / 九十 (jiǔ shí / "nine ten")

Inconsistencies in the English numbers (not in any order of importance), 

1. 11 (eleven) and 12 (twelve) are not identifiable as being related (to each other, nor to 13–19 which all have the common suffix "teen"); 13 to 19 are identifiable as being related to each other, with the suffix "teen" applied to all of them
2. 13 does not keep its base "three" (coming out as thirteen, not threeteen); 14 does (fourteen), but not 15 (fifteen, instead of fiveteen), yet 16, 17 and 19 do (sixteen, seventeen, nineteen), with 18 sort of conforming, yet not (losing a "t", i.e., not "eightteen") 
3. 20–90 are consistent in all having suffix "ty", but 20, 30, 40, 50 have not kept their base (twoty, threety, fourty, fivety), yet 60 (sixty), 70 (seventy), 80 (eighty) and 90 (ninety) have (except for 80, losing one "t", becoming "eighty", not "eightty")

    As you can see, English numbers are quite a higgledy-piggledy bunch, making life hard for the learner.

    The Chinese language is consistent, just going by the positioning of the single digits.  That's it.  No inconsistency as in English, with "twelve instead of twoteen for 12, thirteen instead of threeteen for 13, yet fourteen for 14, but then fifteen instead of fiveteen for 15, etc".  The English set requires the learner to memorise the individual items, with no logic / pattern for predicting how they might/should be, and for when s/he forgets later and needs to rebuild.

    The Chinese way might be very logical and user-friendly to me, yet a student of mine, who'd started learning Chinese 30+ years ago, and is still learning it (not continuously all these decades, though), said she has difficulty processing 十二 shí èr / "ten two" for 12, and 二十 èr shí / "two ten" for 20 -- both for passive decoding (when hearing the two sounds) and for active production (of the two sounds in speech).

    Don't know if it's age (she's in her 80s), or if she's always had trouble on this front.  Most people have blind spots with various things in life, not just language learning, e.g., left vs right (a very common weakness from what I've seen).  (Will have to ask her.)

    I'm not complaining about English numbers (being all over the place) on my own behalf, because during my school days (and in my culture), one mostly just memorised (still does, maybe?) without demurring.  Good teachers would devise mnemonics for the student, like my geography teacher breaking up Mississippi into four separate sounds, "miss is sip pi", to help us get all the letters accounted for, and chemistry teacher Sister Dominic with "ka na cal mag al zinc fe con ni stan plumb" for the periodic table of chemical elements -- both of which I remember to this day, some six decades on.

    I'm sure there's some historical / linguistic explanation for numbers in English being the way they are presented (e.g., that it's the way it's done in Latin or Greek or something), but this blog is only a very superficial (and a bit fun / tongue-in-cheek) dip into how the Chinese language is not as difficult for the learner as people think -- that there are some learner-friendly aspects too.  So, I won't be delving into the roots for why/how numbers in English have turned out the way they have. 

Gratitude-poor Griper (London)

One of the people attending the church dinners on Wednesdays that I’ve been going to (not every week) is a man with hair down below his shoulders.  Name of Vladimir.  (Yes, happy to name and shame him.)

    The dinners are mainly for the homeless and those on low income, but all are welcome -- no one is asked questions about their financial situation, since it's a church and a charity.  After the meal, the homeless people sleep there for the night and have breakfast there the next day.

    The first time I met the vlady selfish man was in the queue outside, complaining that it was past 6pm and they hadn’t opened the doors yet.  I said maybe they were short staffed, adding that I was just grateful for the free food that was all cooked and served by volunteers who gave their time and effort unstintingly.  He didn't take the hint and carried on moaning, saying he was in a hurry.  What a selfish man.  It was all about himself.  I was tempted to say, "Well, then go and cook your own dinner.  See how much time you'll save."

    It wasn’t as if the weather was wet and horrible.  Even if it had been, I would’ve put up with it.  After all, we were getting a free meal without having to do anything but turn up.

    A couple of weeks ago, the ladies-only table was full, so I had to go to the one next to it, and sat down beside someone with long hair whose face I couldn’t see until it was too late.  I’d actually thought it was a woman.

    I should’ve got up and left the table when he looked up from his phone and I saw that it was him.

    He started expressing loudly his indignation about the other tables getting their food already but not ours.  No one at the table supported him.

    (All the work has to be done by the volunteers in charge of each table, right down to fetching salt and pepper.  That’s the rule there.)

    I said, “I’m just grateful that I’m getting free food, with all the work done for me,” hoping he’d take the hint and stop moaning.

    Not only didn't he take the hint, he actually started to turn his guns on the volunteers themselves, “What are they doing?  They’re not doing any work!!”  -- “not doing any work” like as if he was paying for it.  What a churlish chap.

    He said he had no time to wait.  I was tempted to ask him to go and make his meal himself:  spend money and time buying the ingredients, prepping it, cooking it (and paying for the electricity).  See how he’d like to be having to do all the work himself, and pay for it too.

    Being a coward who was brought up not to have a row in public (behaving like a fishwife) and therefore lacking rowing skills, I didn’t challenge him.  (I don’t even have rows in private.)

    Next, he accosted a female volunteer walking past, asking about his dinner.

    I was so disgusted by him I decided to skip the meal.

    I saw a woman (called Yesu, from Eritrea, who’d sat at the ladies-only table before) hovering outside, having just arrived but not admitted because they were full.  So I told the volunteers at the door that she could have my seat, and left.

    Yesu speaks very little English, so she wouldn't have understood most of the vlady whinger's griping, although it doesn't require any linguistic ability at all to feel the aggressive vibes from the vlady selfish man.

(London, 2026)

PS:  Some of you might've noticed the wordplay employed in this blog.  A deliberate decision, to defuse the stress a bit -- a bit of my Distraction Therapy.  Apart from naming and shaming him, of course, which gives me great pleasure (letting the world know about him).

Cultural usage of language: 骂 mà / scold

The cultural usage of 骂 mà makes it tricky to translate adequately into languages that don't behave the same way.

    It is usually for bad or unacceptable behaviour or a misdeed.

    Mostly for telling off / disciplining those below (in the hierarchy: generation-wise, age-wise, position-wise), but not always. It can be a wife telling the husband off for doing something she doesn't approve of, like coming home drunk, or not helping her out with the chores.

    I see in more than one mainland Chinese drama series (on YouTube) that gate keepers often tell people off for returning after the gates are shut, or for ringing up the porter's lodge for someone after hours (without first finding out why -- it might've been an emergency). Late = stupid behaviour, for not sticking to the rules. Default action to take: 骂 mà.

    When I asked, in Mandarin, a bus driver in 1998, in the small bus terminus by the 嘉義 Chiayi / Jiāyì (S. Taiwan) train station, if his bus was going to 後湖里 (Hòuhú-lǐ, an area in the suburbs), his response was (in Mandarin), "Can't you see it says on the front that it's going to 水上 Shuǐshàng?!!?". To him, it should've been obvious to me (looking like one of them, and speaking fluent Mandarin) that since the destination on the front of his bus said 水上, it was not going to 後湖里.  I was, therefore, being stupid by asking about something so obvious, and deserved to be told off.  Default action to take: 骂 mà.

    An English-born student of mine who'd worked in China for years said a year or so ago that yes, Chinese people do indeed 骂 mà people a lot.

    As you can see, 骂 mà happens a lot. It was one of the reasons I decided not to accept one of the two translation jobs I was offered at two different universities in Fujian province in S.E.China. I'd gone there during the Easter break, job seeking in anticipation of being retrenched in London in the summer. A question put to the woman (mid-20s / early 30s?) at the train station ticket window earned me a ticking off, because like the bus driver in Chiayi, she thought it was a stupid question, as the answer was obvious. A brief enquiry presented to a city bus driver another day also netted me a ticking off. I decided in the end that I couldn't face so much grumpiness on a regular basis over an entire year.

    Ah, an antidote story to prove that it wasn't me being a shrinking violet. A woman from mainland China was doing her Masters degree in Nottingham (east Midlands). She told me how touched she'd been when, one day, she asked a bus driver if his bus was the right one for place X.

    Her account (my words from how I remember it): "The bus driver told me no -- to get to place X, I was to catch bus Y. He then proceeded to give me directions for where to catch bus Y: down the street this way, turn left at the junction 10 yards on, and there's the bus stop for bus Y."

    She added, "Not only was he so patient and kind, which wouldn't happen in China, but no one in the queue building up behind me throughout this conversation complained -- they just patiently waited until I had my needs attended to. This wouldn't have happened in China. In the first place, the driver would just tell you his bus is not the right one, and expect you to go away, leaving you to your own devices. The people behind would also start to grumble loudly that you're holding them up."

    The most common translation for 骂 mà is "to scold". I think it's used a lot in Singlish (Singapore English, which is a form of English based on Chinese in syntax, vocab and usage of language).

(From googling) to scold:  Quote To speak to someone angrily or harshly because you disapprove of their behavior. It typically involves reprimanding or chiding someone (often an adult scolding a child) for making a mistake or doing something wrong. Unquote

    British English doesn't use "scold" much. More "to tell sb off / to get told off / to get a telling off / to tick sb off / to get ticked off / to get a ticking off". (sb = somebody)

(From googling)

Quote

In British English, "scold" is understood but rarely used in everyday speech. It usually sounds formal, old-fashioned, or is strictly used when an adult is correcting a young child or an animal.

For typical, everyday situations, native speakers in the UK prefer to use different, more localized terms depending on the context:

• Telling off: The most common, everyday term for reprimanding someone (e.g., "The teacher told me off for being late.").
• Giving a bollocking / Rollicking: Highly common and colloquial British slang for a very harsh or angry telling-off.
• Giving a talking-to: A milder, more diplomatic way of saying you had a serious conversation with someone about their bad behaviour.
• Reprimanding / Admonishing: The preferred formal terms used in professional workplaces or written contexts.

Unquote

No such thing as a free lunch (China)

In the mainland Chinese drama series (set in the China of 1977–92) that I was watching last year, the daughter of one of the neighbours in the alley community decides to go and pay a Chinese New Year visit to the high school teacher a few doors away.

    She's looking in the cupboard for something to take with her (green tea most likely). Her father says, "There's no need to take a gift." She says, "I/We might need his help later on when my younger brother goes to high school."

    I'm now watching a different series, aired 2022, probably set around that time: people use mobile phones; a lot of them drive; two people drink red wine practically all the time when at home; they eat Western food in swish restaurants (beef steak, with knife and fork).

    A cancer patient in hospital, in his 70s and who has a big company, hears about a boy's accident on a construction site, incurring major injuries. He wants to pay for the boy's treatment and hospital stay, saying, “积点德，看我能不能多活几年” (English subs: accumulate some virtues for myself, maybe I can live for a few more years)

(China, 1977–92 / 2022)

* 德 dé is another problematic word, usually translated as "virtue" which doesn't carry the same cultural value in English as it does in Chinese. (I don't know other languages well enough to know.)

Linguistic False Friends: 03 (English / Chinese: Wordplay)

I've been teaching English conversation to a group of Hong Kong incomers at a community centre in north London, as a volunteer.

    For the lessons, I try and incorporate things British:  British English [vs American English, which a lot of people around the world are familiar with, having watched American films and videos];  British food;  British sense of humour;  etc.).

    One British trait, shared by the Chinese, that I've brought up in class is the love of wordplay, particularly in tabloid newspapers and adverts.

    When I first asked the students what "wordplay" meant, a number of them immediately said "crossword puzzle".  (That was in November last year when I took over the class -- their regular volunteer teacher had found paid work.)

    This is probably because the Chinese verb "玩(儿) wán(er) / to play" is used a lot in everyday life.  (The "儿 ér" is the tongue-curling sound that northern speakers add to the end of lots of sounds, both verbs and nouns -- not used by southern speakers.)

    It is another cultural-usage word that poses translation problems, which I shall cover in greater detail in a blog of its own.  For now, it's simpler just to say that to the Chinese-speaking brain, "wordplay" seems to = "word game" (from the "玩 wán / play" link), and therefore ends up being "crossword puzzle".

    The group has just started a new term, with fresh members.  For revision and for the newcomers to catch up on what they'd missed, I asked what "wordplay" meant.  One of the new students said: "Crossword puzzle".

    I shall have to start using "a play on words" from now on.  (It'll be interesting to see if they still think it's "crossword puzzle"...)

* (From googling)  Quote Word play is a broad literary technique used to manipulate sounds and meanings (like puns or riddles). A crossword puzzle is a structured, grid-based word game. The key distinction is that word play is a creative device, while a crossword is a formalized puzzle solved by deducing exact answers to fit an intersecting grid. Unquote

* (From googling)  Quote In the UK, "Hong Kong incomers" refers to individuals and families who have migrated from Hong Kong, typically arriving via the British National (Overseas) [BN(O)] humanitarian visa route. Over 180,000 Hong Kongers have used this pathway to relocate to the UK, settling into communities across the country. Unquote

Linguistic False Friends: 02 (Teochew / Cantonese: Stingy)

This is another one that has already been posted as a blog a while ago:

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2022/03/linguistic-reefs-singapore.html 

Linguistic False Friends: 01 (Indonesian / English: Air)

I've just discovered that this has already been written up a long time ago (September 2025), before I'd thought of doing a series:

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/09/linguistic-false-friend-singapore.html.