Quotes & Sayings About Mandarin

This story is about Howard Beale, who was the news anchorman on UBS TV. In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969, however, his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, began to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks. — Paddy Chayefsky

We did not, of course, speak Mandarin, but the question "What the hell do you think you're doing?" has a familiar ring in any language. The mere idea of even attempting to account for ourselves defeated us. We settled instead for explaining, by means of elaborate mime and sign language, that we were barking mad. This worked. He accepted it, but then hung around in the background to watch us anyway. — Douglas Adams

Wrapping Christmas presents is tough. Even peeling a Mandarin orange is tough. I have to get my kids to help me. — Brendan Morrison

Polish has developed unimpeded; someone put their foot out and tripped English. The human grammar is a fecund weed, like grass. Languages like English, Persian, and Mandarin Chinese are mowed lawns, indicative of an interruption in natural proliferation. — John McWhorter

Say something in Mandarin," said Tessa, with a smile.
Jem said something that sounded like a lot of breathy vowels and
consonants run together, his voice rising and falling melodically: "Ni
hen piao liang."
"What did you say?" Tessa was curious.
"I said your hair is coming undone - here," he said, and reached out
and tucked an escaping curl back behind her ear. Tessa felt the blood
spill hot up into her face, and was glad for the dimness of the
carriage. "You have to be careful with it," he said, taking his hand
back, slowly, his fingers lingering against her cheek. — Cassandra Clare

I majored in Chinese Studies. I'm probably the only director of chicken Indian zombie movies who can speak pretty good Mandarin. — Lloyd Kaufman

There are a lot of colloquialisms in the Cantonese language that can never be represented aptly in Mandarin. — Jia Zhangke

While this experience may sound great, it was terrifying for me as a parent. What if I'm wrong? What if busy and exhausted is what it takes? What if she doesn't get to go to the college of her choice because she doesn't play the violin and speak Mandarin and French and she doesn't play six sports? What — Brene Brown

Mr. Wang had found my interest in fen, the Mandarin word for excrement, peculiar. Nonetheless, he tried to be helpful. He would point out when he spotted a truck full of fen looming behind, though its odor preceded it by far. He would alert me when he saw a tiny figure in a roadside field bearing a tank and hose, spraying--by the smell of it--the contents of his toilets on his cabbages. This practice would horrify any public health professional, given the disease-load of feces, but it's what happens to 90 percent of China's excrement, and has been done forever. There are reasons not to eat salads in China, and why the sizzling woks are so sizzling. — Rose George

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese. — Mira Sorvino

On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. "Goddamnit," I whispered. "I knew I forgot something. — David Sedaris

Culture is a vulture but there's also vulture culture and cultured vultures and cultured yougurt (cherry, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, vanilla, plain, cherry vanilla, pineapple orage, cranberry, orange, mandarin orange, coffee, apricot, raspberry, blueberry, boysenberry, prune). And speaking of vulture culture there's counter-culture and under-the-counter culture, too. But whether you call it kulchur with a k and a ch and without the e it's still the same thing and you can't disguise it with pretty frills and a gallon of dog sweat. It still has two syllables and TWO-SYLLABLE WORDS SUCK so you can just forgetit, man. It's no fun at all and even fun wouldn't be fun if it was called funjure or funion or funching. But somehow fucking is still loads of fun even though there's that extra 3-letter cluster of vowels and consonants. Proof positive that there are exceptions everywhere you look. But don't look too hard, you might get eyestrain. — Richard Meltzer

It's incredible, really, the amount of pain cricketers are prepared to put themselves through. Say you're an opening batsman who gets out for a duck in the first over on day one. What compels you to hang around for the rest of the day, let alone turn up the following Saturday for day two? Yet you do, lest 10 blokes who you don't even like think slightly less of you. You retain a sense of loyalty to the club, to your teammates, even though those same teammates will not hesitate to rate your girlfriend a 'six out of 10' in front of your face. During the time I've spent watching my teammates bat after getting out cheaply, I could have learned a language by now. I could be speaking Mandarin. Instead, all I've got to show for it is a career average of 13.6 and a 10 percent discount at our local pub. — Sam Perry

I was born in Scotland and have lived there all my life. I speak conversational Cantonese with my dad when I'm at home, and very basic Mandarin. — Katie Leung

My parents are European immigrants. And I think as Europeans there are so many languages in close proximity that it's part of the culture to try to learn at least one other language. So my parents really encourage it in the house. Chinese would be really great to learn - like Mandarin or Cantonese. Portuguese would be incredible. — Stana Katic

She spoke seven languages, including Mandarin and Polish, and was finishing up her master's in Intercultural Misunderstanding, which just has to be Europe's next growth industry. — Michael Lewis

Out here we speak Malspeak, a mangle of English and old languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian. Dialects from a time when the land was defined by many borders. Now there's only one that matters. And I am on the wrong side of it. — Georgia Clark

Cantonese, which has up to nine tones as opposed to the five in Mandarin, is much more versatile and one of the richest dialects in Chinese. — David Tang

The most sensible skill that I can give to somebody born in 2003 is a perfect command of Mandarin. — Jim Rogers

I want do a Mandarin language movie. It'll probably be the next movie I do after the one I do next. — Quentin Tarantino

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep. — Murasaki Shikibu

I went back to China and did a movie in Mandarin, and I don't speak Mandarin, so I learned it phonetically. Now, when I'm on set and somebody gives me English lines, I'm like, "Are you kidding? What's happening? This is amazing!" — Maggie Q

floral olive oil sorbet with mandarin orange swirls. — Elizabeth A. Reeves

Bu keyi, Cannot. It was one of the first Mandarin phrases I learned, and it is the phrase of choice for all things forbidden, out of bounds, not possible, or otherwise not allowed. Its meaning seems to vacillate with circumstances: sometimes bu keyi means no, sometimes it suggests maybe, and sometimes it even hints at yes. — Deborah Fallows

Helen Tse tells a gripping tale of struggle, laughter, love and food that marks Sweet Mandarin as a must read book. It is not only an immigrant account of life but also a universal touching story of survival that will move your soul as well. — Ken Hom

Over the past 30 years, approximately 300 million people have moved into China's middle class. And according to the OECD Development Centre, the forecast is for another 200 million people to move into the middle class by 2026. This means the Asia Pacific region, which in 2009 represented 18% of the world's middle class, will reach 66 percent by 2030. Let's repeat that. Over the next 15 years, Asia will go from 20 percent to 66 percent of the world's middle class. At the same time, the developed markets of North America and Europe, which held a combined 54 percent of the global middle class in 2009, are forecast to drop to only 21 percent by 2030. Basically, follow the money. Asia's middle class consumers are the future. Learn Mandarin. — Jeffrey Towson

One Hyde Park squatted next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel like a stack of office furniture, and with all the elegance and charm of the inside of a photocopier. Albeit a brand new photocopier that doubled as a fax and document scanner. — Ben Aaronovitch

I needed an adult female wearing a tight sleeveless cheongsam mini-dress to help me learn Chinese. All my senses would have to focus; otherwise I would end up knowing nothing. Tracing each Chinese character upon the small of her back with my index finger was only proper way to begin a lesson. — Matt Muller

I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche. — Damon Albarn

There were dumplings on the train, sold by grim men and women with deep lines cut into their faces by years and worry and hunger and misery. This was the provinces, the outer territories, the mysterious China that had sent millions of girls and boys to Canton to earn their fortunes in the Pearl River Delta. Matthew knew all their strange accents, he spoke their strange Mandarin language, but he was Cantonese, and these were not his people.
Those were not his dumplings. — Cory Doctorow

I just started taking Mandarin classes. I love the idea of globalization: of being able to work in different countries. — Sandrine Holt

Mandarin is gonna be the language in 15 to 20 years. — Stephon Marbury

I figured Katie was likely swimming in blood. Ick. I looked at the moon and judged that the bloodletting took over two hours before Sabina called a halt by saying words I didn't understand, in French, or Latin, or Mandarin for all I knew. — Faith Hunter

Once I became interested in China, I flew to Beijing in 1996 to spend half a year studying Mandarin. The city stunned me. — Evan Osnos

In November 2014 Hillary Clinton made some revealing comments about illegal immigrants while receiving a "History Maker" award from the New York Historical Society at the city's Mandarin Oriental Hotel. President Obama had just issued an executive order curbing the ability of law enforcement officials to deport illegal immigrants. Obama's action circumvented the law, provoking a firestorm of criticism from many Republicans. — Dinesh D'Souza

I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style. — Vera Wang

Thankfully you tune the strings of your moldering lyre to a moderated, to a passably joyful, nay, to an even delighted psalm of thanksgiving and with it bore your quiet, flabby and slightly stupefied half-and-half god of contentment; and in the thick warm air of a contented boredom and very welcome painlessness the nodding mandarin of a half-and-half god and the nodding middle-aged gentleman who sings his muffled psalm look as like each other as two peas. — Hermann Hesse

I'm old enough to remember the days when you spoke to one person from one outlet and that was the conversation. But now what happens is you speak to people and what you say gets translated into Portuguese, then into Mandarin, through a German prism and then back into English and bears little to no resemblance between - to the exchange or - that you had initially with the journalist or to what you originally said. — Cate Blanchett

Beneath the light, the river and hills are beautiful, The spring breeze bears the fragrance of flowers and grass. The mud has thawed, and swallows fly around. On the warm sand, mandarin ducks are sleeping. — Du Fu

Yearns creep upon the mandarin glow dipping into the horizon, bound to incarnate all the sleepy heads awakening around the globe. — C.C. Wyatt

Because, ten-year-olds of the world, you shouldn't believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won't make a bit of difference until after puberty. It's Newton's lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid. Won't it, Sebastian? Oh, yes, it will, my little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, high-top-wearing friend. God bless you, wherever you are. — Sloane Crosley

A person's native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training. — Ken Robinson

French, for example, is declining as an international language, but Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic are all languages of the future. Ethnic minority groups in the UK may well prove to be a major asset in this effort. — David Graddol

Speaking Mandarin with a Russian accent is extremely difficult. Of all the languages I have learned, Mandarin took me the longest, and having to replicate the suitable tones while simultaneously presenting myself as a rather bumbling Soviet scholar was an exercise that caused me considerable distress. In — Claire North

I once heard you can't truly hate a person until you've cared about them. Until you've loved them -Mandarin — Kirsten Hubbard

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today. — Joshua Foer

At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude - a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery. — Ernest Bramah

The next movie will be in Mandarin. I enjoyed shooting all the Japanese stuff in Kill Bill so much that this whole film will be entirely in Mandarin. — Quentin Tarantino

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. — Yeng Pway Ngon

I speak Mandarin and can read and write a little. I took a few classes at Harvard to get better in my reading and writing skills. — Jeremy Lin

All you had to say was, 'I am a writer,' and you became one. You didn't even have to write anything. You could just sit in a coffee shop with a notebook and stare into space, with a slightly bemused look on your face, judging the weight of the world with a jaundiced eye. As you can see, you can be completely full of shit and still be a writer ... I also thought it was going to be a great way to meet girls, but it wasn't
probably because as I was staring into space, I no doubt looked mildly retarded. You see, I wanted to write plays, which in retrospect is a lot harder than learning Mandarin, I think. How I ended up in this delusional state shall be saved for another time. — Lewis Black

Back in the car she said, "I think I die this year, maybe this month." "I die first," Jiichan replied. "Japanese women live to nineties." "I die first! You eat many mandarin orange as child. They make you live longer. Vitamin C." "You drink more green tea. You live longer. — Cynthia Kadohata

We were to be like long vines with entwined roots, like trees that stand a thousand years, like a pair of mandarin ducks mated for life — Lisa See

In London, I really like going to the Mandarin Oriental. They can even do my feet without tickling me. — Lara Stone

A golf ball is white, dimpled like a bishop's knees, and is the size of small mandarin oranges or those huge pills which vets blow down the throats of constipated cart-horses. — Frank Muir

On the kitchen table a MakerBot was producing a small plastic part, watched intently by a young woman who was talking on her phone in a mix of English and Mandarin. — Neal Stephenson

Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate. — Katherine Paterson

One suit for the White Devil!" in Mandarin, — Christopher Moore

We would never ask a hearing student to comprehend a lecture in Mandarin if he or she did not have proficiency in the language. Nevertheless, we ask this feat of deaf children everyday. — Christine Monikowski

A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. 'I shall be yours,' she told him, 'when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window.' But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away. — Roland Barthes

I've just had a wonderful time doing Chinese music, and it's been so rewarding for me. I feel like there's so much potential in mandarin music, and there's so much, you know, ground left to be broken. — Wang Leehom

Listen to Your Lover (Or Babe, Sweetie Cakes, Hot Rod, Honey, Dancing Queen, Dairy Queen, etc.)
If she tells you she likes it when you bite her neck - do it! It doesn't matter where she learned that she likes it or why she does, just be thankful you got the tip. Girls don't always express what they want, so when she does say it, you really want to make sure you are paying attention. Also, learn her language (unless it is Mandarin, because that shit is impossible). If you start pulling her hair and she starts moaning, that's her way of saying, "Ohmygod, please do this more, and by more I mean all the time." And the more you please her, the more she'll want to do it with you. It's a win-win! — Olivia Munn

You have hundreds of artists you're dealing with across the world and the scale of this movie [Kung Fu Panda] was insane - we had a parallel pipeline going on where you had two versions recording Mandarin voice actors, getting it to be funny for Mandarin audiences going beyond a straight translation, and then animating it and lighting it, it's a lot of work. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

People are always saying these things about how there's no need to read literature anymore-that it won't help the world. Everyone should apparently learn to speak Mandarin, and learn how to write code for computers. More young people should go into STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and math. And that all sounds to be true and reasonable. But you can't say that what you learn in English class doesn't matter. That great writing doesn't make a difference. I'm different. It's hard to put into words, but it's true. Words matter. — Meg Wolitzer

For Mandarin scripts, there's software now where you can just insert the Chinese script, and it comes out all in pinyin. — Daniel Wu

Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time. — Masanobu Fukuoka

The challenge for me, and for Asian models in general has been convincing editors, stylists and photographers that we can have mass appeal, but Asian, especially Chinese models have become a stronger presence. Just a season or two ago, there weren't many models for me to talk with backstage in my native Mandarin. Now I usually have no trouble finding someone at any show. — Liu Wen