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Professional Joined: Sep 15, 2008 Posts: 74

The Mandarin Chinese word for “vehicle” is chē 車. There are many types of vehicles, so chē is combined with other words to describe everything from taxis to bicycles.
for example:
Trains were originally powered by steam and fire, so the Mandarin Chinese word for train is huǒchē 火車 – fire vehicle. The first character in huǒchē is 火 – fire.
Tā zuò huǒchē dào Shànghǎi.
他坐火車到上海｡
他坐火车到上海｡
He is going to Shanghai by train.

Expert Joined: Sep 18, 2008 Posts: 83

this is quite interesting post

Supreme Joined: Oct 08, 2008 Posts: 200

One way making a new word in Chinese is by combining 2 old words with relative factors. It is very helpful because it helps to reduce the large number of Chinese vocabulary.I love Chinese with the way the new words relate to the old words . It sounds like that Chinese people are very creative and imaginary.

Professional Joined: Nov 09, 2009 Posts: 50

you mean we can combine different signal to form words?

Professional Joined: Sep 13, 2008 Posts: 74

I like Chinese word formation in which, every character has its own meaning. And if one stroke is missed out, the word can have a completely different meaning. It's also because of this reason that makes Chinese one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Professional Joined: Sep 11, 2008 Posts: 48

we know some interesting things from this arrticle

Expert Joined: Sep 11, 2008 Posts: 114

oh, how interesting Chinese is! I don't learn Chinese, but I know that the Chinese characters are formed based on how things look like, for ex, field, door, sun, moon,ect.

Expert Joined: Mar 04, 2008 Posts: 101

I think it's the same with Vietnamese. We just say "xe" and then combine it with other words to make many different kinds of vehicles.

Professional Joined: Sep 13, 2008 Posts: 76

it's an interesting post. "che" = xe => "qi che" = xe hoi, "huo che" = xe lua,...and it's the same in Vietnamese as both Chinese and Vietnamese are isolating languages.

Expert Joined: Sep 11, 2008 Posts: 95

We have learned the word "che" before and your post make it clearer about chinese character and meaning.We have many Chinese words go with "chè" that indicate vehicles

Senior Joined: Oct 11, 2009 Posts: 22

I have learnt Chinese and I know that its letters come from real objects, for examlpe, the word " person" looks like a real person. However i must recognize that Chinese is very hard to remember.

Senior Joined: Sep 13, 2008 Posts: 30

Exactly like Vietnamese vocabulary for vehicle. In Mandarin, "che" (xa) when combined with other lexical items, creates the names of different vehicles. In Vietnamese, we have "xe", and then we have "xe dap", "xe may", "xe hoi", "xe oto", "xe tai".

Professional Joined: Jan 24, 2010 Posts: 70

It's interesting to combine "che" with other words to make e new vehicle in Chinese. I totally agree that that of Vietnamese is the same. The only difference is the position among the words of the two languages. "che" combines with other words which precede it: huoche (train), zixingche (bike) , gonggongqiche (bus), ... while "xe" in Vietnamese combines with the words which follow right after it: xe hoi, xe dap, xe can cau, xe lang,.... As we can see, English has different words for each vehicle!

Junior Joined: Mar 12, 2010 Posts: 10

Since many new words in Chinese are made in just exactly the same way as in this post has described, Vienamses find it extremely easy to learn Chinese. This is also the reason why the amount of Chinese characters (Hanzi) that an officer must have mastered is over 2000 characters, and Chinese pay more attention to the Chinese characters （汉字） than the new word （生词）。
eg: from 3 different Chinese characters: 好，听，写, we can have 6 different vocabularies。
好：good (adj) - tốt
听：listen (v) - nghe
写：write (v) - viết
好听：well-listened (adj) - nghe thấy hay
好写：interesting (adj) - viết đọc thấy hay
听写：dictiation (n) - chính tả

Expert Joined: Jan 22, 2010 Posts: 83

Thank you for such a good post. It's true that we can combine "che" with other words to make a new kind of vehicle in Chinese. There are lots of examples: zixingche 自行车 (xe đạp), sanlunche 三轮车 (xe ba bánh), jiuhuche 救护者 (xe cứu thương), motuoche 摩托车 (xe mô tô), jidongche 机动车(Xe gắn máy), jipuche 吉普车 (xe jeep), gonggongqiche 公共汽车 (xe buýt), penshuiche 喷水车 (xe phun nước), qiche 汽车 (xe ô tô)，。。。As you can see from the examples, the position of "车" (che) is right after the modifying words. In Vietnamese, we follow the opposite (xe + ...). As quangthao said, in English, we have different words for each kind of vehicle. It's worth paying attention that the rule is not just for "vehicle". For instant, when it comes to "rou"肉 (meat) ，we have: zhurou 猪肉 (thịt heo)，niurou 牛肉 (thịt bò)，jirou 鸡肉(thịt gà)，yangrou 羊肉(thịt dê)，yurou鱼肉 (thịt cá)，。。

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