The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What can we tell Mandarin-speaking people in the field about the tiny machines inside our cells?
A computer-animated visualization of how tiny molecular machines inside our cells copy DNA
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How can we benefit from avoiding unnecessary ceremony?
Ben Cohen, manager of the Swift team at Apple, speaks of their core design goal of making the Swift programming language ceremony-free.
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) June 25, 2022
Chinese characters have lots and lots and lots of ceremony, especially compared to _Pīnyīn_.https://t.co/vPLUThxUYp pic.twitter.com/aDOlKOIbWt
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Would it be good for other writing systems to emulate Chinese characters when it comes to (supposedly) representing meaning directly, without depending on speech sounds?
Should children be taught to read English, etc. words as if they were ideograms, like Chinese characters are supposed to be?
The Library tab in the JW Library app
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Do Chinese characters really directly represent meaning visually, without dependence on language sound?
Table from p. 129 of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How do we respond to the voodooesque power of the Great Wall of characters?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How can we express in Mandarin our determination to stick to the truth?
This week’s MEotW in the unofficial Pīnyīn Plus resource “Sing Out Joyfully” Bk. (Pīnyīn+Music, Pīnyīn Plus, Web)
A screenshot from an official video, of Sis. Margarita Königer and others using official Pīnyīn Sing to Jehovah songbooks with musical notation
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Are homophones really a showstopper when it comes to using Pīnyīn to write Mandarin? How are homographs a similar problem for characters?
Many claim that _Pīnyīn_ shouldn’t be used as a writing system because characters are required to avoid confusion from all the homophones (different words that sound the same) in Mandarin.
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) April 8, 2025
If that’s true, then people shouldn’t SPEAK Mandarin either! But many do, and it’s fine. pic.twitter.com/1MK0ERuFjc
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Is anger an appropriate reaction to the suggestion to focus less on characters and more on Pīnyīn?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
While they are simpler than traditional Chinese characters, why are the official simplified characters at best a compromise?
“爱” is the Simplified Chinese character for “love”. It’s simpler, but omits the “heart” radical (“心”), and has been “friend” (“友”)-zoned. 💔
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) February 20, 2017
“Ài” is how Pīnyīn represents “love”. It doesn’t play the games the characters play—it helps you actually say “I love you” (“Wǒ ài nǐ”). ❤️
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) February 20, 2017
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
As beloved as they are by many, why have there been serious, concerted efforts to simplify and replace traditional Chinese characters?
“愛” is the Traditional Chinese character for “love”. It appropriately has the “heart” radical (“心”) in it, but it’s quite…complicated. 😓
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) February 20, 2017
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the big picture, how should we Mandarin field language learners view Chinese characters?
(The above picture is from near the beginning of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.)
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What helps to show that Jehovah has been directing things in the worldwide Mandarin field?
A screenshot of early 3-line PDF material from 2001, based on the book Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How can we help to ensure that Jehovah gets the honour and glory he deserves as we serve in the Mandarin field?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the Mandarin field, how can we imitate David as we face a cultural Goliath?
“To Jehovah, for whom ‘a thousand years is as one day’, Chinese civilization has only been around for a few days.…
— tiandi, Links News (@TiandiLinksNews) June 9, 2024
“…we should boast in Jehovah, not in needlessly and self-indulgently complex knowledge relating to a mere worldly human culture” https://t.co/emXNAng9W2#MEotW pic.twitter.com/xEjlDPAkud
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the Mandarin field, how can we show love that “does not look for its own interests”?
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the Mandarin field, what are some ways in which jealousy could affect us if we allow it to?
In God's organization, our unity is based on God's truth, not on human tradition.
— tiandi, Links News (@tiandilinksnews.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 8:27 AM
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Maybe this is connected to why so many Chinese people seem to think,
— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) April 13, 2024
“I suffered with Chinese characters, so you must suffer with them too!”
rather than,
“I want you to use _Pīnyīn_ so you won’t have to suffer with Chinese characters like I did.” https://t.co/rgv337FoFi
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What can we say to Mandarin-speaking people about why the earth is unique?
Earthrise
This iconic picture shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon.
Pale Blue Dot
This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, taken from a distance of more than 4 billion miles (6.4 billion km) from Earth, is a part of the first ever “portrait” of the solar system taken by the Voyager 1 space probe. (Earth is the blueish-white speck almost halfway up the rightmost band of light.)
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How can we say in Mandarin that Jesus will end war?
Wasfi Akab
Yes, war will be over, although perhaps not exactly in the way they had imagined. [source]
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
In the Mandarin field, how can we avoid acting indecently in God’s eyes?
In God's organization, our unity is based on God's truth, not on human tradition.
— tiandi, Links News (@tiandilinksnews.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 8:27 AM
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How are some people in the Mandarin field’s territory like “sheep without a shepherd”?
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