Languagle #20: Chinese (Mandarin)
良药苦口
liáng yào kǔ kǒu
"Good medicine tastes bitter."
What it means
Good advice is often hard to hear, just as good medicine often tastes bitter. The phrase comes from a longer classical saying, 'good medicine is bitter to the mouth but good for the illness; loyal advice is harsh to the ear but good for your conduct'.
How to say it
lyahng yow koo koh
Mandarin is tonal: liáng rises, yào falls sharply, and kǔ kǒu dip low. When two dipping tones meet, the first one rises instead, so it comes out as kú kǒu.
Word by word
- 良 lyahng (rising): good
- 药 yow (falling): medicine
- 苦 koo (dipping): bitter
- 口 koh (dipping): mouth, to the mouth
It's a chengyu, a four-character idiom, and it's the first half of a longer line: 良药苦口利于病, 'good medicine is bitter to the mouth but good for the illness'.
Where it was found
A chengyu, a traditional four-character idiom. The idea of good medicine tasting bitter appears in Chinese writing more than two thousand years ago.
Similar sayings
- Chinese: 忠言逆耳利于行 (zhōng yán nì ěr lì yú xíng). Honest advice grates on the ear but helps you do right. The line usually paired with this one.
How to recognise Chinese (Mandarin)
Chinese is written in characters alone, with no alphabet mixed in. Japanese uses many of the same characters but always adds small curvy kana like の and は, and Korean Hangul is built from circles and straight lines. Mainland China and Singapore use Simplified characters, Taiwan and Hong Kong use Traditional ones, so medicine is 药 in one and 藥 in the other. Written Cantonese uses Traditional characters plus some of its own, like 唔, 嘅 and 咗.
About the Chinese (Mandarin) language
Mandarin Chinese is a Sinitic language with around 950 million native speakers, more than any other language. It is tonal: standard Mandarin has four tones, so the same syllable spoken at a different pitch is a different word. Chinese characters stand for units of meaning rather than sounds. Mainland China and Singapore use simplified characters, introduced in the 1950s, while Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional characters.
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