Learning any language is a difficult task, especially when the culture is very different from your own.

When we speak in English or any other Western-European language, we have a shared background that gives us words and phrases that, while having no literal meaning on their own, have a meaning from allusions to history, literature and traditions. For English, many of these words and phrases come from Greek and Roman history, the Bible and Shakespeare.

For many Western-European languages, such words and phrases are frequently drawn from biblical and historical sources, which allow us to generally understand their meaning. For other languages, like Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, such words and phrases are drawn from sources very different from the West.

For these non-European languages, it’s necessary to not only learn the vocabulary and grammar of the language, but also to learn more about the history and culture that created the language. As a student of Chinese, I’m most familiar with a group of sayings referred to as “chengyu,” or Chinese idioms, which contain a great deal of cultural and historical information.

These idioms are usually four word phrases that are used as shorthand to refer to a feeling or opinion based on historical or literary sources. They are commonly found both in written and spoken Chinese. While it is possible to learn Chinese without studying these idioms, most students of Chinese find that learning some of the more common idioms is helpful to understanding the language and culture.

As an example of how much meaning these idioms may contain, let’s look at one that comes from “Confucius’s Analects:” “Learning three things by asking one question.” This idiom refers to a story in “Analects” where one of Confucius’ students asks Confucius’ son if he has received any special treatment from their teacher. Confucius’ son explains that he has not and reminds the student of the value of two important books. The student then says that by asking one question he has learned three things, the value of the two books and that Confucius is a man of good character who does not provide his son any special advantage over his students. Over time the phrase “learning three things by asking one question” came to mean obtaining more than what was originally expected, similar to our own idiom “killing two birds with one stone.”

While many idioms like the one above are fairly obvious, some of them have changed over the centuries to be the opposite of their literal meaning. Other idioms, like “painting a snake with feet,” have meanings that are not obvious and refer to events from literature or history that we in the West are unfamiliar with.

While most native Chinese speakers will avoid using idioms when speaking with foreigners learning their language, understanding and using these idioms is an important step to being able to read Chinese literature and follow Chinese language media. Aside from this, understanding idioms allows a Chinese language student to begin to understand more about Chinese culture, an important part of becoming fluent. 

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If you haven’t heard yet, we are host to the world’s fattest citizens. This happens to be a title that is great to have over other countries. Screw the Olympics; I’d rather see how fast I can eat sticks of butter. What really cracks me up about the obesity epidemic is it is considered a disease. There are too many things that get lumped in with diseases and obesity is one of them. Obesity has eaten its way onto the disease list and I don’t like it. It’s the only disease I know that can be cured with a banana and a treadmill. 

Now let’s try to examine what is at the heart of this particular “disease.” Individuals that are currently obese just can’t afford to lose the weight. It is way too costly, especially at a time when the economy is rolling down the gutter. When individuals lose weight, they have to buy clothes for every stage of weight loss. If you only go down a size it might not be too bad, but some pennies will still have to be pinched. However, what about the people who have to shed, say, a whole person? There’s a few different stages you have to buy clothes for, and people just can’t afford that. 

Trying to eat right is also detrimental to the dieter’s budget. It costs less to get food that contains partial amounts of foods that are on the pyramid than to buy the actual real food. Buying foods that fill the void and keep you from starving is economical, but trying to be a health fanatic: that’s just insanity. We can’t all try to achieve the Hollywood look. Plus, donuts taste way better than vegetables. 

In order to try to keep the disease away you have to own a gym membership. That’s just the way things are, if you think you can just run and walk all around town for free, you’re just un-American. There’s Communism written all over that “method” of staying healthy and it needs to stop. The days of working out to Richard Simmons videos with cans of soup in each hand while prancing around the living room of your doublewide are unfortunately over. 

These diseased individuals have to go through the ridicule of waiting for the next available weight machine, in front of all the gym fanatics that talk too much about how they felt on the last set and how they felt on their set last month. But why sacrifice being able to put that down payment on your dream house so you can afford that wallet-draining gym membership? I say welcome the disease; it’s cheaper, plus donuts taste better than vegetables. 

Putting the costliness of weight loss aside, I can’t stand people that have just lost a bunch of weight. They are always expecting a compliment. Especially if I see these people at some dinner party around a bunch of the former fatty’s friends. Their friends are nudging me to go compliment them on the loss. Then the moment comes that the former obese person approaches me and asks me what I think of the weight loss. Usually a lie pops out just to shut them up. But what is really going on in my head is, “Well I kind of liked you better when you were fat. You didn’t talk so much and you didn’t bother me with questions.” These people expect more attention because their appearance might be slightly better. Why not stay fat and less attention-happy? Plus those donuts taste way better than vegetables.