This is another group that sounds like its spoken English equivalent. Learn the details of how numbers replace Chinese characters By combining the two, some young people confess their undying love for each other with 5211314 我爱你一生一世( wǒ ài nǐ yì shēng yí shì ). I love you 我爱你 ( wǒ ài nǐ ) is often pronounced and written 521( wǔ èr yī ) 1314 ( yī sān yí sì ) expresses the concept 一生一世( yì shēng yí shì ), or a lifetime. This is an example of a number based homophone because the sound of 88 ( bā bā ) is similar with that of bye-bye.ĥ55( wǔ wǔ wǔ ) is pronounced like the character 呜( wū ) or ( wū wū wū) is the sound used to show weeping. You may have seen some people use 88 to say bye-bye when they end an online conversation. Number based homophones refer to replacing Chinese characters with an array of numbers. Other examples include “Thank you” whose Chinese homonym is 三克油( sān kè yóu ), ok is 欧科( ōu kē ) and baby is 北鼻( běi bí ). However, on the Internet, people prefer to say 爱老虎油( ài lǎohǔ yóu ) in which the pronunciation sounds very similar to the English “I love you,” even though the four Chinese characters technically have nothing to do with “I love you” in meaning. “I love you” in Chinese is 我爱你( wǒ ài nǐ ). Generally, there are three types in Chinese.

Sometimes you might hear “You have a bad RP.” RP is a person’s character or fortune which is the acronym for 人品( rénpǐn ). For online chatting, LS and LX refer to those who have posted on a BBS topic before and after you respectively. Other Internet expressions connected with buildings are 楼上( lóushàng ) and 楼下( lóuxià ), the former literally meaning upstairs, the latter downstairs. 楼主 literally means the landlord of a building but the meaning has been expanded to refer to someone who starts a BBS topic online. Other examples include JJ which means elder sister 姐姐( jiějie ) and MM for younger sister 妹妹( mèimei ). GG means elder brother 哥哥which is the simplification of the pinyin ( gēge ). This is similar to how in English we shorten United Nations to UN. The following are a few of the essential terms that were born online, but have become necessities for swift and effective communication among Chinese netizens.Īcronyms in Chinese are created by replacing the first Chinese character with the first letter used in its Pinyin spelling. This language creates a form of expression popular for its conciseness, flare and humor – infusing new life into the everyday mundane language of the common folk. Chinese Internet slang, created by over half-a-billion netizens, has spread from electronic communications into the life of the everyday Chinese citizen. This has led to a growing culture that is distinct to online users and also rapidly spreads into our daily lives with China being no exception. low context cultures, especially with regards to the usefulness of saying I love you for relationship management purposes, and for asserting (or avoiding) statements of one's individual autonomy.The Internet is quickly establishing itself as the de facto media platform.

The pattern of responses is consistent with theoretical proposals about high vs. Chinese survey respondents did not endorse these options, and instead consistently minimized both verbal and nonverbal love expressions. Bicultural Chinese interviewees observed that one could perform nonverbal actions or even say English I love you as substitutions for saying Wo ai ni. The reasons Americans provided most often related to the inherent importance of saying I love you, while this was the least frequently mentioned reason by Chinese. Interviews revealed that Chinese and American students, the two groups endorsed different reasons for saying Wo ai ni/ I love you. Chinese respondents were not only overall more reticent than Americans in their love expressions, but differed from Americans in avoiding I love you expressions with family (especially parents). A survey on verbal usage of Wo ai ni was administered to university students in Beijing and Shanghai, and compared to uses of I love you by American students in the United States. Explanations for emotional reticence have typically focused on the need in collectivist culture to promote group harmony, but this explanation is most applicable to negative emotions such as anger, not positive expressions such as Wo ai ni. Reticence to express emotions verbally has long been observed in Chinese culture, but quantitative comparisons with Western cultures are few.

I love you in chinese