Never enough beautiful people at work - how to remember 差 chà - "to lack"

Today’s entry is based around the character 差 chà which has quite a few meanings (of course) but basically means ‘to lack, short of, differ from’.

 

One example is used with telling time. 

 

You can say 3 minutes until 8:00 - 差三分八点 – sān fēn bā diăn, which is a terrible time to go to work.  Another useful example is差不多 – chà bù duō – which means ‘almost, nearly the same’.

 

Now let’s break down the elements of 差 chà.  The bottom right of the character looks like 工 gōng, which is work or worker and the top portion reminds me of 美 mĕi which means beautiful.

 

工 gōng is often paired with工作 gōng zuò to describe the activity of work.  The character 工 gōng is fairly easy to remember since it looks like an I – “I can’t believe I have to work today”.

 

美 mĕi is often paired with 美国 –Mĕi guó – America, literally beautiful country, (aww how sweet of you) or 美女 mĕi nǚ beautiful woman – (looks like somebody wants our phone number). 


Of course it’s completely natural at this point to feel compelled to listen to American Woman.

Lenny Kravitz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKgYCgjP_K4

If you’re learning English, here’s a version with text-lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1hGG7QWWCg

 

Now that you have both of those, here’s how to remember the character 差 chà. 

 

At work (工 gōng) there are never enough beautiful (美 mĕi) people around.  Another way to express that - work is lacking (差 chà) beautiful people. 

工 + 美 = 差.

 

And because we were talking about work and beautiful, I would be remiss if I didn’t include a link to Loveboy’s Working for the Weekend. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rutArtds6r8

 

You should follow me on Twitter or add me to a circle on Google Plus → Brandon

 

Please feel free to use the links below to share.

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Tags: basics, beginner, characters, chinese, definitions, fun, language, learn, mandarin, offbeat, More…time

Comment by Martha on February 1, 2011 at 2:34am

Funny ^^

I'm surprised by your creative ideas.I would like to print it out to my students.

By the way , 差 originally is from something hanging down and the left side (左 zuǒ )

In the old time, people think the RIGHT side is correct , and the LEFT side is wrong. That's why 差 has negative meaning.

美 originally is from 羊 yáng ( lamb) and 大 dà (big) . In the old time, people think 羊 is very delicious meat , and if you can have a 大羊, wow , then it will be a very wonderful thing.

差 also has many different pronunciaitons,different sounds has different meaning.Take a look ^^

http://tool.httpcn.com/Html/Zi/25/PWILAZILTBUYDEE.shtml

 

Comment by Brandon on February 2, 2011 at 11:22am
Thanks Martha! Please feel free to share with your students anything you like.  You can also encourage them to join the site & post content of their own.
Comment by name on April 1, 2011 at 7:15am

haha clever :-)

差不多 is a really common and useful phrase. It works a lot like "pretty much" in English.

差 also has alternate pronunciations, as in 出差 （chūchāi）“to go away on business." I remember learning that one my first year in college. Hopefully I'll be able to use it more frequently once I graduate and get a job!

Comment by Júlia Baló on August 29, 2011 at 2:18pm

Thank you Brandon :)

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