LEARN CHINESE
What's in a name?
To start off the series, we'll take a look at the Chinese characters that go to make up the name of this site!
The first two characters (from the left) are 'deen see' in Cantonese or 'dian shi' in Mandarin. Together, the words mean
'television', which is the TV in 'TVB'. Broken down further, 'deen' actually means 'electric' or 'electricity' and 'see' means
'vision' or 'sight', so we get our first glimpse of Chinese logic as 'electric vision' becomes 'television'.
The next two characters are 'gwong bor' (Canto) or 'guang bo' (Mandarin). This means 'broadcast' and again, the words can be
broken down further as 'gwong' means 'wide' and 'bo' means 'spread'. So to spread something widely means you are broadcasting
it. This is also what the B stands for in TVB.
Characters five and six are 'hung gan' (Canto) or 'kong jian' (Mandarin) and this is the Chinese for 'space'. Not to be mistaken
for 'outer space' which is 'tai hung' (ta kong). Breaking this down again into single characters, we have 'hung' which means
'empty' and 'gan' which means 'room', thus an 'empty room' is a space.
Finally, the last two characters are 'san man' (xin wen) and in case you haven't guessed, this means 'news'. Broken down, this
becomes 'san' meaning 'new' and 'man' which means 'something you hear'. Combining them gives the entity we interpret as the latest
news.
That's all for now... until next time, joi geen lah!
Article by Em
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