Join the protest march against the Anti-Secession Law, and you’ll be able to chat with locals about this as you march. Feel free to use this thread to post Q & A on relevant vocab for, say, intermediates. I’ll start the ball rolling: (feel free to correct me by pm on errors & I’ll re-edit the post)
fan3dui4 反對 oppose
zhi1chi2 支持 support
fen1lie4 分裂 split, separate, seceed
fa3, fa3l
Incoming! Quick, into the shelters!
[quote=“sandman”]Incoming! Quick, into the shelters![/quote]
Nice one Sandman, need some good humour late in the day… 
Ok, let’s see …
that would be
fei1dan4 lai2le, kuai4 duo3qi3lai2! 飛彈來了! 快躲起來!
god I love chinese
please tell me the fei1dan4, which I’m assuming means “bomb”, translates literally to “Flying egg”
god, that makes so much sense, seriously, when one puts it in the same sentance as “airplane” (fei1ji1)
I would love to know how to translate, “The airplane dropped a bomb”, and wouldn’t be too surprised if the verb for “dropping a bomb” and “laying an egg” were the same.
Such a beautiful and interesting language.
Would it be asking too much to have the characters as well as the pin yin?
:s
[quote=“GongChangZhang”]Would it be asking too much to have the characters as well as the pin yin?
:s[/quote]
Yes, apparently,…you do know that "PinYin
Unfortunately no. It’s 飛彈, “flying projectile”
Hahaha!! I had a good old laugh at that one.
wo3 fan3dui4 gong4fei3!
I hope the PRC government doesn’t have access to this site… 
Nice one dragonbones. 
to bomb - hong1zha4 轟炸
to lay an egg - chan3dan4 產蛋
Sorry to disappoint! However, you might be amused by the fact that getting a zero on a test is chi1 ya1dan4 吃鴨蛋, which I lovingly translate as ‘to suck duck eggs’.
Actually, just this morning, I was wondering how to say “I oppose Chinese aggression”.
“Wo fandui Zhongguo de …”
(Or maybe I should say ‘dalu’ so that people understand properly, even though I try not to use that word).
Brian
Actually fei1dan4 (飛彈) means “missile” (known as dao3dan4 (導彈) in Putonghua). “Bomb” is zha4dan4 (炸彈).
“The airplane dropped a bomb” = 那架飛機投下一枚炸彈 (nei4 jia4 fei1ji1 tou2 xia4 yi4 mei2 zha4dan4)…
I thought “laying eggs” also means “dropping bombs” in American(?) military speech. Is it not true?
sheng1dan4 (生蛋) seems more common.
Wo fandui Zhongguo de qinlue/qinlue yexin (侵略/侵略野心).
You’re right, sheng1dan4 (生蛋) is the colloquial choice. I just asked a local, who said that although my chan3dan4 產蛋 might be ‘lay an egg’ in the dictionary, it’s rare; when he heard it he even thought I was saying 慘淡, as in 生意慘淡 (business sucks) 
! There goes that retroflex problem again.
back to the message at hand…protest vocab
why not just a good old fashion 中國幹
axiom wrote:
[quote][quote]GongChangZhang wrote:
Would it be asking too much to have the characters as well as the pin yin?
[/quote]
Yes, apparently,…you do know that "PinYin