The Oxford English Dictionary added some oil, but why?
The Oxford English Dictionary recently added an English translation of a famous Chinese phrase, but some are confused.
One of the first _____1______(express) you’ll come across studying Mandarin Chinese — especially as you cower in tears at the _____2___(impossible) high mountain standing before you — is the term “jia you,” a term which, although without an accurate English translation, is ___3______(basic) a form of encouragement.
You’ll hear it screamed out at sports matches, __4_____(mutter)to tired workmates about to enter overtime, and laid on students of Mandarin every day as they hang over the cliff of no hope.
Since the term has no real direct translation into English, some have come up ___5___ approximations along the way to stand in its place.
The problem is, the term can be used in different situations, _____6_____(make) one translation far from adequate.
Chinese people online tend to often translate the word into “fighting!” “That English translation actually comes from South Korea,” Grace Huang, a Mandarin teacher from Shanghai’s Master Chinese told me.
Others, apparently, will directly use the English term “add oil.”
That’s ____7____ I was a bit confused when someone thought the phrase ubiquitous (不存在的)enough to add the term to the Oxford English Dictionary.
How are words added to the dictionary?
Contrary to popular ______8____(believe), there isn’t a team of academics running around looking for cool phrases and new terms to add to the Oxford English Dictionary — quite the contrary.
As the Oxford English Dictionary say themselves, “our dictionaries describe the way languages are used, rather than saying how they should be used.”
Words are added after careful consideration, ____9____(base) on different methods of word collection and inclusion.
They include analyzing massive amounts of language data to ascertain real world usage and __10____(popular)of words.
- expressions
- impossibly
- basically
- muttered
- with
- making
- why
- belief,
- based
- popularity
