澀 - Se4 - Rough, Grating
This word describes a certain texture of food that is unknown in English. Chinese seems to have lots of these, words for tastes and textures that just don’t translate. Certain numb sensations, itchy feelings on the sides of your tongue, food that gets stuck in your throat and makes your voice crack, all have words to describe them. It would be a fun project to catalog them all. 澀 is used to describe food that makes your mouth feel sort of rough and not as slippery as usual. Foods that are known to cause this: spinach! guava! cranberry juice! and according to Yvonne, Coca-Cola! (but not Diet Coke!) Can you think of the texture of all of those foods and pick out the common feeling of 澀? I can pretend I can.
Coming up with word-of-the-days is easy when Yvonne is around. Just listen to her and Jenny talk and pick out words you don’t understand. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel when you know as little Chinese as I do. Unfortunately, she goes back to New York, and back to school, tomorrow.
James
Steve is it possible for you to post the simplified version of the chinese word of the day as well?
steve
Zhongwen.com lists the simplified characters, if any, for each traditional character. You can look them up there. Note that this may not be straightforward: some traditional characters map to multiple simplified characters, and sometimes they either simplify or not based on context.
more info on this topic
zonble
The meaning of 澀 is certainly near 酸(acid), but there are some difference. 澀 is not only acid but you can feel that taste is like a neil poking on you tongue. 澀 is used to describe the taste of fruits and vegetables but seldom (even never) to describe the taste of the meats. For instance, plum tasted 澀.
We often say that some fruits are 澀, just because that they are not totally matured, if they are matured, they should be sweet but not 澀.
We also often say that a boy or a girl is 青澀, green and 澀, that’s a metaphor with he or she is corresponding to the immature fruits. Since the immature fruits are green and taste 澀, that means he or she is young and shy. 澀 also means that some words or phrases are hard to be understood.
steve
Wow. Thanks for that explanation!
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