My guess, pandas are also named this way, 熊猫 xióngmāo “bear cat”, but that could be because it’s a rare animal people weren’t talking much about, or that it historically was found in or beyond the southern regions that spoke different dialects or languages. But owls actually exist literally everywhere except the ice caps 🤷
bendan
joined 2 years ago
Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #23
猫头鹰
(māo tóu yīng)
Literally: “cat head hawk”
Figuratively: “owl”
We love our owls don’t we folks? 
Posting neat Chinese phrases whenever I feel like #21
森林
(sēn lín)
Individually: “[lush] [milieu]”
Combined: “forest”
Remember 木 mù “wood”? Well here are some more of them! Both 森 and 林 can (at least could once upon a time) mean “forest” on their own, but their other meanings pull in different directions: 森 towards thick, dense, dark, strict, and 林 towards grove, circle, group.
yup: tool > technique > work > industry, and branching off into “construction” from somewhere in there
it originally depicted some variant of this but yeah the I-beam definitely helped cement* the continued use of this character
* 
I don't think that sounds appealing?
Why settle for 1 when you can have 3:
张三、李四、王五
(and if you're wondering why they start indexing at 3, all I can say is it's a bit 乱七八糟)
I think it's pretty telling that the original sea lion comic is just a guy being racist and getting annoyed when the sea lion calls him out on said racism
admittedly a rather gay drama but w/e (word of honor)
Everyone's learning Mandarin lol. I've been on and off for a few years but should get back into it, 亡羊补牢！
I've tried to learn the Arabic alphabet a few times but I just can't keep track of the dots. Are there other ways to group the letters that help learning?
📺