While learning Chinese, the foreigners are sometimes perplexed by the usage of “老 (lǎo)’’. Literally, it has five meanings: aged (senior), always, old, outdated and tough. Due to the difference between eastern and western culture, “老 (lǎo)’’ is translated into "senior" particularly when depicting aged people. Westerners consider it a taboo to call someone “old” for the aged people are always marginalized by the society, so they choose “senior” to replace it. By contrast, the Chinese call someone “old” to show respect. Chinese people tend to add 老(lǎo) after an individual’s family name to address him or her respectfully. For instance, Ji Xianlin, the “master of Chinese culture”, was dubbed by many as 季老(jìlǎo).
You may think you perform fairly well in your Chinese lessons. Nevertheless, the following sentence is rather ambiguous that you can hardly comprehend it correctly the first time you read it. “家有老爸,孩子更长寿”, the meaning of it is “children with older fathers and grandfathers live longer.” In the phrase “老爸”, “老” has an exceptional meaning, which is to show the close affiliation to the father in a common and vulgar way. So “老爸” approximately means “daddy”. Nevertheless, in “家有老爸,孩子更长寿”, “老爸” means old father instead of “daddy”, which requires the readers’ excessive perception.
To learn Chinese well, you can never be too cautious. Obviously, it is the context that decides the meaning of a particular word. So when you are learning Chinese, do pay extreme attention to the context and only in this way can you figure out the correct meaning of the text.
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