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Chinese culture Vocabulary

马年快乐! Happy Chinese New Year of the Horse!

新年快乐! 马年好!
Happy Chinese New Year!

The Year of the Wooden Horse starts today. Want to wish someone a Chinese New Year greeting that has a horse theme? Here are a few essential ones to bestow your best wishes onto your friends and family! It will works for other year too, so look closely at the chinese vocabulary for Chinese new year

Chinese New Year of the Horse: Traditional or modern?

If you want to stay traditional in your greetings, you can opt for

马到成功! Ride towards success!

Or, if you want something more trendy, pick a greeting from the currently very popular “马上” series!

This series of greetings all play with the fact “马上” both literally means “on a horse” and  ”immediately”! The idea is to place what you’re wishing for, on a horse to make it happen during the year of the horse !

For example:

马上有钱! (mǎshàng yǒu qián)

To have money right away

Close sounding words make it even better

And if there’s a play on similar sounding words, it’s even better!
Here’s a cool Monkey greeting for you :

马上加猩! Mǎshàng jiā xīng

马上 Mǎshàng 

加 jiā : add

猩 xīng : ape

This literally means: On the horse add an ape

Sounds strange? 加猩  jiā xīng is really close in sound to 加薪 Jiā xīn, which means “to raise salary!

So you’re actually wishing someone an payrise this year!

What do you want on your horse? ^_^

Wondering what to eat for the Chinese New Year? One word: dumplings!
Not sure how to celebrate? Here’s all you need to know!

Enjoy the Chinese New Year!

The Nincha Team

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