Mandarin Chinese Weblog

It’s that time of the year! What time is that? Of course it’s the time to start practicing how to say Merry Christmas in Chinese.

圣诞快乐/shèng dàn kuài lè.
Say it a few time to get it in your head. Someone suggested that if you repeat something 60 times, it will become natural to you. I agree with this statement. but you can just sit down and say something 60 times. I had to be in context and spaced at proper intervals. The context part makes sense, but what those proper intervals are, I’ll leave that to the linguistic statisticians. Just practice and use it as much as you can.

Let’s break that down:
圣诞节/ Shèng dàn jié/ Christmas.
圣 / Shèng / Means “holy” or “sacred” Think “Oh holy night”
诞 / dàn/ Means birth. So 圣诞 means holy birth, talking about Jesus Christ
节/ jié / is “festival” or “holiday”

So 圣诞节 essentially means Christmas Day.

Now here’s a test. If you already know that 新年快乐 xīnnián kuài lè mean Happy New Year, then what do you think 快乐/ kuài lè means? Right, “happy” or “merry.”

Now let’s put it all together and say it in unison:
圣诞快乐/ shèng dàn kuài lè/ Merry Christmas!

Note that there is no 节 in there. Any guesses as to why?