February 18th is the first day of the Chinese New Year. This coming year will be the year of the Golden Pig. It’s considered to be a very lucky, prosperous year. The pig is considered the symbol of fertility. People born in the year of the Pig are thought to be honest, lucky and warm-hearted.
Here’s some info about writing Happy New Year, Pig and Good Luck in Chinese characters…
Happy New Year in Chinese characters is:
You pronounce it in Cantonese as Kung Hey Fat Choy, and in Mandarin as Gong xi fa cai. Both sayings mean “Congratulations and Prosperity!”
Here is the symbol for good luck:
In Mandarin it’s pronounced “fu” and in Cantonese it’s pronounced “fook”. It’s often hung on doors on a red diamond shape banner. Some people hang it upside-down. That’s because the word for upside-down in Mandarin sounds like “dao”, which also sounds like the Mandarin word for “arrive”. So it’s like saying – let good luck arrive.
The Chinese character for Pig is…
Here’s a link with an animation that shows how to write pig in Chinese
Pig is pronounced as “zhu” in both Mandarin and Cantonese – You can hear how to say pig in Cantonese!
You can find more about how to say Happy New Year in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean in my post from last year.
Here you can hear the pronunciation of Happy New Year in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Many thanks to Ray Lee for help with the Chinese characters!
恭喜發財!
This article was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Cantonese, China, Chinese, Chinese New Year, Countries & Cultures, Holidays Around the World, Hong Kong, Languages, Mama Lisa, Mandarin, Taiwan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
9 Responses to “The Chinese New Year – The Year of the Pig”
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February 24th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Thank you so much for this!!!It helped me very much with my project on China…all my credit goes to you!
March 1st, 2007 at 6:06 am
Happy New Year in Chinese characters should be:新年好�
March 1st, 2007 at 6:09 am
Believe me, I’m a Chinese.
And that’s right that we used to say æ?å–œå?‘è´¢ in lunar new years.
March 1st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
The second one is what I wrote above.
Is the first one from a specific region? My friend thought it might be said in northern China.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Happy Chinese New Year in Chinese characters should be: 新年好!Cantonese say æ?å–œå?‘è´¢!during Chinese New Year when they meet someone they know.æ?å–œå?‘è´¢ means “wish you make a fortune”.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm
nice chinese new year pictures and graphics
you can also check out some more chinese new year pictures comments graphics for 2008 at http://www.cyarena.com/comments/chinese/cny/
Happy Chinese New Year in Advance :)
July 15th, 2008 at 3:38 am
thank you so much i needed those symbols for a project
March 3rd, 2011 at 11:45 am
what does that fook mean in english
March 4th, 2011 at 10:52 pm
I believe “fook” means “good luck” – it’s the Cantonese pronunciation.