Taxi and Bus

I have seen in a number of textbooks like the ‘New Practical Chinese Reader 2’ and ‘The Colloquial Chinese 2’ have some materials are quite old-fashioned. So if you are a Chinese Language learner you should definitely be aware of some words that have been used in these books.

The first example is the usage of the word ‘taxi’ and ‘bus’. I have noticed a lot of Chinese textbooks for foreign learners have used words like ‘公共汽车’( gōng gòng qì chē) for bus and ‘出租汽车’( chū zū qì chē ) or ‘出租车’( chū zū chē) for taxi. Many people who live in China today most likely to use the words ‘的士’(dī shì ) for taxi and ‘巴士’(bā shì) for bus. In fact the only people who continue to use words like ‘公共汽车’(gōng gòng qì chē) and ‘出租汽车’( chū zū qì chē ) on an everyday basis are elderly people over 60. Also you probably have noticed the character ‘汽’ (qì) sometimes is not used, like ‘出租汽车’( chū zū qì chē ) can be shortened to ‘出租车’( chū zū chē ), but ‘公共汽车’(gōng gòng qì chē) cannot be shortened to ‘公共车’(gōng gòng chē). However it can be shortened to ‘公交车’( gōng jiāo chē), which literally means ‘public deliver vehicle’.

The origin for the word ‘的士’(dī shì) comes from Hong Kong, and the character ‘的’ (de) is pronounced (dī). The origin for the word ‘巴士’( bā shì ) comes from the English word ‘bus’.