one of the apps i use to practice chinese is called clozemaster. a cloze is a text or sentence with gaps that you need to to fill out with words. it’s a nice exercise, that gives the opportunity to practice reading and understanding words in context.
clozemaster turns that into an old school game, with an 8-bit look and rankings per language. naturally, with so many sentences being tested, some of them are bound to be “interesting”. here are some of my favourites so far:
the texts are always so uplifting!
what’s up with the cat?
and my absolute favourite so far, is this one that i got wrong. i chose “sports are the devil”, but turns out impulsiveness is the devil… i don’t know, i think i’m sticking with my version! :P
it works for lots of languages — give it a try if you’re learning one or just want to practice. :)
2 replies on “clozemaster”
hello. In my memory, the first time that the sentence “冲动是魔鬼” appear in a skectch comedy(In chinese calls “小品”）named 男子汉大丈夫（not sure how to traslate,may be in English it is “masculinity”)，performed in 2005 CCTV New Year’s Gala by Guo Donglin and Niu Li.
The comdy tells the wife conflict with their neighbour and can’t bear the neighbour’s behavior, then she incites her husband fight with the neighbour. The husband is afraid of fighting, persuading his wife to give up fighting by saying “冲动是魔鬼” which means once they fight, a serious result is waiting for them
For the person that hates soprt, sport can a devil. I don’t know what wrong with the cat. I think the senrences about cat are as ordinary as the sentence”I’m pooped” Not having origin and special meaning
@Whale thank you for the insight into that one! i think most of the chinese sentences sound quite normal, but the translations in english are sometimes a bit “out there”, which makes them funny.