I have been watching 趙氏孤兒案 a drama set during the Warring States Period of China about an orphan and in particular Cheng Ying 程嬰 a doctor which in the drama is called an yi1jiang4 醫匠.
In the drama, they used tu2di4 塗地 to mean floor and this made me think of our tou5ê6 塗下. Nowadays, floor is called di4mian4 地面 or di4shang5 地上 in Mandarin.
If you were to watch commentaries of our language you would find experts unable to explain why we call floor tou5ê6 塗下. I think this drama has given me an insight into why this is so.
It is homework time: I have not given homework for a long time for you to get your brain thinking. In the drama, they said 公子悄悄出府 gong1zi3 qiao1qiao1 chu1 fu3
公子 - this is the son of the official
悄悄 - silently [giving a sense of secrecy]
出 - to go out
府 - an official residence
So for your homework: how do you say 公子悄悄出門 in our language? We do not use 府 because I imagine none of us are living in a government official home and I therefore change it to 出門 instead.
You can use our dictionaries of course to do this homework.
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