The other day a friend of mine who came
from Indonesia asked me: what is the difference between “期望”(qi1wang4）and “希望”(xi1wang4)?
That reminded me of several very similar words that even a lot of Chinese may
cannot tell the differences. They are “愿望”(yuan4wang4), “渴望”(ke3wang4),
and the two words I mentioned before. You may say, how could there be so many “望”s! Yeah,
but if you want to learn
Mandarin Chinese, you need to face to these difficulties. But don’t worry;
let’s have a look of them one by one.
First of all, the character “望” means
looking for something, so all of these words express an idea that someone wants
something or hopes something to happen. But among the four words, “愿望” alone
cannot be used as a verb. It can only be used as a noun. Here is an example for
learning Chinese
language, you can say “我的愿望”（wo3de5 yuan4wang4-means my wish）, but “我愿望……” do not
make any sense. On the other hand, “我希望……”, “我期望……”, and “我渴望……” is all right. The word “希望” is
undoubtedly most widely used, and it is not that much intensive. For example, “我希望明天不下雨”(wo3
xi1wang4 ming2tian2 bu2 xia4yu3 – I hope it won’t rain tomorrow.) is a everyday
sentence. If you said this and then the next it rained, you would not feel very
upset about it. Compared with “希望”, “期望” is more intensive. Chinese often tell kids, “别辜负了你父母的期望”(bie2
gu1fu4 ni3 fu4mu3de5 qi1wang4 - Don’t let your parents down). This line
implicates that your parents have a great “期望” for you, namely
they really want you to be someone, so don’t let them down.
Among these words, “渴望” is the
most intensive one. It means someone wants something eagerly. Let’s see the
character “渴”(ke3). “渴” is a adjective which means someone is thirsty. You must want to
grab a cup of water and don’t want to wait for one second when you are thirsty,
right? So if you say you “渴望” to learn
Mandarin language, you must really like it!
Source: http://gctc2310.blog.com/2014/12/15/learning-chinese-language-how-to-distinguish-these-%E2%80%9C%E6%9C%9B%E2%80%9Ds/
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