Keep Chinese Interesting with these Two Words || 有意思 and 无聊
Note: If you are new to characters or generally want some support while working through the example sentences in the next sections, we HIGHLY recommend downloading this plugin*! It will help a ton with character reading, both in this article, and on the greater web in general. If you’ve already installed it, carry on! :)*
If you’re learning Chinese, you may want to say sentences like “Learning Chinese is interesting” and “Learning Spanish is boring and basic” 😜
We’ll teach you how to say “basic” in the blog post over here; in this post we’ll teach you how to say “interesting” and “boring” in Chinese.
TLDR
有意思 and 有趣 both mean “interesting”
无聊, 没意思, and 没趣 can all be used to say “boring”
“Interesting”
The most frequently used translation of “interesting” in Chinese is the expression “有意思“.
Let’s break this down:
有 + 意思 —> Literally “To have meaning”
How does this translate to “interesting”? Well, think about it like this: We find a lot of meaning in our interests, right?
Another common way to say “interesting” is “有趣”, which literally means “To have interest”. That’s pretty easy to understand, right?
Here are some examples:
哇，那个电影真有意思！
Wow, that movie was really interesting! 🎬
王老师是个很有趣的人，有很多兴趣爱好。
Wang Laoshi is a very interesting person, he has a lot of hobbies.
“Boring”
The expressions 无聊, 没意思, and 没趣 can al be used to say “boring”. Let’s break these words down:
无聊：
无 + 聊 —> Literally “Without chat”
How to remember: Something that’s boring is so boring that you don’t find it worth chatting with people about it
没意思：
没 + 意思 —> Literally “To not have meaning” (没 is abbreviated from 没有)
How to remember: Something that’s boring has no meaning to you
没趣：
没 + 趣 —> Literally “To not have interest” (没 abbreviated from 没有)
How to remember: Pretty self-explanatory 🙂
*Note: You can say 没有意思/没有趣 instead of 没意思/没趣. The former pair is typically used in more formal contexts and in writing, while the latter pair is used more colloquially
无聊, 没意思, and 没趣 are all equally valid, and their connotations and the contexts they are typically used are pretty much the same. However, from personal experience it seems that 没意思 is used more than the others.
Perhaps this is because (at least in my opinion) 没意思 rolls off the tongue most easily?
Here are some examples:
那个电影真无聊！
That movie was really boring!
李老师教的课真没意思！
The class Li Laoshi teaches is really boring/uninteresting!
那份工作没趣得让我想辞职了
That job was so boring that it made me want to resign.
To Conclude
Here are the main takeaways you should have gotten from this post:
How to use 有意思 and 有趣 to say “interesting”
How to use 无聊, 没意思, and 没趣 to say “boring”
Try out your knowledge with this quiz! I hope you find it interesting 😜