You’re very good learner, Pasko.

Now you know this is a word with two differet pronunciation! Yes, ta de, wo de, ni de, that’s right. But when it has another pronunciation: “di”, “mu di”, which means “purpose”.

Beta is coming soon, my friend!

xia ci jian!

“的士“ is not “de shi”, we should say “di shi” :)

Actually it’s a very interesting and new term deriving from English. In Mandarin, taxi is “chu zu che”. But Catonese people invented this new word. They say “dai si”, sounds similar with “taxi”, and then this word spread all over the China, becoming popular. But as you know, Cantonese and Mandarin is very different, so in Mandarin, it’s “di shi”. Now, “di shi” has been a more often used word than “chu zu che”. We say “da di” meaning “take a taxi”.

There are many words coming from other languages: For example, “sofa” in Mandarin, we say “sha fa”; “bar” is “ba”. We say “pao ba” meaning “go to the bar”.