Lingo Kaiava

What does "加油" mean?jiayou

Go! / You've got this! — literally "add oil."

Language
🇨🇳 Chinese
Pinyin
jya-YO
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How it's actually used

Shouted at athletes, students before exams, and anyone struggling. It became a national rallying cry during crises. "Add oil" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 as a Hong Kong English borrowing.

Examples

Where it comes from

Literally "add fuel," as in stepping on the gas.

How it compares

Korean says 화이팅, Japanese says 頑張って. Every East Asian language has its own version of this.

Now actually use it out loud

Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Chinese — it uses 加油 the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Chinese.

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