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“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes quotes

Learn Mandarin Chinese, how to say — We anchored the boat in the bay of Anchorage.
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我们把船停泊在安克拉治的海湾里。
wǒmen bǎ chuán tíngbó zài ān kèlā zhì de hǎiwān lǐ .
wǒmen ( 我们 pronoun, we) bǎ (把 active voice marker, to show someone did something to the object) chuán (船 noun, boat) tíngbó (停泊 verb, anchor) zài (在 prepostion, at) ān kèlā zhì (安克拉治 proper noun, Anchorage) de (的 possessive particle to connect attributive and the noun it modifies) hǎiwān (海湾 noun, bay or gulf) lǐ (里preposition, inside) .

Anchor is the device that people cast overboard to secure a ship, boat, or other floating objects by using weight, friction, or hooks. Hundred years ago, an anchor could be a giant rock, a bag of sand or stones, or wooden logs filled with lead. The Greeks are credited with the first usage of iron anchors. The word root for anchor stems from the Latin “ancora” and the Greek “ankyra”, and “ancre” in the Middle English (before 899 AD). The word anchor means crooked or curved.

The modern anchor consists of a shank (the stem), a stock (the crosspiece at the top of the shank, it can be either fixed or removable. It turns the anchor into an attitude that enables the flukes to dig into the sea bed), a crown ( at the bottom portion, connects the various parts of the modern anchor), and flukes (they are to be buried into the seabed, and the very tip of a fluke is sometimes called the bill). In the past, anchors were made of wrought iron, nowadays anchors are often made of forged steel.

Speaking of anchor, I think most of you know there is an US city named Anchorage. I read about Anchorage when I was in middle school. Anchorage is in the south central part of Alaska. It is the 64th-largest city and northernmost major city in the United States. How Anchorage got its name? We already know anchor means crooked or curved. As for the suffix — age. The suffix “age” comes from Latin. The suffix “age” is to do with quality of, act of, function, or place; it forms nouns that denote an action. Thus, the city of Anchorage is a place which has the function of anchoring. It is easy to tell that Anchorage began as a port, a place to anchor, for ships.

Anchorage is a beautiful, mysterious, pure place will give the visitors once-in-a-lifetime experiences. It is a place for adventurers with young spirits and brave souls to explore. You can tread on a glacier, fish for giant king salmon, fly out to Mount McKinley, and cruise leisurely through Prince William Sound.

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An anchor is the tool people use to keep a ship from moving, in Chinese we call it 锚 máo 。

When we cast the anchor to the ground, we call it 下锚 ( xià máo, lower down the anchor or drop anchor)。下锚 xià máo ＝ 停泊 tíngbó ( to anchor)

For weighing anchor —
Heaving up an anchor in preparation for sailing, we call it 起锚 qǐmáo (pull up the anchor) 。起锚 qǐmáo ＝出港 chū gǎng (to leave harbor )。

In English, the word anchor got used in different meanings. For example,

In time of trouble, faith is our anchor. The anchor here, refers to a support.
遇到困难时，信仰是我们的寄托。
yù dào kùnnan shí , xìnyǎng shì wǒmen de jìtuō .

For the main broadcaster，the news anchor, we called her or him 主播 zhǔbō (chief broadcaster)。

He is the anchor on the television news program.
他是电视新闻节目的主播。
tā shì diànshì xīnwén jiémù de zhǔbō.

There is a Chinese slang called 抛锚 pāomáo. Literally it means throw away anchor. However, it is used to refer to car got dead in the half way. It is a funny saying 🙂 If your car got out of order on the road, it does look like it got anchored on the road; no way to move it around, right?

我的车抛锚在半路，真是糟糕。

Test your translation skill:

How to say
The ship anchored off Japan.
We anchored at Hong Kong.

You are welcome to write your answer in the comments, and I will correct it.

Anchor by Mindy Gledhill with Lyrics