Category: Chinese (中文)

The future is behind you

By Simon

According to an interesting article I came across today, in Tuvan (Тыва дыл), a Turkic language spoken in the Republic of Tuva in southern Siberia, the future is behind you and the past is in front of you. Which makes sense as you can ‘see’ the past, or at least remember it, but you can’t see the future.

In Chinese languages time is described as flowing vertically in some contexts, so the past is above you and the future below you. In Mandarin, for example, last week is 上個月 [上个月] (shàng gè yuè) and next month is 下個月 [下个月] (xià gè yuè), or ‘up/above month’ and ‘down/below month’.

Do any other languages describe the past as being in front of or above you and the future as being behind or below you? Or are there other was to describe the flow of time?

Bilingual aphasia

By Simon

The lost and forgotten languages of Shanghai

I recently read The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai, an interesting novel by Ruiyan Xu about a Chinese man who loses his ability to speak Chinese after suffering brain damage in an accident. The main character, Li Jing, grew up in America and spoke nothing but English until the age of 10, when his family moved to Shanghai. After that he promptly forgot his English and learnt Mandarin as quickly as he could.

After the accident he finds that he can’t speak Mandarin at all and can only speak falteringly in English, a language which his father speaks, but his wife and son don’t, which makes their relationship very difficult. When he discovers that he’s lost his Mandarin, he refuses to speak at first, but with the help and encouragement of an American neurologist who specialises in bilingual aphasia* and who his family bring to Shanghai, he starts to dredge up more of his English, though his Mandarin remains locked in his head.

* Bilingual aphasia is a condition that affects one or more languages spoken by bilingual and multilingual people as a result of stroke or traumatic brain damage.

The American neurologist doesn’t speak any Mandarin, and finds life in Shanghai quite a struggle as she can’t understand or talk to the locals, or read anything. Inspite of this she finds ways to communicate. Her paitent can understand everything people say in Mandarin and can read Chinese, but can’t speak or write it, which is a huge source of frustration and embarassment for him.

The events in the novel parellel the authors life in some ways – she was born in Shanghai and her family moved to America when she was ten. At the time she spoke no English. When she went back to Shanghai for a short visit eight years later she could speak English fluently, but could no longer read or write Chinese and was not confident about speaking Mandarin, fearing making mistakes and not being understood.

Li Jing’s case sounds somewhat similar to language learners who focus mainly on reading and listening, and can understand the language quite well, but cannot speak or write it as well. This is how I tend to learn languages – concentrating on the listening and reading, but not practising my speaking and writing as much. I’m trying to change this and to spend more time practising actively producing my languages in speech and writing. One way I do this is by making videos – I plan to make some in the Celtic languages I’m working on. This will involve writing dialogues, recording them and putting together the videos.

Dialect, vernacular, patois?

By Simon

The other I found quite an interesting article about Shanghainese which suggest that’s it has become a bit more popular recently, and is being used for some announcements in public transport and on planes, and that children are allowed to speak it at one school, at least during breaks.

The article says that about 10 million people in Shanghai speak Shanghainese, and then another 10 million don’t. Some of the non-Shanghainese speakers “consider the vernacular pride movement either unnecessary or unwelcome.”, and one woman who has spent most of her life in Shanghai seems to proud that she doesn’t speak Shanghainese.

Shanghainese is variously referred to as a lingua, a dialect, a vernacular and a patois at different points in the article, though not a language.

Though there are slight plenty of Shanghainese speakers, there are apparently relatively few young speakers, which is not a good sign for its future.

Mandarin v English

By Simon

I came across an interesting article about the relative importance of Mandarin and English in South East Asia today. It talks about children from Malaysia being sent to school in Singapore because their parents want them to be fluent in English – schools in Malaysia teach in Malay, while those in Singapore teach in English. The parents believe that the standard of English used in Malaysia has declined significantly since the 1980s, when Malay had become the main language used in Malay schools, and they think the fluency in English is important for the children’s future.

Meanwhile in Singapore Mandarin is becoming increasingly important as more and more business is done with China. However English remains an important language. The article suggests that while both Mandarin and English are useful, English is a dominant position in terms of culture (music, movies, etc).

In Vietnam there is apparently a resistance to learning Mandarin and many people prefer to learn English and do business with the USA.

Ventriloquism

By Simon

There was quite a bit of talk about ventriloquism on an episode of QI I watched recently, mainly because one of the guests was a ventriloquist. The word ventriloquism comes for the Latin words venter (stomach, belly, womb) and loquī (to speak) so it means “to speak from the stomach”. It was known as εγγαστριμυθία (gastromancy) in Greek, which means the same thing.

In other languages the word for ventriloquist is either from the Latin, e.g. ventriloquia (Spanish), ventriloque (French), ventriloquo (Italian), or a calque of the word: Bauchredner (German – ‘belly speaker’), Brzuchomówstwo (Polish – ‘belly speaker), 腹語術 (Chinese – ‘belly language art/skill’). In Welsh though, the word is tafleisydd, from tafle (to throw), llais (voice) and -ydd (suffix for a person or tool), so it means ‘voice thrower’.

Ventriloquism apparently started a religious practice. Ventriloquists were thought to be able to speak to the dead and predict the future, and the voices that seemed to come from the stomachs were thought to be those of the dead. By the 19th century ventriloquism became a form of entertainment and people started using dummies, at least in the West. In other parts of the world, such as among the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is used for religious and ritual purposes.

Ventriloquism involves talking without moving your lips to make it appear that the words are coming from elsewhere. It is also known as throwing your voice, though no throwing is involved. To make bilabial sounds such as /m/ and /b/ without lip movement the trick is apparently to substitute similar sounds – /n/ and /g/. If you say them fast your listeners’ brains will hopefully hear the letters you want them to – we tend to hear what we expect to hear anyway. Then again, you could just use other words without the troublesome letters. More details.

Have you tried ventriloquism?

I can sort of do it, though would need more practice to do it convincingly.

What I wonder is whether it is easier to ventriloquise in some languages or accents than in others, and whether there are many bilingual/polyglot ventriloquists who speak one language themselves and have their dummy or dummies speaking others. That might be a fun way to practise languages and interpretation skills.

神马都是浮云

By Simon

神马都是浮云 (shénmǎ dōu shì fúyún）is a Chinese phrase I learnt yesterday which means something like “everything is fleeting / transient” or “nothing is permanent”. The 神马 part is internet slang for 什么 (shénme) = what, and 浮云 [浮雲] (fúyún) means floating clouds, fleeting, transient. This is apparently a popular phrase in China at the moment, particularly online.

Another phrase that’s popular online at the moment is 有木有 (you mùyou) instead of 有没有 (yǒu méiyǒu) = “have not have” – this is a typical form of question in Mandarin Chinese. For example, 你有没有时间？ (nǐ yǒu méiyǒu shíjiān?) = Do you have time? If you translate such questions literally into English they can sound rude – “You have not have time?” or “You have time or not?”, but this is fine in Chinese.

Sources:
http://www.mdbg.net
http://baike.baidu.com/view/4531752.htm
http://baike.baidu.com/view/5347838.htm

Chinese app

By Simon

Chinese character app logo

A new application for Android devices that teaches you how to read and write the 100 most widely-used Chinese characters was launched today.

It shows you how to write each character with animations, and also has recordings in Mandarin Chinese and English, as well as pinyin transcription and English translations for each character,

It was developed by Adam Beaumont of Leafcutter Studios with Mandarin Chinese recordings by a Chinese friend of mine, Helen Zhang (张丹), and English recordings by me.

Just playing around

By Simon

In Mandarin Chinese when you want to talk about playing a musical instrument, there are quite a few different words you could use, depending on the type of instrument.

– 拉 (lā) is used for bowed instruments such as the 二胡 (èrhú), violin (小提琴 xiǎotíqín), viola (中提琴 zhōngtíqín) and cello (大提琴 dàtíqín), and also means to pull, drag, draw or chat.

– 彈 [弹] (tán) is used for the piano (鋼琴 [钢琴] gāngqín), and string instruments such as the guitar (吉他 jítā), and also means to pluck, spring, leap, shoot , fluff, flick and so on.

– 吹 (chuī) is used for wind instruments such as the 笛 dí (flute), 簫 xiào (bamboo flute) and clarinet (單簧管 [单簧管] dānhuángguǎn) and also means to blow, blast, boast, brag and to end in failure.

– 打 (dǎ) is used for the drums (鼓 gǔ) and other percussion, and also means to beat, strike, hit, break, type, fight and so on. As well as meaning to play/beat a drum, 打鼓 (dǎ​gǔ) also means to be nervous. 打 also means to play games such as golf – 打高爾夫球 [打高尔夫球] (dǎ gāo’ěrfū qiú), and also to play cards – 打牌 (dǎ pái).

If you want to talk about playing music in general without mentioning a specific instrument you could say 演奏 (yǎn​zòu) – to play a musical instrument, to perform music. I thought there wasn’t a general term like this in Chinese and that was what promoted me to write this post.

In other contexts, there are various was to translate to play in Chinese, including:

– 玩 (wán) is the most common one and can mean to play games (玩遊戲 [玩游戏] wán yóu​xì) or to have fun. In English the phrase “Are you coming out to play?” is usually only uttered by children, but the equivalent in Chinese, 你出來玩嗎？ [你出去玩吗？] nǐ chūlái wán ma?, is used by both children and adults.

– 踢 (tī) means to kick and to play ball games such as football (soccer) – 踢足球 (tī zúqiú).

-弄 (nòng) means to play/fool/mess/toy with, to fix, do, manage or to handle – a useful word that can used in a variety of contexts.

Source: MDBG Chinese-English Dicitonary

我们AA吧！

By Simon

The Mandarin Chinese expression, 我们AA吧！ (wǒmen AA ba), is the equivalent of “lets split the bill” or “let’s go Dutch”. I heard it for the first time from a Chinese friend the other day. My friend assures me that it’s a very common expression and is used when going out for a meal with friends (or on similar occasions) where instead of one person treating everybody (请客 qǐngkè), as happens at formal meals and banquets, each person pays for what they eat and drink.

Other ways to express the same idea include 我们分开付款 (wǒmen fēnkāi fùkuǎn) = we split the bill; 我们AA制吧 (wǒmen AA zhì ba) “let’s pay AA”; and 我们各付各的吧 (wǒmen gèfùgède ba) “let’s each pay our own”.

Apparently AA stands for “Algebraic Average” – the average share of the bill [source].

[Addendum] AA is also used in medical prescriptions as an abbreviation for the Late Latin word ana (in equal quantities) [source].

A few other Chinese expressions that use letters like this include 卡拉OK (kǎ lā OK) = karaoke and T恤 (T xù/xié): T-shirt.

Do you know any others?

The English phrase “to go Dutch”, meaning to pay separately, first appeared in writing in 1914 and is mainly used in the USA, according to the OED.

According to Wikipedia:

The phrase “going Dutch” originates from the concept of a Dutch door. Previously on farmhouses this consisted of two equal parts. Another school of thought is that it may be related to Dutch etiquette. In the Netherlands, it was not unusual to pay separately when going out as a group. When dating in a one-on-one situation, however, the man will most commonly pay for meals and drinks. English rivalry with the Netherlands especially during the period of the Anglo-Dutch Wars gave rise to several phrases including Dutch that promote certain negative stereotypes. Examples include Dutch oven, Dutch courage, Dutch uncle and Dutch wife.

Hedges and thistles

By Simon

During a conversation with a Chinese friend yesterday neither of us could think of the Mandarin word for hedge or thistle, among others, so I thought I’d look it up.

There appear to be a number of words for hedge in Mandarin:

– 栵 (lì) – hedge
– 藩籬 [藩篱] (fān​lí) – hedge / fence; line of defence / barrier
– 樹籬 [树篱] (shù​lí) – quickset hedge*
– 籬垣 [篱垣] (lí​yuán) – fence / hedge
– 柵籬 [栅篱] (zhà​lí) – hedgerow

If you want to talk about hedge funds though, there’s 私募基金 (sī​mù​jī​jīn) or 對衝基金 (duì​chōng​jī​jīn), and a hedgehog is 猬 (wei).

From: MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary

*a quickset hedge is a type of hedge created by planting live hazel or whitethorn (common hawthorn) cuttings directly into the earth. Once planted, these cuttings root and form new plants, creating a dense barrier [source].

So I’m still not sure which word to use for the hedge in my garden (a privet hedge), probably 栵 or 藩籬. This is the kind of thing you often have to deal with when translating.

The English word hedge comes from the Old English *hęcg, hęgg from the Germanic *hagjâ.

The Mandarin for thistle is 荼 (tú), which also means common sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) / bitter (taste) / cruel / flowering grass in profusion [source]. The English word thistle comes from the Old English þistil, from the Old Germanic *þīstil.