Category: Chinese (中文)

上海闲话 (Shanghainese)

By Simon

According to an article I came across today, the local government in Shanghai is trying to preserve Shanghainese, the variety of Wu spoken in Shanghai. This involves recording people who speak ‘pure’ Shanghainese talking about local legends and traditions, etc. This is the third time such a project has been attempted, and they hope to find more speakers of ‘true’ Shanghainese this time – something they didn’t manage before.

Similar projects are underway in other parts of China, such as Jiangsu and Yunnan, to preserve other regionalects/languages. The plan is to compile a national database of regional languages and dialects.

This initiative marks a reversal of the government policy of the 1990s when there was a campaign to encourage people to speak Mandarin rather than Shanghainese in Shanghai. The use of Shanghainese was banned in schools and the number of Shanghainese programmes on the radio and TV fell dramatically. As a result, relatively few children speak Shanghainese and those who do don’t speak it very well, Mandarin became the main language for many people in Shanghai, and Shanghainese became stigmatised.

Recently the situation has changed somewhat with the publication of a Shanghainese dictionary, a regular and popular newpaper column, and music and stand-up comedy in Shanghainese [source].

Do you speak Shanghainese or are you studying it?

Macaronic radio

By Simon

I listened to some Cantonese on RTHK this morning, and while I didn’t understand everything, I could get the gist of the news stories. Then I saw that RTHK has a Mandarin channel as well, so I listened to that for a while and noticed that when they had outside reports and interviews, many of the reporters and interviewees spoke in Cantonese, which wasn’t translated into Mandarin. I assume they don’t bother with translation because the majority of their listeners can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.

Other radio stations do the same sort of thing – Radio Cymru doesn’t translate bits in English into Welsh, and source], and it comes from the New Latin macaronicus, from Italian dialect maccarone (dumpling, macaroni) [source]. As it is usually used for humorously or satirically , it might not be the best term to describe this type of language use on the radio.

Are there other radio or TV stations that assume their listeners are bilingual or multilingual and that leave segments in other languages untranslated? Do any such stations do so for more than two languages?

Thinking sdrawkcab

By Simon

Here are the words of a song we’ve been learning recently at the Bangor Community Choir:

When there is light in the soul, there is beauty in the person.
When there is beauty in the person, there is harmony in the home.
When there is harmony in the home, there is honour in the nation.
When there is honour in the nation, there is peace in the world.

We were told that it’s based on a Chinese proverb, so of course I searched for that proverb and found the following:

明明德於天下者，先治其國。(míngmíng dé yú tiānxià zhĕ, xiān zhì qí guó)
欲治其國者，先齊其家。(yù zhì qí guó zhĕ, xiān qí qí jiā)
欲齊其家者，先修其身。(yù qí qí jiā zhĕ, xiān xiū qí shēn)
欲修其身者，先正其心。(yù xiū qí shēn zhĕ, xiān zhēng qí xīn)

This expresses more of less same sentiments, though they are the opposite way round: it starts taking about the world, then the nation, the home, etc.

Here’s a rough translation:

Those who wish to bring light and virtue to the world, must first govern the nation.
Those who wish to govern the nation, must first organise the home.
Those who wish to organise the home, must first cultivate themselves.
Those who wish to cultivate themselves, must first correct their heart.

Does anybody know where this proverb comes from, by the way?

The way things are arranged in Chinese often seems backwards from the point of view of English speakers. For example, surnames come before personal names, and addresses start from the country or province, rather than with the name.

When speaking (Mandarin) Chinese I try to think in Chinese, but words sometimes come out in English, Welsh or French order, which doesn’t necessarily work very well. This is mainly because I haven’t been using Chinese as much as I used to, so am not as practised at constructing Chinese sentences. I can still communicate effectively in Chinese, but have to rearrange some of the utterances either in my head or after I’ve said them. More practise should help to eliminate this problem.

肚皮舞 (dù​pí​wǔ​)

By Simon

The other day I discovered that the Mandarin word for belly dancing is 肚皮舞 (dù​pí​wǔ​). As I knew the meanings of the individual characters, I could guess the meaning of the word, even though I hadn’t heard it before. 肚 (dù​​) is stomach or belly, 皮 (​pí​​) is skin, and 舞 (wǔ​) is dance.

I don’t remember seeing 肚 (dù​​) written down before, though was familiar with the phrase “我肚子饿” (wǒ​ dù​zi​ è) = I’m hungry (lit. “I belly hungry”). According to the MDBG Chinese dictionary, 肚 (dù) means belly, 肚 (dǔ​) means tripe, and 肚子 (dù​zi​) means belly / abdomen / stomach.

Related words and expressions include:

  • 肚臍 [肚脐] (dù​qí) / 肚臍眼 (dù​qí​yǎn​) – navel
  • 肚子痛 (dù​zi​tòng​) / 肚痛 (dù​tòng)​ – stomach ache / belly-ache
  • 大肚子 (dà​dù​zi) -​pregnant (“big belly”)
  • 爆肚 (bào​dǔ​) – deep fried tripe
  • 眼饞肚飽 (yǎn​chán​dù​bǎo) – to have eyes bigger than one’s belly (“eyes greedy belly full”)
  • 鼠肚雞腸 (shǔ​dù​jī​cháng​) – small-minded (“rat/mouse belly chicken intestines”)
  • 將軍肚子 (jiāng​jūn​dù​zi​) – beer belly (“general’s belly” – complimentary)
  • 香羊肚 (xiāng​yáng​dù​) – haggis (“fragrant sheep belly”)

Another word for stomach is 腹 (fù​) – abdomen, belly, stomach.ng

On the tip of my pyramid

By Simon

Last night I spoke quite a bit of Mandarin with some people from China, and while I was able to have a good conversation with them, though there were some things I couldn’t remember or didn’t know how to say. Usually when this happens I try to find another way to express the same idea, or if the people I’m talking to speak English, as was the case last night, I might say whatever it is in English and ask them how to say it in Mandarin. When they tell me, I often realise that I did know the words, but they just wouldn’t come to mind.

It’s likely that there’ll be gaps in your vocabulary, both in languages you’re learning, and in your native language, unless you memorise dictionaries. If the gaps are things you talk about frequently, it certainly helps to learn the words for them, but for other things you could use paraphrases. For example, one of the words that came up last night was pyramid. I didn’t know how to say it in Mandarin, but one of the Chinese guys did. After I got home I thought of a way to express the idea of a pyramid in Mandarin: 人造的小山，在埃及可看到的 (rénzhào de xiǎoshān, zài āijí kĕ kàndào de) – “man-made little hills that can be seen in Egypt” – not perfect perhaps, but it should get the message across.

In case you’re wondering, the Mandarin for pyramid is 金字塔 (jīn​zì​tǎ​), which could be glossed as “tower shaped like the character 金”.

Christmas

By Simon

Nadolig Llawen
Joyeux Noël
聖誕快樂
Nollaig shona doibh
¡Feliz Navidad!
Nollick Ghennal
Bo Nadal
Nollaig chridheil
メリークリスマス
Buon Natale
Frohe Weihnachten
Bon Nadal
Veselé vánoce
and Merry Christmas!

Colds, streams and rivers

By Simon

A snow-covered Siliwen Road in Bangor

It’s rather cold here at the moment with daytime temperatures not much above freezing, and nighttime dropping to -10°C (14°F) or even -20°C (-4°F) in places. As a result, some of the snow that fell last week has frozen solid and been trampled down on pavements and ungritted back streets making them decidedly icey and slippery.

I also have a cold at the moment, so I thought I’d look into how to say “I have a cold” in a number of languages. In French it’s “Je suis enrhumé” or “I am enrhumed”. Enrhumé comes from rhume (cold), which comes from the Old French reume, from the Latin rheuma, from the Greek rheuma (stream, current, a flowing), from rhein (to flow), from the Proto-Indo-European *sreu- (to flow). The Proto-Indo-European *sreu- is also the root of the Irish sruth (stream, river), the Welsh ffrwd (stream) and the Polish strumyk (brook). [source].

The Czech word for cold rýmu appears to be spring from the same source – mám rýmu is “I have a cold” by the way – as does the English word rheumatism. You can also say jsem nachlazený for “I have a cold” in Czech, which has a similar structure to the French phrase – “I am colded” or something like that.

In Welsh you don’t have a cold but rather a cold is on you: mae annwyd arna i, and the other Celtic languages use the same structure, “Is cold on/at me”: tá slaghdán orm (Irish), tha ‘n cnatan orm (Scottish Gaelic), ta feayraght/mughane aym (Manx).

In German “I have a cold” is Ich bin erkältet (“I am becolded?”), with erkältet coming from kalt (cold).

In Mandarin Chinese you say 我感冒了 (wǒ gǎnmào le) or “I catch cold [change of state particle]”.

Double dutch and lost dragons

By Simon

I’ve been playing with Xtranormal today and have made a couple of new films:

Double Dutch (in Dutch and English)

Where’s my dragon? (In Mandarin and English)

When you use Mandarin the system refuses to accept some of the characters you type in, including some common ones like 谢 (thanks). I tried substituting pinyin for the problematic characters, but found that this only works in some cases. Then I came up with the idea of substituting other characters with the same sounds, and it works well. For example 谢谢 becomes 泄泄 (泄 [xiè = to leak) and 话 (huà) – language, becomes 画 (huà) – picture. It’s not ideal, but it works and I’ve learnt some new characters, or re-learnt ones I should already know.

If I can work out how to add subtitles, I might do so, but it should be possible to work out most of the non-English bits from the English bits.

I’ve also posted these films on YouTube.

Chinese puzzle

By Simon

Chinese characters

Can any of you decipher the Chinese in this image?

The larger characters appear to be “仙露明珠方 朗潤松風水月北” (xiān lù míng zhū fāng lǎng rùn sōng fēng shuǐ yuè běi).

The smaller characters on the left appear to be “??扵甾香饭石生?” (??zāi xiāng fàn dàn shēng ?) – I’m not sure about the first two or the last one.

I know what parts of it mean, but not the whole thing.

[Update 21/11/2010]: according to a friend or a friend, the characters are “仙露明珠方明润，松风明月比清华。 于留香馆，石生画。” This is from 《小窗幽记》 (xiăochuāng yōujì) in 《醉古堂剑扫》 (zuì gŭ táng jiàn săo), Volume 12, Paragraph 121.

Xtranormal

By Simon

Today I came across an interesting-looking site called Xtranormal that use text-to-speech and other clever stuff – they call it ‘text-to-movie’ – to make animated films.

You just choose your characters and setting, and then type in the dialogue. You can also play with the cameras, animate the characters, and add other effects.

What interests me particularly about this program is that you can choose voices in a variety of languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese and Dutch, and I think this could be a useful language learning and teaching tool.

Here’s a short bilingual (English and Mandarin) film I put together:

[Update] It didn’t accept quite a few of the Chinese characters I tried to use, so you can only use very simple phrases. Here’s another short film in French and English: