Month: April 2008

Word of the day – 成語

By Simon

成語 [成语] (chéngyǔ) are Chinese idioms usually consisting of four characters. They tend to pack a lot of meaning into those four characters and many have a story, myth or moral behind them from Classical Chinese literature, in which they were used extensively. If you’re not familiar with the stories, it will be very difficult or impossible to work out what the idioms mean. They’re still quite commonly used in modern written and spoken Chinese, and there are between 5,000 and 20,000 of them.

Here are a few examples:

一日千秋 (yírìqiānqiū) = “one day, a thousand autumns” – implies rapid changes; one day equals a thousand years

一日千里 (yírìqiānlǐ) = “one day, a thousand miles.”- implies rapid progress; travelling a thousand miles in a day

一日三秋 (yírìsānqiū) = “one day, three autumns.” – when you’re missing someone very much, one day can feel as long as three years.

From Wikipedia

A good place to find out more about chengyu is this site, which explains a number of them in Chinese and English. Another useful chengyu site is this one, which contains a dictionary of 13,000 of them with explanations in Chinese.

These idioms are also used in Japanese and are called 四字熟語 (yojijukugo) – four character idioms. They come mainly from Classical Chinese and have the same or similar meanings to the Chinese ones. A dictionary of Japanese four characters idioms, with explanations in Japanese, can be found here, while this site explains some of them in English.

Pear stories

By Simon

An interesting site I came across today called the Chinese Pear Stories features material in seven Chinese languages – Mandarin (普通话), Cantonese (广东话), Hakka (客家话), Shanghai Wu (吳), Xiamen Min Nan (閩南话), Xiang 湘 and Gan 贛. The material consists of recordings and transcriptions of stories told by speakers of each of these languages. This is the first time I’ve heard the latter two and to me they sound a lot like Mandarin.

A researcher from the University of California made a short film, which can be seen on the site, called ‘Pear Stories’ about some children stealing fruit.The film has no dialogue and is designed to elicit samples of various languages, including the Chinese ones already mentioned and also English, German, Greek, Japanese, and one of the Mayan languages. People watched the film, then were asked to say what they’d seen in their language. The idea was to compare how speakers of different languages describe the same events.

One finding that emerged was that the structure of the stories was very similar across all the languages – there appears to be a common ‘story grammar’. There were however some minor differences in the vocabulary used, and some people added moral comments about stealing.

Soaking up languages like a sponge

By Simon

A report I found today talks about a school in Seattle called sponge which aims to teach babies and children four languages – Spanish, Mandarin, French and Japanese – through play, songs, stories, etc. They have teachers who are native speakers of the languages they teach and take children from as young 5 months and up to 5 years old.

This sounds like an interesting approach to language teaching and I’m sure that children will benefit from this multilingual environment. I wonder whether they’ll become fluent in all the languages though – they may not get sufficient exposure to each to acquire them fully. Perhaps that isn’t the point of the school.

Say something!

By Simon

When other people discover that you speak a foreign language, they sometimes ask you to say something in that language. You might want to say something complicated thinking it will impress them, but if they don’t speak the language themselves, anything you say will probably do that. But what to say?

Poems, songs, proverbs, sayings or tongue twisters are all possible choices. They will sound impressive, even if you stumble over parts of them. If that happens and you just keep going as if nothing happened, nobody will notice. Simple sentences such as “My name is ….”, “I come from …”, “Isn’t it a nice day today?” or something similar are another possibility. Or if you’re feeling flippant, you could just say the equivalent of “something” or “something in [name of language]”.

When asked to perform in this way I usually just say a few simple sentences, though afterwards I think maybe I should’ve said something along the lines of, “As you don’t speak this language I can say whatever I like and you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about. So I just want to mention that my hovercraft is full of eels, as well you know!”. Unfortunately I can’t always manage to construct this kind of thing on the fly.

What do you usually say when asked to say something in a foreign language?

This post was inspired by one on Corcaighist.

Míkmaq trees

By Simon

The words for trees in Míkmaq, an Algonquian language spoken in parts of Canada and the USA, are apparently based on the sounds the trees make in the wind. More specifically, according to this book, the names come from “the sound that the wind makes when it blows through the leaves during autumn about an hour after sunset, when the wind usually comes from a particular direction.” The names can therefore change over time depending on the wind and the age and size of the trees. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any of the actual names of trees in Míkmaq.

Míkmaq words for animals are also based on sounds – the sounds made by those animals. For example, kitten is miaojij. The same happens to some extent in other languages. For example, the Mandarin Chinese for cat is 猫 (māo).

In English the names of some birds are onomatopoeic, including cuckoo, whippoorwill, morepork, chiffchaff, chickadee, whooping swan and peewit.

Can you think of other examples of onomatopoeic birds, animals or other creatures?

Eira

By Simon

Yr wythnos hon meddyliais bod y tywydd yn wella a bydd hi’n mynd yn dwym cyn bo hir. Ond heddiw mae hi’n bwrw eira trwm ac mae hi’n oer. Dyma’r tro cyntaf mod i wedi gweld cymaint o eira yma ym Mrighton – mae e’n aros ar toeon y ceir a’r tai, ar y traeth ac ar y parciau a’r gerddi. Dw i wedi tynnu lluniau ac wedi rhoi nhw ar Flickr.

Sneacht

An seachtaine seo shíl mé go mbeidh an aimsir ag éirí níos fearr agus níos teo go luath. Ach tá sé ag cur sneachta go trom inniu agus tá sé fuar. Seo an chéad uair atá mé an oiread sin sneachta a fheiceáil anseo i Bhrighton – tá sé ag fanacht ar díonta tithe agus gluaisteán, ar an thrá agus ar páirceanna agus gairdín. Tá mé i ndiaidh grianghrafaí a thógáil agus iad a chuir air Flickr.

Snow

This week I thought the weather was improving and getting warmer, but today it’s snowing and cold. This is the first time I’ve seen so much snow here in Brighton – it’s settling on the roofs of cars and houses, on the beach and on parks and gardens. I took a few photos of the snow earlier today and put them on Flickr.

Word of the day – poklop

By Simon

Poklop is a Czech word I came across today which means trapdoor or hatch. I’m not sure of its etymology, but I just like the sound of this word.

An alternative word for the same thing is padací dveře (lit. “falling door”). Related words include padací most drawbridge, (lit. “falling bridge”) and padací mříž portculis, (lit. “falling bar/grating/grid”).