Laowai Chinese 老外中文

The Curse of the Convergent Concepts

2008 May 10 – 8:18 am

Categories: Vocabulary, Word Hog | 3 Comments »

We’ve talked a little bit before about concepts that are distinct in English but are the same in Chinese. Some of the examples I’ve given (I think) were:

• jiè 借 = to borrow / to lend
• ràng 让 = to make / to let / to ask someone to do something

In one of my English classes last week, I ran into two that never got sorted out. Perhaps some of you can shed some light.

Jump / Dive

The student wanted to talk about the Olympic sport of diving. That seems to be:

• tiàoshuǐ 跳水 = to dive / diving (the sport)

The confusion came when I said, “Doesn’t that “tiào” just mean “jump?” Yes it does. So how would you say “jump into the water?”

The class was split. Some of them said something like:

• “tiào jìn shuǐ” 跳进水 = to jump into the water

But others insisted that tiàoshuǐ 跳水 could have both meanings. In the end, the dispute (between the students) came down to the height of the platform the person is diving from. Since I thought that HAD to be irrelevant to my original question, I was reduced to drawing pictures (for which I’ll substitute shamelessly-stolen Google Images here) and saying:

1. If your head touches the water before your feet, that’s diving.

image source

2. If your feet touch the water before your head, that’s jumping into the water.

image source

So how do you say number 1 in Chinese, and how do you say number 2 in Chinese? There still wasn’t agreement. Anyone like to add your opinion?

The Olympic Torch

I was infinitely confused when my students told me that the Olympic torch was in Guangzhou on Wednesday and from there went the top of Mt. Everest on Thursday. The reason this confused me was other students were insisting it was in Huizhou Thursday (many hundreds of miles from the top of Everest). I asked, as anyone would in such a situation, “So you mean there are two torches?”

I was shouted down with a resounding, unison, “NOOOOOO!”

Rather than trying to figure out why they seemed offended at the idea of two torches, I decided to focus on how the torch seemed to be violating the nature of the universe and existing in two places at once. I got nowhere until, again, I drew a picture.

image source

They immediately seemed relieved and eagerly cleared up the misunderstanding.

1. shènghuǒ 圣火 = sacred flame / Olympic flame (which there is only one of)

2. huǒjù 火炬 = torch (which there are two or more of)

And I should have left it there. But I had to ask, “So when I originally asked ‘Are there two torches?’ what word, in Chinese did you think I meant?”

Some tried to deny it, but they all had to admit they thought I was saying huǒjù 火炬.

“So WHY did you say there was only one, but now you’re saying there are multiple huǒjù-s ?!?!?!”

They couldn’t answer that and kept muttering things like, “It’s a cultural difference” and “It’s a language difference” and I simply gave up and went on with the class.

If anyone would like to attempt to explain either of these two confusing convergent concepts to me, but especially what in the world happened in the torch discussion, I’m all–um–eyes.

Funnest Things to Say

2008 April 24 – 12:14 pm

Categories: Pronunciation, Tones, Vocabulary, Word Hog | 8 Comments »

DISCLAIMER: In case I have a Chinese reader, I should tell you “funnest” isn’t a real word.

This post started out innocently enough as a fun way to test the new audio plugin (thanks to Beijing Sounds for the tip) and celebrate the joy of speaking a foreign language. But in the end (as you’ll see at the end) I ended up documenting some bona fide “tone fudging” by a real, live, Chinese native speaker. So, don’t touch that dial!

First, here are some things that roll so nicely off the tongue that I’m constantly looking for excuses to say them.

Top 4 Favorite Things to Say in Chinese:

Tech support note: If anyone is having trouble playing these audio files, please let me know and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.

4. guàibude 怪不得 = No wonder

Of course you can also say, “nánguài” 难怪, which may actually get used more by real Chinese people, but where’s the fun in that?

3. chàbuduō 差不多 = more or less, almost, nearly

In addition to helping you accomplish all your equivocating goals, it’s useful with an added “le” 了 to mean:

chàbuduō le 差不多了 = That’s about enough (stop giving me rice / time to go home now, etc.)

2. suàn le ba 算了吧 = forget it / never mind

Here’s an example where you could use it with or without the “ba” 吧:

A: yǒu méiyǒu hóngsè de? 有没有红色的? = Do you have a red one?
B: méiyǒu 没有 = No.
A: suàn le (ba) 算了(吧) = Ok, never mind / forget it then.

Now, “méi guānxi” 没关系 also means “never mind” but it can also mean “it doesn’t make any difference.” If you really only want a red one (let’s say a lamp) then “suàn le ba” gets you out of buying one. But if you say “méi guānxi” it may imply that the color isn’t that important and you might still be interested in a white one.

But, as if our lives weren’t bitter enough, here’s an extremely confusing situation where “suàn le” 算了 means the opposite:

A: zhège duōshao qián? 这个多少钱? = How much does this cost?
B: wǔshíwǔ kuài 五十五块 = 55 yuan.
A: wǔshí kěyǐ ma? 五十可以吗? = 50, ok?
B: suàn le, suàn le 算了算了 = Ok, ok (it’s a deal).

The best way I can think of to explain this is: if the buyer says “suàn le” 算了, it means he doesn’t want it. But if the seller says “suàn le” 算了 to a price, it means it’s acceptable. I’d love to hear someone else take a crack at clarifying why that is.

1. niǔ niǔ niē niē 扭扭捏捏 = to be fake shy / to hesitate

While opportunities to say this are rare, it’s got to be the most fun thing to say in Chinese I’ve found so far. It literally means “twist twist pinch pinch” (again, someone please explain why).

To use it to scold your students for taking too long to decide who’s going to speak first in a dialog, you can add the imperative “don’t want”:

bú yào niǔ niǔ niē niē 不要扭扭捏捏 = don’t pretend to be shy

BONUS: Tone Fudging

You may have noticed that “niǔ niǔ niē niē” becomes “niú niǔ niē niē.” That’s codified. The ol’ “two 3rd tones becomes a 2nd and a 3rd” rule. But did you notice what happened to the “bú yào”?

When I recorded my informant saying the above phrase, I noticed a very interesting little phenomenon: she doesn’t say “bú yào” 不要 with a second and fourth tone like we’ve been told we’re supposed to. Instead, it sounds like “bǔ yáo” or maybe “bú yáo.”

I asked her if I heard that right and she said she could also do it the other “standard” way, but that the tone of voice (yǔqì 语气) would be different (she explains it all at the end of this post).

Here’s the standard way:

bú yào niǔ niǔ niē niē

Now, let’s listen to the first way followed directly by this “standard” way:

1. bǔ yáo niǔ niǔ niē niē

2. bú yào niǔ niǔ niē niē

And just for kicks, only the “bu yao’s” in isolation, repeated to really shine the spotlight on the phenomenon (sorry the “n” of “niu” is at the end of each–it sounds like “bu yaon” but we can deal with that, right?):

1. bǔ yáo

2. bú yào

Here’s her explanation of the difference:

“bǔ yáo niǔniǔniēniē” jiùshì bǐjiào kǒuyǔhuà de.
“不要扭扭捏捏”就是比较口语化的.
“[the first way]” is relatively colloquial.

yǔqì méi nàme zhòng.
语气没那么重.
The tone of voice isn’t that serious.

“bú yào niǔniǔniēniē” jiùshì yǒu yìdiǎn shēngqì de gǎnjué.
“不要扭扭捏捏”就是有一点生气的感觉.
“[the second way]” has a little bit of an angry feeling.

So there you have it, straight from a native speaker’s mouth. It opens up a whole new discussion called, “Well, how do we know what tones can be fudged to express feelings?” The short answer: we don’t, only they do.

I can’t help but think that this would have been called “Zhonglish” if it had come from a foreigner. But since it’s from a native speaker, it’s bona fide, acceptable Chinese. I’m sure there’s a lot more tone fudging going on with native speakers than we know about. I hope to get some more examples. Maybe I’ll start a whole new post category on it! Regardless, this is the first empirical evidence that what I wrote in Tone Wars isn’t as cut and dried as I originally thought.

Tomb Sweeping Festival

2008 April 4 – 9:29 am

Categories: Vocabulary, Word Hog | 7 Comments »

Happy Qīngmíng Jié 清明节 everyone. I thought I’d share what I learned in the English classes I taught this week. This will NOT be an extensive treatment of all the ins and outs of Qingming Jie, just some new things I’ve learned.

Culture

1. First year for official holiday. While Qingming Jie is thousands of years old, this is the first year (2008) that it has been an official, government holiday from school and work. I asked my students to theorize why that may be. They sited the following possible factors:

• The May holiday has been shortened to one day (from three previously) which has freed up more holidays to be given to other festivals.
• “Korea has stolen Dragon Boat Festival” and the Chinese don’t want to see that happen with any other rightfully Chinese traditional holidays. (here’s an article that touches on the conflict which seems to have something to do with World Heritage listings).

If anyone else has any theories, I’d love to hear them.

2. For boys, not girls. While some towns allow girls to participate, the tomb sweeping responsibilities are usually for the men of the family.

3. More important in South than North. Apparently, some of my students from northern China didn’t even know what Qingming Jie was. Can anyone up north confirm or deny that this is a trend and not just my students?

Vocabulary

If you talk to any Chinese people about their home town’s traditions for Qingming Jie, you may run across some of this vocab. These are words I was asked “how to say…” so often that I actually learned the Chinese for them in the process.

fénmù 坟墓 = tomb / grave

mùdì 墓地 = cemetery (which sounds exactly like mùdì 目的 = “goal”)

sǎomù 扫墓 = to sweep tombs

bài zǔxiān 拜祖先 = to pay respects to ancestors

shāo xiāng 烧香 = to burn incense

shāo zhū 烧猪 = roast pig

gānzhè 甘蔗 = sugar cane

fàng biānpào 放鞭炮 = set off firecrackers

If you want to know the significance of these things, you’ll have to ask your Chinese informants (or find an article online). If there are some other useful (and confirmed by a native speaker) words I’ve left off, please feel free to share them with us.