I’ve been thinking about outlets for that frustration and I’ve decided that the one I’m most prone to is complaining about the Chinese language. I’ve found the following to be true about my linguistic complaining:

1. I usually complain to other foreigners (especially those who are also trying to learn Chinese).
2. I don’t mind complaining in front of Chinese people.
3. I almost always complain about unchangeable, ingrained parts of the language (like the fact that there are tones).
4. I use the word “they” when complaining about the language to mean “Chinese people” or “speakers of Chinese.”
5. I prepare my complaints ahead of time so that when I meet a sympathetic listener I’m ready.
6. It feels good to complain.

However, despite the temporary good feelings I may get from venting, I’ve come to believe that linguistic complaining is overall a very destructive activity. This may come as a surprise since I’ve occasionally even used this blog for some ranting. Let’s just say I’m trying to turn over a new leaf.

But before I explain why I feel I’ve got a problem and I’m trying to quit, let me give some examples of the type of complaining I’m most prone to so it’ll be easier to imagine my plight.

Types of Linguistic Complaining

1. Pronunciation

Probably the most common category for me is the tones. I find it unfair that I’ve got to learn two things for each word (the word itself and the tone with which to say it). I also find it strange that Chinese people can understand the words of songs (which follow the “tones” of the melody rather than the tones the dictionary gives for each word) but can’t understand the words I’m saying with the wrong tones. I’ve often felt that a fruit vendor or someone “misunderstood me on purpose and knew full well what I meant!”

2. Vocabulary

How do you say something in Chinese? Well there might be a whole lot of words for it and every dictionary you look in might give you a different word. I’ve often been frustrated that “They have so many words for the same thing!” in Chinese. There are also some divergent concepts where Chinese has two or more different words for something we’ve only got one word for (for example “thin” and “thick” are different in Chinese depending on the shape of the object).

3. Listening

One of the side effects of only having 409-ish syllables in Chinese plus the 5 tones is that a whole lot of words sound the same. This makes listening especially difficult. I’ve found myself getting angry when a student asked me in class (without any context), for example: “How do you say shíwù in English?” My brain immediately starts pumping out permutations of all the meanings those syllables could have with those tones (here are the four in the dictionary) and I have no way of knowing which one the student meant without resorting to hanzi or some sort of clarifying discussion.

4. Lack of Practice Partners

Over my five years in China, it’s been a real “feast or famine” regarding Chinese language practice partners. Fact is: you can’t learn Chinese (well, most people can’t) unless there’s someone who’s willing to talk to you in Chinese. During times when I’ve been isolated or unable to find people who don’t want to talk to me just to improve their English, I’ve often said to myself, “They’re so selfish! I’m trying to learn THEIR language and no one’s helping me!”

Effects of Complaining

The above examples are meant to help you identify whether you too are prone to linguistic complaining. If you are, it’s of course up to you also to decide if you think it’s a good use of your energy. For me, personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that no good comes of the type of complaining I’ve described.

1. It Torpedoes My Motivation

When I complain about these things, all of which are out of my control to change, I find that a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness quickly grows. I start thinking, “It’s not getting better, and I’ve already been trying this long. Maybe I’ve done about as much as I can with this language.”

2. It Torpedoes My Relationships with Chinese Friends

Imagine for a moment I have my own children. I don’t want my neighbor to come over and list all the bad things my kids do. I know my kids aren’t perfect, but I’m stuck with them. And there are a lot of good things they do too.

Well, as polite as our Chinese friends may be when listening to rants against their language, they would probably rather talk about something else. It’s out of their control as much as it is out of mine. But I’ve actually (shockingly!) found myself blaming individual Chinese friends of mine for “this language” and its perceived flaws. It really put a damper on our relationship. I’ve often wondered if that’s one contributing factor to those dry spells when I didn’t have Chinese friends who wanted to speak Chinese with me.

I’m amazed at how emotional I can get over these issues. Some people get angry about sports teams. I’ve gotten angry about measure words. No one wants to be around angry people on a prolonged basis.

3. It Makes Me Proud

If I could sum up the problem with linguistic complaining in one sentence it would be:

“When I complain, I feel powerful and it gives me an artificially inflated sense of who I am in this country and the whole universe for that matter.”

When I complain about something as ancient and complex as the Chinese language, I’m setting myself up as a sort of “Linguistic God.” I’m actually thinking thoughts like, “If I’d created the language I would have done things very, VERY differently.” As if I can even take credit for anything in my own language!

Zěnme Bàn? 怎么办?

Now that I’ve identified the fact that I’m a linguistic complainer and that it’s a problem for me, the issue becomes how to avoid slipping back into those tendencies to complain. As with all complaining, the root is actually thinking.

The key, for me, is to still feel free to think honestly about the language and the language-learning process, without being negative. Many of the solutions I’ve come up with have come about by thinking and speaking honestly about difficulties I’ve encountered.

But problems arise when I start thinking negatively about things I have no control over (for example the fact that the language has tones at all).

For example, I’ve found I need to avoid thoughts in the following general categories:

• “Chinese is a bad language.”
• “English (or some other language) is better because of ____.”
• “If I were trying to learn a different language I wouldn’t be feeling this way.”

Such thoughts put the blame for how I’m feeling on the language. In fact, I’m in charge of my own emotional response to the language and the thoughts I allow myself to entertain. Besides, no one is forcing me to continue attempting to learn the language or even stay in China for that matter.

I’m now convinced that, regardless of the difficulties inherent in learning Chinese (and there are many), complaining about them is of no benefit to me (or anyone) and only leaves me angry or discouraged. Complaining makes me feeling powerful and it may even be entertaining to listen to. But I’ve found that the long-term costs outweigh the temporary benefits.

Thus ends the confession of a linguistic complainer.

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wúxiàn shí shàngwǎng

She rattled off some more stats and info that was lost on me, but I had to clarify what she’d just said. I’d been thinking of wireless routers and I thought maybe they were running some sort of Mid-Autumn special for wireless (wúxiàn 无线) capability for getting online (shàngwǎng 上网).

After MANY clarifying questions I found that wúxiàn was really 无限 not 无线. She laughed and said:

mànmàn xué ba 慢慢学吧 = Learn slowly / Take your time learning

It was hard for me not to feel a little patronized especially when the words I’d gotten confused sound EXACTLY the same, and they can BOTH apply to getting online.

The one syllable I was supposed to use to help me figure out which wúxiàn she was talking about was:

wúxiàn shí shàngwǎng

That shí turns out to be shíjiān de shí 时间的时. So that phrase meant “there is no limit to the amount of time I can spend online” and NOT “getting on wireless internet.”

What a hard language.

PS: On the evening of Mid-Autumn Festival I ran into some of my students. I asked where they were going and one replied with only two syllables: “xiǎng yuè.” At first I had no idea what she meant because I’ve never heard that phrase,  but luckily I had predicted that she would say something about the moon. I ran her two syllables through the database of possible things I would have said, then deleted 2 syllables from my results and compared them to what she said. The result came up with the most likely candidate for what she’d meant being: xiǎngshòu yuèliang 享受月亮. MATCH FOUND! It was later confirmed by her. I’ve never heard those two syllables like that before. I consider it a minor miracle that I understood it at all.

What a hard language.

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“The ambassador also introduced her family to the media in fluent mandarin…”

This surprise me because I thought the new ambassador was Jon Huntsman. Turns out he is, and this is just the classic “he/she/(it)” mix-up.

It could be an innocent typo (of which I myself make many on this blog!), but more likely the article was either written by a native speaker of Chinese or the article was translated from Chinese (couldn’t confirm). Here’s the full quotation:

“The ambassador also introduced her family to the media in fluent mandarin and invited reporters to enjoy an episode his eldest daughter Mary Anne played on piano in the living room.”

For anyone new to the “he/she” fiasco, the defense usually goes like this:

“We Chinese have only one word for ‘he/she/it’: tā. So when speaking English we often make mistakes. It’s a case where a divergent concept in English (like doubt/suspect, borrow/lend) is responsible for this mistake as well as others.

The prosecution now says:

“Yes, but when writing Chinese characters you have to chose one of three depending on what you’re talking about. 他,她, and 它 are all pronounced tā, but mean ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘it,’ respectively. And now here’s an article in a major Chinese publication that shows the mistake in print, even though there is no divergence between the Chinese and English writing of ‘he/she/it.’”

I’m not really interested in a “verdict,” I just thought it was interesting to see more evidence that the “he/she” problem isn’t just in the realm of speaking (my writing students in China have been known to write “he/she” wrong from time to time even when talking about their own family members!).

And now, just to indulge my fantasy of becoming a forensic linguist, I’d like to point out that whoever wrote the article was most likely trained in British English because of the collective treatment of “family” here:

“Now my family are very happy to come here to serve on behalf of the US government.”

I think Mr. Huntsman would have said “my family is very happy,” hence my theory that this has been translated into English by someone trained in British English.

That was fun.

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Anyone who’s studied Chinese for a few weeks or months should be able to do the quiz.  The best time to take this quiz is while you’re feeling good after hearing a native speaker not know the measure word for computer.

Questions

1. How do you say, “16 people” in Chinese?

2. How do you say “24 hours” in Chinese?

HINT: There is more than one correct answer to each question.

Do you have your answers?  Try not to think about the title of this post when you answer or you’ll anticipate my coup de grace.

Answers

(not bolded to reduce cheating)

1. shíliù gè rén 十六个人 – OR – shíliù wèi rén 十六位人 (polite)*

2. èrshísì gè xiǎoshí 二十四个小时 – OR – èrshísì gè zhōngtóu 二十四个钟头

*There are even more measure words you can use for people, but those are the main ones in everyday speech.

Now, look at these pictures and see if you can see the difference between your answers and the written Chinese (again, try not to think about the post title):

(elevator max occupancy plate)

(TV show "24" Season 7 pirated DVD cover)

The hanzi in those two pictures tells us that additional correct answers are:

1. shíliù rén 十六人 (16人 as it appears in the picture)

2. èrshísì xiǎoshí 二十四小时 (24小时 as it appears in the picture)

No measure words!

Alright, enough beating around the bush.  I’m going to just come out and tell you what I’m getting at:

The Chinese don’t seem to need measure words within written Chinese.

I don’t think it would be acceptable to SAY, when speaking Chinese, either of those no-measure-word utterances that appear in the pictures (at least usually rén 人 and xiǎoshí 小时 need a measure word in front of them).

I count this as an argument supporting theory 3: that measure words came about to help people differentiate all those homonyms when speaking to each other.  When dealing with hanzi only (i.e. reading written Chinese), there are no homonyms. Therefore, you can do without measure words.

I guess that means that the main functions of measure words in spoken Chinese are to indicate:

1. What I just said before this measure word was a number.

2. What I’m about to say after this measure word is a noun.

With the huge number of homonyms in Chinese, other words can sound like numbers (especially 1 yī, 10 shí, and 4 sì the way it’s pronounced by many in Southern China as “shì”), and the noun itself can sound like other nouns with only a single tone difference (and sometimes not even that).  Measure words give valuable auditory clues that help increase the chances (not always to 100%) that what you’re saying will be understood.

And so, to close on a pedagogical note: when speaking Chinese, the more accurate your measure words are, the more likely it is that you’ll be understood (there’s some help with that here and here).

Anyone else know any examples of a measure word that would usually be there in spoken Chinese that disappears in written Chinese?  Do tell.

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1. sofa = shāfā 沙发 (English -> Chinese)

2. typhoon = táifēng 台风 (Chinese -> English)

But some things I can’t explain at all.  Are these just amazing qiǎohé-s?  I’d love to know.

Fee = fèi 费

The English word is from the Middle English and Old French term “fief” and the payment fiefs gave to their landlords.  If you tell me it’s just a one-in-a-million coincidence that the Chinese word sounds so similar, I’ll accept that…once.

Totem = túténg 图腾

The English word comes from a North American Indian language family called Algonquian.  Does that mean that the ancient Chinese people in southern Guangxi who made totems didn’t have a word for it and waited for the term to get imported across the Pacific?  Or is this just an amazing coincidence again?  I’d be willing to accept that, but not the next one.

Swallow (bird) = yàn 燕
To Swallow = yàn 咽

The two English words have different histories.  The word for the bird comes from the Old English “swealwe” akin to the German “schwalbe.”  The verb comes from the Old Engilsh “swelgan” which goes back to the Indo-European base “swel-” meaning “to devour” (from which we also get the English word “swill”).  Ok, that’s just a coincidence.  If we had “yingzi” pictographic characters, the bird and the verb would be two different characters, but the same pronunciation.

But what are the chances that the Chinese name for the bird and the verb are also two different characters but the exact same pronunciation?  The others I MIGHT be willing to accept as coincidences, but not this.  This is too weird.  I’m loosing sleep over this, people.  Help!  Help!

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One time, I wanted to ask at a hotel if the room had a shower.  So I asked if they had a “yùshì” 浴室.  The front desk worker said, “xǐzǎo ma?” 洗澡吗.  Ok, sure.  So, I guess it’s a noun too?

If you’d be so kind as to leave a comment, I’d like to do a little poll:

1. What word(s) do you say for “a shower” (n.) and “to take a shower” (v.)?

2. Does your favorite dictionary have “xǐzǎo” 洗澡 under the English definition for “shower”?

3. What dictionary was that you just checked?

If I hear back from anyone, the results of this poll will help inform an upcoming article I’m writing.

Thanking you in advance.

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Me: So now let’s hear from one of the students on that same question: What’s your idea of a good friend?

Jingle: A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Me: Umm…ok, thanks for that.  Would you care to explain or give an example of what you mean?

Jingle: I just mean that two heads are better than one.

Me: Well…umm…that’s not exactly…

Someone else: (interrupting) Have you seen Titanic?

Jingle: Professionals built the Titanic, but amateurs built the ark.

Me: Ok…well…sadly, we’re out of time now.

Jingle: Time flies like an arrow.

Me: I don’t know what that means.

I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not.  That’s how it happened.  It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a “conversation.”

And I’ve met other Jingles from time to time in my years in China.  What’s happened is: they’ve gotten a book of English proverbs and idioms and just slurped them up without any real understanding of the nuances of their meanings or situations in which they’d be appropriate to use.

Well, we’ve got to be careful of the same sort of thing.  There are times when we think we know what an idiom means, but the connotations in Chinese are totally different (or different enough) to cause some real problems.  Even if the words translate the same, we may be dealing with a “false friend.”

Exhibit A: “Actions Speak Louder than Words”

My second (ever) week in China, I was invited to a fancy dinner with the other two foreign teachers and the bigwigs of the college.  It was a small gathering of about a dozen, and needless to say, my Chinese was pretty basic at that point.  A few days earlier, I had just learned:

shuō bùrú zuò 说不如作

The literal Chinese translation is “Speaking is not better than doing.”  From the context I had learned it in, I was sure it meant “Actions speak louder than words.”

To cut a long (and painful) story short, the president of the college asked me something at one point during the dinner and one of the English department leaders translated it into English for me.  I replied with “shuō bùrú zuò” to mean that I would prove my loyalty to the school not by what I said but by my actions.  If it had actually meant “Actions speak louder than words,” I would have been fine.

In fact, a much better translation of that phrase would be “Talk is cheap.”  Because of the context, the president could have taken that as my insulting him.  He could have thought I was saying “All this talk at a fancy dinner is worthless” (a lot of talking, an toasting, goes on at those events).

At the time I said it, I got the feeling something was wrong but it was only later that I learned what a  blunder that had been.  It made me want to steer clear of all idioms (overreacting, I know).  Even though I knew what all the words meant, I didn’t have a good grasp of the connotations.  It turned out to be a false friend.

Exhibit B: “We’re in the Same Boat”

When the Sìchuān dà dìzhèn 四川大地震 stuck, my classes of English majors wanted to talk about it.  People were talking about the tragedy and all the hardships the people of Sichuan were enduring.  After the earthquake, because of landslides blocking rivers, the threat of flooding was reaching critical.  At one point, when asked for her opinion, a girl simply said, “I think we’re all in the same boat, don’t you think so?”

I said, “We’ll, I don’t think we’re exactly in the same boat but we’re trying to understand them.”

Well, let me tell you, that became a HUGE issue.  I was lucky I found out about it the next week.  The students were furious (and had been talking about it) and said I was “discriminating” against Chinese people (whatever that meant!) and couldn’t believe I’d said that.  I was shocked that my little comment about figurative boats had caused such an uproar, so I asked a thousand questions and finally figured out the problem.

If you’ll look at the first two entries here (a resource not available to me in class), you’ll see that “in the same boat” in Chinese includes feelings of solidarity and helping each other.

I explained to the class that in English, “In the same boat” just means we’ve found ourselves in the same situation.  But, since our buildings hadn’t fallen down, our friends and family members hadn’t been killed, and we are not worried about flooding, I said we aren’t in the same boat as the Sichuan people.  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about them or want to help them.  I myself donated money to the earthquake victims at that little table in front of cafeteria number 1!” I explained.

That cleared it all up for them and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“In the same boat” is a false friend in Chinese because the words are the same, but the meaning isn’t exactly.  It’s more about “hùxiāng bāngzhù” 互相帮助 (helping each other) in Chinese, and the English idiom doesn’t necessarily have that meaning.

Oh, and about Traveling…

In class last week, I asked my students why we had to make up our Monday and Tuesday classes on Saturday and Sunday (as we always do for these “week-long” holidays).  The answer is: so we can have 7 days off in a row even though there are officially only 3 days of vacation (3 real + 2 made up + 2 next weekend = 7).

I posited that the idea behind 7 days in a row was to allow people to travel farther.  But the class shook their heads.  I was dead wrong.

I said, “Ok, if it’s not for traveling, what is the reason?”

My student answered, “For example, if a worker has gone out of town to work, and his home is very far away, he can go back home because there are 7 days in a row.”

“That’s what I said!  It’s so people can travel farther.”

And then the nickel dropped.

I continued, “Oh!  When I said ‘travel’ you were thinking ‘lǚyóu’ 旅游, right?”

“YES!”

“And lǚyóu is always for fun, right?”

“RIGHT!”

“But a worker going home is not lǚyóu-ing, right?”

“RIGHT!”

“Ok, ok, ok.  In English ‘travel’ simply means going from one place to another, which is usually for fun, but a business trip is also traveling, so is going home.”

“OH!”

Not exactly a false-friend idiom.  More like a divergent concept, but I still had to throw it in.

Anyone else know any false-friend idioms or divergent concepts like these?  Do tell.

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Spoon (sháozi 勺子).

Why?  I don’t know.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked for a spoon, or another spoon, or a clean spoon in a restaurant, and the fúwùyuán 服务员 didn’t understand me.  I say it slower, making sure to get the tone right, add a measure word for clarification (bǎ 把), but finally have to resort to plain old charades.

I also can’t tell you how many times a CHINESE PERSON has asked for a spoon, in my presence, and either gotten a blank look or a ladle in return.

Besides the divergent concept issue, what’s going on with spoons?!  Is that a word that’s been specially selected for fāngyán 方言 diversity?  (“Ok, now there are lots of words that are bound to sound almost the same from dialect to dialect, but some words need to be unique.  Ok, everyone has to come up with their own word for spoon?  Agreed?  Good.  Dismissed.”)  Do restaurantes pay a tax for every additional spoon they hand out?  Anyone?

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• 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.

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For example, In my very first months in China, when I was jogging around my campus I ran past two strangers and I nodded and smiled to them as I passed. Their response was not a smile nor nod back nor even a “ni hao.” Rather one of them said with a straight face:

• pǎobù a! 跑步啊 = You’re jogging, huh

And another simple said,

• lǎowài 老外 = foreigner

This was a little bit uncomfortable for me because a) I know I’m jogging, b) I know I’m a foreigner, c) I didn’t know what in the world could be gained from either parties stating these obvious facts.

However, now that I’ve been in China longer, I realize the Chinese like to state the obvious and label things.

For example, after I tell a funny story, my Chinese friends will often say to me (in English or Chinese):

• You are very “humorous” (“yōumò” 幽默)
• That was very “funny” (“gǎoxiào” 搞笑)

I thought their exuberant laughter would have been a clue enough that they thought that way, but no. After the laughter died down, they also felt it necessary to tell me. Admittedly we might do that in English sometimes, but it seems like the Chinese people like to do it more.

I don’t know why. Perhaps Chinese people feel stating the obvious is good because:

1. It’s better than saying nothing
2. It’s a friendly was of starting a conversation (like talking about the weather or something)
3. It deflects attention away from the speaker

The most uncomfortable situation for me was when I was playing tennis a few days ago. I have to pay to use the university tennis courts, but the P.E. teachers don’t because it’s obviously part of their facilities.

The other day, one P.E. teacher was sitting with the money lady when I came up to pay for the court time. As I handed over the money, the P.E. teacher said:

• jiāoqián a! 交钱啊 = So, payin’ money.

It was hard to hear it as anything but gloating, “Haha! You have to pay money and I don’t.” But from what I know about the teacher, that’s a little bit out of character for her. So…my theory is that she was just in “state the obvious” mode, and didn’t think about the specifics of what she was saying.

I would LOVE to hear any of your thoughts on this phenomenon. Has anyone else noticed this?

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