For Chinese pronunciation, as with algebra, X is the unknown.
06
Dec
2010
2010
Tones in Chinese Songs
I’ve been asked a number of times: if Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, what happens when you sing in Mandarin? Well, the answer is the melody takes over and the tones are ignored. Pretty simple.
However, it may not quite end there. I recently discovered a paper called “Tone and Melody in Cantonese” which asserts that Cantonese tones are set to music in a somewhat different way:
For Chinese, modern songs in Mandarin and Cantonese exhibit very
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27
Aug
2010
2010
Jukuu is interesting
Sinosplice reader Matthew recently introduced me to Jukuu, a database of sample sentences. The Chinese name, 句酷, is a pun on the word 句库, meaning “sentence base,” in the naming tradition of nciku). There are some really interesting things going on on Jukuu. Here’s a screenshot from the results for a search for “get”:
I enjoyed some of those random sentences. Some things worth noting:
- The sample sentences in the screenshot above are all taken …
29
Jul
2010
2010
Randy and the Half-Life of Irregular Verbs
Last night I met up with Randy Alexander of Sinoglot, Yuwen, and Echoes of Manchu for dinner and imported beers. We had a great chat, with topics ranging from English and Chinese linguistics, to sci-fi and (evil genius) Joel Martinsen, to the Sinoglot crew and how they tricked Randy into learning Manchu.
We started talking about some of our favorite linguistics articles, on Language Log or elsewhere, and I brought up the one about the half-life of irregular …
21
May
2010
2010
Orlando Kelm on Language Power Struggles
To follow up my recent massive post on Language Power Struggles, I’d like to highlight the responses of Dr. Orlando Kelm, a professor of linguistics, teacher of many years, and learner of multiple languages. Dr. Kelm’s experience is largely with Portuguese and Spanish, but he’s also studied Japanese and Chinese, among other languages.
Dr. Kelm’s three main points were:
Chinese perception of use of English: There is something interesting about Chinese adoption of Putonghua as a lingua franca,
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18
May
2010
2010
Language Power Struggles
Do you ever find yourself engaged in battles of nerves over which language you should be using? Whether it’s waiters, business contacts, or friends, these linguistic power struggles are everywhere. Learn a bit more about how to minimize conflict in this post about language power struggles.
23
Feb
2010
2010
Why China for Grad School?
I chose to earn my master’s in applied linguistics here in Shanghai, through a Chinese-language program at East China Normal University (华东师范大学). While I’m certainly not the only foreigner to ever do this, I get a lot of inquiries about it, as more and more non-Chinese focus on China. Although I’ve written a bit about different aspects of grad school in China in the past, I find it difficult to offer a very useful comparison simply because I’ve …
11
Feb
2010
2010
The Sinoglot China Blogs
There’s a new China language blog in town, backed a whole group of linguistically minded writers. Sinoglot is not only a group blog, it’s also host to some other very interesting individual linguistic blogs:
- Sinoglot: language in China, eclectically.
- Beijing Sounds: Beijing sounds, mostly language, through foreign ears.
- The Annals of Wu: voices from the Yangzi delta.
- Echoes of Manchu: information & discussion the Manchu language.
- Yǔwén: Mandarin acquisition by Chinese children.
- Naxi Script Resource
…
02
Feb
2010
2010
The 3-2 Tone Swap Error
This post identifies a type of tonal production error which many students of Mandarin Chinese make, not only in the beginner and elementary stages, but often well into the intermediate stage. While neither years of personal observation nor the multiple appearances in the audio data for my master’s thesis experiment constitute definitive evidence, it’s my belief that the phenomenon is real, and examining it can yield useful results for both students and teachers of Mandarin Chinese. I’m dubbing the error …
13
Oct
2009
2009
Chinese Modal Verb Venn Diagram
I’m a bit of a sucker for Venn diagrams. When I was recently asked by a student about the Chinese modal verbs 会, 能, and 可以 (all of which can be translated into English as “can”), I recalled a nice Venn diagram on the topic and dug it up.
What creates the most confusion with these three modal verbs is not that they can all be translated into “can” in English. The problem is that they are usually …
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