21
Jan 2014
Call Girl vs. Cali Girl
I saw this flyer in a Shanghai burger joint called CaliBurger. What headline do you see here?
I literally had to read it three times before I could figure out that it doesn’t say “Vote for Call Girl of China.” It says, “Vote for Cali Girl of China.”
Yikes. I guess typography matters! (The Chinese, “中国赛区加州女孩” is less ambiguous.)
14
Jan 2014Introducing Mandarin Companion
Ever since founding AllSet Learning in 2010, we’ve been steadily adding new products and expanding our mini-empire of resources. The Chinese Grammar Wiki was one of our most significant additions (and it’s growing nicely), and we also have two iPad apps out: AllSet Learning Pinyin and the Chinese Picture Book Reader. Last year, our expansion went in an all-new direction with our work on Mandarin Companion‘s brand new Chinese graded reader series.
If you follow me on Twitter you may have heard of Mandarin Companion already, but this is the first time I’m directly mentioning it on Sinosplice. I was waiting until all five of our Level 1 digital editions were released for both Amazon Kindle and iBooks, and now they are.
What is it and who’s it for?
Since I’ve gotten quite deep into extensive reading and graded readers over the past year, there’s a lot I could say here, but I’ll keep it simple in this post.
Mandarin Companion graded readers are for learners with 1-2 years of formal study under their belts (or the equivalent), looking for something longer and more interesting to read for pleasure, without having to constantly reference a dictionary.
Mandarin Companion’s Level 1 books assume a foundation of only 300 Chinese characters, and it’s 300 characters you will know if you’ve studied virtually any standard course.
To create this graded reader series, I’ve teamed up with a partner, Jared Turner, while also leveraging the tools and talent at AllSet Learning.
What are the titles?
We released five Level 1 stories in 2013, all based on western classics and adapted into Chinese stories (more on that in a future post). Here are the first five titles:
The Secret Garden:《秘密花园》
This was our first book, and it was an awesome choice. It’s an excellent story, free of complicated settings or plot twists. There are more characters in this story than in most of our other ones, but they all have easy (and very Chinese) names, and the story ends up feeling very Chinese itself, despite the British roots. (Just look at the cover!)
The Sixty-Year Dream:《六十年的梦》
You can’t tell from the name, but this graded reader is an adaptation of Rip Van Winkle. In adapting this and making it totally Chinese, we had a lot of issues to consider. The original work is about going to sleep as a colonist before the American revolution, and waking up afterward in a newly formed country. It’s a story about change. Well, what country knows change better than China? For maximum dramatic effect, we chose a 60-year time span, going from pre-Communist China to post-Mao China. The relevant Chinese history of the periods adds a lot of color to the story.
The Monkey’s Paw:《猴爪》
I remember reading this classic story as a kid, and it totally creeped me out. The first time you’re introduced to the idea of pre-determinism it kind of blows your mind, right? I initially had my doubts as to how well this story could be adapted into simple Chinese while preserving the feel, but we pulled it off pretty well, if I do say so myself.
The Country of the Blind:《盲人国》
This graded reader is based on a classic H.G. Wells story, and I actually blogged about it not long ago, in conjunction with China. (Now you know why I was thinking about the story so hard!) The text of the story doesn’t get into any of those details, really, though… I just wanted as close to an “adventure” story as we could do at the 300-character level (it really is a challenge), and this one fit the bill. The sci-fi connection was icing on the cake! This one is also notable because we altered the original ending just a little bit.
Sherlock Holmes and the Red-Headed League:《卷发公司的案子》
What if you adapted Sherlock Holmes to 1920’s Shanghai? Well, this what happens! This one was fun, because we had to research styles of the time to get the illustrations right, but actually none of that affected the text of the story itself. (But hey, details matter, right? Sherlock.. errr, 高明 would approve!) It was definitely a pleasure to create our own take on the world’s most famous sleuth.
I’m really proud of these books we’ve created, and I wish I had had material like this when I was just starting out on my journey of learning Chinese. You don’t have to wait until you can read a Chinese newspaper to enjoy reading Chinese, really.
Related Links
– Mandarin Companion: the official website (FaceBook, Twitter)
– Mandarin Companion graded reader grammar points: courtesy of the Chinese Grammar Wiki, of course
– Chinese Breeze: another graded reader you may be familiar with (comparisons are welcome!)
– Extensive reading (Wikipedia): good stuff here, including more on graded readers
– AllSet Learning Product Newsletter: we just did a promotion where we gave away iBook versions of these 5 books. Sign up if you’re interested!
07
Jan 2014Zaijian, ChinesePod
It’s been almost 8 years that I’ve worked at ChinesePod, but as of 2014, I’m now spending all my time with AllSet Learning. I’m incredibly proud of all the work I’ve done at ChinesePod over the years, especially of the enormous body of useful, modern lessons the ChinesePod team and I created for a new type of self-directed learner, a learner eager to devour practical and up-to-date Mandarin Chinese lesson material.
I’ll be in touch with the ChinesePod crew for years to come, I’m sure, but I think it’s a good time to reflect on ChinesePod’s greatest asset as an organization: the awesome people that work there or have worked there.
Hank, thanks for your support in a three-year transition from full-time work at ChinesePod to full-time work at AllSet Learning. One of the big takeaways I got from you was the idea that entrepreneurs can be a powerful force for change. It’s this idea, probably above all else, that pushed me to start my own company.
Jenny, I’ve watched you grow from a quirky kid to a mother of two with very polished hosting skills. It’s always humbling to remember you’re not a native speaker of English, and it’s been a privilege hosting podcasts with you over all these years. We had some great times behind the mic.
Ken, you created the product that became the ChinesePod podcast. It’s easy to forget that language-learning podcasts were not “a thing” when ChinesePod started, and the pioneering work you did with audio became the standard for the industry. It was an honor learning from you, and I’ve always respected your vision.
Connie, you’re one of the few of ChinesePod’s “Year 1” crew that’s still around, and your attitude and humor have remained constant over the years. You were always fun to work with, and added your mark, not just to Qing Wen, Advanced lessons, and the dialogs, but also to all those hilarious supplementary sentences you snuck in behind the scenes.
David Xu, you’re another member of the “Year 1” crew, and I still remember your first day, running around in the studio, all nervous. It wasn’t long before your audio editing skills were seriously impressing everybody. I won’t forget that you’re key to why ChinesePod podcasts sound so professional.
Jiaojie, it’s funny to think that we sort of went to school together at ECNU, but we had no idea we’d be working together. Thanks so much for your professional guidance on obscure grammar issues, and I’ll always remember you for your respect of the authority of the dictionary and for your flair for the romantic.
Dilu, you’re the “new kid on the block,” but you’ve become a legendary host in record speed, soaking in all the training and adding a style all your own. Thanks also for reminding us when we’d done a string of relatively boring lessons and it was time to mix it up! We had a blast.
Vera, you really don’t get enough credit for all the hard work that you do behind the scenes. You’re not behind the mic as much, but I’ve always been impressed by your positive attitude and awesome work ethic.
Amber, it’s been a really long time since I’ve worked with you, but those were some great times, and you did amazing work. You imparted something really special to ChinesePod that it’s never quite had since.
John B, you played a lot of different roles at ChinesePod over the years, but one thing was constant: good ideas. (Also trips to the store, but the great ideas were in greater quantity.) I miss working with you.
Dave, you were eccentric, but also genius, and we all know that your tech ideas were a tremendous help in transitioning from “scrappy little outfit” to “serious outfit,” and to ChinesePod’s long-term development in general.
Obviously, there are way more people I could thank. I don’t want to slight anyone, but this post is getting long.
I’ve really enjoyed working with ChinesePod’s translators, from Amber (yes, she played that role too), to Pete, to Jason, Greg, and all the way up to Tom. Those were some fun semantic conversations we had, and they went a long way in shaping my own ideas of how translation can and should aid learners.
Then there’s the other roles, like Steve, Aric, Canadian Matt, Colleen, Aussie Matt, Clay, Catherine, Joy, Nana, Jin Xin, Aggie, Jiabin, Ziheng, Zhang Feng, Carol, Suyi, Xiao Xia, Ross, Eileen, Rian, Sarah, Gulam, Bill, Rob, Hurwitz, J.C., Justin, Ray, Jiao, Vivi… the list is very long.
Thank you, team, past and present, and thank you ChinesePod users.
再见.
01
Jan 20145 Language Learning Tips for 2014
Happy 2014! It’s that time of year when lots of people are thinking about seriously tackling a language again.
I was referred by a friend to this YouTube video: 5 techniques to speak any language, by polyglot Sid Efromovich.
Lists like this always feel a bit arbitrary to me, because while they’re almost always good recommendations, you’re always leaving some good stuff out for the sake of brevity or sticking to that succinct number.
Here are Sid’s 5 tips, and some articles of my own that complement them nicely:
- Make Mistakes. I wrote a post on the importance of making mistakes called Tone Purgatory and Accent Exorcism.
- Scrap the Foreign Alphabet. This advice seems a bit strange, coming from a language lover. Really what his point boils down, to, though, is not reading a foreign language through the filter of your native tongue. When it comes to Chinese, it means learning pinyin ASAP (and really learning it). Check out the Sinosplice Chinese Pronunciation Guide, the free AllSet Learning Pinyin iPad app, and also X is the Unknown.
- Find a Stickler. Although I spend a ton of time on “how to best be a stickler” with the AllSet Learning teachers, I don’t have much on Sinosplice that corresponds exactly to what Sid talks about. Here are two sorta related ones: Animals as Language Partners, and Recasting in Language Learning.
- Have Shower Conversations. Ah, talking to yourself… and you don’t even have to do it in the shower! My take: Talking to Oneself Productively, later followed by Thinking to Oneself Productively.
- Use the Buddy Formula. Sid specifically refers to “Best Language in Common,” which is an important point in one of my most popular posts: Language Power Struggles. I also like his reference to “Best Secret Language in Common.”
Remember, there are a million ways to learn a language right. The key, in the short-term, is to just get started, and for the mid- to long-term, to enjoy it. Why not do it in 2014?
30
Dec 2013Jet Lag’s Revenge
OK, I admit… I like talking about stages. Stages of learning Chinese, stages of tonal development, Chinese grammar challenges in stages, stages of cultural adaptation. And now it’s stages of jet lag evolution.
I’d like to think that after all these trips across the Pacific, I’d have learned a thing or two about how to minimize the effects of jet lag. In reality, though, despite a few beautifully victorious battles back in the day, I realize that I’m losing the war.
It goes something like this:
- Indestructible 20’s. Ah, those were the good old days. The “stay up all night the day before your flight, and then sleep the whole way there” plan. It actually worked. I needed like a day to bounce back. I actually remember saying, on multiple occasions, “jet lag doesn’t affect me.” Yeah, those days are long gone.
- Slowing down around 30. Eventually I stopped saying “jet lag doesn’t affect me.” I quit feeling like staying up all night the day before a flight was either doable or wise. And I had to start dealing with jet lag the way most normal adults do, over the course of 2-3 days. (Secretly, though, I felt like I was much better at getting over it than the average person.)
- Dragged down by a baby. OK, I’m going to do the manly thing now and blame my heinous jet lag on a baby. (It is her fault, though!) The thing is, when we come back to the States to visit, we stay with my parents and stay in the guest room. And even if I’m still “better than average” at getting over jet lag, two-year-olds are most definitely not good at getting over jet lag. And her sleep schedule, when she sleeps in the same room as me, definitely affects mine. So three days of jet lag becomes a week. Ouch!
The moral of this story: enjoy the time you have before jet lag gets its revenge.
13
Dec 2013Chinese Pwns Shakespeare？
I discovered this little gem of translation magic in my WeChat feed the other day under the title 中文远比英文美 (“Chinese is far more beautiful than English”). The poem quoted below is widely attributed to Shakespeare online, so the attribution is reasonable. (More on that later.)
I’ve tried to maintain a 4-line structure to make comparisons easier, but in a few cases it was inappropriate to break the Chinese poem structures, so I left them as is, since the 4-part structure is obvious anyway.
Original English Poem
> You say that you love rain, but you open your umbrella when it rains.
You say that you love the sun, but you find a shadow spot when the sun shines.
You say that you love the wind, but you close your windows when wind blows.
This is why I am afraid–you say that you love me too.
― William Shakespeare
普通版 (“Normal” Version)
This is the “normal” version, a straight translation of the English above into modern Chinese. (This is also the second most accessible version if you want to try reading the Chinese.)
> 你说你爱雨，但当细雨飘洒时你却撑开了伞；
你说你爱太阳，但当它当空时你却看见了阳光下的暗影；
你说你爱风，但当它轻拂时你却紧紧地关上了自己的窗子；
你说你也爱我，而我却为此烦忧。
文艺版 (“Artsy” Version)
文艺 literally means “literature and arts,” but these days it’s often closely associated with the phrase 文艺青年, a young person who pursues artistic beauty (especially of the literary nature), but may often come across pretentious to normal people.
You’ll immediately notice how difficult the following translation is compared to the first one; it’s chock-full of hard words.
> 你说烟雨微芒，兰亭远望；后来轻揽婆娑，深遮霓裳。
你说春光烂漫，绿袖红香；后来内掩西楼，静立卿旁。
你说软风轻拂，醉卧思量；后来紧掩门窗，漫帐成殇。
你说情丝柔肠，如何相忘；我却眼波微转，兀自成霜。
诗经版 (“Book of Songs” Version)
This one is written in the style of the 诗经, the “Classic of Poetry,” AKA “The Book of Songs.”
You’ll notice a dramatic reduction in length, plus a classical style.
> 子言慕雨，启伞避之。
子言好阳，寻荫拒之。
子言喜风，阖户离之。
子言偕老，吾所畏之。
离骚版 (“Departing in Sorrow” Version)
离骚, also known as “Departing in Sorrow,” is a famous Chinese poem from the Warring States period, written by 屈原, the poet commemorated by China’s “Dragon Boat Festival.”
> 君乐雨兮启伞枝，君乐昼兮林蔽日，
君乐风兮栏帐起，君乐吾兮吾心噬。
七言绝句版
七言绝句 is a Tang Dynasty poem structure using seven characters in 4 “sentences.”
> 恋雨却怕绣衣湿，喜日偏向树下倚。
欲风总把绮窗关，叫奴如何心付伊。
吴语版 (Wu Version)
吴语 is a “topolect” of Chinese; it’s the family that Shanghainese belongs to.
Shanghainese friends tell me that this version is a little forced and not very poetic (it doesn’t do Shanghainese justice). Seems like it just got tacked on later after a 文艺青年 did the other versions.
> 弄刚欢喜落雨，落雨了么搞布洋塞；
欢喜塔漾么又谱捏色；
欢喜西剥风么又要丫起来；
弄刚欢喜唔么，搓色唔霉头。
女汉子版 (“Strong Woman” Version)
女汉子 is difficult to translate, but 汉子 normally refers to a man. So 女汉子 refers to a “manly” woman, or more appropriately a “strong woman,” the type that takes no crap from nobody. “你有本事” (literally, “[if] you have the ability”) lends an air of direct challenge to the whole thing, kind of a “what are you gonna do about it?” feel.
This one, like the 吴语 version above, also seems tacked on, since the phrase 女汉子 is trendy these days.
> 你有本事爱雨天，你有本事别打伞啊！
你有本事爱阳光，你有本事别乘凉啊！！
你有本事爱吹风，你有本事别关窗啊！！！
你有本事说爱我，你有本事捡肥皂啊！！！！
七律压轴版
七律压轴 is an 8-line poem format, 7-characters per line. (I don’t know much about this, and my Googling didn’t turn up any definitive results, so if anyone wants to help out in the comments, feel free!)
> 江南三月雨微茫，
罗伞叠烟湿幽香。
夏日微醺正可人，
却傍佳木趁荫凉。
霜风清和更初霁，
轻蹙蛾眉锁朱窗。
怜卿一片相思意，
犹恐流年拆鸳鸯。
The Original Original Poem (in Turkish)
OK, so here’s the thing… That “original” English poem was not by Shakespeare, and it’s actually a translation into English from Turkish. There’s a reason it doesn’t see too “Shakespearean” (especially in word choice). Below is the original word choice:
> Yağmuru seviyorum diyorsun, yağmur yağınca şemsiyeni açıyorsun…
Güneşi seviyorum diyorsun, güneş açınca gölgeye kaçıyorsun…
Rüzgarı seviyorum diyorsun, rüzgar çıkınca pencereni kapatıyorsun…
İşte,bunun için korkuyorum; Beni de sevdiğini söylüyorsun…
Source: http://www.turkishclass.com/poem_136
Conclusion
This little experiment certainly doesn’t prove any superiority or “pwnage,” and the English translation was clearly chosen because it matches existing Chinese poem forms, but… Chinese is still pretty awesome.
10
Dec 2013Experiencing Shanghai’s Airpocalypse
Last week was a very bad week to be in Shanghai. We had the worst pollution here, ever, as far as I can gather. There are lots of different numbers thrown around, but pretty much everyone agrees that the PM2.5 count went above 500 last Friday (December 6, 2013). Just to put that “500” in perspective:
> WHO guidelines say average concentrations of the tiniest pollution particles – called PM2.5 – should be no more than 25 microgrammes per cubic metre. Air is unhealthy above 100 microgrammes and at 300, all children and elderly people should remain indoors.
My favorite tool for following pollution levels is the Graphing Air Pollution in China page at kopf.github.io/chineseair/. Here’s a screenshot highlighting the peak last Friday (Shanghai in red, Beijing in blue):
By coincidence, I went outside on Friday night (close to the peak) to pick up some milk at the store. It’s a 5-minute walk to the nearest Family Mart. As soon as I stepped outside into the haze, I noticed that the air smelled faintly burnt. I say “faintly,” but it’s the kind of “faintly” that gets incredibly obvious the more you smell it. Meanwhile, the air just felt grimy. Beijing has had some terrific pollution in its day, but Beijing air tends to stay quite dry. Shanghai, meanwhile, is incredibly humid. It makes summers super sweltering, winters bone-chilling, and smoggy days absolutely disgusting.
I’m actually not very sensitive to the pollution, and when people ask me how bad it is, I don’t have a lot to say. It just doesn’t bother me that much. This latest uber-smog, though, got to me. In the 5-minute walk to the store, I started to feel a little queasy. In the 5-minute walk back home, I was feeling sick to my stomach.
So yeah, it was really bad. If it was like this every day, or even routinely, I wouldn’t want to live here anymore. I seriously hope China can take effective measures against this horrific pollution. Right now I’m seriously looking forward to my Christmas trip to Florida. Besides the precious family time, I could also use a little lung detox.
04
Dec 2013Bitcoin: Why China?
Bitcoin is a hot topic these days, and it seems to come up in all sorts of my interactions in Shanghai, from clients to friends to family. My initial thought was the oversimplification that “Chinese people like speculation,” and they’re getting tired of the super-expensive “bubble that just won’t burst” real estate option. [“Bitcoin” in Chinese is 比特币, by the way.]
Here’s a more informed answer to the question “What is Beijing’s rationale for promoting Bitcoin?” by Paul Denlinger on Quora:
There are several reasons for giving it higher visibility; most recently I’ve noticed that China Telecom, a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) is accepting bill payments in Bitcoin.
Here are some of the reasons:
- China’s economy is too slanted to investment instead of relying on consumer-spending generated tax revenue. This means that there is too much untaxed cash sloshing around in the system;
- Real estate prices are continuing to rise in the cities in spite of government efforts to dampen the price rise. Bitcoin offers a chance to take some excess cash out of the system, and thus dampen price inflation.
- The party is going after corruption among Chinese officials. Even though the party needs to clean up, it needs to give its own members an exit plan, as too much prosecution would make the people think that the party is completely corrupt.
- Since November 2008, the US Fed has been injecting liquidity into US banks at the rate of US$80B a month as part of the quantitative easing plan. This means that 4.8T has been injected into the global economy in the past five years. US banks have tightened their lending requirements, which means a lot of this hot money has made its way to China, where it is fueling inflation. This is in addition to US1-2T of cash in Hong Kong banks which has nowhere to go except China investments. Too much liquidity fuels inflation.
- There has been a lot of talk about China dumping US treasuries if things got hot between the US and China. This is a dumb strategy. Instead, China needs to soak up a lot of the US$ liquidity, and promote the Chinese yuan as an international currency. By promoting the yuan, the US would have to raise interest rates to acquire US$ buyers, making the cost of the US$ higher for its issuer, the Fed.
A lot of the discussion about Bitcoin has centered on its not being widely accepted. This misses the mark. For two years before the euro was officially introduced as a currency in the EU, it was used for settling accounts among banks.
To a large extent, Bitcoin replaces banking services. If it is used among more individuals for settling accounts, it will have a valuable role. Right now, that is just beginning, since the amount of Bitcoin in circulation is just US$15B, which when compared with the other amounts mentioned above, is a very small amount.
Most Chinese buyers of Bitcoin are using it not as a spending currency, but to hide and protect their currency and asset savings. They only convert from Bitcoin to cash when needed.
Compared to banks and individuals who need to report large cash transactions, Bitcoin is anonymous. This makes it ideal for international currency movements. This trend is just beginning.
(I hate copying such a large chunk of the text instead of just linking to Quora, but Quora is pretty hostile to readers that aren’t accessing Quora in just the right way, so there you go.
29
Nov 2013Love Returns Home
This Family Mart ad reads:
> 爱 ♥ 回家 [literally, “love” ♥ “return home”]
The character 回 has been converted into a little house, presumably because it’s a lot easier to do with 回 than with 家!
The ad is for a charitable group which helps poverty-stricken children get an education. More info (in Chinese) here. (The video on that page reminds me of the new free 农村生活 content in AllSet Learning’s updated Picture Book Reader iPad app.)
In case you’re wondering how one should understand the phrase “爱 ♥ 回家” grammatically, 爱 is a noun here, so it means “love returns home” rather than “[someone] loves to return home.” Ah, Chinese grammar and its flexible parts of speech…
26
Nov 2013Replace or Hazard?
Here’s a Chinese public service poster that uses a pun to get its point across:
The big text reads:
> 你是要换， [Do you want to replace it,]
> 还是要患？ [or do you want a (safety) hazard?]
So the key here is that “huàn” can be both the verb 换, meaning “to replace,” as well as the noun 患, which means “hazard” (in the “safety hazard” sense). You often see it in the word 隐患, literally “hidden danger,” referring to potential safety hazards. (隐患 actually appears at the very bottom of the notice.)
The question uses the standard “A or B” 还是 question form.
(Sharp-eyed advanced students will notice another pun in the smaller print, involving the phrase 防患于未然 and the character 燃.)
15
Nov 2013Curtailed Freedom (in Characters)
There’s an interesting article on Pro Publica titled: How to Get Censored on China’s Twitter (“China’s Twitter,” being, of course, Weibo).
What especially caught my eye was the mention of this use of Chinese characters:
The characters involved are 自由 and 目田. The former is a real word meaning “freedom,” the letter is a nonsensical combination of two characters (“eye” + “field”), chosen for their appearance only.
I really love how creativity with characters (something I call characterplay) allows for circumvention of censorship. This case is particularly ironic, because in order to avoid automated detection you’re literally removing the top part of both characters, a nice parallel to the content removal activities going on behind the scenes at Weibo.
This situation, although more interesting, also reminded me of the word-parsing censorship problem I’ve written about before (also involving the word 自由).
Link via Sinocism.
14
Nov 2013Foot Massage Confessions
Photo by bodhana mallorca
In a recent ChinesePod lesson on foot baths, I made this comment:
> I think I find this form of Chinese “relaxation” painful about 90% of the time, but that other 10% is quite nice!
This prompted this reply from RJ:
> My experience as well. Compared to “foot massage”, water-boarding is a sport. They scrape the sensitive bottoms of your feet with a very dull knife, so as not to draw blood. All the while they are thinking: die laowai, die. Had I been a CIA operative under interrogation, I would have cracked. The gal that took me, my host, seemed to be having a great time however. The deluxe 1.5 hour package also came with a happy ending. They packed my legs in a warm “herbal paste” that felt a lot like hot drain cleaner. They also wrap it up in several layers of cloth and tie knots so you can not escape. I was so relieved to see that there was still skin on my legs when they finally removed the restraints. I had to drink an extra beer at dinner just to get rid of the residual pain. How I managed to smile for an hour and a half I dont know, but I could just imagine the whole crew laughing and slapping their thighs after we left. “We got another one, die laowai die”! 🙂
User podster replied with:
> Ah yes, the Chinese foot torture. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Oh, sorry, it’s just “enhanced interrogation.” I got some chemical goo that probably doubles as rust remover at the shipyard smeared on my legs during one of these therapeutic treatments. As the searing pain began to set in, they asked me “烫吗？” [“Too hot?”] I wonder how to ask in Chinese exactly how much pain is “normal.”
I really do wonder if our western feet are built differently (wimpier), or what. Exaggeration aside, this kind of experience seems to be par for the course when it comes to foot baths/massages.
08
Nov 2013How to bridge the gap to real Chinese
Olle at Hacking Chinese just put up a new post called Asking the experts: How to bridge the gap to real Chinese. In it, he asks quite a few language learners/experts the question:
“How do you bridge the gap from textbook/classroom Chinese to real immersion?”
My answer:
The truth is that no materials–textbooks, podcasts, videos, whatever–are entirely appropriate for any individual learner. That’s why it’s essential that the active learner adapt all materials to his own specific needs. Obviously, a good teacher is a tremendous help in doing this, and any good Chinese lesson with a teacher will involve bridging the gap between the language introduced in the study material and the language the learner can actually put to use.
At AllSet Learning we spend a lot of time selecting the study materials most appropriate for a given learner. That way, there’s less “bridging” that needs to be done by teachers, fewer additional vocabulary words that need to be introduced, fewer outdated or irrelevant terms to be filtered out, etc. More time in the lessons can be spent practicing applying the material to real-life situations.
For the independent learner (especially in a foreign language context), this issue of selecting materials is a huge challenge, and it probably involves a lot of time sorting through potential material. Recognizing that most textbooks are pretty outdated (how many textbooks currently in use never cover the words 手机 or 网络?) is a good start. The big question is then whether or not the material is truly useful for you, the learner. Usually HSK word lists and chengyu stories are not the most useful material. Neither are blindly selected frequency lists. What material is going to get you talking to Chinese people the fastest, about the things you care about, adding to your motivation to keep improving? That’s the right material to study.
Definitely check out some of the answers if this topic interests you at all; there’s a lot of them, with lots of good points.
A lot of the answers are what you might expect, but I especially liked the response by Roddy of Chinese-Forums.com:
I think I’d warn against a mindset of “I’m immersed, therefore I’m learning.” We all know people who’ve spent years in what should be a perfect language learning environment, yet somehow fail to make much progress. What do they fail to do?
First I think is a failure to pay attention and absorb. What do people actually say and do in the situations you’re in? Sit near the counter in a fast food place and listen to how people order food, or how the cashiers shout the orders back to the cooks. Stand near the doors on the bus and listen to how people buy their tickets or ask the conductor how to get to wherever. Note how your colleagues greet each other and how age or status affects that. Adopt that language.
It’s kind of remarkable how people can fail to do this. I was in McDonalds once eating with another foreigner, who was complaining about how they never seemed to understand his order for fries and he always had to point at the menu. Somehow he’d never noticed everyone else was asking for 薯条 [french fries], not the 土豆丝 [shredded potato] he was requesting.
Again, there’s lots more in Olle’s original post.
06
Nov 2013The Chengyu Bias
Chengyu (成语) are the (usually) four-character idioms that any intermediate learner of Chinese knows about. By the time you get to the intermediate level of Chinese, you’ve heard lots about how many of them there are, and how richly imbued with Chinese culture they are, and how they’re wonderful little stories packed into four short characters. Oh, and there are literally thousands of them, so you better start memorizing.
But wait… why?? Why do intermediate learners of Chinese need to start memorizing chengyu so early when, as far as they can tell, they’re relatively rare in daily life? Is it more important to learn a list of four-character idioms than to get better at ordering food in Chinese? Or to talk about basic economics? Or to discuss modern social issues? Or even to finally get a decent grasp of the ever-elusive particle 了? Those tasks all involve the use of relatively high frequency vocabulary and require no chengyu. So why the chengyu urgency?
The Bias
Many students of Chinese are told by their Chinese teachers that chengyu are important. They take this advice to heart and dutifully start learning. They may enjoy the stories behind them, or they may not, but these students inevitably realize that they hardly ever come across these chengyu they’re learning in actual conversation or even readings.
The fact is that teaching Chinese to foreigners on any large scale is a relatively new thing, and as such, some kinks are still being worked out. Early efforts at teaching foreigners involved a lot of transference of educational methods used on Chinese children. Memorization of Tang dynasty poems, writing out each new character hundreds of times, and memorizing lists of chengyu long before they’re actually useful are time-honored traditions when it comes to teaching Chinese kids their native language. That doesn’t mean these methods are effective for non-Chinese adults learning Chinese, especially when basic communication is the goal.
The Four-Character Fetish
Despite their questionable usefulness, chengyu get a lot of attention. From an English-speaking perspective, so much fuss over chengyu seems a little strange. Maybe it would help to draw some analogies to English.
Some chengyu are relatively straightforward to understand, and the meaning can be guessed. These are sort of like many English idioms. Think “raining cats and dogs” or “a dime a dozen” or “barking up the wrong tree.” They’re interesting to language nerds, and kind of make sense. They can be fun, but they’re no substitute for basic vocabulary. Fortunately, they’re also pretty easy to understand once your Chinese is at a low advanced level.
Other chengyu are more cryptic because they involve words and word order from classical Chinese, and/or refer to specific stories from ancient China. These are the ones you typically cannot guess the meaning of, and if you don’t know them, you’re absolutely clueless as to what they mean. These are the ones that truly separate the men from the boys in terms of Chinese literacy, and educated Chinese often stump each other with obscure chengyu of this type. It would be more appropriate to compare these with Latin sayings common in highbrow English, like “carpe diem” or “et tu, Brute” or “quid pro quo.”
In short, this second type especially, when overused, comes across as a bit pretentious. This connection of chengyu to an elite education is no small part of the appeal, either to native speakers or to learners of Chinese as a foreign language.
No Special Treatment
In Chinese, chengyu are generally considered individual words. This may seem a little strange, and the definition of a Chinese “word” is a bit amorphous to begin with, but bear with me here. Chengyu sometimes serve as mini sentences, sometimes work as verbs or adjectives, but essentially function like four-character words. Sure, they often have a rich history and pack quite a semantic punch in a small package, but they’re still essentially words.
Since they’re words, it’s easily to apply standard linguistic analysis to them. Corpus analysis can tell us how common any given chengyu is, what types of texts it’s likely to appear in, whether it’s a high-frequency word, etc. And the thing is, chengyu are not high-frequency words, especially when taken individually. Some are definitely higher frequency than others, but compared with ordinary words, they’re essentially all low-frequency.
Now obviously I’m not trying to say that low-frequency words are worthless or not worth learning. But why should low-frequency words be prioritized over medium-frequency words simply because they’ve got the chengyu label? When you start focusing on chengyu as an intermediate learner, that’s exactly what you’re doing. As an intermediate learner, there’s still a ton of good useful medium-frequency words to get familiar with. Why should chengyu get preferential treatment? When you need the word for “ambulance” or “stock market” or “allergy,” having memorized a few dozen chengyu (that you’ve probably never used) are little consolation.
So learners, don’t avoid chengyu, but don’t learn chengyu just because they’re chengyu. Don’t give chengyu special treatment when you could be improving your ability to communicate in Chinese. Just think of chengyu as the low frequency words they are, and when you start to encounter them naturally, learn them. When the time comes, you’ll recognize their usefulness in context and will see them more than once. As an intermediate learner, you’ll occasionally come across high-frequency chengyu (I have my own chengyu top ten), but certainly not by the boatload.
The Caveat
If you really love chengyu, then I’m sure my advice won’t shake your passion. And learning a few can certainly be interesting.
Thanks to @saporedicina for motivating me to finally put this post up. See also Olle of Hacking Chinese’s post (we definitely see eye to eye): Learning the right chengyu the right way.
01
Nov 2013Credit Sinocism When Credit Is Due
I’m often to busy to give the info-packed Sinocism newsletters my full attention, but when I do, I often find really great stuff. I’ve also noticed a trend on Facebook and Twitter. It goes something like this:
1. Sinocism newsletter comes out, with a link to especially interesting story “X”
2. Sinocism readers click through to the story on “X,” love it, share it via Twitter and/or Facebook
3. The Sinocism readers who share “X” get Likes, retweets, comments
You see the net effect here? Sinocism is serving as an invaluable information hub, but it’s not getting credit for the major role it’s playing in the dissemination of China-related news. And the worst part is that the Sinocism readers aren’t doing it on purpose; they’re just using their social media like they always do, but the way the system is set up, Sinocism gets no credit.
I’m pretty sure I saw an example of this last week. There was a great article about Chinese surnames‘ geographical distribution in China that got a fair amount of attention: Mapping China’s Surnames 制图 “老百姓”. I admit, I tweeted it too, the “bad” way. I then saw lots of people I know on Twitter and Facebook sharing it, no credit. I strongly suspect Sinocism set off the rash of shares (but wasn’t credited).
There are two solutions, as I see it:
1. Sinocism needs to build its social media presence. Ugh, I feel a little slimy just using the phrase, and I can understand if Bill Bishop would much prefer to keep the endeavor as a blog and newsletter. (Sinocism does have its own (private) Twitter account and Facebook page, but neither are used or promoted much.)
2. Sinocism readers make an effort to credit the articles they discover through Sinocism when they share them on social media. (For example, you could add “via @sinocism” to tweets, or maybe even “#sinocism“.)
Here’s an example of #2:
'China's Spielberg' Feng Xiaogang Says Censors Are Holding Back Industry (Q&A) http://t.co/rUikwUxJuo via @sinocism
— John Pasden (@sinosplice) November 1, 2013
Comments welcome! I’ve also asked Bill Bishop for comment. Please also support the Sinocism China Newsletter however you can; it’s a great service.
29
Oct 2013Apps, Graded Readers, Wiki, Duolingo
Time for a personal update on some of the stuff I’ve been working on….
Chinese Picture Book Reader iPad app
Over the weekend AllSet Learning’s Chinese Picture Book Reader iPad app (v1.3) was finally approved! I am repeatedly surprised by how much time and effort the creation and maintenance of an iOS app takes. Although the app itself looks great, this is clearly not the best way for developers… it really makes me yearn for HTML5 apps.
That said, I’m really happy with what we’ve done! Sinosplice readers actually contributed ideas for this app’s new content, some of which is free, and some of which is paid. We probably should have added a bit less all at once to this release, but there’s still some more coming. Details about the release are on the AllSet Learning blog post: Chinese Picture Book Reader 1.3.
I’m also putting a lot of time into my (sort of) new Chinese graded reader project, but I’m saving more details on that for a future update.
The Chinese Grammar Wiki continues to grow. We’re adding more sample sentences and more translations across the whole thing, and while it’s already quite extensive in its coverage, it’s also beefing up across the board.
One thing I’ve gotten into personally (for fun, but also research) is Duolingo. I’m trying it out as a purely iPhone experience, and I chose French because I know very little about it, and I know that pronunciation is a challenge. Man, I’ve got some opinions. That’s a future post too, though.
I’m staying super busy, but I have a big long list of blog topics that will see publication on Sinosplice sooner or later. Because I’m spending so much time working on my own projects, it can be hard to not want to blog about them all the time too, but that would get annoying to some of my readers. If anyone has specific questions about what I’m working on, though, let me know, and the answers might just become blog posts.
If you’re interested in updates about all these Chinese-related projects I’m working on at AllSet, please do sign up for the newsletter. We won’t annoy you, and we’ll keep you updated!
22
Oct 2013The Shaping of a Bilingual Child’s Reality
My daughter is almost 2 years old now, and as she talks more and more, not only is it a blast to see that this little crying pink thing has grown into a real human, but I’ve also got front row seats to the amazing phenomenon of first language acquisition. If you’ve never seen a kid acquire language from scratch, or have never seen it happen bilingually, there are bound to be a few surprises. It’s kind of messy, and sometimes it feels like a wonder that it even works.
The other night my daughter displayed what you might call “neat presentation” of linguistic mastery. She asked for some water by saying “please water.” I gave her some of mine, and I could tell by her expression that it was colder than she expected. “It’s cold, huh?” I asked her. She nodded her head, repeating, “cold.” “It’s cold water,” I said. She nodded, repeating, “cold water, cold water.” Then she looked at her mom, and exclaimed with joy, “冰水，冰水!” (cold water, cold water). Wow, she’s already becoming a little translation machine! It’s not usually quite so orderly as all that, though.
Then there’s the “little boy” and “little girl” case, which ties in nicely with the concept of linguistic relativity. I recently realized that my daughter didn’t know the words “boy” or “girl,” and didn’t know the Chinese for them either. This seemed a little strange to me, because I know that during the day her Chinese grandmother takes her outside a lot, and she plays with other kids. Shouldn’t she at least know the Chinese for 男孩 (boy) or 女孩 (girl) or 小孩 (child), if not the English?
Well, it turns out that no, she shouldn’t know those words, because she rarely hears them. What she was learning was actually a bit more complicated than all that. Every time she encountered another baby that was male and younger than her, she was instructed to call him 弟弟, the Chinese word that literally means “little brother.” For girls younger than her, it’s 妹妹 (“little sister”). For little boys older than her, it’s 哥哥 (“big brother”), and for little girls older than her, it’s 姐姐 (“big sister”). This is fairly typical for Chinese kids.
Photo by Feldore
Of course, she doesn’t know the word for “man” or “woman,” either. She calls all women 阿姨 (that is, any female that’s not obviously still a child, much to the dismay of the 20-year-old young ladies she encounters), which traditionally means “auntie,” and all adult males 叔叔.
She especially enjoys identifying every 阿姨 (“auntie”) she sees, whether it be a woman on the street, a female mannequin in a store, or even a drawing of a woman in an ad.
Meanwhile, I’m lamely trying to remind her that there are English words for all these people, starting with “boy” and “girl,” and maybe it’s my imagination, but could it be she’s having a hard time accepting the words I offer because they don’t match her existing mental map?
More exposure is all she needs, of course… I certainly won’t make it any more complicated than that; I’ll just keep throwing natural English at her (I don’t speak to her in Chinese). But it’s certainly fun to watch her deft little brain running through these semantic mazes. With continued exposure, she’ll make it through, no matter what Chinese (or English) throws at her.
15
Oct 2013We All Scream for Bling-qilin
The Chinese word for “ice cream” is 冰淇淋 (bingqilin). [Somewhat annoyingly, it also has an alternate form: 冰激凌 (bingjiling), but we’re ignoring that one for the purposes of this pun.]
So from “bīngqílín” (冰淇淋) we get this:
Honestly, though, they could really be trying a little harder on the bling.
Via friend and ex-co-worker Jason, who’s new doing cool things at FluentU from Taiwan.
11
Oct 2013Classical Chinese through Chinese Texts
I have to give a quick recommendation to the readers out there that have been toying with the idea of learning a little classical Chinese: Chinese Texts. It’s actually more fun than you might expect.
Via Sinoscism, which offers this introduction:
> This course is intended for people who would like to learn how to read classical Chinese philosophy and history as expeditiously as possible. The professor is a specialist in early Chinese history. He is not a linguist, and offers no more discussion of grammatical particles and structures than is strictly necessary.
This may be true, but I find many of the grammatical explanations rather linguisticky. I don’t mind (and I’m sure they could be a lot more abstruse). I like how supplementary grammar examples given are short, to the point, and interesting.
Here’s an example:
> 而 ér
> This is one of the most common words in classical Chinese. It links phrases, not nouns. “And” or “but” is often a satisfactory translation. However, often the phrase preceding 而 is subordinate, so it should be translated as a participle indicating modification. Thus, in the first sentence of the Mencius, the King of Liáng says 不遠千里而來 “[You] came, not considering a thousand miles too far.” In such cases the first phrase describes a condition or background to the second, as in the English sentence “Peter, fully knowing the danger, entered the room.” In other cases the two phrases are co-ordinate, and the second phrase simply narrates what follows (from) the first.
This is also one of those little bits of classical Chinese that will help sophisticate your modern Chinese. We cover 而 on the Chinese Grammar Wiki in a number of patterns.
Another great example of classical Chinese common in written Chinese:
> 以 yĭ
> This character was originally a verb meaning “to take, to take up, to grab onto.” Thus “X 以 noun verb” would mean “X takes or grasps the noun and verbs,” hence “X uses noun to verb.” Thus 以口言 “speaks with the mouth (口 kŏu),” or 以心知 “knows with the heart/mind (心 xīn).”
> 以 also precedes verbs, in which case it usually acts as a conjunction meaning “in order to.” Thus 出門以見日 “to go out the door in order to see (見 jiàn) the sun,” 溫古以習之 “to review ancient times in order to become familiar with them.”
> One of the most common uses of 以 is in the phrase 以為 “to take and make, take and use as, take and regard as.” This phrase can also be divided to form 以 A 為 B, “to take A and make it into B, use it as B, regard it as B.” As the translations suggest, this action can be either physical—to take some object or substance and make it into something—or mental—to regard something as being something else. Thus 以木為門 “to take wood (木 mù) and make a gate,” 王以天下為家 “The king regards the whole world (天下 tiān xià) as his household (家 jiā),” 孔子以國為小 “Confucius considered the state to be small (小 xiăo),” 吾以為子不知之 “I thought that you didn’t know it.” This use of 以為, both as a unit and as separate words, is still common in modern Chinese.
(You can find 以 on the Chinese Grammar Wiki as well, of course.)
I’m just starting this online course (my education in classical Chinese is still spotty and very incomplete), but it came highly recommended by a friend, and what I’ve read so far I’ve enjoyed a lot.