Here’s more oddities of the Chinese language as heard by the ears of a Westerner. By the way, I get questions about why I use the term “Westerner” as opposed to “American”. The reason is that you hear that term so much more often here in China than “British”, “American”, “Dutch”, “German”, etc. We all look the same anyway, at least to the Chinese. Also, once you begin learning a tonal language like Mandarin, you might as well use a much broader group like “Westerner” or “Speaker of an Indo-European” language since that’s much more inclusive than “English Speaker”. I suspect just about all Indo-European language speakers will have the same difficulties with Mandarin. The number one, of course, for oral Mandarin is…the tones! Here’s a quick review: Chinese has four tones (there’s a 5th neutral, but it doesn’t really count):

1) A high even tone (tone 1)
2) A tone that starts low and rises high (tone 2)
3) A tone that starts medium, dips down, then returns to the medium tone (tone 3)
4) A quick tone that starts high and moves forcefully down to a low tone (tone 4)

You can hear a cupla examples on this weird website (you mouse over rows in the table).

One of my favorite examples:

1) Yu (tone 1) – Means “mud”
2) Yu (tone 2) – Means “fish”
3) Yu (tone 3) – Means “rain”
4) Yu (tone 4) – Means “jade”

See, this all really does makes sense; it’s like music. A “C” two octaves above an “A” sounds a lot different, right? Following non-tonal language rules (like English), you’d say that they sounded the same because the notes both lasted one second long and were played on a piano. You wouldn’t say they were different until they were really different, like when played on different instruments.

So the key is to be able to think of the word “fish” not as “Yu”, but as “Yu” at a certain pitch and inflection. We English speakers are hardwired to not count the pitch and inflection as part of what determines the uniqueness of the word. So, we have to do our best to unlearn this, hence all the difficulties.

Here’s an example that happened just yesterday. I was listening to colleagues talk (I get lots of practice with this) and was able to recognize the word “Li Zhi”, which in the Western world is pronounced “Lee-chee” (because we generally can’t say “Zhi”). So, I immediately thought, “Oh they’re talking about the Lychee fruit.” Afterwards, I asked and got a bit of a laugh. “No, we were talking about someone quitting work!”

Oh.

See, “Li Zhi”, the fruit, is “Li (tone 4) Zhi (tone 1)”. “To quit work” is “Li (tone 2), Zhi (tone 2)”. So, I started explaining about how to a Westerner’s ear, those sound almost identical, especially when spoken fast. Two of my colleagues immediately suggested that as I learn new vocabulary, I should also learn the character as well, because the character will help you remember the word. I didn’t really see that logic and learning the characters is another battle probably worse than the tones to fight. But, I took that under advisement.

Later on that day, I asked someone else the difference in the two, and they too suggested that I learn the character. So, as a test, I challenged, “OK, why don’t you draw me the characters for Li4 Zhi1 and I’ll see how easy it is to remember based on that.” Here are the characters for the fruit Lychee:

荔栉

So, of course my response was, “How is that supposed to look like fruit???” The answer was quite telling:

The first character represents the berries of the Lychee. See that the first character is composed of three “Li4″ characters at the bottom?

Li4:

力

That’s supposed to look like three berries. “Li4″ by the way, means “strength”. I don’t get the connection between strength and berries though. The next character has another primary character appearing on the left side, the character “Mu4″ which means “Wood”. In this case, “Zhi1″ means “Branch”. Pretty neat, eh?

Mu4:

木

Now, the dirty little secret is that once you’re fluent in Chinese, tones don’t really matter because it’s the context of a sentence that determines what a word means. When you’re speaking your Chinese at 100mph, you don’t really put in all the different tones perfectly; you let the context do the work for you. So, imagine this sentence:

“Oh, guess what. Our colleague, Bill, quit work today. He went to work at QQ.”

No native speaker will think:

“Oh, guess what. Our colleague, Bill, lychee fruit today. He went to work at QQ.”

So, that’s another insidious reason that the learning curve for Mandarin is so steep. You have to pay attention to tones early on because you don’t know enough words to establish a context!   不好！

I’m studying Chinese characters now. I have an ambition to study Chinese (how cool to be trilingual) and I’ve decided to make the valiant effort to learn it all – listening, speaking…and reading and writing. I’ve received several warnings however: “Oh, Chinese is too hard for foreigners to learn to write. You can just learn to speak maybe.” What kind of attitude is that? Full speed ahead!

Hmmm…I’m now wondering if I’m in over my head. These characters are nuts. Imagine each simple word in the English language is represented by a letter of the alphabet. You’d have to expand the alphabet by…how many thousands of letters? That’s right; there’s no such thing as an alphabet in Chinese. I’m not exactly sure what the approximate number is for all Chinese characters. Twenty thousand? Thirty-five thousand? Ug. OK, that is not possible for me to learn. But, guess what! If I learn about four or five thousand, I’ll be able to read a newspaper. I think the average literate Chinaman has a written vocabulary of not much bigger than that. All those extra characters are mostly reserved for literature. Don’t forget the other challenging thing of this monosyllabic language: combinations of these characters is what forms more complex words.

I’ve learned maybe 120 characters so far. I’d say about 70 or 80 of those I know very well and can recognize and write easily. Still working on the other 40. Plus, I just finished another lesson where I learned about 25 more. I’ll need to write them each about 15 times to learn them well, and I have to revisit them or use them in the real world or I forget. Also, I find that if I want to recognize a character, the best way to do that is to learn to write it. However, the ability write fades pretty fast if I haven’t really drilled it in, but fortunately, the recognition stays. Reading is more important than writing.

Another neat things is that by writing I’m starting to recognize the structure of the characters. Though I don’t understand the vast majority, when I do see a new one, I can recognize the structure, the individual components, and I’m pretty good at figuring out the proper order of strokes. Plus, it seems like to really know Chinese, the language and the culture, understanding the characters makes a lot of sense.

For example, this character:

ç”·

is “nan” (tone 2). It means “male”. This character is actually made up of two other basic characters:

田 力

The first is “tian” (tone 2) meaning “field”, basically. The second is “li” (tone 4) meaning “strength”. See the idea? “Strength for working in the field.” Pretty cool, eh? But, then again, there’s not much sense, that I’ve learned anyway, from the character for “female”:

女

This is the character “nv” (tone 3), the “v” is just symbolic of a special pronunciation of the letter “u”.

There are many characters that are combinations of simpler characters. Then there are these things called “radicals” which are like mini characters (though they can sometimes be more complex than regular characters) which basically indicates a “theme”. For example, you can have a “water” radical which expresses liquids, or another radical that indicates certain types of animals. But, sometimes, more often than not, it seems like there’s no logic to it at all.

Check these out:

猪 猫 猩

Notice the symbol on the left is the same in all? This is the “radical” expressing types of animals. But, I have yet to understand the classification. And, I haven’t asked because I have so many more pressing questions. These are the characters (l-r): zhu (tone 1) or “pig”, mao (tone 1) or “cat”, and xing (tone 1) which, when paired with another “xing”, means “gorilla”. :-o

OK, that’s enough confusion now. I’m starting to get mixed up again.

I was riding home with Xiao Liu today and chatting in Chinese as usual. Lately, we’ve been looking for and counting good-looking Chinese girls on the street. Today though, a red warning came on the light of the Buick. Xiao Liu pointed it out to me and, despite the short time that the words were illuminated between flashes, I was able to make-out “Low Coolant”.

“Zhe shi shen mo?”, asked Xiao Liu. Or something like that. He was asking me what it meant. So, I thought to myself, “How do I tell him that he needs to top off the coolant?” Well, a good challenge anyway.

“Uh…uh…ni de chi che…mei you leng…”

A pretty lousy first attempt. Translation: “Your car lacks cold.”

But, the second time around, I nailed it. I recalled the words for “have to” and “add” and, well, what could I say for “liquid”? Here’s what I came up with:

“Ni yao jia chi che leng de shui.”

“Oh oh oh!! OK OK OK!!! <thumbs up> Hao hao!”

Translation: “You have to add cold water to your car.”

I’m slowly starting to learn Chinese characters. I wonder if this is actually worth it. Well, I’m enjoying it, so I’m forging ahead. Check out the receipt for my “Yi ping mian” (my noodle dish that I frequently eat for lunch):

See the lower left corner? You see the numeral “1″ (not sure why Roman numerals are favored over the Chinese versions) followed by two characters. I’ve learned the first; it’s quite common. I describe it as a “J” with two little slashes on either side. This is the word “xiao” which means “small”. The other character is therefore “wan” which means “bowl”. ‘Cause I always order “Yi ping mian xiao wan”. I haven’t memorized “wan” yet ’cause it’s more complicated. “Xiao” is quite common…as you’ll soon see.

Oh yes, also look at the character in the upper left followed by the “3″. It looks like a wishbone, sorta. This is the character for “ren” or “person”. We had 3 people at our table this day. I think “ren” is the very first character that everyone learns; it was for me too.

OK, check this out:

These two characters together mean “center”, as in a “shopping center”. The first character, “zhong”, looks like a rectangle with a vertical line through it. It means “middle”. The second, “xin”, looks like a backwards “J” with three slashes. It means “heart”. So, the word for “center” is a combination of “middle heart”. Go figure. I remember learning “xin” and asking, “How does that look like a heart?” “Doesn’t it look like a heart? See the valves and the major veins?” Well, after looking for a long time, I guess I see it. Reminds me of the computer-generated 3D artwork where it takes a long time to “see” the image. Anyway, this is a very common combination that you see everywhere.

Now, finally, look at this one:

I showed this in a previous post. Note the first two characters: “xiao” followed by “xin” (granted, “xin” looks much different in this picture). Those two together mean “be careful”. So, “small heart” means “be careful”. I have no idea if Chinese folks think about small hearts when someone tells them to be careful, I’ll have to followup with that one. Anyway, it’s interesting how a combination of these very simple words mean new things. Another word that uses “xin” is “happy”. Put the word for “open”, or “kai”, in front of “heart” and you have “happy”, or “open heart”. That’s Chinese for you.

Here’s a pretty cool language story.  Have you ever heard the term “Long time, no see.”?  Obviously, it’s a saying that almost every English speaker is aware of.  However, I’m pretty sure that it originated in China and is a direct translation of the Chinese saying, “Hao jiu bu jian”.  I thought it was odd when someone taught me this same saying in Chinese, but they also spoke decent English so I figured they were just translating a common English saying, that they happened to like, into Chinese.  Well, over time, I noticed other people, who didn’t speak English, saying it as well.  So, of course, I thought, “Why are they saying this literal translation of an English saying?”  Then I realized that English most likely borrowed it from Chinese.  The supporting argument is that the saying follows typical Chinese grammar which is way simpler than English.  Instead of, “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other” they just say, “Long time, no see”.  Chinese grammar is like this:  simple, straightforward, almost to the point of appearing half-witted on the surface.

OK, I didn’t think I would write an “Engrish” post, but this is just too choice. This is a letter I received from the apartment complex outlining the various Sunday activities that are offered.

Dear Sir or Madam

Thank you for you continuous the understanding and the support that works to us. In order to provides the good communication platform to the apartment long resident guest. We draw up from this Saturday starting apartment collective celebration, specifically activity arrangement following,

And here it goes on to list the various activities like “see bird”.

Please note,

1. This active arrangement like has the change, in separate informs you ahead of time
2. (my favorite) If your excellency has any suggestion or the opinion, please promptly takes charge of with the reception,
3. Please attend, people go to reception center in advance to sign up.

If only I could speak Chinese that “good.”