Category: Chinese (中文)

Unusual characters

By Simon

Believe it or not the Chinese characters shown below are all variants forms of the ‘same’ character.

Variant forms of the complex Chinese character for one

The character in question is 壹 (yī) – the complex form of ‘one’, which is used on banknotes, coins and cheques. Well actually the first one is a version of 一, the simple from of ‘one’.

The first two characters come from this site, which includes a number of other rare and unusual Chinese characters. The only one of them I’ve seen ‘in the wild’ is the Shanxi noodle one (no. 2), which appears in many Chinese restaurants in the UK.

Mandarin learning – a fad?

By Simon

Is the current craze for learning Mandarin Chinese a misguided fad? An article in The Economist I found today suggests that it might be.

Mandarin is now taught at over 400 secondary schools in the UK, and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust would like to see it made part of the national curriculum. Around the world there are some 30 million people studying Mandarin at the moment, and the Chinese government expects that number to rise to 100 million by 2010.

The article argues that for most people, a knowledge of Mandarin is unlikely to result in a better career. A number of factors are put forward to support this statement: the difficultly of learning Mandarin when compared to most other languages, especially European languages, which means that very few who study Mandarin attain a high level of competence in the language. The lack of regard among British employers for languages skills is another factor. Finally the fact that the Chinese are busy learning English means that British people doing business with China are unlikely to need a knowledge of Mandarin.

The article concludes with a comment from a representative of a Beijing employment agency, who says that:

whereas the value of compensation packages for expat executives has been shrinking over the past ten years, the number of Chinese-speaking foreigners she handles has been rising. Better language skills, she reckons, are a product less of market demand than of a general enthusiasm for China. Reason enough, perhaps, to learn the language.

By the way, I don’t agree with the article myself. Learning any language is a worthwhile endeavour, even if you only acquire the basics. While a knowledge of Mandarin might not automatically lead to a job, learning it certainly isn’t a waste of your time and effort.

Sounds familiar

By Simon

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been learning the Polish version of Silent Night (Cicha Noc). While trying work out how to pronounce the Polish, I noticed that some of the the Polish consonants are similar to those found in Mandarin Chinese.

For example:

  • Polish c [ts] = Mandarin c, as in 次
  • Polish ć & c+i [ʨ] = Mandarin q, as in 七
  • Polish cz [tʂ] Mandarin ch, as in 吃
  • Polish sz [ʂ] = Mandarin sh, as in 十
  • Polish ś & s+i [ɕ] = Mandarin x, as in 西

Comparing the pronunciation of one language to another isn’t always helpful and can be misleading. In this case though, it gives me a better understanding Polish phonology.

Tâi-ôan-ōe / Taiwanese

By Simon

I found an interesting website today called Tailingua, which provides a good, clear introduction to the Taiwanese language (Tâi-ôan-ōe). It includes information about the language, the numerous methods used to write it, and explains how to set up your computer to write Taiwanese using Peh8-oe7-ji7 (POJ), the most popular system for writing Taiwanese with the Latin alphabet. There is also a list of books for learning Taiwanese, links, and a blog.

Other sites with information (in English) about Taiwanese include Talking Taiwanese, Intermediate Taiwanese Grammar, and Glossika.

Japanese more difficult than Chinese?

By Simon

An article I came across today, via Keith’s blog, argues that it’s a lot more difficult to learn Japanese than Chinese.

The author of the article studied both Chinese and Japanese at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), and lived in Japan for over seven years. He feels confident about communicating in Chinese (Mandarin) and found it much easier than Japanese, or Spanish and German, which he studied in high school. He didn’t find learning Japanese at the DLI too hard, but had difficulty communicating with Japanese people in Japan. He believes the main difficulties are the sheer amount of Japanese syntax, only a small proportion of which is covered in most Japanese courses, and Japanese culture, in which people tend to avoid saying things in a straightforward way.

My own experiences are somewhat similar – I found Chinese easier to learn than Japanese, though I’ve only been to Japan once and was there for four months, whereas I spent over five years in Taiwan, plus a couple of months in China. Had I spent longer in Japan, I’m sure my Japanese would be a lot better now. Would it be as good as my Chinese? I don’t know.

Online language tests

By Simon

Most online language tests I’ve come across seem to use be of the ‘fill in the blanks’ variety. Today I found an online Chinese test with some interesting variations on the theme.

It’s divided into three sections, the first of which asks to choose where to place words, which you are given, in sentences. The second section has standard fill in the blanks questions, and the third section tests your knowledge of Chinese culture. I took the test earlier today and got 25 points. Unfortunately it doesn’t show which answer were wrong.

Do you know of any other online language tests which don’t involve just filling in the blanks?

Word of the day – 和

By Simon

The Chinese character héIn Mandarin Chinese, the word 和 (hé) has a number of meanings. On it’s own it is usually means ‘and’, but also means harmony, peace, to be affable, the sum, and ‘of Japan’.

Here are a few words featuring this character:
和平 (hépíng) – peace; peaceful; mild
和鳴 [和鸣] (hémíng) – to sound in harmony
和風 [和风] (héfeng) – a gentle breeze
和服 (héfú) – a (Japanese) kimono
和氣 [和气] (héqi) – gentle; affable; agreeable; friendly
和聲 [和声] (hésheng) – (musical) harmony

When pronounced hè, this character means to match; to harmonize, or to write a poem in reply (和詩). It has another pronunciation – huò – which means to knead or to mix. Apparently some people pronounce it han as well, but I’ve never heard that pronunciation.

In Japanese, this character is pronounced wa, o, yawa- or nago- and means peace; harmony; the sum; the total; Japan and various other things.

Peeling the library

By Simon

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to peel’.

In French the word librarie means bookshop. A French library is a bibliothèque, which comes via the Latin bibliothēca, from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothêkê), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into βίβλος (biblos), ‘book’, and θήκη (thêkê), ‘chest’.

Variations on the theme of bibliothèque are used in a number of other languages, including:

Dutch – bibliotheek
German – Bibliothek
Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothiki)
Italian/Portuguese/Spanish – biblioteca
Russian – библиотека (biblioteka)

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell, from llyfr, ‘book’ and cell, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann, from leabhar, ‘book’ and lann (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is 圖書館 [图书馆] (túshūguăn) = ‘map book house’.

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari), Tsonga (layiburari) and Venda (laiburari), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.

[Addendum] *lann in Irish is an archaic/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *landā ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa (plain), and the English words land and lawn [source].

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionnaire, Yawiktionary

New Cantonese phrases

By Simon

The Cantonese phrases page on Omniglot now includes quite a lot of new phrases with sound files. If you’re able to make recordings of any of the other phrases, do let me know.

I also have new phrases and sounds files for Mandarin, Japanese and Thai, which I’ll be adding to the site soon.

These new phrases and sound files were all provided by the good people at HNHSoft, who make talking phrase books for PDAs and mobile phones.

Word of the day – 月食 (yuèshí)

By Simon

Today one of my Chinese contacts asked me the meaning of 月食 (yuèshí). It’s not a word I’ve come across before and I wasn’t able to guess its meaning from the meanings of the individual characters, so I had to look it up. It means ‘lunar eclipse’ and the individual characters mean ‘moon’ and ‘to eat’. I suppose it does look like part of the moon has been eaten during an eclipse. A solar eclipse is 日食 (rìshí).