One thing I've found tricky to learn in Chinese is the numbering system. Every language has their own way to name the numbers and numeric concepts, but Chinese is the strangest to me.
First of all, there are no distinct words for numbers bigger than 10 (十), until you get up to 100(百), 1000 (千), etc. This makes it easy to remember but conversely more confusing to hear for me. For example, the word for "twenty" is actually pronounced as if you were saying "two ten" (二十) in English. But this means that a word like 74 is prounced "seven ten four" (七十四). This is fairly logical and easy to understand, but because I'm still getting used to this I have to first hear the individual numbers and then recombine them in my head to form their actual values.
It gets harder as you get to larger numbers. First, there are words for 100 and 1000, but there is also a word for 10,000 (万). 100,000 is ten-tenthousands (十万). This means that you have to group numbers by 4 digits instead of 3: The number 300,223 isn't "three hundred thousand two hundred twenty three", it's 30'0223 - "thirty ten-thousands two hundreds two tens three" (三十万二百二十三). This makes it hard to convert the numbers unless you've totally internalized the different representations.
Oh, and you usually don't use er2 (二) to say "two something", you have to use liang (两). So if you want to say "Two dogs", you don't say er zhi gou (二只狗), you say liang zhi gou (两只狗).
Then there's the convention used for talking about discounts. In English we often talk about how much on sale something is: 25% off, for exmaple. In Chinese you say how much is left to pay: da qi zhe (打七折) would be "on sale for 7 tenths." That means it's 30% off. If you want to say 25% off, you'd say 7 tenths 5, or da qi zhe wu (打七折). As far as I know, you can't sell something for more than 90% off: 90% off would be da yi zhe (打一折), or 1 tenth, but you can't say da ling zhe jiu (0 tenths 9)(打零折九).
Showing posts with label Mandarin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mandarin. Show all posts
Chinese Perapera-kun
I've recently discovered a great new tool to help me learn Chinese: a firefox addon which displays pinyin and english translations for Chinese characters. It's pretty nifty: it shows the translation and Pinyin for the character next to the cursor and, if that character is the start of a common compound word or phrase, it shows the translation for that phrase.
Beijing's Olympic Inside Joke
The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing feature a set of nauseating mascots called Fuwa (福娃). The basic idea is alright (one mascot for each olympic ring) but I find the art style they used to be not to my liking. I suspect millions of Chinese children love these critters and millions of Chinese parents hate them.
But the funny thing about these mascots is their names. Beibei (贝贝) is the Fish, Jingjing (晶晶) is the Panda, Huanhuan (欢欢) is the Olympic Flame, Yingying (迎迎) is the Tibetan Antelope and Nini (妮妮) is the Swallow. (I just noticed that the official web page for the Fuwa explains the names and the joke but I'll explain it again here). If you take each name's character and put them together (贝晶欢迎妮) you get "Beijing huanying ni". Which sounds like "北京欢迎你", or "Beijing haunying ni", which translates to "Beijing welcomes you". This is a nice sentiment but only people who speak Mandarin can see the joke; if you speak Cantonese or some other dialect the words "贝晶欢迎妮" are meaningless and the pun is lost. And if you don't speak any Chinese at all you obviously won't see the hidden meaning either.
But the funny thing about these mascots is their names. Beibei (贝贝) is the Fish, Jingjing (晶晶) is the Panda, Huanhuan (欢欢) is the Olympic Flame, Yingying (迎迎) is the Tibetan Antelope and Nini (妮妮) is the Swallow. (I just noticed that the official web page for the Fuwa explains the names and the joke but I'll explain it again here). If you take each name's character and put them together (贝晶欢迎妮) you get "Beijing huanying ni". Which sounds like "北京欢迎你", or "Beijing haunying ni", which translates to "Beijing welcomes you". This is a nice sentiment but only people who speak Mandarin can see the joke; if you speak Cantonese or some other dialect the words "贝晶欢迎妮" are meaningless and the pun is lost. And if you don't speak any Chinese at all you obviously won't see the hidden meaning either.
Singing in Chinese
My last post about Mandarin was related to tones. Tones convey important meaning but they are a hindrance when you want to sing, since songs have their own tones. The Chinese solution: ignore the tones.
A popular Chinese song, 月亮代表我的心 (The Moon Represents My Heart), demonstrates this. This song, originally performed by Teresa Teng, demonstrates it in action. Here is the same song, performed by Leslie Cheung. It's interesting to note that Mr. Cheung is speaking in Cantonese to the audience before singing the song in Mandarin. His pronounciation of the words is slightly different than Ms. Teng's but that's not really suprising.
The other interesting thing about singing in Chinese is that some of the words are mis-pronounced, at least in this song. The word 的 is normally pronounced 'de' but both singers pronounce it 'di'. That sounds odd to me but since I don't listen to Chinese music I can't say if it's commonplace or not.
For more information about 月亮代表我的心, check out this link.
A popular Chinese song, 月亮代表我的心 (The Moon Represents My Heart), demonstrates this. This song, originally performed by Teresa Teng, demonstrates it in action. Here is the same song, performed by Leslie Cheung. It's interesting to note that Mr. Cheung is speaking in Cantonese to the audience before singing the song in Mandarin. His pronounciation of the words is slightly different than Ms. Teng's but that's not really suprising.
The other interesting thing about singing in Chinese is that some of the words are mis-pronounced, at least in this song. The word 的 is normally pronounced 'de' but both singers pronounce it 'di'. That sounds odd to me but since I don't listen to Chinese music I can't say if it's commonplace or not.
For more information about 月亮代表我的心, check out this link.
More Mandarin Lessons
Last time I discussed learning Mandarin I mentioned a few things about characters. Today I'm talking about tones.
In Mandarin there are 4 tones (or 5 if you count the 'neutral' tone). The tones are numbered 1 through 4 and represent the pitch of the word. The first tone is high pitch, the second tone is rising, the third tone is falling-rising, and the fourth tone is falling.
Tones are very important because there are lots of words that are indistinguishable except for the tone. The classic example are the words mā (媽) and mǎ (馬). The first word means mother and the second means horse. The first word is pronounced with the first tone while the second is pronounced with a 3rd tone. This musicality is the only way to distinguish between the two words when spoken in isolation. In a complete sentence, you can sometimes guess the word based on the context, but it can be unclear.
Consider the following example:
English: Please ask me.
Chinese: Qǐng wèn wǒ.
If you mispronounce the middle word, using the 3rd tone instead of the 4th tone, wèn (問) becomes wěn (吻), which changes the sentence to "Please kiss me". While this could be an extremely useful phrase, using it in the wrong situation can lead to problems.
In Mandarin there are 4 tones (or 5 if you count the 'neutral' tone). The tones are numbered 1 through 4 and represent the pitch of the word. The first tone is high pitch, the second tone is rising, the third tone is falling-rising, and the fourth tone is falling.
Tones are very important because there are lots of words that are indistinguishable except for the tone. The classic example are the words mā (媽) and mǎ (馬). The first word means mother and the second means horse. The first word is pronounced with the first tone while the second is pronounced with a 3rd tone. This musicality is the only way to distinguish between the two words when spoken in isolation. In a complete sentence, you can sometimes guess the word based on the context, but it can be unclear.
Consider the following example:
English: Please ask me.
Chinese: Qǐng wèn wǒ.
If you mispronounce the middle word, using the 3rd tone instead of the 4th tone, wèn (問) becomes wěn (吻), which changes the sentence to "Please kiss me". While this could be an extremely useful phrase, using it in the wrong situation can lead to problems.
Mandarin Lessons
I am studying Mandarin. This is an interesting language to learn because it has a long history which is all new to me. My native French and English languages I take for granted, but learning a completely foreign language, from a place like China, makes for a lot of new facts.
For example, I learned that Cantonese is older than Mandarin. This is shown by comparing classical Chinese literature to modern Cantonese and Mandarin. Poetry, for example, probably won't rhyme if read in the wrong dialect, and classical poetry usually sounds best in Cantonese because it rhymes and flows better.
What makes learning Chinese even trickier is that the written words are completely disconnected from the spoken words. In English, if you know how to pronounce "turn" and "key" you can probably figure out "turkey". In Chinese, however, the written words are just symbols, and knowing the shape of a symbol tells you little or nothing about the pronunciation.
There is one class of exceptions: Chinese characters made up of a meaning part and a sound part. A good example is the word for Mom1:
媽
The left half of that symbol is the radical for "Woman" while the right half is the radical for "Horse". The reason for the Horse is because both mom and horse are pronounced 'ma'2. Personally I find it funny that 'Horse' gets its own symbol but 'Mom' does not.
Next time: how using the wrong tone can lead to embarrassment.
Notes:
1. The word for "Mom" is actually 媽媽, as in 'mama'.
2. The words for horse and mother have different tones, which is how Chinese speakers distinguish them.
For example, I learned that Cantonese is older than Mandarin. This is shown by comparing classical Chinese literature to modern Cantonese and Mandarin. Poetry, for example, probably won't rhyme if read in the wrong dialect, and classical poetry usually sounds best in Cantonese because it rhymes and flows better.
What makes learning Chinese even trickier is that the written words are completely disconnected from the spoken words. In English, if you know how to pronounce "turn" and "key" you can probably figure out "turkey". In Chinese, however, the written words are just symbols, and knowing the shape of a symbol tells you little or nothing about the pronunciation.
There is one class of exceptions: Chinese characters made up of a meaning part and a sound part. A good example is the word for Mom1:
媽
The left half of that symbol is the radical for "Woman" while the right half is the radical for "Horse". The reason for the Horse is because both mom and horse are pronounced 'ma'2. Personally I find it funny that 'Horse' gets its own symbol but 'Mom' does not.
Next time: how using the wrong tone can lead to embarrassment.
Notes:
1. The word for "Mom" is actually 媽媽, as in 'mama'.
2. The words for horse and mother have different tones, which is how Chinese speakers distinguish them.
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