Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!

Yvonne — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:05:13 +0000

I basically abandoned both my Chinese and Japanese texts as of this post and its sleep-inducing adventures learning Chinese at Seton Hall University.

I’m seeing the wisdom in Khatzumoto‘s principle: if it’s not something you’d voluntarily read in your L1, why bother with it in L2? Read/watch the fun stuff first; it’ll help with the boring stuff later.

I did manage to acquire a whole mess of children’s books in Chinese to supplement my reading (including the dozen 奇先生，妙小姐 books I scored yesterday), but it’s been more of a struggle to get Japanese books that aren’t so far beyond me that reading them would just be an exercise in frustration. One of the books I did eventually buy is Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!

This book is co-authored by Eric Carle (エリッカ　カール) of Very Hungry Caterpillar fame and Japanese illustrator Kazuo Iwamura (いわむら　かずお). The English story, illustrated by Carle, reads from left to right; the (almost identical) Japanese story, illustrated by Iwamura, reads from right to left the way Japanese is traditionally written. The two stories meet in the middle of the book.

I totally want the puppy in Iwamura’s illustrations. Black shiba inu, maybe?

Like most children’s picture books, the text is pretty repetitive, which is good for language learning. The Japanese text is all written in hiragana, with the phonetic pronunciation written next to each character.

This is a decent introduction to Japanese, particularly if you are just learning hiragana. However, there are a couple drawbacks to this book for people farther along on the learning curve.

The word segmentation, in some cases, makes it more difficult to look words up in the dictionary. Granted, you should be glad there’s any word segmentation at all! But seeing どこへ　いくの is a bit misleading when どこ and いく appear in the dictionary by themselves; へ and の are a preposition and a grammatical marker, respectively.

The other drawback is the lack of Kanji, which also makes it difficult to look up the meaning of the phrases. For example, what appears in the book as どこへ　いくの would normally be どこへ行くの. The lack of Kanji in this phrase isn’t so confusing, but I had a hell of a time with ともだちに　あいに, especially the あいに. There’s no dictionary entry for aini, and the only entry for ai is 愛, or love. But that doesn’t make any sense in context. Turns it’s supposed to be 会, or association, but thanks to Japanese’s multiple ways of pronouncing the same Kanji that appears in the dictionary under kai. Putting the Kanji in there would have helped resolve the phonetic ambiguity.

This is what the Japanese text in Where Are You Going? To See My Friend! would look like written in standard Japanese:

どこへ行くの？
友達に会いに！

どんな友達？
歌がうまいんだ。

歌なら私も大好き。
ニャオ　ニャオ　ニャオ [or other animal noises]
私も会いたいな。

いいとも。
僕の友達わ君の友達さ。

This repeats for a while, and then after the rabbit arrives you get this exchange:

どんな友達？
歌がうまいんだ。
ダンスも上手。
ダンスなら僕も大好き。
タッ　タッ　タッ
僕も会いたいな。

After some more animal noises, the dog introduces the girl with:

皆僕の友達だよ。

And the girl responds with:

わーい！
あなたの友達は私の友達よ。
皆歌がうまいし、ダンスも上手。
私の友達が来たよ。
さあ、歌お！
さあ、踊ろ！

Do a comparison if you own a copy of the book. It’s a big difference!

Intriguing Characters

Yvonne — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:28:19 +0000

We went to Half-Price Books today to sell some books. Which, by the way, I think is a total racket, albeit one I participate in willingly. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to sell books and not spend more than their entire offer while waiting for them to process my pile.

I’d hoped to get a bunch of children’s books in Spanish, figuring that since muchos hispanohablantes viven aquí I had above-average odds of getting something good. I did walk away with a copy of Cinderella (or Cenicienta) and passed on a copy of Harry Potter 2, but the Spanish selection turned out to be pretty disappointing.

But there were some unexpected finds on the Foreign Language shelf. First, a copy of 金魚が逃げた (Hiragana: きんぎょがにげた; Romaji: Kingyo ga Nigeta; English: The Goldfish Escaped).

And then I hit the mother lode:

Is that awesome, or is that TOTALLY AWESOME? From left to right, top to bottom, we have:

Chinese Title	Chinese Pronunciation	English Title
胖嘟嘟小姐	pang4 du1 du1 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Greedy
迷糊小姐	mi2 hu2 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Scatterbrain
明星小姐	ming2 xing1 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Star
雙胞胎小姐	shuang1 bao1 tai1 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Twins
聰明先生	cong1* ming2 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Clever
呆呆先生	dai1 dai1 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Clumsy
傷腦筋先生	shang1 nao3 jin1 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Dizzy
健忘先生	jian4 wang4 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Forgetful
匆忙先生	cong1* mang2 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Rush
雪人先生	xue3 ren2 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Snow
長腿先生	chang2 tui3 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Tall
傲慢先生	ao4 man4 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Uppity

Most of the translated titles are very close in meaning, but there are a few head-scratchers in there:

胖嘟嘟 doesn’t mean “greedy”, it means “chubby” or just plain “fat”. “Greedy” is 貪吃 (tan1 chi1). The back cover of the Taiwanese Mr. Men books lists Mr. Greedy as 貪吃先生, so I have no idea why they didn’t just go with 貪吃小姐 for Little Miss Greedy.
迷糊 is more “dazed and confused” than “scatterbrained”.
呆呆 doesn’t mean “clumsy”, it means “slow-witted”.
And 傷腦筋 most definitely doesn’t mean “dizzy”. The best translation I can come up with is “brainhurt”. Which isn’t even a legitimate English word.

They’ve also done something interesting with Mr. Tall. A direct translation to Chinese would get you 高先生, as 高 (gao1) means “tall”. Except that 高 is also a fairly common Chinese surname, mine and Peter’s surname in fact, and thus 高先生 is a pretty boring name for a whimsical character. So the translators went with 長腿先生, which means “Mr. Long Legs” (長 = long; 腿 = leg).

Even more interesting is the name of the series. What we know in English as “Mr. Men and Little Miss” is 奇先生，妙小姐 in Chinese, literally “Mr. Strange and Miss Wonderful”. 奇妙 (qi2 miao4) is a phrase that means “intriguing” and is part of the common idiom 莫名奇妙 (mo4 ming2 qi2 miao4), which means “to be baffling”.

*Pronunciation note: Despite what it looks like, cong is not actually pronounced with any kind of c sound. Instead, it sounds like tsong. Pinyin sucks that way.

Chipanglish » Children’s Books

Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!

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Intriguing Characters

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