Chipanglish » Books

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #5: Cowardly Rat

Peter — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:13:43 +0000

We start a new series of short stories. Each story highlights one of the animals that make up the Chinese Zodiac. Today’s story is about the rat.

膽小如鼠
dan3 xiao3 ru2 shu3
The Cowardly Rat

According to the Zodiac, the rat is seen for his intelligence and cunning yet sensitive nature. In this story, we meet a rat prince who insists that he is brave, despite his species’ reputation to be fearful and meek. To prove his bravery on behalf of all members of the genus Rattus, he reads a fairytale and decides to go slay a fire-breathing dragon. Yeah… good luck with that.

Alas, no fire breathing dragons are to be found. But he stumbles a princess who’s been locked up in a tower. I shall call her Asian Rapunzel, given her long flowing braid in the illustration. There’s even an evil which who calls up to her, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your raven hair.” (Ok, so the last part was a slight mistranslation on my part.)

Anyhoo, the rat abandons the idea of dragon slaying and decides to rescue the princess. Upon hearing that the rat prince is there to save her, Asian Rapunzel freaks out. She whips her braid out the window, lashes it to a tree, and thrusts herself out. (In episode 111, Mythbusters. actually proved it’s possible for a rope of human hair to hold the weight of a human, allowing someone to break out of prison.) When the witch comes to check on Asian Rapunzel, the rat sees her hideous face and freaks out.

Moral of the story. Everyone has moments of brave and moments of being a nervous wreck.

Much more condensed (and in a much smaller font than the previous things I’ve read), this story is more advanced both in content and in language than the previous pieces of literature. It is full of idioms which may only be known to a native speaker. It helps the reader learn more colloquial vocabulary. Having the phonetic transliteration with each character helps the reader decipher pronunciation. The man illustrations also give the reader clues as to story elements. While still a children’s story, the themes are less cutesy with rainbows and unicorn sparkles.

It’s definitely worth reading for the idioms alone.

Up next: The story for the Ox for which the title does not have a nice translation. Even my mom got confused when she read the title.

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.

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #4: The Witch’s Determination

Peter — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 22:24:59 +0000

Sorry for the month long hiatus. I’ve been busy tap dancing and being a performer on stage.

This installment of Chinese Kid Lit returns to the story of the Old Lady Witch who turned into a bench. We rejoin her story many years later.

魔女的決心
Mo3 nu3 de5 jue2 xin1
The Witch’s Determination

At the end of the previous story, the witch had turned herself into a beautiful park bench. Now, with the passage of time, she has become a worn and weathered park bench. This does not matter to her since she meets a little girl named 小萌 Xiao3 Meng2 (Little Sprout). Little Sprout sits on the park bench every day after school and waits until her dad comes on the bus to pick her up after work. The witch learns that Little Sprout’s mother is in the hospital. Over time, she develops an affinity to Little Sprout and her family. Little Sprout’s mother has taken very ill and can no longer attend the park. Little Sprout promises the bench that she’ll come back, asking the bench to wait for her return.

One day, dark shadowy figures, come and survey the park area. They’ve been hired to replace the ugly old bench with a new one. The old one wood be turned into woodchips. The news, of course, is very unsettling and alarming to the witch. She summons all her might and turns herself back into human form.

Overjoyed at having overcome her temporary amnesia, she runs home to find everything covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. She cleans up her house with her broom, only to remember that it was her magic broom! She takes her broom out for a spin to the park in time to see Little Sprout coming. Remembering her promise to Little Sprout, she goes back to her old spot and turns herself back into a shiny new park bench.

Little Sprout sad her old bench is gone, but happy that the new one is just as good. She also brings good news. Her mother is leaving the hospital! Just then, the broom knocks itself over. Like any curious child, Little Sprout deduces that this must be a magic broom, gets on it, and flies away to oblivion. Or something like that.

The Old Lady Witch series (if you can call two books a series), is much more entertaining and enjoyable to read than that of the Little Fox with anxiety issues. They’re cute stories and sequential, which gives emerging readers something to look forward to. From an instructional standpoint, vocabulary is repeated enough throughout the book that I was able to recognize characters without looking at the phonetic spelling. There are also enough context clues to help fill in some of the gaps. I do admit, I did have to consult the dictionary and my mother for certain words and phrases. However, these resources were not used as often as when I started reading two months ago. Woo!

More books were brought back from Taiwan, so stay tuned for future installments of Chinese Kid Lit. I promise no more month-long waits between posts!

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #3: The Last Magic

Peter — Sun, 03 May 2009 05:37:15 +0000

This week, we abandon the psychotic Little Fox in favor of a lovely little old lady who performs magic.

最後的魔法
Zui4 huo4 de5 mo3 fa3
The Last Magic

In this book, an aging 魔女 mo3 nu3 (Sorceress) decides that for her last use of her magic, she wants to turn herself into something beautiful and people will love. First, she turns herself into a flower, only to escape becoming a fox’s lunch by returning to her former state. (What is it with these stories and foxes?) Then she tries becoming a crow, which goes well until she flies too high and is chased by an eagle. After crash landing into a tree, she meets a little boy. They hike to the top of a hill only to rest. “Boy, would it be nice to have a bench to sit on!” they exclaim. (Why, that’s not foreshadowing at all! What? Did I give away the ending?)

The boy is fascinated by her magic after she writes his name on his shoes with it. He runs to go home and asks the woman to wait for him. As she waits, several others hike up the steep hill and ponder over the lack of a bench. (I bet you can guess what she’ll turn herself into next! That’s right, a grand piano with golden keys!) After hearing yet another person wish for a bench, she makes up her mind and makes it so; using her last bit of magic. The next day, the boy returns and is heartbroken to see the old lady gone, so he sits on the bench to wait for her.

This is such a cute little story. It’s got everything: optimism, nice little old ladies, thrilling chases, danger, crash landings in trees, emotional tug of the heartstrings, and magic. Aww.

Next week, we return to the Little Old Lady and learn what happens many years later.

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #2: Creaky and Swaying Suspension Bridge

Peter — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:26:19 +0000

Last week, we met Little Fox and his fragile emotional state that leads him to cry at the sight of a wet water bucket. In this week’s book, we learn more about Little Fox’s psyche as we explore his fear of heights and apparent sexuality.

吊橋搖呀搖
Diao4 qiao2 yao2 ya1 yao2
The Creaky and Swaying Suspension Bridge

Once again, 小狐狸 xiao3 hu2 li2 (Little Fox) and his friends 小熊 xiao3 xiong2 (Little Bear) and 小兔子 xiao3 tu4 zi5 (Little Rabbit) are on an adventure through the woods. This time, the trio come across a suspension bridge that crosses a gorge. They want to cross it, but are too afraid of heights. (They looked down at the river below… idiots.)

Just then, an elderly 山豬 shan1 zhu1 (Mountain Boar) crosses the bridge. The kids are eager to ask him what lies on the other side of the bridge. Sensing their gullibility, he tells them on the other side a little girl fox, a little girl bear, and a little boy rabbit are waiting for them. (Apparently, Little Rabbit is a girl.) Upon hearing this news, the kids’ ears perk up and they fantasize a scene in which they square dance in the woods; or at least that’s what the illustration implies.

The next day, Little Bear and Little Rabbit realize they’re too young to cross the bridge on their own and they should wait until they’re older and abandon Little Fox at the bridge. Besides, the opposite sex might have cooties. Little Fox, however, is all of a sudden horny and wants to cross the bridge to meet the mythical little girl fox. But first, he must dream about crossing the bridge. His dream scares him so much that he closes his eyes… while sleeping and dreaming. In the morning, he gets enough courage to try crossing the bridge. Little Fox very cautiously takes three steps, then runs back. The next day he takes four steps. Followed by five steps, six steps, etc. (The author felt the need to do this for several pages.)

A few days later, Mountain Boar crosses the bridge again and runs into Little Fox, desperately clinging to the sides as the bridge shakes from Mountain Boar’s weighty steps. Little Fox asks after his beloved crush and is reassured that she is just fine. In fact, she’s still waiting for him.

One day, on his brave quest, he brings a flower for the little girl fox. He takes his however many steps for that day and places it on the bridge telling her, “Here’s a flower for you… on the bridge… because I’m to chicken to cross the entire thing myself and deliver it in person.” (Ok, so the last part wasn’t exactly in the book.) The next day, the flower is gone. Little Fox reveals a bit of skepticism by considering the possibility that the wind blew it away, but the romantic decides that someone took it.

Later, he decides to go for it and cross the bridge. (It’s been well over a week since he started, by the way.) He makes it to the halfway point on the bridge. Little Fox sits down on the bridge, pulls out a harmonica which he just happen to have in his pocket (Huh?), and begins to play. Music permeates the air and reaches the ears of his friends who realize they’ve been less than stellar by abandoning him on the bridge. Little Bear and Little Rabbit quickly run to the bridge and call out to Little Fox, “Come Play with Us!”

Little Fox looks at his friends, looks at the other side of the bridge, and back at his friends again. He tells the little girl fox, “One day when we’re older, I hope we can play together,” before running BACK TO THE STARTING POINT to join his friends.

OY! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS KID? He gets conned by an old mountain boar into thinking a little girl on the otherside of the bridge has the hots for him. Despite desperately wanting to meet this non-existent girl, he ends up abandoning her to play with his friends. In reading this book, I just wanted to shove the twerp off the bridge into the river hundreds of feet below.

Unfortunately, I have no more books about Little Fox at my disposal. Yvonne has some if she’d like to contribute next week’s entry. Otherwise, we’ll take a break from this psychotic animal and learn about a nice old lady who can perform magic!

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #1: The Yellow Bucket

Peter — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:15:55 +0000

Remember when Yvonne was commenting on not having any fun Chinese kid lit growing up?

Problem solved. On a recent trip to Taiwan, we bought quite a few books for us to practice our Chinese reading skills. Some are classic stories known to Americans while others are new material. This recent acquisition of reading material has inspired me to create a new feature: Chinese Kid Lit.

This week’s book is titled:
黃色水桶
Huang2 se4 shui3 tong3
The Yellow Bucket.

In the book, 小狐狸 xiao3 hu2 li2 (Little Fox), finds a yellow bucket in the woods. He really wants a bucket because all his friends have buckets, including 小熊 xiao3 xiong2 (Little Bear) and 小兔子 xiao3 tu4 zi5 (Little Rabbit). 小熊 and 小兔子 convince 小狐狸 that since the bucket was found, he cannot just take it outright. So, they decide to wait a week and see if its owner claims it. If not, then 小狐狸 can finally take home the yellow bucket.

Apparently, this fox has no life as he goes into the woods each day to play with the bucket. At the end of each day, he sets it down and goes home. Through his play, he swings it, throws it around, fills it with water, etc. One day, he goes to the woods and finds his precious bucket wet from a heavy rainstorm. This makes him so upset that he wants to cry!

Seriously?

It’s a WATER bucket. It’s supposed to get WET! In fact, the first character in the word 水桶 (bucket), actually means water.

The rest of the story gets even more annoying as Little Fox continues to whine and mope about not having his own bucket. (If you want the bucket so badly, just take the darn thing!) He gets so obsessed that he dreams about the bucket at night. In one particular dream, he throws the bucket in the air and it flies away into the moonlight. On the final day, Little Fox goes to retrieve his bucket to find it missing. It’s unclear whether his dream was actually Little Fox sleepwalking or if the bucket’s rightful owner picked it up on the seventh day.

The animal kids in the story need lives… and parents. Who lets their kids run around in the woods every day unsupervised? Not to mention the emotional issues this Little Fox has that he’s willing to cry over the fact that it rained in a bucket that doesn’t even belong to him.

More stories about Little Fox to follow in future posts. Come join us as we delve further into this emotionally needy character who clearly has some psychological issues. Who said children’s literature was boring?

It’s Time for New Reading Material

Yvonne — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 07:06:56 +0000

Let us review the sage words of Khatzumoto:

Most learners of a foreign language – any foreign language – remain, like a novice skater to the wall of the rink, glued to their textbooks: a boring, sanitized, artificial, mutant subset of their target language.

Speaking of boring, check out these scintillating passages from Lesson 15 of Beginning Chinese Reader:

離上海不遠有一個很大的湖, 是太湖. 湖的四邊水田很多, 湖裏頭還有很多魚, 所以湖邊的人家都說太湖太好了.

Translation, de-mutant-ized for easier reading: Not far from Shanghai, there’s a lake: Tai Lake. Around the lake there are many irrigated fields; inside the lake there are many fish. That’s why those near the lake all say that Tai Lake is very nice.

Are you asleep yet? No? How about this?

中國的湖南是在一個大湖的南邊. 湖北是在這個大湖的北邊.

Translation: China’s Hunan Province is located on the south side of a large lake. Hupeh Province is on the north side of this large lake.

It’s actually even more boring than it sounds in English. “Hunan” and “Hupeh” literally mean “south of lake” and “north of lake”, respectively.

One more for the road:

我要念中文. 西東大學離我家很近, 可是我是一個中學生, 不能在大學念書, 要不然我就在西東念中文了.

Translation: I want to study Chinese. Seton Hall University is very close to my house, but I’m a middle school student and can’t take classes at the university. Otherwise I would study Chinese at Seton Hall.

Fantastic!

I remember we had some Chinese board books at home, but once I outgrew those the only readily-available Chinese text was the 世界日報 newspaper. I didn’t even like reading news in English as a kid, why would I want to attempt it in Chinese? The lack of fun Chinese reading material while growing up is probably a big reason why I’m now illiterate.

I wonder if I could get my grandma to send me some Chinese picture books. And then I could work my way up to say, Chinese Harry Potter. Beats reading about Hunan Province and Seton Hall University ad nauseum.

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My New Best Friend: The Dictionary

Yvonne — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:13:32 +0000

From the time I was very small, I knew that if my parents asked for the 漢英字典 (han4 ying1 zi4 dian3), they meant the battered teal green Chinese-English dictionary that was squirreled away in the cubby by the front door. It wasn’t until much, much later that I learned the 漢 part referred to the Chinese language. I knew that 英 meant English so you’d think it would’ve been obvious, but I guess not.

Well, I’m now the proud owner of my very own 漢英字典! Or rather, 漢英英漢字典. And none too soon, as I gave myself massive eyestrain staring at the stark white of Zhongwen.com, translating the cover of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook.

After much scouring on Amazon and asking Peter what he used in his college Chinese classes, I settled on this Chinese-English dictionary.

My requirements for a dictionary were:

Must deal equally with traditional and simplified Chinese
Must be able to look up by English, pinyin, radical, or stroke count
If I look up English, I should get characters and pinyin. If I look up characters, I should get English and pinyin.

The first requirement turned out to be the hardest to manage, as many of the dictionaries I looked at (like the Langenscheidt one) seemed to deal primarily with simplified Chinese, which is the writing system they use on the mainland.

I want to be able to read simplified Chinese, as I want to read primary news sources from China, but I will be using traditional Chinese to communicate with my family in Taiwan.

My main concern about getting this particular dictionary was its physical size. Many, many of the negative reviews on Amazon complained the book was so small the writing was unreadable. Kind of a problem for a Chinese dictionary, as the individual characters tend to be a bit more complex than, y’know, the letter A. However, a careful reading of the reviews produced this useful tidbit: there is a large print edition of this dictionary (ISBN: 7-100-04358-1), which Amazon calls the “Library Binding” edition. I’d guess my “large print” edition uses about an 8pt font so you can imagine how readable the regular edition is.

I used the dictionary to compose an e-mail to my uncle and it pretty much did what I need a dictionary to do (assuming he doesn’t reply with 你說甚麼?—ni3 shuo1 shen2 mo5?—what did you say?).

I did notice a few instances of simplified Chinese that weren’t accompanied by the equivalent traditional Chinese, and a few of the phrases I was looking for weren’t in there. Whether that’s a matter of mainland colloquialisms/pronunciation vs. Taiwanese colloquialisms/pronunciation, or formal Chinese vs. informal Chinese, or dictionary only has Mandarin pronunciations vs. I didn’t realize this phrase I’ve always used is in the Taiwanese dialect, or dictionary has good Chinese vs. Yvonne has bad Chinese requires more exploration.

Chipanglish » Books

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Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!

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Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #3: The Last Magic

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Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #2: Creaky and Swaying Suspension Bridge

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