Chipanglish » Chinese

iPhone Chinese Alphabet App

Peter — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:09:19 +0000

Good Characters, Inc has come out with a new iPhone application: Chinese Alphabet. Thankfully, the creators realize such a thing does not exist and this is for entertainment value only, to add “mystery” to your writing. Of course, everything from the Orient is mysterious…

To those gullible enough to think this will translate their writing into real Chinese, for just $1.99 you can sound like an idiot!

三內丁口了!

According to the app, it says “Enjoy”, but it actually says:
“Three inside diced meat/vegetables mouth [past tense marker]!”

On second thought, I might actually enjoy three pieces of diced meat/vegetables in my mouth. Mmm… beef stew.

So I’ve Been Lazy

Yvonne — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:10:06 +0000

I haven’t cracked open a non-English book in weeks, including Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook. I haven’t done any practice with my Anki decks either. The truth is, I was on the verge of language burnout, and then I had to work a billion hours to finish my dissertation. Brain fried.

And so I’ve been lazy.

Though this doesn’t mean I haven’t been getting worthy language practice, as it turns out.

My husband and I have been watching Code Geass. Japanese audio, English subtitles. Each episode is a little over 20 minutes long and we finished Episode 20 today. I’ve already noticed some improvement in my Japanese comprehension even with this small amount of semi-immersion.

And then I read How to Learn Spanish for Lazy People on Spanish Only:

5 Reasons Lazy People Are Better Language Learners

They generally don’t worry all too much.

They don’t use textbooks.

Instead, they use native materials.

They have all the time of the world to get massive amounts of input well before ever speaking a word.

When they eventually speak it’s again stress-free, aiming to get their point across (which, miracally often goes without making loads of mistakes and/or pauses).

It made me feel even better about my laziness.

Because to be honest, I hate doing SRS. I hate being glued to my dictionary. I hate being all systematic and angsty about my language progress. And trying to study three different languages every day is a good way to make your brain all ‘splody.

So I’m going to relax. Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook is going on hiatus (and frankly, I was starting to run out of the funny phrases anyways).

For Japanese and Spanish, my new goal is to watch 1000 hours of TV in each language before I attempt any more formal study. For the time being, I’ve decided that subtitles in Japanese are ok, as I’m basically starting from nothing here. If I use subtitles on the Spanish TV, they must be in Spanish.

I’ve already gotten my 1000 hours of native-speed Chinese audio, so I will start reading through the massive collection of children’s books I have. Once I get through all of those (without systematically mining them for vocabulary), I’ll re-evaluate where I am.

Here’s where I am so far, going as far back as my Spanish movie-watching week (during which I also snuck in a viewing of Spirited Away):

Japanese: 9.4/1000 hours

Spanish: 7.8/1000 hours

Chinese Etymology

Peter — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 05:36:13 +0000

I stumbled across this website while perusing one of favorite etymology websites. Growing up and attending Chinese school, we saw pictographs that eventually became the written characters today. However, after looking at some of the archaic written Chinese, I’m not convinced they weren’t written by preschoolers.

Take for example, 高 gao1, which means “tall”. Here are the historic writing samples.

Is it just me or do a lot of them look like houses?

In any case, I still fail to see the connection between many words and their associated meanings.

*The website classifies characters by time in history with “Seal” characters being the most recent (not counting modern Chinese) and “Oracle” characters as the oldest.

I, For One, Welcome Our New 魚完美 Overlords

Yvonne — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:29:59 +0000

Have you seen The Onion lately?

A screenshot for posterity’s sake:

Make sure you check out the store too.

Here are the Chinese items from the news ticker:

起來, 各位中華民族的移民子弟! 收回你的命运!
反抗時刻即將到達, 各位在位做好準備.
重要目標已選擇, 時間不久了.

Translation after the jump.

Continue reading I, For One, Welcome Our New 魚完美 Overlords (93 words) »

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Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook: Astrology

Yvonne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:00:59 +0000

“Do you believe in horoscopes?”

你相信星座嗎?
Ni3 xiang1 xin4 xing1 zuo4 ma1?

あんたは星座を信じますか。
Anata wa seiza wo shinjimasuka.

Straightforward sentence structures this week! Because you need to spend all your mental energy trying to figure out how to work this sentence into the conversation. It’s not even “What’s your sign?”

In Chinese: 你 = you, 相信 = believe, 星座 = zodiac signs (though the dictionary defines it as “constellation”), 嗎 = question marker.

In Japanese: あんた = you, は = subject marker, 星座 = zodiac signs, を = object marker, 信じます = believe, か = question marker.

Note that “Do you believe in zodiac signs?” seems to be a slightly better English translation.

People learning both Chinese and Japanese get a double bonus this week: easy sentences and the same characters in both languages!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #15: If You’re Ever On a Reality TV Show…

Yvonne — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:00:50 +0000

This week’s “essential travel phrase” is actually quite useful for those traveling, say, to a remote island or to a glorified hamster cage with the hopes of winning lots of money and becoming famous (not necessarily in that order).

“I have no regrets.”

我毫無遺憾.
Wo3 hao2 wu2 yi2 han4.

私は残念だと思いません。
Watashi wa zannen da to omoimasen.

The Chinese is easy. 我 = I, 毫無 = don’t have any (literally, “in the least, don’t have”), 遺憾 = regret. Chinese doesn’t really have a plural form.

The Japanese…confuses me. I think it’s because I hardly know any Japanese and not because the sentence is somehow wrong. 私 = I, は = subject marker. That’s the easy part. My dictionary says 残念に思う (zannen ni omou) is “to feel bad” (literally “‘hard luck!’ [adverb marker] to feel”), so I think 残念に思いません (zannen ni omoimasen) should be “to not feel bad”. But the phrasebook has 残念だと思いません (zannen da to omoimasen), and I’m not quite sure what function the だと in the middle serves.

Google Translate defines だと as “if it’s the case”. EnglishJapaneseOnlineDictionary.com gives an example sentence using だと: そうだと思います (sō dato omoimasu), “I guess so”, which I guess literally translates to “yes, if that’s the case, I feel it.” If that’s the case, then 残念だと思いません is “hard luck! If that’s the case, I don’t feel it.”

On the other hand, it might be that だ and と are supposed to be separate, and I think the audio suggests this. My dictionary defines だ as “be”, and と思う as “to regard as”. If that’s the case, then 残念だと思いません is “hard luck it be!, I don’t regard it as.”

If you know which interpretation is right (or if neither interpretation is right, or if it’s six of one, half dozen of the other), please leave a comment and let me know!

The beauty of learning through immersion is that you really don’t have to fret this much about the specifics of the grammar. Just learn the sentence (and many, many others) and your brain will figure out the patterns of correct usage.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #14: Tom Cruise

Yvonne — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:00:26 +0000

Is being compared to Tom Cruise a compliment or an insult? You might want to suss that out before trying this phrase.

“Has anyone told you that you look like Tom Cruise?”

有人跟你說過你長得像湯姆克魯斯嗎?
You3 ren2 gen1 ni3 shuo1 guo4 ni3 zhang3 de5 xiang4 tang1 mu3 ke4 lu3 si1 ma1?

タム·クルーズに似てるって言われませんか。
Tamu Kurūzu ni niterutte iwaremasen ka.

We’ve seen English-words-turned-Chinese before, but this is the first time a name is getting transliterated. And what a disaster it is! “Tom Cruise”, two syllables that roll easily off an English-speaking tongue, becomes the tongue-twisting gibberish phrase 湯姆克魯斯 (tang1 mu3 ke4 lu3 si1). It’s “Soup Mother Restraining Stupid Thus”, if you must have an attempt at a translation.

The construction of the Chinese sentence is almost as brain-twisting as Tom Cruise’s name is tongue-twisting. 有 = there are, 人 = people, 跟你說過 = told you before (literally, “with you tell past”), 你 = you, 長得像 = look like (literally, “grown to resemble”), 湯姆克魯斯 = Tom Cruise, 嗎 = question marker.

The Japanese is a relief in comparison, though it’s still not one of the easiest sentences we’ve done. タム·クルーズ = Tom Cruise, nicely spelled out phonetically in Katakana, に = adverb marker, 似てるって = resembled, 言われません = been described, か = question marker.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #13: Mosquito Bites

Yvonne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:00:52 +0000

“I’ve got a mosquito bite on my face.”

我的臉被蚊子咬.
Wo3 de5 lian3 bei4 wen2 zi5 yao3.

顔を蚊に刺されました。
Kao wo ka ni sasaremashita.

The 被 construction, which we first saw last week, rears its head again. Otherwise, the Chinese is about as simple as it gets. 我的 = my; 臉 = face; 被 = marker to indicate the subject of the sentence is the recipient of some action; 蚊子 = mosquito; 咬 = bite.

Note that the character for “face” looks kind of like a face!

臉
lian3

The left side of the character, 月, means moon by itself, but is often used as a radical for person-things. I’m not really sure why that is, but you can see 月-as-radical in a few of the 奇先生，妙小姐 titles.

The Japanese is also just about as simple as it gets. 顔 = face (note: not the same character as the Chinese); を = object marker; 蚊 = mosquito (note: the same character as the Chinese); に = to; 刺されました = bite, past tense.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #12: Swine Flu Quarantine Edition

Yvonne — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:00:31 +0000

I’m going to hope that you don’t find this to be a useful travel phrase. Because if you ever utter this sentence while visiting China, it probably means you’re chatting with these folks in Hotel Quarantine or will be shortly.

“I got the flu from my roommate.”

我被室友傳染了流行性感冒.
Wo3 bei4 shi4 you3 chuan2 ran3 liu2 xing2 xing4 gan3 mao4.

ルーマメートに流感をうつされました。
Rūmamēto ni ryūkan wo utsusaremashita.

The grammatical structure on the Chinese sentence is pretty weird for English speakers. This is the first time we’re seeing the marker 被 on Chipanglish. 被 indicates that the subject of the sentence, in this case 我, is on the receiving end of some action. 我 = I, 室友 = roommate (literally “room friend”), 傳染 = to infect, 了 = marker to indicate an action is completed, 流行性感冒 = the flu.

But what is really interesting about this sentence comes in this long phrase for “flu”: 流行性感冒. The first two characters form the compound 流行, which means “trendy” or “popular”. 性 is an adjective marker. The last two characters for the compound 感冒, which means “common cold” and literally translates to “feel steamy”. So flu is a trendy steamy feeling. Hah! I love how Chinese can be so evocative, sometimes bizarrely so.

The grammar is pretty standard Japanese, which means it seems contorted to an English speaker—implied subject, actor, object, and finally the verb. ルーマメート = roommate, に = by, 流感 = flu, を = object marker, うつされました = infected. Now, note that the Kanji for “flu”, 流感, are plucked from the Chinese compound. You see this in Japanese a lot, where rather than borrowing a whole phrase from another language, they’ll just borrow bits of that phrase and mash it together to form a shorter compound.

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.

Chinese Radicals: The 螞蟻 Goes Marching

Yvonne — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:52:50 +0000

I keep failing this item in my flashcard study (I use Anki) despite its relative obviousness, so I thought I’d make a post about it because you remember things best when you try to teaching them to someone else.

ant

螞蟻
ma2 yi3

Hurrah, hurrah.

Why do I say this one should be relatively obvious? Because of the two-part structure of each word. We first discussed radicals in the espresso edition of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook.

Both 螞 and 蟻 have the same radical: 虫. In simplified Chinese, this character by itself means “insect” (in traditional Chinese, three of them get stacked together to form the character for insect: 蟲). When it appears in radical form it usually is marking an insect-related term. Other examples include:

butterfly

蝴蝶
hu2 die2

honeybee

蜜蜂
mi4 feng1

So that’s the first reason why it should be relatively obvious.

The second reason has to do with the right sides of the characters: 馬 and 義. These characters, which I should already know, are pronounced ma3 and yi4.

The third reason is that I’m already pretty fluent in Chinese. “Ant” is one of those words I absolutely know how to say, if not necessarily how to write or read.

So put that all together.

螞蟻

I see a Chinese phrase with the bug radical.
I see the right sides are ma3 and yi4, respectively. So this must be an insect word that sounds like ma yi.
I know that “ant” in Chinese is pronounced ma2 yi3.

Why do I keep failing this item?

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #11: Fancy Sandals!

Yvonne — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:00:56 +0000

Sorry for missing last week’s Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook posting; I was traveling on business. In keeping with the spirit of this series, this week’s phrase is not something I had any occasion to use while I was on the road.

“What a pair of fancy sandals.”

好別緻的涼鞋喔!
Hao3 bie2 zhi4 de5 liang2 xie2 wo5!

すてきなサンダルですね！
Suteki na sandaru desu ne!

It’s a rare week when the Japanese sentence structure is easier to explain to an English speaker than the Chinese sentence structure. The Japanese sentence structure is basically Yoda-esque.

すてき = “cute, gorgeous, swell” (Note: my book gives the hiragana, but there is Kanji. 素敵 = すてき), な = adjective marker, サンダル = “sandals”, です = “are”, ね = emphasis/exclamation word. Almost literally, “Cute sandals, they are!”

The Chinese sentence structure is a bit Yoda-esque as well, but it lacks a verb. There’s also a bit of trickiness around the character 好. Most commonly, 好 means “good” or “well”. For example, 你好嗎? means “Are you well?” (More colloquially, “How are you?”) But in this instance, it functions more like the English word “so”. For example, 好多人喔! means “so many people!”

別緻 means “delightful”, so naturally 好別緻 = “so delightful”. 的 = possessive marker, 涼鞋 = sandals, 喔 = word of exclamation. So the Chinese comes out to be, “So delightful, a property which is possessed by sandals, oh!”

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!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #10: Try Walking Backwards

Yvonne — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:00:43 +0000

In previous editions of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook we’ve seen flippant remarks, computer problems, and family angst, but we’ve yet to feature an actual travel phrase from this alleged travel phrasebook.

Until now.

Granted, I’m not sure why you’d want to travel this way, but who am I to judge?

“Let’s try walking backwards.”

試試看倒退走.
Shi4 shi4 kan4 dao4 tui4 zou3.

後ろ向きに歩いてみて。
Ushiro muki ni aruitemite.

Finding an appropriate context for this sentence might be a challenge, but at least the grammar is easy for both Chinese and Japanese.

試試看 = “try” (actually one 試 already means “try” but we Chinese like to repeat things) or “try and see what happens” (看 = “see), 倒退 = “reverse” or “go backwards”, 走 = “walk” or “move”.

What’s interesting here is that there are actually multiple ways to translate this Chinese into English. “Let’s try walking backwards” is valid, if rarely useful (if ever); “See what happens if you reverse” is also valid and more useful—say your car is stuck in a ditch or other place and you’re trying to get out. “Try retracing your steps” is still valid, I think (though I’d probably use a different phrase for “retrace your steps”), and even more useful. Context is everything when translating Chinese (and when translating, period).

The Japanese, as far as I can tell, does literally mean to walk on foot; the only definition my dictionary gives for 歩いて is “on foot”.

後ろ = “back” or “rear”, 向き = “direction”, に = adverb marker, 歩いてみて = “try walking”.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #9: Don’t Be a Pig

Yvonne — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:00:23 +0000

Happy Memorial Day, all!

Now, I think Memorial Day is a mighty fine time to bust out the grill. Especially now that I live in the South where there’s Proper Summer Weather on Memorial Day.

So today’s phrase is:

“Don’t make a pig of yourself.”

你別吃太多啊!
Ni3 bie2 chi1 tai4 duo1 a5!

食べ過ぎないで！
Tabe suginai de!

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one, as both the Chinese and Japanese phrases translate to the significantly-more-polite “Don’t eat too much!”

Chinese: 你 = “you”, 別 = “don’t”, 吃 = “eat”, 太 = “e”, 多 = “much”, 啊 = word of exclamation. I’d like to note that 你 isn’t really necessary here. The “you” can be implied.

Japanese: 食べ = “eat”, 過ぎない = “don’t go too far”, で = command/request marker. The “you” is implied.

So what’s the deal here? “Pig” is a standard insult at least in Chinese so you could certainly do a more literal and ultimately better translation that captures the tone. On the other hand, it’s kind of bad to call someone a pig in Chinese—it’s a lot more insulting than the English equivalent, which is kind of grade-school.

The authors of this book are obviously not native English speakers. My only guess is that while “Don’t eat too much!” would have been a perfectly good translation here, they wanted something a bit more idiomatic (though who knows why) and didn’t have a good enough grasp of colloquialisms to come up with “Don’t stuff yourself!”

Either that, or they think English speakers are really, really rude.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #8: Espresso Machines

Yvonne — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:00:55 +0000

I am exhausted. Thus, this week’s “essential” “travel” phrase is:

“All you need is an espresso maker.”

只需要一台濃縮咖啡機就夠了.
Zhi3 xu1 yao4 yi4 tai2 nong2 suo1 ka1 fei1 ji1 jiu4 gou4 le5.

エスプレッソマシーンが必要ですね。
Esupuresso mashīn ga hitsuyō desu ne.

Last week we talked about the Japanese propensity to borrow words from other languages. Well, here it is again! I don’t need to tell you what an エスプレッソマシーン (esupurasso mashīn) is, do I? The rest of the sentence is also straightforward, at least for Japanese grammar: が = object marker, 必要 = “necessary”, です = “is”, ね = emphasis marker. As in last week’s sentence, the “you” part is implied.

This week we also have a borrowed word in the Chinese: 咖啡 (ka1 fei1), or coffee. But before I can explain where these characters come from, I need to back up and explain a bit about the structure of Chinese characters.

Many Chinese characters break down into two parts: a radical,which hints at the meaning of the character (and is also used to sort words into dictionary order), and the…other part (forgot the technical term if there is one, sorry)…which hints at the pronunciation. Take, for example, the character for “mother”:

媽
ma1

The left side of the character is 女 (which you first saw here), which means “female” or “woman”. The right side of the character is 馬, which is pronounced ma3.

If you have some spoken proficiency in Chinese but are just learning to read (like little kids or, uh…me), learning the radicals can help you make educated guesses at unknown characters.

Now back to coffee.

咖啡

As far as I can tell, both of these characters were specifically invented to Chinese-ize the word coffee (though not necessarily from English). Note that both characters have 口for a radical on the left. 口 means “mouth” and is a common radical for food- and drink-related characters.

The right sides of the characters are 加 (jia1) and 非 (fei1), respectively, and are common characters that more or less give us the pronunciation ka1 fei1.

As far as I know, 啡 has no usage other than being part of the compound for “coffee”; it doesn’t even get a standalone entry in my dictionary.

咖 does get a standalone entry, but it has no definition. The only things that appear in the entry are the compound 咖啡 and a note that the character is also pronounced ga1. I flip to the ga1 entry and once again, no definition, just the compound 咖喱 (ga1 li2) which both means and sounds suspiciously like “curry”.

Whew! To summarize, the Japanese borrow words from other languages by approximating the pronunciation using their katakana alphabet. The Chinese approximate the pronunciation with existing characters, which they then mash with an appropriate radical for the meaning.

Sometimes. You’ll see a different way of borrowing below.

We’ve taken an extended detour into the etymology of 咖啡, but that’s just regular ol’ coffee. We’re talking espresso! To get espresso from 咖啡 you add 濃縮 (nong2 suo1) in front of it. 濃縮 means “concentrated” (literally, “concentrated and shrunken”—Chinese do love redundancies).

Sometimes you’ll see 意大利濃縮咖啡 on a menu, specifying Italian espresso. And for the record, 意大利 (yi4 da4 li4) means and sounds like “Italy”, but the characters separately mean “meaning”, “big”, and “sharp”, respectively. In this case, there’s no radical to alert us that this is the name of a country—they just mash common characters together to approximate the pronunciation. Learn your compounds, kids! Because sometimes reading one character at a time gets you gibberish. Which makes Dan Brown an idiot.

There’s actually one more thing about this particular Chinese sentence to tickle the brains of language nerds, but I’ll save it for another time. To wrap up:

只 = “only”, 需要 = “need”, 一台 = “one”, 濃縮咖啡 = “espresso”, 機 = machine, 就夠了 = “is enough”.

王大中 vs. Da-zhong Wang vs. DJ Wong

Yvonne — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:27:10 +0000

I wanted to respond to Peter’s post about the Texas voter ID law.

First, a bit of background on how Chinese names usually work.

Most Chinese names have three characters (though some only have two). The surname goes first, and the remaining two characters are your given name.

For example, everyone’s favorite Chinese textbook hero is named 王大中. 王 (wang2) is his surname. 大中 (da4 zhong1) is his given name.

How do you turn that into English? We here at Chipanglish use Hanyu Pinyin for transliterating Chinese words. It’s the international standard (at least as of 1982, and didn’t become the standard in Taiwan until January 1 of this year), but there are plenty of other systems out there.

In Hanyu Pinyin 王大中 becomes Dazhong Wang. Or Da-zhong Wang. Or Da Zhong Wang which becomes Da Z. Wang.

Use a different system (or make up your own) and you might wind up with Da-jong Wong instead. It’s the same name, just transliterated differently. Let’s assume for a minute that he goes with Dajong Wong for first and last names when filling out the immigration paperwork, leaving the middle name blank.

And after living in the US for a while, Dajong gets tired of people butchering his name and decides to go by DJ instead. His immigration papers, passport, and driver’s license still all say Dajong Wong, but his college transcript, his library card, his frequent flyer card, and his voter registration card (which tend to have more lenient ID requirements) all say DJ Wong.

He goes to vote, is asked to show ID, and is denied because the voter rolls say DJ Wong, but his driver’s license says Dajong Wong. He can’t prove it’s the same person.

That’s the issue in a nutshell. And it will rapidly expand beyond voting and into flying, as TSA Secure Flight now requires that the name on your ID, ticket, and frequent flyer information match exactly.

Now, I do think people have a legal responsibility to keep the usage of their legal name straight. It’s one thing to go by DJ socially, but if your legal name is Dajong, that’s what should go on official documents.

But Betty Brown’s suggestion that people could solve the problem by changing their names to something more American is completely asinine for two reasons:

A big part of the problem comes from people trying to do exactly that, albeit not through official legal channels.
This is not a problem limited to Asian names!

Say your name is Annemarie Smith, but you normally just go by Anne. If the voter rolls say Anne Smith and your ID says Annemarie Smith, well…that doesn’t match either.

Or now about a last name? Say your name is Ana Ramirez Delgado. In keeping with Hispanic naming customs, “Ramirez Delgado” is your full last name (no hyphen), but you just use Ramirez for most occasions. But thanks to clerical error, you show up on the voter rolls as Ana R. Delgado. Which does not match your ID.

Stuff happens with hyphenated last names too. Just ask Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

From a policy standpoint, the obvious first step is to have a nation-wide standardized format for names that can handle hyphens and spaces in your names (and also really long names). Middle names should stop being optional—if you have no middle name you should check a box confirming thus. IDs should specify what is first, middle, and last, rather than leaving it up to clerks and bureaucrats of varying degrees of cluelessness to figure out what is what. Second step, be a bit lenient if it’s obvious a hyphen/space got screwed up in data entry, making you Sara Kelly Johnson instead of Sara Kelly-Johnson.

And now to bring it full circle back to Texas. Unlike the federal government and every other state I’ve lived in, Texas does not do hyphens on IDs. My middle name is hyphenated. I could either drop half of my middle name or mash the two parts together sans hyphen. I chose to mash.

And so now I have the absurd situation where the name on my passport (and social security card, and birth certificate) is hyphenated and the name on my driver’s license is not. My primary forms of government-issued ID do not all match exactly.

If I’m ever in a situation where that hyphen actually matters, I’m screwed.

The Return of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook: Microsoft Edition

Yvonne — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:39:28 +0000

The last Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook (#7) ended rather abruptly. To make a long story short, my dad (and Peter‘s dad) passed away the day after that post went live, after a long illness. Blogging fell to the bottom of my priority list. But now I’m back and ready to learn some more “useful travel phrases”!

So, where were we?

“My computer is rebooting on its own again!”

我的電腦又自己重新啟動了!
Wo3 de dian4 nao3 you4 zi4 ji3 chong2 xin1 qi3 dong4 le5!

コンピューターが勝手に再起動しました。
Konpyuta ga katte ni saikidō shimashita.

The Japanese love to borrow words from other languages, especially English. They even have katakana, an entirely different writing system just for borrowed English words (and other non-Chinese borrowed words…and sound effects). Katakana is more boxy than hiragana, the writing system for actual Japanese words.

For comparison:

Selected Phonemes in Hiragana and Katakana
Romaji	a	i	u	e	o	ka	ki	ku	ke	ko
Hiragana	あ	い	う	え	お	か	き	く	け	こ
Katakana	ア	イ	ウ	エ	オ	カ	キ	ク	ケ	コ

Sounding out the first stretch of katakana in the Japanese, コンピューター gets you konpyuta, which is obviously “computer”.

In Chinese, we’re not so lucky. Computer is 電腦 or literally “electric brain”.

At least the Chinese grammar is fairly straightforward (though the literal translation sounds a bit redundant): 我的 = “my”, 電腦 = “computer”, 又 = “again”, 自己 = “self”, 重新 = “start over”, 啟動 = “start up”, 了 = marker to indicate an action is completed.

As usual, the Japanese grammar ties a native English speaker into knots: コンピューター = “computer”, が = object marker, 勝手 = “arbitrary”, に = adverb marker, 再起動しました = “rebooted” (literally “reboot did”). It’s implied that you’re talking about your computer. If you needed to emphasize that it’s your computer, you could add 私の (watashi no) at the beginning of the sentence.

It’s worth mentioning that 起動 (kidō), the Japanese for “boot up” is also perfectly acceptable Chinese. Using 起動 instead of 啟動 in the above sentence is just fine and it’s even pronounced the same (qi3 dong4): 我的電腦又自己重新起動了. Also note the similarity in pronunciation between Japanese and Chinese.

That (finally) concludes the Microsoft edition of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook. We’ll be back to Mondays at noon for new installments!

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.

What’s In a Name?

Peter — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:46:42 +0000

Recently, Rep. Betty Brown of Texas made some comments that are causing quite a stir, particularly in the Asian community.

Our resident Texan can correct me if I’m wrong, but Texas is currently reviewing a Voter ID bill. One problem with Voter ID is the matching of names, particularly Asian names. The point the speaker addressing Rep. Brown makes is that Asian names can cause ID problems because a person can fall under multiple “aliases” depending on who did the transliteration of the name and when it was done. Additionally, many people use English names, which may or may not be a legal name. Since the names don’t match, the person cannot vote.

However, Rep. Brown fails to grasp this concept and actually says, “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Not only would this add another name to the mix and defeat the whole purpose, it’s just stupid. But then again, I have always felt a little weird having both a Chinese AND an English name. Perhaps Rep. Brown, you are right. Maybe I do need just one name that I can use for ID purposes that is easier for government officials worldwide to “deal with”.

How about Ethelbert Grzeskiewicz?

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?

Learning Chinese via Fortune Cookie

Peter — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:41:32 +0000

I was surfing through my friend’s Facebook profile and noticed that he has the fortune from a fortune cookie posted on it. Many of today’s fortune cookies not only give you non-fortunes (ie. “Money makes one wealthy.” Duh?), but they have branched out into teaching Chinese.

My friend’s “Learn Chinese” phrase was:
potsticker – guo-ti

Here is a perfect example of complications that arise when transcribing Chinese into English. First, the Pinyin is wrong. It should be guo-tie (鍋貼). Secondly, without tonal notations, other words with identical Pinyin spellings can be substituted, leading to some hilarious results.

With no tone markers, the words for “fruit”, “nation”, and “to pass over” all have a Pinyin of guo. Likewise, tie is also the Pinyin for “iron” (as in the metal). But since the Pinyin is wrong, the word they gave is ti (踢), or “kick”.

Instead of potstickers, the yummy fried dumplings, we are now kicking around fruit.

Anyone up for a game of soccer? I’ll bring the cantaloupe!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #7: Microsoft Edition

Yvonne — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:00:12 +0000

This week it’s the Microsoft edition of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook!

“My computer is rebooting on its own again!”

我的電腦又自己重新啟動了!
Wo3 de dian4 nao3 you4 zi4 ji3 chong2 xin1 qi3 dong4 le5!

コンピューターが勝手に再起動しました。
Konpyuta ga katte ni saikidō shimashita.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #6: Buck Teeth

Yvonne — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:00:45 +0000

“I have bulging teeth.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve never even used this phrase in English. But in the event that you want to learn how to say it in Chinese or Japanese, here we go:

我有兔寶寶門牙.
Wo2 you3 tu4 bao3 bao1 men2 ya2.

私の前歯は大きいです。
Watashi no maeba wa ōkii desu.

The Chinese phrase is more suggestive, literally “I have rabbit-like front teeth.” 我有 = “I have”, 兔寶寶 = “rabbit” or “cutesy little precious rabbit” (兔 by itself is sufficient for “rabbit”; the 寶寶 part is literally “precious precious” and is symptomatic of the Chinese need to a) nickname everything, and b) repeat words), 門牙 = “front teeth”.

The Japanese phrase is very literal: “My front teeth are big.” 私 = “I/me”, の = possessive marker, 前歯 = “front teeth” (though 歯 by itself is pronounced ha (は) instead of ba (ば), は = subject marker, 大きいです = “are big”.

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