Chipanglish » Japanese

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

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.

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!

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.

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!”

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”.

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!

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”.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #5: Mom Gets Mad

Yvonne — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:00:33 +0000

It’s the Teen Angst edition of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook! Or if you prefer, the Family Dysfunction Edition! This week’s “travel” phrase might come in handy if you’re taking a family vacation and you manage to escape family drama to the bar.

“Mom just blew up at me.”

媽媽剛剛對我大發脾氣.
Ma1 ma3 gang1 gang1 dui4 wo3 da4 fa1 pi2 qi4.

さっきお母さんが私を怒ったんだ。
Sakki okāsan ga watashi wo okottanda.

Before I get to the translation, I want to mark a milestone in my Chinese language study. In the last couple of days, I’ve managed to read enough of a Chinese e-mail and a couple of Chinese forum posts to get the gist of the message without having to crack a dictionary. While I’m still a long way away from adult-level literacy, two months ago I could have maybe picked out one word in ten or twenty. The work is starting to pay off! Woo!

Unlike last week’s bizarro translations, this week it’s pretty straightforward.

Chinese: 媽媽 = mother, 剛剛 = just now, 對我 = towards me, 大 = big, 發脾氣 = throw a temper tantrum.

Japanese: さっき = a little while ago, お母さん = mother, が = subject marker, 私 = I or me, を = object marker, 怒ったんだ = got angry.

As usual, the Japanese are a little more polite than the rest of us.

Like in “Don’t stand on the desk!” the Kanji in the Japanese sentence aren’t the same as the characters used in the Chinese sentence.

母 (mu3) does mean “mother” in Chinese, but colloquially people usually say 媽媽 (ma1 ma3). 母 does appear in compounds like 父母 (fu4 mu3)—parents, literally “father mother”.

私 (si1) means something closer to “personal” or “private” in Chinese; 我 is used for I/me.

怒 (nu4) does mean “anger”, though it’s not a word I’ve ever heard used before. But I think if you substituted 發怒氣 for 發脾氣 in today’s phrase you’d get pretty much the same thing.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #4: I Like Toys [Updated]

Yvonne — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:00:31 +0000

For reasons too complex (and boring) to explain here, I am typing this week’s Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook in the dark, with only my laptop for light. Thus I wanted to minimize the need to look words up in the dictionary. This almost resulted in me having to post an actual useful phrase! Horrors! However, I managed to find this:

“I’m really into toy collectibles.”

我很喜歡公仔.
Wo3 hen2 xi3 huan1 gong1 zai3.

人形遊びが好きです。
Ningyō asobi ga suki desu.

Let’s unpack the Japanese first. 人形 = doll, 遊び = game or play, が = subject marker, 好きです = like.

Not sure where the “collectibles” part comes in.

Chinese! 我 = I, 很喜歡 = like very much. As for 公仔, the phrase isn’t in my dictionary. The closest thing is 公子, which means “son of a feudal prince or high official.” Mmmm…nope. Though I note that 花花公子 means “playboy” (花花, hua1 hua1: flowery; flamboyant) and I’m guessing it’s a derogatory term.

Maybe 公仔 isn’t a compound? The dictionary gives these definitions for 公:

public; state-owned
fair; just
metric
male

For 仔 it says, “(of domestic animals or fowl) young: 仔豬 piglet. 仔鷄 chick.” It has just one other phrase listed in the entry. 仔細: careful; attentive.

Yeah, I have no idea, sorry. Going to check with a native speaker and get back to y’all. If you are a native speaker of either Japanese or Chinese, feel free to comment.

Update: My dad confirms that 公仔 is “non-standard”. Heh.

Today I Make Your Head Explode: 今

Yvonne — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:02:35 +0000

今日わ日本語勉強します。
Kyō wa Nihongo benkyō shimasu.

“Today I am studying Japanese.” I hope. Otherwise, it’s the next edition of Unintentional Multilingual Self-Humiliation.

And today, 今 is making my head explode. In both Chinese and Japanese, 今 means roughly “the present”.

According to Nihongo Resources, Lesson 1 今 can be pronounced as いま (ima), which means “now” or as こん (kon) like in 今晩 (konban) — “this evening” or 今日 (konnichi), “this day”. This is obviously related to 今晩は (konbanwa) and 今日は (konnichiwa) — “good evening” and “good day”.

But here the plot thickens. “Good evening” and “good day” are more commonly written as こんばんは and こんいちは, without the Kanji. So when you see 今日, it is probably pronounced kyō— and means “today”.

“This morning” is 今朝 or けさ (kesa). “Morning” is 朝 (asa), and “good morning” is おはよございます (ohayo gozaimasu).

It makes the Chinese seem positively simple in comparison. 今 (jin1) has only one pronunciation.

On the other hand, in Chinese 今朝 doesn’t mean “this morning”. 今朝, along with 今日 and 今天 all mean “today”.

Interference. I haz it.

Retroactive Interference in Action

Yvonne — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:41:24 +0000

So I finally busted out some Spanish in the comments of my previous post.

I’ve been volunteering at the Children’s Museum of Houston where maybe half of the visitors speak Spanish. I’d like to get to the point where I’m confident enough in my Spanish to at least mix it in with English in teaching these kids, especially since some of them don’t speak English yet.

My brain is not cooperating. I can switch off easily between English and Chinese as I’ve been doing that my whole life. However, my brain has grouped Spanish and Japanese together in a category apparently named “Languages I Speak Brokenly.”

We were doing a slime demonstration at the museum last week. One of the kids started to eat the slime. I racked my brain for “Don’t eat!” in Spanish and this is what happened.

English-speaking brain: I need “Don’t eat!” in Spanish!
Broken languages brain: “No tabetes!”
English-speaking brain: That…makes no sense in any language!
Broken languages brain: @#$#%^$!!!
English-speaking brain: You’re taking too long! I give up! “DON’T EAT THAT!”

食べる (taberu) is Japanese for “to eat”. “No tabetes” is apparently wrongly-conjugated Japanish. Classic retroactive interference.

After the slime-eating danger had passed, my broken languages brain finally came up with “¡No come!” Which I’m pretty sure is right, but the actual Spanish speakers in the audience will have to weigh in on that.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #3: Don’t Stand on the Desk!

Yvonne — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:00:17 +0000

I chose this week’s essential travel phrase because it’s really handy for those times you’re going somewhere and then find yourself kidnapped to Never Never Land and forced to play schoolmarm to the Lost Boys.

“Don’t stand on the desk!”

不要站在桌上!
Bu2 yao4 zhan4 zai4 zhuo1 shang4!

机の上に立たないでください!
Tsukue no ue ni tatanai de kudasai!

The Chinese is pretty straightforward; the word order follows pretty closely with the English: 不要 = don’t, 站 = stand, 在 = at or on, 桌 = desk or table, 上 = up or top.

Japanese grammar structures the sentence completely differently: 机 = desk, の = of, 上に = on top, 立たない = don’t stand, で = on, ください = please (the Japanese are unfailingly polite that way).

In last week’s phrase, the Chinese characters and Japanese Kanji for “problem” matched exactly. This week, we have something a bit different. The Chinese character for desk or table is 桌. In Japanese, desk is 机. But in (simplified) Chinese, 机 (機 in traditional Chinese) means “machine” or “engine”. So the correspondence between languages isn’t exact.

As a random aside, there was a popular teenage clothing chain selling t-shirts with 桌 on it a while ago. I wish I’d gone in the store and asked them what they thought it said.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #2: That’s Your Problem

Yvonne — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:00:14 +0000

This week’s essential travel phrase is, “That’s your problem.”

那是你的問題.
Na4 shi4 ni3 de5 wen4 ti2.

それはあなたの問題です。
Sore wa anata no mondai desu.

Note that 問題 means “problem” in both Chinese and Japanese. 漢字 (Hanzi/Kanji—Chinese characters) doing double duty! The pronunciation is even somewhat similar, wen4 ti2 vs. mondai. The Taiwanese dialect gets even closer to the Japanese pronunciation: wen3 dei2.

Also note that 的 (de5) in Chinese and の (no) in Japanese serve essentially the same function—”of” or to mark possession. 你的 and あなたの both mean “your”.

That leaves the rest of the sentence for “that is.” The Chinese sentence basically parallels English: 那是 (na4 shi4) = “that is”. The Japanese grammar is a bit more complicated.

それ (sore, pronounced soh-ray) means “that”, while は (pronounced wa, even though it’s the hiragana letter “ha”) is a grammatical marker to indicate that それ is the subject of the sentence. There’s no English equivalent. The end of the sentence, です (desu, pronounced dess—the u gets chopped off), more or less means “is”.

See you next week on Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #1: Are You Nuts?

Yvonne — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:00:09 +0000

My grandma is fluent in Chinese and Japanese and was thrilled when I told her I was studying Japanese. She gave me a trilingual phrasebook with accompanying CDs to help me along with my studies.

The cover advertises 1500 essential travel phrases. One of those essential travel phrases is, “I’m a jazz addict.”

Another one: “Are you nuts?”

你是笨蛋嗎?
Ni3 shi4 ben4 dan4 ma1?

あなたはバカですか?
Anata wa baka desu ka?

Both the Chinese and the Japanese actually ask if you’re stupid, not if you’re crazy. If you wanted to ask if someone was crazy in Chinese, you’d ask:

你的頭腦壞掉了嗎?
Ni3 de5 tou2 nao3 huai4 diao4 le5 ma1?

Literally, “Is your brain broken?”

This concludes the first installment of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook. Check back every Monday at noon (Central Time) for more “essential travel phrases”!

P.S. You would not believe how long it took me to translate the front cover of the book, scouring Zhongwen.com for the characters I didn’t know. Clearly I need radical/stroke count practice.

About Me, About the Blog

Yvonne — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:43:48 +0000

The first complete English sentence I could speak was, “I am big, you are small.” The perils of letting your child learn the language of your adopted country via Sesame Street.

In the nearly three decades that have passed since I first proudly uttered those words, English has become, by far, my dominant language. The switch took place when I was around seven years old, much to my parents’ chagrin.

I remember being a small child on the playground, struggling to find an English retort to some bullies. Now I can sling English wisecracks like any native speaker, but my repertoire of Mandarin insults is sadly limited to pig, turtle, and various types of bad eggs. 笨蛋!—ben4 dan4!—stupid egg.

This blog is about my journey to re-claim my Mandarin proficiency and hopefully achieve native fluency. My spoken fluency is intermediate, I’d guess either 2+ or 3 on the ILR scale, but with native pronunciation. I can recognize several dozen Chinese characters and write even fewer, making me functionally illiterate.

This blog is also about my journey to learn Japanese. I married into a Japanese family and would like to communicate with my in-laws, beyond こんにちわ (konnichiwa—hello), ありがとうございます (arigato gozaimasu—thank you very much), 結婚式 (kekkonshiki—wedding), and 編み物 (amimono—knitting).

I’d like to take this moment to thank the computer for auto-converting romaji to hiragana to kanji and making me look way more advanced than I actually am (unless it did it wrong, in which case I’d like to thank it for helping me to get over the hump of the first Unintentional Multilingual Self-Humiliation). I can write/sound-out hiragana and katakana, but it’s pretty slow and painstaking.

And if I have time, I’ll even dust off my rusty ol’ Spanish! I’m better at speaking Spanish than speaking Japanese and reading Spanish than reading Chinese, which is to say that after six years of coursework and more years to forget, my Spanish is really, really lousy.

I hope that eventually I’ll be able to write entire non-English posts and mostly make sense. Hope you’ll come along for the ride!

Chipanglish » Japanese

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