stillgoingnative » language

ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4

tony — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:48:44 +0000

Toward Better Tones in Natural Speech - Dr. Liao (of the Defense Language Institute) suggests re-conceptualizing tones in Mandarin to take into account natural speech patterns and tone changes within sentences:

Pronunciation (which tones are stressed) will often change depending on previously spoken words. I’m not sure there’s a good way to study these except memorizing lots of sentences.

For example, if you’re coming off a second tone, it’s very easy to say a first tone or third tone, but much harder to say another second tone – which is why the first instance is often stressed less. For example, say 美籍华人 ten times fast – this can make for an intense oral workout. I wonder if anyone is marketing Mandarin courses by stressing the beneficial aspects of regular mouth exercises?

tony’s collaborative novel project

tony — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:06:48 +0000

Stumbling Towards Apotheosis

First Sentence: I had Santa Clause in the cross-hairs…

Last Sentence: Granted but a single wish, he asked only for the wisdom to use it.

No characters or plot yet. Help me fill in the details.

a gentle washing

tony — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:53:00 +0000

In an editorial, ‘Walking along a French Corner, Revealing T|bet’s History” (走上法国街头，展示西藏历史) in yesterday’s Global Times, Professor He Qing (of Tsinghua and Zhejiang Universities) writes:

During the 10 years I spent in France, I conversed with countless French people about T|bet. You could say that for every 10 French people, 9 would be of the opinion ‘T|bet is an independent state – China’s army invaded and is currently occupying (T|bet).’ I’m not sure if this is because of the French education system, the media, or the result of long-term indoctrination. Regardless, the general conviction (among French) is that T|bet is an independent country.

This sounds positively like me talking about other sorts of cognitive biases – like how we yuppies take voting so seriously despite the absurdity of the whole project. I digress. He continues:

… for a long time, the Western mainstream has engaged in the ‘oppose and contain China’ strategy with the aim of splitting T|bet (from China) by means of long-term propaganda.

This was in reference to Sarkozy having met with the Dala| |ama - an event that always gets a fair bit of mainstream media coverage here. If you followed only official reporting, you might conclude everyone was hopping mad – my impression from conversations with countless Han people on Chinese corners is that “Of course T|bet is a part of China. Say, sure has been warm lately. Nice coat.”

It’s interesting to me to try to understand how deeply certain convictions and beliefs are held. Perhaps I’m wrong, and have misled myself about numerous topics, T|bet not the least of them? Obviously information and data need to be trusted – but how far can someone self-deceive for the sake of security, gain, or preconception?

If we are simply puppets, may we should have the clarity to see the strings.

useful phrase, 09.28.08

tony — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:42:00 +0000

“It’s really very difficult to say for certain, as these problems are extremely complex, but I feel that Great Leader Chairman Mao would agree with American Treasury Department Overlord Paulson and his “save-market scheme.”**

其实很难说，因为这些情况挺复杂、但是我觉得伟大领袖毛主席会同意美国财政部保尔森霸主的“救市方案”。
(Qí shí hěn nán shuō, yīn wèi zhè xiē qíng kuàng tǐng fù zá, dàn shì wǒ jué de wěi dà lǐng xiù máo zhǔ xí huì tóng yì měi guó cái zhèng bù bǎo ěr sēn bà zhǔ de “jiù shì fāng àn.”)

Dandong is famous for its Mao statue, located right next to the train station. My four day trip went well, aside from being marooned in the Pacific – comfortably so, as it were. Being blisfully out of touch with anything happening in the rest of the world, and duly smitten by the experience, I’ve elected to stop having opinions about anything of import.

** In all seriousness: a bailout of some form seems necessary? It’s lamentable that we’ve come to this. Remain frightened.

how to : resume in chinese

tony — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:29:24 +0000

If current trends continue, the CCP and its subsidiaries will soon own most of the U.S. – ironic that. There is only one logical choice: capitulation and appeasement. As such I’ve expedited my Chinese resume project – though the glamour photo will probably be replaced by something more stern and serious, indicating efficiency and productivity.

And you can have one too, with my user friendly template (turn comments on for translations) and a little copy-pasting from an online dictionary like www.nciku.com. Chinese resumes are pretty formulaic – it’s like filling out a character sheet or application, so directly translating things isn’t all that difficult. It’s also not unusual just to list “Date – Employer – Title” without lengthy explanations of duties. You could even use English for the aforementioned.

You will of course notice a few linguo-cultural format differences:

Extensive personal information. Most people provide their picture, gender (in case it’s unclear sometimes – like this guy). You also generally provide your height and weight, “health status” (insurance is expensive), marital status, and specification of ethnicity / citizenship.
Length: in the U.S. you tend to need a good reason to go over one page – like lots of publications. Not so in the Middle Kingdom, where brevity is a sign of weakness. You must fill the page, and preferable be well into two or three.
Don’t stick your name at the top. Subtlety and humility are highly valued.
Style: like the Chinese home, the resume must be perfectly Feng-Shui’d to allow for a pleasurable read, and maximization of career-qi. They need to know you’re serious about appropriate aesthetics – no minimalism or crafty use of white space.

If you’re like me, this document will have one purpose: demonstrate that you are in fact familiar with Chinese, and sufficiently in tune with the culture to know and use the format. Or at least are sufficiently pliable enough to meet their demands.

South African English

laura — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:08:55 +0000

English is one of the eleven official languages in South Africa. English was introduced by the British at the end of the 18^th century. Most white settlers at the time were either of Dutch descent and spoke Afrikaans, or of British descent. Over time, words from Afrikaans and other indigenous languages (Zulu, Xhosa) were incorporated into a form of the English that is distinctly South African. Here are some South African words and expressions.

Bakkie = pick up truck

Braai = cook out

Is it? = really?

Plaster = band aid

Robot = traffic light

“Just now,” “now” and “now now” = expressions to describe Africa time

resumap

tony — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:50:21 +0000

After creating a google earth kmz file to instruct people as to my present location; it occurred to me that someone such as myself – who has lived in all sorts of places but has no real remunerative skills to speak of, could create a semi-interactive map-resume (resumap) using a kmz file. You could even attach pictures / other types of files to demonstrate skills, and fill in entry details with material you’d otherwise put in the content section of a resume. Here’s the start of mine:

Not quite sure how to send this to employers. Will report on success, if any.

benefits of daily oral exercise

tony — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:10:23 +0000

or how / why you should learn Mandarin. Yes the title is gratuitous, but it will land me higher on google.

How to:

1. Learn Logograms: they aren’t as frightening as you might think. The easiest way to remember them is to make up a bogus story based upon etymology (much like remembering people’s names). The following book suggests just such an approach – though written for Japanese instruction, the book teaches only meanings, not pronounciation. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the method it’s easily ported to Mandarin:

I first read it when studying Japanese many years ago. The author advocates using character radicals to construct personalized meanings for hard to remember words, since the vast majority of Chinese logograms are combinations of three-dozen or so basic symbols. For exampled, I learned 洽谈 (qia4tan2; “hold talks / discussion”) as “flowing (water) contracts and fire.” Obviously, during all negotiations we want our contracts to be flexible, but also to get our way through fiery speech. Or it’s possible to simply do a visual association – when I first learned 高 (gao1, “high; up”) I decided that it looked like an alien sitting in a ufo that was high above the ground. Yes it is stupid, but it works.

2. Speak: tones aren’t so bad (they lie, there are actually at least 6 or 7 ‘tones’ in normal Mandarin, if you consider the idiosyncratic multi-word tone changes); I find the best way is to try to memorize them within each character, and try to divorce yourself from relying on Pinyin notation. That being said, if you speak *fast* enough, no one will really care, since context will usually carry the day. It’s at least a valid method of walking before running.

More importantly, speaking Chinese often will give your face an extensive workout. I find that this is underemphasized in language instruction – allow your mouth to take on unusual shapes. With Chinese, move your tongue back slightly as the starting point, and then find out how to produce the sounds properly.

But why would we want to learn Chinese?

1. To sell fake American antiques to our gullible Chinese overlords after the invasion and subsequent occupation.*

That’s the most compelling reason i can think of. Furthermore, Mandarin is only really spoken by a couple hundred million or so people in Northeast China – a really boring place, thanks to the cultural revolution. Down in the South, where the interesting stuff is they all speak some bumpkin-local-dialect, which bears about as much resemblance as to the mother tongue as French does to German. And even though Chinese is become important in business and academia, most of the people who will be willing to do business / academe with you probably already speak English. Go learn something useful, like mathematics or poetry.

* A more comprehensive analysis of geopolitical realities puts China’s rise ‘past’ the US well beyond 2040, blithely assuming no major roadblocks (of which there are potentially many).

minitrue

tony — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:50:32 +0000

Anyone want to work in China? The newspapers here are always looking for English ‘proofers’ of stories that are translated / created specifically for the foreign branches of state media. They are needed to avoid the following:

… Scientists and engineers are prepared to chase rainy clouds, if any, away from the Bird’s Nest, the iconic national stadium, so that billions of TV watchers worldwide can see a storm-free opening ceremony on August 8.

Amazingly, the old local habits of spitting, littering and shouting-out, actions which our foreign friends used to frown upon, have died fast in the strong headwind of the Olympics. Grandpas and grandmas now use tissues when coughing and sneezing, … commuters seldom jump queues at bus and mass transit stations and the annoying pickpocket nuisances have gone home — or been sent away by police…

… The freedom to protest will also be a part of the Games. The city recently announced three parks, one in the vicinity of Beijing’s diplomatic compounds, will be legitimate places for airing different opinions. A wise move on the part of Beijing, for being ideologically tolerant isn’t bad at all. A versatile and open city will be more advantageous.

the last of the qing

tony — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:53:26 +0000

It’s come to my attention (via that liberal rag) that there may yet live heirs of the Qing, the last Imperial Dynasty. Rather, there are still a few native Manchu speakers living somewhere in Heilongjiang province. Manchurian calligraphy is gorgeous, and their historical significance isn’t too shabby either – in that abstract cultural sense.

I’m going to find them. More to come.

secret, ancient seal

tony — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:55:16 +0000

You can make one here. I could start using it as an email sig – and flood everyone’s inbox with useless graphics. Excellent.

most useful: dictionary

tony — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:28:58 +0000

A very nice dictionary, featured at www.nciku.com – you can even use your mouse to draw and find characters, so long as you can reasonably approximate the stroke order. Combined with pinyin input and autocompletion of terms, it’s at least as useful as the more expensive electronic dictionaries.

It’s also interesting how amazingly simple it is to text using a ten-button input (the numbers on your phone) in Asian languages. There’s got to be a doctoral dissertation out there regarding combinatorics and inputs in different language families – paradoxically, it seems harder to program predictive algorithms for Western languages. In this circumstance there’s a large tradeoff between phonetic complexity given limited signals (Chinese) and average word usage (? English ?). More investigation required.

how do you say…

tony — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:28:55 +0000

Anarcho-capitalism in Chinese: 无政资注意 (wu3zheng2zi1zhu3yi1). Maybe. It’s my best guess at an abbreviation right now. Try it out at your next cocktail party. If that fails, use: 自由放任注意 (zi4you2fang2ren4zhu3yi1) = laissez-faire. If you’re in infiltration mode, try 专家朱国 (zhuan1jia1zhu4guo2 (technocrat).

In my trade / finance course here, I’ve been learning vocabulary to describe why central planning largely failed (lack of incentives, hippies, etc etc). I don’t have the vocabulary yet to broach the Socialist Calculation Debate. I wonder if Chinese economists have had any major contributions. I suppose there’s an argument that they took the critique seriously, and created a big market to guide planning activity – though as far as I can tell, the motivation was much more pragmatic.