Mandarin Segments: learn

Showing posts with label learn_Mandarin. Show all posts

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Mandarin has FIVE tones (I said five, not four!)

Depending on what you read, different sources seem to disagree about how many tones Mandarin has. It's not a particularly big disagreement (and somehow, life goes on) but still ...

Some sources say Mandarin has four tones (No!). Some say it has four tones plus a neutral tone (what does that mean??). And others say it has five tones (like this post).

In this post I will *prove* that Mandarin has 5 tones! :-) Basically, I want to show you that the fifth tone is not just the toneless pronunciation of a Chinese character - the fifth tone actually changes the meaning of a character.

Brace yourselves.

The 5th tone is NOT the 1st tone

You can see from the MDBG screenshot on the right, the following words.

地方: If this is pronounced dìfāng (where 方 is a 1st tone), it means 'region' or 'local'. But when it's pronounced dìfang (with 方 being the neutral tone) it means an 'area' or 'place'. Clearly the neutral tone isn't simply the correct way to pronounce the word - it actually has a different meaning when you use either the 1st tone or the 5th tone.
人家: Similarly, rénjiā means a 'family' or 'household', while rénjia means 'people' or 'other people'.
工夫; And while gōngfū is 'casual labour', gōngfu is 'time' or 'effort'.

So yes, the 5th tone is not the 1st tone.

The 5th tone is not the 2nd tone

Similarly, the following words show that the 5th tone isn't just an alternative pronunciation, it actually changes the meaning of the word:

精神: jīngshén means 'spirit' or 'essence', while jīngshen has more of a 'vigour' or 'vitality' meaning
出来: This one is slightly different, in that it's the first of the two characters which can also take on the neutral tone, but we see that chūlái talks about something 'appearing' or 'arising', while chulai is added after a verb to show completion.
用人: This one is interesting - and it shows that I'm really skating on thin ice with this article, but in the MDBG dictionary (screen shot way above & right) only shows one possible pronunciation, whereas in the Pleco dictionary (slightly above and to the right) it suggests that while yòngrén means 'to make use of personnel', yòngren simply means a 'servant'

The 5th tone is not the 3rd tone

I'm sure you're getting my point at this stage. Again, looking at the MDBG screenshot to the right, you can see that ...

吗: When it's mǎ it's more about a sound-word (used in the Chinese word for morphine, for example), but as a neutral tone it's the question indicator
起来: This can be qǐlai (to stand up) or qilai (placed after a verb to showing the process is beginning)

So yes, the 5th tone can't be the 3rd tone.

The 5th tone is not the 4th tone

I came up with a few more example here, showing that a neutral tone again totally changes the meaning of the word:

大意: We start with dàyì (main idea), but when we change the tone we get dàyi (careless)
生意: We first have shēngyì (vitality), but end up with shēngyi (business)
不是: And while búshi (fault) has the neutral tone, bùshì (is not) is a clear 4th tone.
世故: And again the one tone has one meaning with shìgù (the ways of the world), while the other tone has a different meaning with shìgu (sophisticated)

There is another one, but again MDBG is silent on the difference, whereas Pleco is very clear:

过 (or 過 in traditional): When it's used as a 4th tone word then the meaning is about 'crossing' or 'spending time', whereas when we want to show that is is about putting after a verb to show completion, then we need to use it as a 5th (neutral) tone.

So there! We have shown that the 5th tone is not any of the first four tones - and in each of the above cases we are talking about the same Chinese characters, and about a complete meaning change when the 5th tone is used.

So if you had any doubt whether there are 4 tones or 5 tones - now you now. There are definitely five distinct tones. And it's not just a pronunciation thing!

Sideline thoughts:

As you can see, I'm thinking a fair amount about tones at the moment, and this follows the success of my previous article on the sneaky third tone.
You might also see this as a confusing follow-on to my discovery that Mandarin is just a series of maths formulae!
Do you know why I chose this particular photo - right at the top of the article - to be the header for my post? There is no prize - but people will love & respect you if you explain below specifically where I got the screenshot, and why I used it here.
If you want an intelligent discussion of the neutral tone, as opposed to what you get on this blog :) then read some good stuff, like this Wikipedia article.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The question of the problem with questions & problems

In Mandarin, the word for 'question' is the same as the word for 'problem': 问题 (wèntí). This is normally not an issue - you can tell from the context of the sentence as to which interpretation is being used.

This morning, however, when I sat down to a hot cappuccino with my Chinese teacher, she asked me, “有问题吗？” (yǒu wèntí ma?) I was confused for a moment, since I thought she might have been asking it in a challenge way - like "What's your problem??" Then I realised she was simply asking if I had any questions at the start of our lesson.

As I say, most of the time the context makes it clear what your meaning is. But if not, you could always extend the sentence just a little.

For example, instead of "我有问题" (I have a 'question', or I have a 'problem'??) - you could say "我有问题要问你" (I have a question I have to ask you.)

Or you could just leave people wondering about you.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Looking for Mandarin 'companion'

A few weeks ago I was approached by Jared Turner at Mandarin Companion with the offer of a few download codes, giving me the opportunity to review* some of their new books. MC launched towards the end of last year, with the goal of releasing a series of graded Mandarin readers ("new books for a new generation of Chinese learners") - and they have a growing library available. Also in the MC team is John Pasden (of ChinesePod fame).

TL;WR**: I'm very impressed.

Extensive Reading

I've read many articles about language learning that encourage you to start reading in your target language (books, magazines, newspapers, comics, …) as soon as possible for maximum gains. Of course for many other languages, it's relatively easy to do this - even quite early on. After all, they use the same alphabet as English, and there is certainly a lot more overlap with English. (For example, can you guess what the Italian word 'aeroporto' means? Or the German word 'Banane'?)

But for Chinese, it's tough to follow this great advice about extensive reading. Even before you can begin you need to have memorised a few hundred characters just to hope to understand the first sentence. And this is where graded readers come in ...

Graded Readers

("this rare hit title uses just 10 letters, as a rule")

You can read more about what Graded Readers are (and why they are good) in Mandarin Companion's own words, but suffice to say that they are books which are written to be at a specific level - allowing for the number of characters used, the level of the resulting vocabulary, the themes covered, etc.

Over the years I have tried a few graded readers, and collected a number of Chinese books at various skill levels. The problems I have had is that some of the books have been too simple, some have been too complex, and many at the more basic literacy levels have quite boring stories - even childish.

The Mandarin Companion books that I have read are different, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them.

So, the books …

I was given download codes for the following three books:

The Monkey's Paw (originally by WW Jacobs in 1902)
The Country of the Blind (originally by HG Wells in 1904)
The Secret Garden (originally by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1911)

These are old stories - but don't let that put you off. I'm guessing the reason for choosing old stories is to avoid issues around copyright, but these are classics - and are very good stories in their own right. A nice touch is that the names and places have been changed to totally 'Chinify' the story, so you forget about the Western world for a while.

In fact, I was so immersed in reading them that I often forgot I was reading Chinese, I was just so into the story - which is how reading should be IMHO.

These three books are all at the so-called Level 1 - which means they use about 300 characters, which build up to 400 unique words. But because the stories chosen were classics, I didn't feel that I was reading children's books - even though my reading skills are materially past Level 1.

A nice touch was that for certain words which were perhaps deemed to be more challenging for people at Level 1, there is a set of endnotes - you can click on the words to go to the definition, and then click 'return' and get taken back to the place you left off.

And I was pleased to see that people's names and places were underlined. I seldom see this in the Chinese books I read - most commonly seen in movie subtitles - but it's really helpful, particularly for readers who are less experienced.

You can see their full selection of books here.

Suggestions to Mandarin Companion

Although I very much enjoyed reading their books, I have some suggestions for them - one bigger, and several smaller ones.

I do have some concerns with the price - at fractionally under US$10, I think it could work out to be an expensive habit. On the one hand, I appreciate that a huge amount of effort goes into abbreviating, translating, illustrating and then grading these books - and maybe this really is the 'right' price. On the other hand, I believe that books for learning like this should be consumed and not savoured, and for something that takes an hour or two to read (depending on your level), even a book a month will amount to a lot, let alone anything more regular. (At first glance, $10 for around 120 pages perhaps doesn't seem so bad, but allowing for English introductions & endnotes, the stories are only about 70-90 pages including illustrations.)
The endnotes are great - but I think a new word really only needs to be referenced once. For later appearances of the same word, I think MC could (indeed, 'should') skip the endnote reference. That would certainly make the reading flow better. For example, having the endnote break 漂亮的 into 漂亮[2]的 each time, 盲人门 into 盲人[1]门 dozens of times, and 盲人国 also into 盲人[1]国 dozens of times feels a little clumsy and slow.
I think that having an illustration that represents the end of the story should be avoided (or put waaaaay past the final page of text). I was down to the last couple of pages and staring at me was a picture of what happens at the end - even before the words had taken me there. I had a sense of pride for having read the book, but it wasn't the words that gave away the ending it was the picture :(
There are a few places along the way where a name was missing in the intro, or the 'return' from endnotes took me back to the wrong page. Not serious issues - just requires a little more editing.

The Future

I look forward to seeing more titles being released. I will be reading more at Level 1, partly just because I enjoyed the flow of reading at a level that didn't require any thinking or use of dictionaries, and partly because the stories are just good reads. I also look forward to seeing titles coming out at the higher levels (I'm not sure when that might happen, or how far those levels will reach - perhaps MC can tell us below?).
Following on from my comment about price, maybe there will be special bulk offers available for people who want to mass consume? Please?
And as for you … I recommend that you get yourself a book or two - for instant reading on Kindle, iBooks or Kobo. They're great stories, nicely translated, and they make excellent reading practice.

TL;DR**: I'm very impressed and will definitely get some more

* Other than the three free download codes, no other incentives were offered nor taken

** 'too long won't read' or 'too long didn't read' :-)

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Mandarin does not use these Cantonese characters

In the previous article I wrote - about Chinese people confusing 'he' and 'she' when speaking English - we discussed a very common word that is used in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin. That got me thinking about other characters which similarly appear in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin.

Of course there are many expressions that are used in one and not the other (for example, while Mandarin says 不好看, Cantonese instead says 唔好睇) - after all, they are two different languages. But in this article I'm going to avoid expressions, and rather focus on individual characters that have this feature.

As a cheat - since I don't speak Cantonese :) - my starting point was to search in the MDBG online dictionary for the word 'Cantonese', which gave me 99 results, from which I started to whittle the list down to ones worthy of being included in this article ...

唔: This is the first obvious one which means 'no' or 'not'. In theory it's pronounced wú in Mandarin, but it's only* used in Cantonese where it's pronounced m4. This is extremely common in Cantonese, generally used where Mandarin would use 不 - so for example 'bad' in Mandarin is 不好 whereas in Cantonese it would be 唔好.
冇: In Mandarin it is pronounced mǎo, but in Cantonese it's mou5. The closest Mandarin word to this character might be 没有 (méiyǒu - which even sounds very similar to mou5). This is another very common character in Cantonese. To be clear, I have never seen this used in Mandarin.
佢: This is he/she/it in Cantonese: keoi5. No need to discuss this one - since I wrote an entire article on it before :-)
嘅: This is the Cantonese equivalent of the Mandarin possessive article 的. In Cantonese 嘅 is pronounced ge3.
呢: This character as used mostly in 呢個 to mean 'this' - basically it's the same as 這個 in Mandarin (or 这个 in the simplified system)) and is pronounced ni1.
嗰: Similarly, this character is used for 'that' in Cantonese - usually in the word 嗰個, which is pronounced go2go3. Mandarin would use 那個 (Simplified: 那个) instead.
喺: This is the Cantonese equivalent of 在 (to be at) - and it is pronounced hai2.
咩: This is pronounced me1, and it indicates surprise by turning the sentence into a question. For example, 係咩 (hai6me1) means "Really?"
佬: If you're a foreigner living in HK, you will hear this character every day - part of the word 'gweilo' - this character is actually pronounced lou2. Therefore 'gweilo' actually means 'male ghost' (and not 'old ghost' - which is a common mistake that confuses 佬 with 老).
乜嘢: This is pronounced mat1 je5 in Cantonese, meaning 'what' or 'why'. Since both characters are unique to Cantonese, and since they are commonly used together in this compound word, I just gave them a single entry. It has the same meaning as Mandarin's 什么 or perhaps 东西.
咗: This is pronounced zo2, and puts the sentence into past-tense, in the same way that Mandarin might use 了 or 过 (過).
咁: The character is pronounced gam3, and can mean 'so' (like Mandarin's 这样) or 'very' (like 很).
噉: This is the other 'gam' word of interest, although the tone here is different: gam2. It means 'in that case' or 'and then'. When I'm listening to my colleagues speaking on the phone, I hear this word a lot! (In written Cantonese, this is sometimes just written as 咁, apparently.)
啱: The character is the Cantonese equivalent of Mandarin's 对 (Traditional:對), meaning 'correct'. It is pronounced ngaam1. (And because you, Dear Reader, are so clever - you probably already worked out by yourself that we can piece together two of these characters to get the Cantonese word for incorrect: 唔啱.)
There are a few more that are worth listing here because they are quite common, but I will just group them together: They include 搵 (find, like 找), 瞓 (sleep, like 睡), 噏 (gossip), 攰 (tired, like 累), 嘥 (to waste), 屌 (to fuck), and finally 餸 (a side dish).

In the past (before moving to HK), I had been reading Chinese comics which I picked up on my travels, wondering why I was struggling to understand the text so much - and I kept seeing strange characters (like 冇). That is how I originally realised that there are indeed characters which are used in Cantonese and not Mandarin, which explains why at the time I couldn't easily work out what the text was saying.

So now we all know. 冇問題.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Mandarin is just a series of maths formulae

I have successfully found a series of formulae that works out a word's meaning by looking at the characters which make up that word!!!!

An earlier post of mine entitled Permit Access (permit+permit+exist+take) got me thinking (and it's always scary when I think) ...

In taking the phrase "permit access" and dissecting the Chinese word 允许存取 into its component parts, I found that while on one hand (permit+permit=permit, because both 允 and 许 mean permit, as does the compound word 允许); and on the other hand you also get (exist+take=access), which is a completely different make-up.

As an actuary, I have a background in maths & stats, and I started wondering whether I could create a series of mathematical equations to help you work out how to derive the meaning of any two characters which have been combined to create a compound word.

And by golly I think I've done it! It's time to take out your high school maths textbooks in order to understand Chinese better :-)

When 1+2=3
As we saw in the above-mentioned article, the word 存取 (cúnqǔ) can be calculated as follows: access=exist+take. Think of it like "take something that exists" - it makes up a logical build-up, like 1+2=3. Simple. This logic can be seen in many other two-character words, including:
你好 (nǐhǎo): hello = you are good
满意 (mǎnyì): satisfied = full thinking
意外 (yìwài): accident = outside your thoughts
过奖 (guòjiǎng): flatter = pass the reward
怕痒 (pàyǎng): fear the itch = ticklish

When 1+1=1
This one is mathematically slightly less intuitive, but in Chinese it makes total sense. We also have from the previous article that 允许 (yǔnxǔ) is 'permit', and in simple terms: 'permit'=permit+permit (允+许=允许). Good, for once Chinese seems simple. Mathematically, this can be written as 1+1=1 :-) This is a common enough construct, and you can also see it in words like:
讨论 (tǎolùn): discuss = discuss+discuss
练习 (liànxí): practise = practise+practise
自己 (zìjǐ): self = self+self
选择 (xuǎnzé): choose = choose+choose
依赖 (yīlài): reply = rely+rely
应该 (yīnggāi): should = should+should
休息 (xiūxi): rest = rest+rest
帮助 (bāngzhù): help = help+help
号码 (hàomǎ): number = number+number
(And so many others: 犯罪, 错误, 继续, ...)

But going beyond the equations from the earlier article, we can also observe some others in use ...

When -1+1=0
This is well-known way of creating words in Mandarin, and there are plenty of blog posts where people have written about this. Some of the better known examples include:
多少 (duōshao): lots+little = how much
左右 (zuǒyòu): left+right = approximately
上下 (shàngxià): up+down = about
大小 (dàxiǎo): big+small = size
东西 (dōngxi): east+west = things
买卖 (mǎimài): buy+sell = business

When 1+2=12
楼下 (lóuxià): building+down = downstairs
水平 (shuǐpíng): water+level = horizontal
领带 (lǐngdài): neck+strap = necktie
声频 (shēngpín): sound+frequency = audio frequency
(And I'm sure you can derive many more instances of this type yourself!)

When 1-1=1
Yes, this exists too - where even introducing a completely contradictory word doesn't change the meaning of the first ...
忘记 (wàngjì): forget+remember = forget
全部 (quánbù): whole+part = whole
但是 (dànshì): but+indeed = but
毒药 (dúyào): poison+medicine = poison

When 376+1=1
白痴 (báichī): white(!)+dumb = dumb
干净 (gānjìng): dry(!)+clean = clean
原谅 (yuánliàng): source(!)+forgive = forgive
愉快 (yúkuài): pleasant+fast(!) = pleasant

When 1+2=634
How about this ...
漂亮 (piàoliang): pretty = tossed light
面包 (miànbāo): surface+package = bread
马上 (mǎshàng): horse+on = immediately
有机 (yǒujī): have+machine = organic
厉害 (lìhai): severe+injury = awesome
消息 (xiāoxi): extinguish+rest = news

Conclusion

OK, so I lied. I really have not succeeded in breaking Mandarin down into a number of mathematical formulae. I think most of you figured that out when I announced that 1+1=1 :-)

In fact, I've warned you before about the problems of trying to be too logical with Chinese, in a post called Mandarin is not "antidisestablishmentarian".

But it's still instructive when trying to remember words - and in learning another language you really do need to learn a lot of words - to consider how compounds are put together, and to be conscious about what you're taking in, rather than relying only on brute force to absorb it all.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Under the blankets, with a torch

It's a secret, so I'm not telling anyone, but I have started Heisig Book 2 again. Shhhh ...

As you might remember from last July, I wrote a post called I have begun Heisig Book 2. Kinda. At that stage - just 3 weeks after beginning - I was already behind 'schedule', and that was really disappointing for me because I managed to do the entire Book 1 in about 3 months. By August, just a month later, I was writing a post called Total failure - I simply did not have enough time to study Heisig, and decided that the little spare time I had should rather be spent doing flashcards rather than additional characters.

(To give you a sense of my time shortages, last year I did over 50 flights, which is approximately one business trip every second week. Ouch.)

Well, at the start of January this year, I picked up the book again, and began with character 1501.

What I'm doing differently - lessons from last time

1. No goals
I didn't set myself any goals - last time I actually found that disheartening. Instead I decided I would first get some momentum going, and get a sense of what time I would have available - and only then decide what goals to set myself. I still don't have a solid rhythm going, and I'm still not working through the book each day, but I'm enjoying the pressure-free attitude to Book 2, which means at least I'm enjoying it.

2. More revision
As I had remarked in the July article, Book 2 is more difficult - obviously. This means I really need more time with the revision because these more complex images can fade quite quickly in the beginning. I'm less panicked about finishing within a certain time frame, so revision actually feels like it's contributing to my goal of learning to read, rather than delaying my goal of getting through the book.

3. Character-to-English
When I did Book 1, my focus was on being able to see the character and know it's meaning. This is, after all, my challenge when I'm trying to read. Learning to write was less important to me, so the need for English-to-Character is less. After focusing on C2E when studying the book, I loaded up an Anki flashcard deck, and my revision of the book was based on E2C. I found this an extremely enjoyable and efficient approach, and I'm doing the same ... learning C2E mainly while studying the book. Later on I will load up a flashcard pack for Book 2.

4. Enjoy
I was not enjoying learning Book 2 when I picked it up last year. Don't get me wrong ... I wanted to learn the book, and I remember how excited I was when the book was first delivered to me, but it was the wrong time, and the wrong attitude - and it failed. Now I'm enjoying it - and although I can't guarantee that I won't fail again, I at least feel like I'm on the right track.

5. Don't give up (in the long run)
I gave up in August, it was the wrong time for so many reasons. But I didn't give-up totally. I knew I would pick it up again, at the right time. And I did pick it up again. And this might be the right time :-)

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Serves me right?!

Let's start at the very beginning, right?
The other day I was speaking to a native Mandarin speaker from the Mainland, who asked me who I practise with, given that I live in Hong Kong where the native language is Cantonese, and where spoken Mandarin is "non-standard".

He was shocked to hear that most of my time spent speaking Chinese is actually with Hong Kong people. In fact, he went as far as to say it would probably be better not to practise at all, than to practise with someone who doesn't speak "standard" Mandarin.

This makes no sense to me. If I want to learn Chinese then I need to practise, and in fact imperfect practice is better than none at all. This reminds me of a great ironic post by Khatzumoto (founder of the AJATT "All Japanese All The Time" system) - definitely worth reading after you have finished reading this post!

F*** me, right?
There is a great meme which comes from the movie Superbad, that features Jonah Hill (in the picture above). You can read more about the origins of this particular meme, and see many variations at KnowYourMeme and QuickMeme, but let me summarise as follows: The meme, in its various forms, implies that they were trying to do a good thing (written at the top of the page) but in fact people are being negative about that. Examples include:

I'm just trying to give you a better education. F*** me, right?
I did what I was asked. F*** me, right?
I'm doing 60kmph in a 60kmph zone. F *** me, right?
I want to make a living doing something I love. F*** me, right?

I'm sure you get it now. Right?

So f*** ME, right??
And that was basically how I felt when I was being told that I shouldn't be practising my Chinese with people who don't speak perfect standard Mandarin. Right?

There's a lesson in here, right?
Well, when I mentally linked my conversation to this meme, I started wondering how I might say that in Mandarin. Frankly, despite speaking to several native speakers, I didn't get a (literal) suggestion that I liked. But Yi (thanks Yi!) suggested something that did feel right, although disappointingly it doesn't contain any swear words. F*** me, right?

She suggested the phrase 活该 (huógāi), which could mean "deservedly so" or "serves [you] right". I like this, and so my own variation of this meme - seen above - contains that phrase. I've added in the 吧 (ba) character to emphasis it's more of a leading suggestion than an actual question.

Naturally, when I want to make sure I remember a word, it invariably finds its way into my flashcard pack, and for your interest, this is the sentence I used:

She ate too much and feels sick, serves her right
她吃太多了感到难受，活该
她吃太多了感到難受，活該
ta chī tài duō le, gǎndào nánshòu, huógāi

Notes you might find useful, right?

If you don't know what a meme is, look here
"Standard Chinese" is how people commonly refer to the variation of Mandarin which is the official version - because there really are so many versions & dialects. In Mandarin you would use the word 标准 (biāozhǔn).
Some readers might notice that I use both the words 'practice' and 'practise'. This is not an error, in English one is a noun and one is a verb :-)
If you have suggestions for alternative translations, especially ones that contain swear words :-) then please leave comments below.

I just thought you might be interested to note the above points. F*** me, right?

Thursday, November 22, 2012

The first Chinese song I ever wrote

I always thought that once I got good enough in Chinese, I would write a song. I'm glad to say that, after all these years, I have reached a very satisfying level, and I wanted to share it with you.

I'm a terrible singer, so I probably won't add a recording, but here are the lyrics. Try to sing along yourself.

Vocab
Here are some quick-reference words for you:
a song / 一首歌 / yī shǒu gē

very irritating / 很烦的 / hěn fán

I know / 我知道 / wǒ zhīdao

The Chorus: please sing along

我知道一首很烦的歌

很烦的歌