When a character says: To be or To do

If you're anything beyond a beginner in studying Mandarin, you would have come across situations when the same word can be used both as a noun and a verb.

There are untold examples of this, the one that comes to mind right now being 选择 (xuǎnzé) which can either mean 'to choose' or 'a choice'. This diversity makes Chinese both easier and more difficult.

In this short post, I wanted to point out another interesting aspect of Chinese - that is when the same character can either be a noun or a verb, but there is a tone change that goes along with the change in meaning.

This might be something you already are very clear on, but for those who find this new (or a timely reminder) or for those who kinda half noticed half didn't notice, then enjoy!

• 数 (to count = shǔ) (a number = shù)

This is the first character where I realised that the matching name & verb had to involve a tone change to reflect the swap between meanings.

• 扫 (to sweep = sǎo) (a broom = sào)

This is another example where the verb is third tone, and the noun is fourth tone. Of course Chinese doesn't alway operate in single-hanzi words - so you're probably more likely to see a double word like 扫帚 (sàozhou) to mean broom, but the fourth tone still remains.

• 钉 (to nail = dìng) (a nail = dīng) 

OK, so it's not always that the third tone is the verb, but again note it's the same character, but with different tones giving different meanings. And even messier, the verb meaning can also be a first tone when paired with another character - for example 钉牢(dīngláo) means 'to nail' yet uses the first tone.

Nothing earth-shattering, but it is probably useful enough for beginners that it's worth pointing out.

Can you think of other examples without using a dictionary? Please leave comments below to let others know ...

Dr Seuss sounds pleasing, Even when you're Chinesing

I grew up on Seuss
I read him a lot
And though I'm a grown-up
I still think he's hot!

If I Ran the Zoo
And then: Hop on Pop
Horton Hears a Who
Ten Apples up on Top

One Fish Two Fish
The Cat in the Hat
Red Fish Blue Fish
So many classics like that.

You can read Wikipedia
With relative ease
About the Doc's background
In English / Chinese

But that got me thinking
How I could fit it in
To translate his titles
Into pure Mandarin

So with some quick searching
I found this and that
And have copied it down here
Now give me a pat

You can read them quite quickly
Without paying much heed
Or copy-and-paste them
Into flashcards you'll need

Whatever you choose
Remember you are the one
You just cannot lose
When you make Mandarin fun.

 .  .  .  .


Some Translations

Dr Seuss
苏斯博士 (simplified)
蘇斯博士 (traditional)
sūsī bó​shì (pinyin)
Note: The first part is clearly an attempt to transliterate his name, and the second (博士) means doctor or PhD

Cat in the Hat
戴高帽的猫
戴高帽的貓
dài gāo mào de māo
Note: The literal Chinese translation is a little different: 'the cat that wears the tall hat' (and how coincidental that 帽 and 猫 sound the same :)

Green Eggs & Ham
绿鸡蛋和火腿
綠雞蛋和火腿
lǜ jīdàn hé huǒtuǐ
Note: Literally translated. Green. Eggs. And. Ham.

If I Ran the Circus
如果我来经营马戏团
如果我來經營馬戲團
rúguǒ wǒ lái jīngyíng mǎxìtuán
Note: And now I know the word for circus :)

One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish
一条鱼 两条鱼 红色的鱼 蓝色的鱼
一條魚 兩條魚 紅色的魚 藍色的魚
yī tiáo yú liǎng tiáo yú hóngsè de yú lánsè yú
Note: Measure words really make a hash out of this!


Other posts
While searching for the Chinese names of his books, I found some other internet articles / blogposts, for those who might be interested ...

• Dr Seuss in Chinese!
• Dr Seuss: lost in translation
• Bilingual Dr Seuss
• 苏斯博士：让孩子站在地平线上 ---- 儿童文学博士李虹

This last link has a long list of his books, including Chinese book names - certainly much longer than my list above.

Bookmark this post. For reference. And stuff.

Flashcards - the full collection of articles

It was back in 2011 that I wrote my first post dedicated to the use of flashcards for learning Chinese, entitled "Flashcards: Just do it". And this remains my strong recommendation for anyone who isn't yet an "advanced" student of Chinese (or any language you might be learning).

Since then, I have written a number of posts dedicated to the use of flashcards, and this article brings all such posts together into a full compilation - to make it easier for you to find them all ...

• Flashcards: Just do it (I don't think I could be more explicit about how important flashcards are if you really want to accelerate your language learning)
• My long romance with flashcards (This post is about how I got into flashcards - after first trying and failing and giving up - to finally doing it properly)
• The 'redneck' guide to flashcards (A humorous look at "You know you should be using flashcards if ...")
• How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb? (Here I give you an early insight into my actual flashcard deck, with lots of stats about its content and my usage, with some early and some recent examples of cards added)
• Getting sentenced in Chinese (In this article I talk about why I had moved to learning sentences and not just words, and how to 'roll your own' sentences)
• A clever butcher uses a cleaver (As you can see from the heading, you can actually create really clever sentences which link words, making them much easier to memorise)
• "Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS (Here I reviewed the Skritter iOS app, coming to the conclusion it's a great flashcard-style system for reading & writing Chinese)
• The one flashcard I review more than any other (A little tongue-in-cheek article about vocabulary :)

The above articles are specifically about flashcards, and the number of articles will grow over time. I make many other references to flashcards in articles, especially those in the Heisig series, as well as in terms of 'dragon tattoo' posts and 'Charlie Brown' posts and 'flexible' posts and 'snake' posts and 'boat' posts and 'horse' posts (and many others) where I include sentences that can easily be copied-and-pasted into your own home-grown flashcard pack.

And for those who are wondering, I have been using the Anki flashcard software (originally on Windows, then Mac, now mainly on iOS) - it's fantastic software, for many many reasons.

And, just to make my point clear, there is one post you really should read: Flashcards: just do it!

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.

That sneaky third tone - stand still!

I've been thinking a fair amount about tones lately, and although some of the points are relatively basic, I thought it would be useful to put some of them down in writing. There is a surprise in here for you!

So today I wanted to write a really short article about the changeability of the third tone - going from blatant to less well known.

1: The Default Position
The character 你 means 'you', and it is written in pinyin as: nǐ. This is the dipping tone (it sounds like it looks) - and if you want to hear it pronounced correctly, just selected the audio option here.

2: Two in a word
There are some words which contain two third tones next to each other, like 你好 (nǐhǎo) - this is 'hello' and probably the first Chinese word you learned. In practice, you do not say nǐhǎo when you find words containing two third tones in a row: the first third actually becomes a second. If you have studied Chinese for more than a couple of months, you probably know this. Officially, pinyin still writes this as nǐhǎo even if it's pronounced níhǎo.

3. Two in a row, but different words
This is a slightly different variation of the above, but worth noting. Take the phrase 'very good' which is written 很好 (hěn hǎo).  Even though they are two separate words (so there is a space between hěn & hǎo), you still use the same rule as above, and pronounce this: hén hǎo.

4. The memorise-it-anyway-even-though-it-makes-no-sense type
Many students of Chinese learn the following phrase quite early on: 马马虎虎. It translates as 'horse horse tiger tiger', and the meaning is more like 'not so bad' or 'OK' (not quite a horse not quite a tiger, I guess). And this phrase is a sneaky collection of third tones:
    - 3333: item by item, it's mǎmǎhǔhǔ - but that's wrong
    - 2323/2223: if we followed the rules above, it might be either mámǎhúhǔ or mámáhúhǔ - but that's wrong too
    - 3511: actually the correct tones are: mǎmahūhū (!)


So odd, yes.
But worth noting (just in case).

As (confusing) as possible

I was revising flashcards recently, and in a relatively short space of time there were sentences that included 尽可能 (jǐnkěnéng - as much as possible) and 尽力 (jìnlì - trying one's hardest).

Aside: 尽 (jin) means something like 'to the furthest extent', so since 力 means 'strength' and 可能 means 'possible', you can see how (尽X) words would work. 

Anyway, so my mind noticed - because the two sentences appeared just minutes apart - that in one I found myself saying jǐn (third tone - which is correct) and the other I said jìn (fourth tone - correct too). Chinese is always confusing - I've written about this plenty before - but I got to wondering when each would be correct.

The other word which then popped into my mind was 尽快 so I looked that up too ... damn!  The dictionary showed that it could be both jǐnkuài OR jìnkuài. So strange.

I was speaking to Judy about this oddity the other day, and she - as a HK'er who uses the traditional character system rather than the simplified system - pointed out the following ...

• This is a known oddity in Chinese, and even HK people note this when studying Mandarin
• If you use traditional characters, the words are written 儘可能 and 盡力, which shows us that actually they are not the same character in the traditional set (the 亻 component exists) - which partly explains why the one is third tone and the other is fourth tone
• 尽量 gets this right, because the one traditional variation is 盡量 which consistently uses the fourth tone (jìnliàng) while 儘量 consistently uses the third tone (jǐnliàng)
• However, when you look up 尽快 in the dictionary, you strangely find that not only can it be written using both forms of the traditional character (盡快 and 儘快), but even the matching tones that we observed above don't work here!

I guess this is a point of theoretical interest. It's nice to know, but if you're learning by listening & talking (and not just reading) then you'll get these points right anyway. Like in my case, I was actually correctly using the respective first & third tones without realising it - because that's how I learned each - and it was more coincidence than anything that I noticed it.

TL;DR:  Probably the right advice in this case is (a) listen to Chinese more (obviously!) and (b) if you're a flashcards kinda person (and you ought to be, if you're not yet advanced) then make a point of sometimes reading them out aloud - making sure the tones you're saying match the tones you're reading in the pinyin.

I've written before about words which - although the pronunciation remains the same - the meanings can be really flexible. But in this case it's about having the same meaning, but different pronunciations. Do you have any particular words which are as confusing as possible to you? Please leave a comment below ...

The one flashcard I review more than any other

:)

Cat's Delite

When I was very young I wrote a story at school, during which I used the word 'delite'. The teacher corrected this to 'delight' using her angry red pen. Later that evening my mom was looking at my work, and asked me why I spelled it incorrectly like that. I pointed out that I had seen the spelling on TV - and indeed I had. If my memory serves me correctly, there was a cat food product called "Cat's Delite" advertised, and they used the 'wrong' spelling for the brand name.

I remember feeling how unfair it was that incorrect (quote unquote) spelling was allowed on TV which could confuse us poor little innocent children.


And so we come to Chinese.

I had lunch recently with Jimmy, a language exchange partner. I forget what we were talking about, but when wanting to use the word "communicate" (i.e. people communicating with each other), I used the word 交通 (jiāotōng) - which Jimmy was quick to point it was not the correct word.  He recommended that I should use 交流 (jiāoliú) instead.

I know there are often many synonyms for a single word, and somehow I had convinced myself that 交通 was a valid alternative for 'communications'.  I was about to accept that I must have made it up, or something, when Jimmy came up with a suggestion ... and he was right!

Yup, all over HK I see the logo for Bank of Communications, and the word 交通 appears there. In my mind I guess I had therefore connected those two words - even though in fact 交通 is more about 'traffic' than about people 'communicating' with each other.

Sigh, us poor little innocent language learners. Learner's Delite indeed.


Have u incorrectly learned words that terned out knot two bee rite?  Drop a note be low and rite a comment ...

iPhone's new annoying pinyin keyboard

My pinyin keyboard, for messaging in Chinese on my iPhone, used to look like this ...

But when I upgraded to OS7, it got really ugly and ended up looking like this ...

This new keyboard (which I subsequently found out is called the 'T10') was terrible - I was used to 'qwerty' and I wanted it back!  I looked for another pinyin keyboard in the usual place, but there were no other pinyin options available ...

     Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard ...

So I kind of gave up, thinking that this must be an Apple design choice, and that I was the one left without a choice.


Then a couple of weeks ago, while looking at my list of installed keyboards, I accidentally clicked on my pinyin keyboard  ("Chinese - Simplified,  Pinyin")  - and suddenly I was faced with several options:

At the time, '10 Key' was selected, but nothing else. I took a gamble, by turning off '10 Key' and turning on 'QWERTY' - and I got my preferred keyboard back.


I couldn't believe that I missed that in the first place - as had all the people I moaned to about this new setting, it seems. But even stranger is the fact that this appears to be Apple's default pinyin keyboard for HK & China, even though a quick search shows that most people hate it. What a strange default position for Apple.

From my perspective, however, this is now solved. I have my qwerty pinyin keyboard back, and life is beautiful.

I've written this article because it seems that there are still many people who don't realise that they aren't limited to T10 - so feel free to choose the one you want!


PS. Any of you get stuck with this damn T10, not realising you had a choice? You're welcome to leave a moan comment.

Winning imaginary arguments

I remember seeing a post on Reddit (which I have been unable to track down - let me know if you can) which was roughly as follows:  "This is a graph of how I spend my time in the shower:"

There is certainly some truth to this, and judging by the response to that original graph, there are plenty of people who do this - imagining scenarios, presenting clever arguments, and winning convincingly.

And, for people studying another language, some of those imaginary arguments end up being in Chinese. Don't pretend that you haven't done it too … you know, you imagine a scenario where you're having to deal with some difficult person who only speaks your target language, and you win while arguing in that language.

What's fun is that this imaginary arguments sometimes happen in real life (although probably not arguing with strangers in the shower  :)

Sure, you get the easy scenarios where - in real life - some Chinese person is looking confused and you end up helping them by giving directions in Mandarin.

But you also get the real arguments.

For example, last year I went to South Africa and was standing in the queue at immigrations, waiting my turn to get through. Suddenly a group of five Mandarin-speaking people tried pushing in front of me. I told them in English there was a queue and they should please go to the back - but they pretended they couldn't speak English (or maybe they actually couldn't) - but either way they just ignored me.

I got really annoyed, and started telling them - in Chinese - that there was a queue, and that everyone else is waiting, and they should go to the back of the queue. They stood there speechless. The main guy said something back in Chinese, but I didn't actually understand him - so I just repeated myself, reminding them that there is a queue.

And they backed off, and then slinked to the back of the queue.

I felt fantastic - winning an argument in real life in Chinese - in a scenario that normally would only be imagined during 95% of one's shower time. Then some of the other (non-Chinese speaking) people in the queue smiled and gave me the thumbs up.

So yes, if you're looking for a reason to study Chinese, or to study a little harder, then winning arguments like this - whether privately & imaginary during your shower, or publicly with real Chinese people - definitely makes it worth while.

Have you ever had something along these lines happen to you in Chinese?

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.

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'  :-)

Eye shit

The other day I was speaking with a Chinese friend, who thought she might be getting sick, because when she woke up her eyes had been filled with "eye shit". She said it so matter-of-factly, as if that was the official name for the gunk that collects in one's eyes while sleeping.

Well, it turns out that in Chinese, it is!

It is written 眼屎 and pronounced yǎnshǐ - the translation given by MDBG.net is "gum in the eyes".

The first character 眼 is 'eyes' - that's easy'. And according to the same online dictionary, the translation for 屎 is 'excrement, shit, dung'.  So yes, "excrement from the eyes" is a more palatable translation.

But I definitely think that "eye shit" is the winner here today, folks.



PS. In English I call it "sleep in my eyes" - what do you call it?

Saddle up … for the Year of the Horse

Horse calligraphy, by Jasmin

It's riding into town - The Year of the Horse - and it will arrive on 31 January 2014.

In the same way that the western Zodiac has different personality types for people born in different months, the Chinese Zodiac has something for people born in different lunar calendar years. For a bit of fun, if you'd like to understand better what personality you are, and what the Year of the Horse means for you, then take a look at this site which has some great summaries.

But this is a Mandarin-learning blog, so let's dig a little into 'horse' as a character, a word, and as part of larger phrases. This is all consistent with my WordPack philosophy - which helps make learning Chinese much more efficient.


The Character Itself
The Simplified Chinese character for 'horse' is 马, which is written as 馬 in the Traditional Chinese character system - this is pronounced mǎ.  Although it's hard to tell, the character actually evolved from something that used to look like a horse! Here's a diagram which I got from Taeglich Chinesisch (a German-language Chinese blog) to make that etymology more obvious:

Just part of a Character
Sometimes, though, the 马 character isn't used as a full character, but rather only as a part of the character. For example, the word for 'camel' is 骆驼 (luòtuo) - note how the horse radical appears in both of the hanzi. When you're learning to read & write Chinese, you need a system to help you memorise all of these variations - I recently wrote an article called Stoned Horses which covers exactly that topic.


Horse Words
There are many words which include the 马 character - some related to horses, and some where the connection is a little more obscure. For your convenience, I have include the full details of the words & phrases below, so that it's easy for you to copy into your flashcard pack. And seriously, if you want to massively increase your vocab, in my opinion you really should be using flashcards.

The format I will be using is:

• english (simplified / traditional) pinyin: comment

The Actual Horse

• horse (马 / 馬) mǎ
• measure word for horses: (匹) pǐ: for example, 'three horses' is 三匹马
• horse (马匹 / 馬匹 ) mǎpǐ: given the above two characters, this alternative word isn't really a surprise :)

Things Related to Horses

• saddle (马鞍 / 馬鞍) mǎ'ān: literally a 'horse saddle'
• horseshoe (马蹄铁 / 馬蹄鐵) mǎtítiě: literally 'horse hoof iron'
• to ride a horse (骑马 / 騎馬) qímǎ
• horse racing (赛马 / 賽馬) sàimǎ

Because English uses the Word 'horse'

• horsepower (马力 / 馬力) mǎlì: uhm, it's 'horse power'
• seahorse (海马 / 海馬) hǎimǎ: again, as simple as 'sea horse'
• ponytail - for hairstyles or similar (马尾 / 馬尾) mǎwěi: if you pretend a pony and a horse is the same thing
• wooden horse / rocking horse / gym vaulting horse / trojan horse in computing (木马 / 木馬) mùmǎ: literally it's a 'wooden horse'

Names & Places - because it makes the 'ma' sound

• Mark (马克 / 馬克) Mǎkè
• Marco Polo (马可波罗 / 馬可波羅) Mǎkě Bōluó
• Barack Obama (奥巴马 / 奧巴馬) Àobāmǎ
• Rome, capital of Italy (罗马 / 羅馬) Luómǎ
• Malaysia (马来西亚 / 馬來西亞) Mǎláixīyà
• Himalayas (喜马拉雅 / 喜馬拉雅) Xǐmǎlāyǎ
• Amazon (亚马逊 / 亞馬遜) Yàmǎxùn
• … and so many more example like this.

Figurative Horses - where the connection is slightly tenuous

• immediately (马上 / 馬上) mǎshàng: get on your horse right now!
• street or road (马路 / 馬路) mǎlù: I guess it's the place where horses used to ride
• BMW cars (宝马 / 寶馬) Bǎomǎ: quite a clever name, by sound & meaning
• zebra (斑马 / 斑馬) bānmǎ: I suppose 'striped horse' is about as accurate as you can get!
• hippopotamus (河马 / 河馬) hémǎ: it looks like a horse in the river (said no one, ever)
• fine steed (千里马 / 千里馬) qiānlǐmǎ: literally a thousand mile horse, which would be fine!
• unexpected winner (黑马 / 黑馬) hēimǎ: literally a black horse, similar to English usage
• knight in shining armour (白马王子 / 白馬王子) báimǎwángzǐ: a Prince on his White Horse
• so-so (马马虎虎 / 馬馬虎虎) mǎmahūhū: horse-horse-tiger-tiger, neither one nor the other
• suck up to / toady (拍马屁 / 拍馬屁) pāimǎpì: to pat the horse's buttocks, to encourage it forwards

Idioms

Chengyu is a massive body of Chinese idioms (usually four characters) which you can read about here. Below are some of the ones I have found which relate to horses. If you take a look at Chinese-Tools, you will find at least 50 chengyu that use the character 马 - so I will only include a few here, and leave you to trawl through the others if you're overcome with desire.

• 马马虎虎 (mǎ ma hū hū) so-so: I have already mentioned this one above, but it's one of the first chengyu/idioms that we learn when studying Chinese so it's worth a second mention
• 兵荒马乱 (bīng huāng mǎ luàn) the chaos of war: soldiers wasteland horses confusion
• 单枪匹马 (dān qiāng pí mǎ) single-handedly: single spear one horse
• 非驴非马 (fēi lǘ fēi mǎ) it resembles nothing: neither donkey nor horse
• 快马加鞭 (kuài mǎ jiā biān) as fast as possible: fast horse add whip
• 露出马脚 (lùchū mǎjiǎo) unmask the true nature: expose the cloven hoof (also: 露马脚)
• 马到成功 (mǎ dào chéng gōng) achieve instant success: succeed as soon as the horse arrives
• 盲人瞎马 (máng rén xiā mǎ) rush headlong into disaster: blind person kills the horse
• 秣马厉兵 (mò mǎ lì bīng) be combat ready: feed the horse, strict soldiers
• 一马当先 (yī mǎ dāng xiān) be the first to take the lead: one horse goes first
• 走马看花 (zǒu mǎ kàn huā) examine a thing hurriedly: ride the horse while looking at flowers
• 车水马龙 (chē shuǐ mǎ lóng) heavy traffic: car water horse dragon (sorry, what??)

Saddle Up

So now you know the character, the words, the implications. All that is left to do is to have a great Year of the Horse - bring on the dancing horses!!

   Happy New Year!  

   新年快乐!

   xīnniánkuàilè!

Stoned Horses

When students learn to read & write Chinese characters, there are broadly two ways of doing it. The first is 'brute force' where you practise the strokes over & over again until you have internalised them, and the second is to use some method of visualisation which allows you to decompose the characters into parts - and piece them together again using imagary (which is much easier to remember that just pure strokes).

Although I used the Heisig method to learn 3000 characters (and I've blogged extensively on this - you can find the full collection here), note that what I'm writing below is about visualisation in general, and is not specific to the Heisig approach.

Take for example the character for 'numeral' - which is 码 (mǎ, also written 嗎 in the traditional system). You can see it's made up of 石 (stone) and 马 (horse). When I learned this character, I naturally had to create an image of why stone+horse=numeral. In this case, a flood of images came to mind, and I realised there were so many options.

So many examples!

It got me thinking of times I've spoken to people about visualisation methods, and they say it's so hard to create images. So in addition to the very popular article Tips & Tricks for Heisig Visualisations, I decided to share here a range of images that I could use for this character.

• I picture the Terracotta Army, but instead of rows and rows of soldiers, I picture rows and rows of stone horses. And of course, since this is a very valuable collection, I imagine each horse is numbered - as you often see in museums. I suppose you can use this & this to help you create the image yourself. Ultimately this is my preferred image for remembering that stone+horse=numeral. Your preferred image may be different, and that's OK.
• Or I can see a horse doing maths. You know, with numerals. But horses can't write in books, so this horse has a few stones laid out on the ground before him, and he is moving them around, a little like someone might use an abacus, to do the calculations. 
• I can also visualise a ten-pin bowling alley, but you won't find pins at this place - instead you will find 10 stone horses at the bottom of the bowling lane. Can you see as your ball hits them, they break from the impact - and your score (such a high number!) appears on the board above you.
• Maybe there are horses running a race, but the track has lots of loose stones on the track, and each time a horse stumbles on the stone and falls, someone keeping score of 'lost' horses chalks up a higher numeral on the board.
• How about a large piece of cardboard which is part of a colour-by-numbers approach. But with this one you don't paint according to the number, you place a stone of different colour on that number. And when it's done and you step back, you can see it's a horse!
• Another possibility is to imagine cave paintings of horses scratched into the stone walls, but when you look more closely you notice that between the pictures of horses there are numbers - almost like the person was doing maths with horses as numerals. 
• Alternatively, I can see a gateway with a stone horse head mounted on top (it looks a little like this) - there is someone sitting astride that head, and as people pass through the gateway, she updates the numerals in her notepad, since she's counting people who use this entrance. 

Choosing the best one

Let's be clear, the one that is best for me may not be the best for you - so don't simply choose the one that I have chosen, but recognise which one best matches the way your own thinking works.

(It is possible to come up with really bad images, which I've written about here, but none of the above ones fails the tests in that article.)

After having done 3000 characters this way, I know instinctively how my brain works. And if you repeatedly hypnotised me to forget this character, and kept asking me to (re)create an image, it would probably be the first one, again & again. This is important, because in future when you're facing the character in The Real World © you will indeed need to see 码 then think stone+horse, and if your mind comes up with a different image, then you're never going to be able to work out what character you're looking at!)

So?

Did this help? Is it useful to be reminded that there really are so many (good) ways of creating images, that we shouldn't feel helpless, and we shouldn't forgive ourselves for feeling we can only come up with poor images?

So while you're in a visualisation mood, challenge yourself … Pick one or two of the characters below and create a few images that actually work. For fun.

• 敌: tongue+taskmaster = enemy
• 妄: perish+woman = absurd
• 坏: earth+NO = bad
• 如: woman+mouth = if

Leave a comment if you have any clever thoughts. Or if you have any dumb thoughts, that's OK too.

Ridiculously flexible words

When you start learning Chinese, you figure out relatively quickly how the language puts characters together to make words.

Since 好 (hǎo) means 'good', it makes sense that 好友 is a 'close friend', 好看 is 'good looking', 好处 is an 'advantage', 好心 is 'kind hearted', and so on.

Deep down, I want Chinese to be like this all the time: consistent, and easy to learn. Unfortunately, life isn't fair. And Chinese isn't like this.

The one character, more than any others I have found, that seems to represent so many different things, is the character 节 / 節 (usually pronounced jié). The MDBG dictionary provides this selection of possible meanings: "festival / holiday / node / joint / section / segment / part / to economize / to save / to abridge / moral integrity / classifier for segments, e.g. lessons, train wagons, biblical verses".

I was seeing this character appearing in so many (very different) words, which is what got me thinking,  including: 节目 (jié​mù) = program;  春节 (Chūn​jié) = Spring Festival (but it also applies to most festivals including Christmas & Valentines Day);  章节 (zhāng​jié) = chapter;  细节 (xì​jié) = details;  空气调节 (kōng​qì​tiáo​jié) = aircon;  etc.

Not sure about you, but I find this confusing!

In an attempt to gain control of this character, with Judy's help, I came up with the following sentence to put in my flashcard pack.

     On Thanksgiving, frugal people might buy energy-saving lightbulbs in order to save money
     在感恩节，节俭的人可能买节能的灯泡来节省金钱
     在感恩節，節儉的人可能買節能的燈泡來節省金錢
     zài Gǎn'ēnjié, jiéjiǎn de rén kěnéng mǎi jiénéng de dēngpào lái jiéshěng jīnqián

(And if you remember, it really does help to create 'special' sentences for you flashcard pack, as I've written about here: The clever butcher uses a cleaver)


What about you? Do you have a character in mind that has many meanings? If so, please leave a comment below (anonymous notes are welcome too!).

That music smells good

I recently went on a business trip to Kuala Lumpur, and was eating lunch with a colleague. When our Jasmine tea arrived, we were each given two small cups, both were then filled with tea. I had never seen this before, and my colleague explained that one of them is called the 闻香杯 (wénxiāngbēi) - the smelling cup. The basic idea is that one cup is for smelling, and one is for drinking. Or something like that.

I was (linguistically) confused, however, since the Chinese characters she wrote for 'smelling' cup seemed to translate into "hearing-fragrance-cup"!  She then explained that 闻 could also mean 'to smell'.

What? I immediately launched Pleco Dictionary on my iPhone and ... she was right.

(Pleco gave me the best one yet: 闻见 ('hear' & 'see') can mean 'to smell'.  Good grief. If you refer back to my article about Chinese being a series of mathematical formulae, then this is a great example of 1+2=634.)


Mandarin continues to surprise me. But I'm past the point of these confusing incidents frustrating me, now it's just interesting. At least, it's interesting enough to write a blogpost about it.

And now I'm off to smell some music.
(Or perhaps just look at it. #thicke)

Luke, SHE is your father

I'm sure you've noticed, when talking English with native-Chinese people, that they sometimes mistakenly interchange 'he' and 'she'. And although I noticed it in China, it is certainly more common in Hong Kong.

In Mandarin, 'he' (他) and 'she' (她) are both pronounced 'tā'  (same sound and same first tone). And I had convinced myself that because the two words sound the same, that in the mind of Chinese people it must be easy to confuse the translation into English.

But there were two things that kept bothering me ... (1) I figured Chinese people were more likely to think in terms of characters than pronunciations (since so many words sound the same), and (2) Why was the confusion of he/she so much more common in Hong Kong than mainland China?

Clearly, this wasn't the explanation I was looking for.  (*)

And it was only a couple of weeks ago that I found out!  Which surprises me since I've been living in HK for nearly three years already.

It turns out that in Cantonese they actually use the same word for 'he' and 'she' - 佢. In Mandarin, this is pronounced qú, and in Cantonese it's pronounced keoi5.  Yes you can find both 他 and 她 in a Cantonese dictionary (both pronounced 'taa1'), but it's not the one they use. So now we know.

佢 ... Yes, the force is strong with this one. (*)

Counting to THR三三

Following on from the recent post I did on The 'correct' (sic) way to count in Chinese, it reminded me of a sign I saw when visiting Singapore on business a couple of weeks ago.  I think it was a restaurant, and the name of the place was:  FIV五

I liked that :-)  It was an interesting way of merging the English alphabet with Chinese characters, and I started wondering how much I could extend this ...

In terms of single digit numbers, this is what I came up with ...

ZER零
(ONE)
(TWO) 
THR三三
F四UR
FIV五
SI六
SE七EN
EIG八T
九I九E
十EN

Sadly, 1 & 2 can't be done nicely, and even 0, 4 & 7 are pushing it a bit!

For bigger numbers ...

百UNDRED
千HOUSAND
万EN 万HOUSAND
HUNDRED M亿LION

(I'm quite proud of the last one, but the way. Be sure to leave comments below to tell me how much it impressed you too :-)


Will this make the quality of your life better?   No.
Will it help you learn Chinese better?   I doubt it.
Is it interesting?   I think so.
Should you leave a comment below?   Absolutely!

The 'correct' (sic) way to count in Chinese

I'm sure you've all seen cartoons of people in prison or on dessert islands, counting the number of days that they have been there. Here is a Punch cartoon, showing the usual way this is done ... each of the first four counts gets a vertical line, and the fifth one is represented by crossing through those four.

I was told a couple of years ago about an equivalent method that Chinese people use, also counting to five, but instead it uses the Chinese character 正 (zhèng - which means 'correct' or 'proper').

You can see the stroke order for this character here:

Or if you prefer the animated version:

So yes, that's how (at least some of) the Chinese do it.  You can use it to count the number of days in a row you practise flashcards, how many times you phoned your mom this month, or anything else You want to count ...