Parseltongue! (the Year of the Snake is coming)

calligraphy by Jasmin

On the 10th of February it will be here - the Year of the Snake.

There is plenty of information about this coming year in the Chinese Zodiac, and for your convenience, here's a quick link to summarise some of the key points.

But since this is a language-learning blog, I thought now would be a good time to provide you with some words & idioms associated with snakes in general, in a WordPack kinda way. You're obviously using flashcards (right?) so copy some or all of these into your pack, and learn them when they make it to the front of that pack.

(And in case you don't get the heading of this post, in the Harry Potter series, 'Parseltongue' is the language of snakes. Now you too can be a 'Parselmouth'.)


The character
The character for snake or serpent in Chinese is 蛇 - pronounced shé  (and if you haven't heard this word before, make sure you don't make this common mistake when saying it).

It's component parts are 虫 and 它, meaning insect+it ... just in case that's either interesting or useful to you in memorising it. (I use Stephen King's IT character ('it') to help with the visualisation.)

Both Simplified & Traditional character sets use the same character, although I have found an alternative Traditional character of 虵 which seems to be the same thing.


Some relevant words
Using my favourite MDBG online dictionary, I found some words that might be useful for you.

• 蛇皮 (shépí): snake skin
• 蛇毒 (shédú): snake venom
• 蝮蛇 (fùshé): venomous snake
• 蛇年 (shénián): Year of the Snake
• 蛇形 (shéxíng): S-shaped / coiled like a snake 

Snake (and Snake-like) characters
In the Chinese Zodiac, the character of the snake does have implications of malevolence, sorcery, mystery, divination. So it's interesting to note the following too:

• 虺蜥 (huǐxī): figuratively a vicious person, but literally a poisonous snake
• 蛇头 (shétóu): figuratively a human smuggler, but literally the head of a snake
• 法海 (Fǎhǎi): Fahai the evil Buddhist monk in Tale of the White Snake
• 白蛇传 (BáiShéZhuàn): Tale of the White Snake / Madame White Snake

And also ...

• 摩喉罗伽 (móhóuluójiā): Mahoraga, the snake protector deity of Buddhist law

Idioms / Chengyu
Chengyu is a massive body of Chinese idioms (usually four characters) which you can read about here. Below are the ones I have found which have something to do with snakes:

• 虎头蛇尾 (hǔtóushéwěi): a strong start but a weak finish (literally tiger's head snake's tail) T:虎頭蛇尾
• 画蛇添足 (huàshétiānzú): to go too far with something (literally to draw the legs on a snake) T:畫蛇添足
• 打草惊蛇 (dǎcǎojīngshé​): to inadvertently alert an enemy (literally beat the grass to scare the snake) T: 打草驚蛇
• 引蛇出洞 (yǐnshéchūdòng​): to draw something bad out into the open (literally to pull a snake from its hole)
• 杯弓蛇影 (bēigōngshéyǐng​): unnecessarily suspicious (literally to see a bow reflected in a cup as a snake)
• 佛口蛇心 (fókǒushéxīn​): two-faced (literally words of a Buddha, heart of a snake)
• 打蛇不死 (dǎshébùsǐ​): nip the problem in the bud (literally beat the snake to prevent death)
• 强龙不压地头蛇 (qiánglóngbùyādìtóushé​): a gangster who is above the law (literally strong dragon cannot repress the snake) T: 強龍不壓地頭蛇
• 一年被蛇咬十年怕井绳 (yīniánbèishéyǎoshíniánpàjǐngshéng​): once bitten twice shy (literally bitten by a snake in one year, fears the well-rope for ten years) T: 一年被蛇咬十年怕井繩
• 虚与委蛇 (xū​yǔ​wēi​shé​): pretence of complying (literally false gift by sending a snake) T: 虛與委蛇
• 龙蛇混杂 (lóng shé hùnzá): a mingling of good & evil within a person (literally mixing dragon & snake) T: 龍蛇混雜
• 牛鬼蛇神 (niú guǐ shé shén): evil people of all types (literally cow ghost snake spirit)
• 人心不足蛇吞象 (rénxīnbùzúshétūnxiàng​): a man who is never content is like a snake trying to swallow an elephant

So yes, Year of the Snake. At least now you'll be ready - and armed to the teeth with words and idioms to impress anyone that you might slither into. Good luck!


Edit: I can't believe I didn't think of it while I was writing the article, but you might now also be wondering how they say "Parseltongue" in the Chinese translation of the Harry Potter books. With the help of a couple of friends at a language exchange meeting yesterday (thanks Fiona & Wavy) we found two versions:  蛇老腔 (shélǎoqiāng) which is perhaps best translated "ancient snake speech"; and 爬说语 (páshuōyǔ) which is more of a loanword that sounds similar, albeit with clever choice of characters.

Reading Chinese (in Japan!)

Another trip, another (Mandarin) discovery ...

I have just spent a couple of weeks in Japan - my last trip having been three years ago. At that time, I probably knew only about 12 Kanji (Japanese characters, which were originally borrowed from Chinese about 2000 years ago), whereas this time I know about 100 times as many characters.

I was curious to see how my Chinese reading skills would work in Japan.

Here is the background:

• I have been studying the Simplified Chinese character set - whereas of course Kanji would be closer to the Traditional Chinese character set
• I am referring here to recognising individual characters, and piecing together enough of them to get the general meaning of what I'm reading
• After all, I'm not a fluent Chinese reader, so I couldn't exactly expect to manage Japanese without a hitch.

And here are some quick observations about my experiences understanding:

• In spite of the above points, I was still able to follow much of the Kanji which I read in signs, menus, posters, etc.
• Even when signs were a mixture of Kanji and Hiragana (the one phonetic alphabet of Japanese), I sometimes found that the core meaning came from the Kanji. (For example, if you look at the picture below (sorry for the bad lighting, I took it in a shrine) in the right-column you can recognise the characters 帽子 (hat) and 脱 (take-off) -I'm sure you can work out what you have to do!

• Sometimes the Kanji means exactly the same as the chinese, for example 注意 (zhù​yì, see below)
• And whereas the character 天 (tiān)​ is used in day-based words in Chinese (昨天: yesterday,  今天: today,  明天: tomorrow), in Japanese the 天 doesn't appear, and instead 日 is used in it's place  
• Sometimes the Japanese have different words for common objects to what the Chinese use, even though you can still read the Japanese version and work out what they mean. For example (Chinese/Japanese):  'car' (汽車 = gas vehicle / 自動車 = automatic vehicle), 'emergency exit' (紧急出口 = urgency exit / 非常口 = extreme doorway), 'no smoking' (吸煙禁止 / 禁煙), 'train' (火車 = fire vehicle / 電車 = electric vehicle), 'push' (on doors) (推 / 押), 'fire extinguisher' (灭火器 vs 消火器) etc.

Finally, here are some fun observations:

• The Japanese love the word 注意 (zhù​yì, meaning 'notice' or 'caution') - I saw it all over the place - either stand-alone or at the end of the sentence
• I discovered that the Chinese word 先生 (xiān​sheng​, or 'mister') is the same word as Japan's "sensei".  Similarly, Japan's "onsen" (the famous style hot baths, usually from spring water) is written as 温泉 (wēn​quán)​, which is of course "hot spring" in Chinese
• In China the word for 'tap' is 水龍頭 (water dragon head) whereas in Japan they call it 蛇口 (snake mouth)

• Before I knew that 自動車 is the Kanji for 'car', I was seeing the following words (see below) a lot: 自動車x除x. I read this as "automatic vehicle blah blah" - and for some odd reason I started thinking about those automated parking lots in Japan, where you drive onto a platform, and that takes your car away in a space-efficient manner. When you return for your car, you select the bay number, and it comes out again, almost like a vending machine :-)   So I had assumed the sign below made reference to there being one of those automated parking bays being in the vicinity - only to discover that it's not meant to imply 'automatic car-park', but rather just 'car-something'. (I'm sure the above paragraph is confusing to you, the reader. Please treat it as a stream-of-consciousness description of little import.)

Conclusion? Learning to read Chinese has use even outside the Chinese-speaking countries. It was fun to see that for myself.

If you know of other differences or similarities between between Chinese and Japanese, please drop a note for us below. And if you don't, then pretend you do and just make something up!