Mandarin Segments

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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 (xūyǔwēishé): 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.

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