Not banned. hǎo xiāoxi

(I don't know why the "hǎo" in the title looks dumb in Internet Explorer...sorry)

Well, for whatever reason, the blog is back up in China. So please destroy any links to the pirated pkblogs.com version (as I have done).

Here's some appropriate vocabulary to celebrate with:

hǎo xiāoxi = good news

huài xiāoxi = bad news

I actually think of that "xiāoxi" should as "information" or "message." If you want to say "read the news" it's a different word:

kàn xīnwén = read the news [look new + smell/hear]

Weird that "to smell" can also mean "to hear." And, even though it's not SUPER important, the correct measure word for both kinds of news seems to be "tiáo" {measure word for long, narrow things} according to Chubby. Doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I always imagine ancient Chinese messengers reading decrees from the emperor on long scrolls (remember ancient Chinese was written top to bottom, right to left). But thankfully, they actually seem to prefer the old "ge" measure word in this case:

wǒ yǒu yí gè hǎo xiāoxi = I've got good news [I have one {m.} good message] **better**
wǒ yǒu yì tiáo hǎo xiāoxi = I've got good news [I have one {m.} good message]

Don't be alarmed that the tone for "yi" changed. That's what it does. There's a post in the works about the tone changes.

It's apparently also ok to say

wǒ yǒu hǎo xiāoxi = I've got good news [I have good message]

But omitting the "one" part of it seems to imply that you have a whole bunch of news to share. And, more importantly, the Chinese usually have that measure word in there when they say it and hey...they're the boss.

And now that final step of integrating the vocab into my daily life:

wǒ yǒu yí gè hǎo xiāoxi: wǒ de bókè huílái le = I've got good news: my blog came back

Banned. zěnme bàn?

If you're able to read this you should be as glad as I am. It seems that China has, for whatever reason, blocked access to all blogger/blogspot blogs. I think the email updates should still be going out. But if you're in mainland China (I still haven't heard from that island off the east coast) you won't be able to access it directly.

Regardless of what context may suggest, "zěnme bàn?" doesn't mean "how did they ban me?" It's the bàn of bànfǎ = method [do way]. A good translation would be:

zěnme bàn? = what's to be done? / what should we do?

I used that the other day when my water dispenser sprung a leak. The guy delivered a new bottle and I showed him the puddle. He then waxed eloquent, totally losing me, saying things I'm sure boiled down to stuff like:

"Well this particular model, when inundated with an influx of new water after a freshly replenished container is installed, seems to have a tendency to backwash ever so slightly, while, I shouldn't fail to mention that, a simple preemptive strike--viz. draining the surplus water before installing the new jug--may very well serve to nip this problem in the bud."

I blinked at him loudly and said simply, "zěnme bàn?"

He then sprung into action demonstrating and implementing what he had (I'm sure) just explained and all was made clear. Never mind that it didn't solve the problem. I called him the next day saying:

hái yǒu yíyàng de wèntí. zěnme bàn? = (it) still has the same problem. What should we do?

The point is, this is a useful little phrase that, even if it doesn't lead to a real solution, might at least lead to action.

Which brings me back to the problem of this blog. Here's what I suggest:

1. If you're in China: depend on the email updates. To subcribe (or refer someone to subscribe) click here. Amzingly, you still seem to be able to leave comments (see "comments" link at bottom of the email). And, if you MUST look at the website version of this blog, you can go here (as long as it lasts) and type in "laowaichinese". But please don't make any links to the pirated pkblogs.com version becaise if/when my real blog comes back, that sight will be useless. There are also a lot of people complaining that pkblogs.com is stealing their "google ranking" which basically means people are linking to that site rather than the original one.
2. If you're not in China: enjoy your free access and let me know if there are any strange layout problems.

Field Notes

Even though it might seem like a no-brainer to you, enough people have commented on my little notebook that I thought it merited a short post.

I rarely leave home without my little notebook:

• I have a medium-sized notebook so I can write little phrases on one line. But it still fits in my pocket.
• On the left-hand pages I write single vocabulary words. I suggest writing them with English on the left like this: "English word = yīngwén dāncí". I haven't always done it like that but it makes it real hard to "look up" a word if my eyes are first hitting a bunch of pinyin. Also, if I'm walking, thinking my little thoughts, and I suddenly realize there's a word I want to know, I immediately write the English word and leave the Chinese side blank until I get the answer, like "escalator = " (it's the same as "elevator" by the way: "diàntī")
• On the right-hand pages I write phrases or little proverbs. Ideally (although I'm way behind), a native-speaker informant would record each of these phrases, as well as saying the page number, so I can memorize whole chunks of tonally correct Chinese.
• I laminated the outside cover of my notebook with packaging tape so that rain won't wreak immediate havoc on it.

Organize it however you want, but I strongly recommend carrying a field notebook whenever Chinese interaction, or even dead time that you might want to use as study time, is on the horizon.

How Hard Is Chinese to Learn, Really?

Well opinions on that question vary. The US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute has given major foreign languages a rank in order of difficulty to learn for native English speakers. Although the ranking seems to have changed over time from a scale of 1-4 (4 being hardest) to a scale of 1-3, Chinese is invariably given the highest (hardest) score.

But, if you want my humble opinion (and what else is a blog?), I think the reading/writing Chinese hanzi characters is what makes the language hard, and speaking is relatively easy—-kind of. I'll break it down below, but I have to say this first: The best way to learn Chinese slowly is to try to tackle the hanzi characters from the beginning. I've got a whole little article on the subject of hanzi as a pedagological millstone around students' linguistic necks, but since I hope it will influence future Chinese curriculum development in the USA, it’s not quite ready for public viewing.

I’ve created my own scale of 1-10 where:
1 = as easy as I imagine a foreign language could be to learn
10 = as hard as I imagine a foreign language could be to learn

How Hard is Chinese?

Grammar: 3 (pretty easy)

Pros:

1. Word order is often the same between Chinese and English
   
2. Pronouns. No distionction between he/she/it. And no distinction between cases (he, she, her, it, its). tā = he, him, she, her, it. To make the possessive form add the "de" particle (tā de).


3. No inflected cases of any kind (like in German or Slavic languages)
   
4. No plural nouns. "Apple" and "apples" are both are translated píngguǒ. The only exception is the plural suffix "men" for pronouns (wǒ = I, wǒmen = us; tā = he/she/it, tāmen = them). But as you see, even that doesn’t change depending on usage.


5. No verb tenses to speak of. Do, does, did, doing, done are all translated as zuò. Tense is shown by time markers ("yesterday I do") or tricky little particles ("I am going to go now" = wǒ zǒu le (I go + particle to show change in states or situation).


6. No articles. "A book," "the book," the Chinese don’t care. Just say "book" (shū).

Cons:

1. Measure words. Nothing could be perfect. Even though there’s no plural or articles, they had to add those pesky little measure words that basically serve no linguistic purpose. There is no way to say "One book" in Chinese without saying the correct measure word (běn). So, really what you’re saying in Chinese is "One bound-thing book" (yī běn shū). Or for table, "One flat-surfaced-thing table" (yī zhāng zuōzi). My Chinese friends avidly condone measure words as a way of categorizing and organizing the world and telling you the shape of the thing you’re going to be talking about. I reply with, "There’s no reason for me to know the shape of the thing you’re about to say because you’re about to say the name of the thing itself which will be infinitely more useful for my imagining its shape." I then hear crickets chirping for a few seconds and we change subjects. My theory as to the practical use for measure words has to do with the myriad homonyms in Chinese, but that’s another post.


2. Adjectival phrases. Not all the word order is the same. The biggest difference, in my experience, is saying things like, "The person reading a book" in Chinese needs to be said, "The reading book person" (kàn shū de rén).
   Adverbs of place. Similar to the adjectival phrases, "Behind the shop" needs to be said "At the shop behind place" (zài shangdiàn hòumian).


3. Tricky little particles. It's a real trick to master when to throw in a "ba" or a "ne" or a "de" or a "le." But if I'm not sure I just pick my favorite and at least other foreigners think I know what I'm saying.


4. Word order very important. To pay the piper for all the perks of not having any cases or tenses, the Chinese depend very much on word order to convey meaning. Although it’s not as important in conversational Chinese as the textbooks would have us believe, throwing two words in the wrong order can absolutely stump most of them. I’ll try to think of a real-life example soon (it seems like it’s happened so often, yet they all escape me).

Vocabulary: 5 (medium)

Pros (In addition to the above grammar pros):

1. Little chunks. Since the Chinese language is made of a lot of characters (each with their own meaning), their compound words are combinations of smaller words. For example, "motivation" (dòngjī) when broken down into it’s two characters means "move machine." Also, "resolved, determined" (juéxīn) means "decide heart." Modern words also need to use known characters in new combination. The word for "blog/blogger" (bókè) has the same first character as the first character of "doctor/Ph.D." and the second is "guest." So, because of this bite-sized approach, vocabulary learning can gain a kind of critical mass where you’re not actually learning new pieces but, learning a new word means arranging old pieces in a new way. This can be made easier if you organize your known vocabulary using what I call a "hanzi web" (my next post).

Cons:

1. So many homonyms. Since there are so few possible syllables, and only 4 tones (I never thought I’d say "only"), there are so many words that sound exactly the same. The only way to distinguish them in writing is that they each have a different hanzi character. In speaking, context determines their meaning. The winner I think is shì with at least 40 different characters for the same pronunciation. There’s even a poem in ancient Chinese where someone wrote the whole poem using only words that were pronounced "shi" with different tones.


2. The tones. For every word you have to remember the right tone. This is just straight memorization. Its like learning two words for every one. The best way to remember the tones is to make a little mnemonic device for yourself (a later post).

Pronunciation: 6 (medium-hard)

Pros:

1. Limited pain. There are only a few hundred possible syllables in Chinese (strangely, people can’t agree on the exact number, but it’s around 400). After you learn to pronounce those, you’re done. You can say anything in Chinese.

Cons:

1. The tones again. Even though there are only 4 tones, you still have to a) remember the right tone to say, b) say that tone correctly, c) adjust for any tone changes. The tones do change in relationship to each other. There are rules, but you still have to remember the rules.


2. The secret tone. Most people agree there is a 5th, neutral tone. I’ve found this to be mostly a lie. a) How am I supposed to say something with no tone at all? Really fast? Really quiet? b) that hanzi character does have a tone and all the Chinese know what it is. If they say something really slowly it comes right out. For example, you’ll never hear a Chinese person say "you all" (nǐmen) slowly without putting a 2nd tone on the "men." It’s true that ma, ba, ne and other little particles really have no tone. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say them any way you want. For example in "let’s go" (zǒu ba) you have to say the ba like it’s a first tone. There are rules, but it’s still a hassle.


3. Some new sounds. As should be expected when learning a foreign language, there are some new sounds for speakers of English learning Chinese. For vowels the newest sound is the umlaut ü but the back "i" sound in pinyin "shi" and "si" can be a little tricky too. For consonants the biggest challenge is the "r" which is said a lot of diffrent ways (depending on whom you ask) including sounding just like our "r." There are also two ways to say our "sh" and "ch" in Chinese. For example the "sh" sound in "thank you" (xièxie) and the "sh" sound in book ( shū) are different.

Listening: 7 (hard)

Pros:

I can’t think of any

Cons:

1. So many homonyms. Even if I know the word, sometimes I can’t understand it because my mind immediately chooses to understand one of the syllables wrong. For example, I kept hearing "math" (shùxué) as "tree" (shù) study even though I knew that should never be anyone’s major.


2. So many synonyms. There are so many words for the same thing in Chinese. But people say, "it's the same in every language." No. Well, yes. But Chinese is different (probably because it's been around a lot longer than...well, most any other currently spoken language). They've had thousands of years to accumulate vocabulary. The various dialects and regions only compound the problem. I'll give one example. In English I only know one way to say, "I speak English." I guess I could say, "I speak American English" but that's it. In Chinese I know of 10 ways to say, "I speak Chinese." 2 words for speak (shuō, jiǎng) and 4 words for Chinese (zhōngwén, zhōngguóhuà, hànyǔ, guóyǔ, pǔtōnghuà). Although some of those mean Mandarin as opposed to just Chinese, people use them interchangeably. This means when I'm speaking I have all sorts of fun options to say. But for listening, if I didn't happen to learn all the different ways something could be said, I'm easily stumped.


3. So many dialects. While common wisdom states that "A billion people!" speak Mandarin Chinese, a recent article said that ain’t the case. This helps explain why so many people in my first two years living in China didn’t speak Mandarin to me. They didn’t know it. It makes me feel a little better for not understanding them, but still. Toward the middle of my first year I actually started asking people I couldn’t understand, "Are you speaking Mandarin" just to try to get the comprehension burden off myself.


4. So many accents. Even if people speak Mandarin, their accent may vary wildely from the standard. I still remember a time in a Kunming drugstore when a guy came up to say to me, "no one is watching your bike" and I kid you not (and I confirmed this with other people later) what he said sounded EXACTLY like "no one is watching your eggplant." He was speaking what he thought was Mandarin (and I give him full marks for that) but his accent was some amalgamation of his local dialect and Mandarin.
   
5. Reduced forms. Simillar to the English reduction of "I would have been killed" to "I wouldabeen killed," Chinese speakers often drop one or more syllables of common words. For example reducing "zuótiān wǎnshàng shuìjiào de shíhòu" to "zuó wǎn shuìjiào shí." If you don't know that not all syllables are created equal, and some can be dropped, understanding those reduced forms is basically impossible.

Reading: 8 (really hard)

Reading is easier than writing because it’s receptive not productive. Conventional wisdom says to read a newspaper you need to know 3000 characters. That’s not 3000 words but 3000 little pieces of words (see vocabulary pros). And the only way to learn those characters is rote memorization. Many are made of several smaller pieces (radicals) and that can give you a clue as to how it MIGHT be pronounced. But really, it feels a bit like memorizing the Periodic Table of the Elements, except longer.

Writing: 9 (really, really hard)

The only reason this isn’t 10 is because I’m in mainland China and they use "simplified" characters. Taiwan and Hong Kong writing is a 10.

Where do I put the tone marks in pinyin words?

In my first year of studying Chinese I learned (by doing it wrong in front of Chinese friends) that there are rules for where to put tone markings in words with more than one vowel. The official rules, according to Mark Swofford's very helpful site, are:

• A and e trump all other vowels and always take the tone mark. There are no Mandarin syllables in Hanyu Pinyin that contain both a and e.
• In the combination ou, o takes the mark.
• In all other cases, the final vowel takes the mark.

But I noticed the craziest little pattern. If you want to remember only one rule and one exception think of it like this:

• Alphabetical order dictates which letter gets the tone mark. (if it's "biāo" then the "a" is alphabetically first, so give it the tone mark)
• The only exception I've found is the "iu" combination. In this case the "u" gets the mark even though it's alphabetically after "i"
• Oh wait, there is another rather rare exception and that's "io" combination ("o" get's the mark")
  

So here's the way I remember it:

• "duì" in Chinese means "correct," so the alphabetical rule is correct for that word
• "diū" in Chinese means "to lose," so the alphabetical rule has lost it's integrity (and face) for that word
• Since "io" is also an exception (xiōngdì), "I owe" everyone an apology for saying there was only one exception
  

Still, since the "io" combo is very rare, and the "ui" and "iu" combos are easy to watch for, I've found the alphabetical rule to be the easiest to remember and use.