This was taken in Shanghai. Can’t remember what area exactly (maybe Xintiandi?), but I was just strolling around the street looking for interesting things. It immediately caught my attention due to the almost alien like crop circle characters. It says: 快樂瑪麗安 (simplified: 快乐玛丽安), which means “Happy Marianne”. 瑪麗 is Mary. However, it’s interesting to note that they didn’t use the correct full translation of the transliterated name and kept it “Marian”. Before I could figure out that Marian was indeed the name “Marianne”, I wondered why they used “丽” for the “ri” syllable as that syllable does exist in Chinese. Then I realized, that transliteration is meant to imitate sound not form. So 丽 is closer the “ri” sound in “Marianne”.

Besides the interesting transliteration, just look at those characters! Now what intrigues me is the second character: 樂. All the other ones seem to resemble their non-modified counterparts closely, but 樂 has a lot missing in the sign above. It seems to resemble a kid sitting/playing with a ball right? I think it combined the simplicity of 乐 too. In any case, a fascinating sign and use of Chinese characters! Next one:

This is quite an obvious one, but cleverly done. 新蛋商城 has been cleverly modified to add an “egg” in the character 蛋. What I find more interesting is the combination of 新 going into 蛋 almost forming a ligature of sort. The 新 also looks a like lizard with a tail, right?

55tuan is a group buying site in China. Their logo seems to love hearts! The characters are 窝窝团. Note the use of 55 that resemble the pinyin “wu” -> “wo”. This is a common in Chinese names, to use numbers as sounds. Like the popular job site 51job.com -> “Wo Yao Job”. I’m not exactly sure as to what 窝窝 would translate into. If anyone can help me here it would be great? Nest? Den? 团 is mean “group”. I just like the way they changed the strokes into hearts. Clever!

Not exactly a modern sign, but I found this in the Shanghai Museum. They had a whole wing on Chinese calligraphy. This was the short-lived lacquer script. It was different from other styles at the time. Notice the strong thick horizontal lines? Quite cool.

I can’t wait to live in China. I’d be on the hunt for interesting characters in the wild all the time. Have you seen some interesting characters?

I’m sucker for this kind of music. It might be a bit sad and melancholic, but I enjoy it. Western equivalents would be City & Color, Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver.

An example of the beautiful lyrics:

如此生活30年

直到大厦崩塌

云层深处的黑暗啊

淹没心底的景观

It’s advanced yes, but it’s just so evocative. Some of their other songs have words like 夜幕, 眼底 and 归途. Here’s another song:

I’m sure others might find the music a bit too draining, but I feel that you don’t find Chinese music like this very often. Most sing of butterflies, wings and love. Introspective and poetic lyrics like this are great. It’s probably because I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan, that this music sits well with me. It also makes me just love the Chinese language so much more, because it shows just how beautiful and poetic it can be. Not that it isn’t, just that it’s possible for a group twenty-somethings to sing about topics that are complex, but portrayed so beautifully with the succinct Chinese language.

Now where can I find more of this? Where are the young Chinese poets? Where are the ones that sit at night bogged down by the pressures of Chinese society, scribbling in the margins? I feel that Omnipotent Youth Society are a part of this idea and now I’m yearning for more.

So, the language learning community is buzzing, especially the Chinese one, with the news that Benny is attempting to become fluent in Mandarin in 3 Months. Now, phew, where to start on this doozy of a topic. I remember writing about this briefly last year, asking How Long does it take to Learn Chinese? A few others have already posted their thoughts on Benny’s mission: Sara Jaaksola and Olle Linge. It pretty much echoes what most people are saying, that Benny is in over his head, but it’s not impossible. Reddit also had a bit of go at Benny (with him posting there himself).

There are some topics I’d like to discuss concerning his mission as a language learner, linguist and Chinese enthusiast in response to Benny and lots of others things in terms of language learning.

The Beginning

I’ve been following Benny and other polyglot blogs for some time now. I find their dedication and admiration for learning languages inspiring. But, I’ve always had a mixed feeling of disdain, jealously and hope when reading his and other people’s blogs. On one side, these people rock. The more people are inspiring and blogging about languages the better, but sometimes these goals that the polyglots put on themselves becomes pride, and turns into a stubborn defense mechanism.

I have found this on a few of these blogs. I remember being banned from commenting on a site for questioning statements. There is a divide between language learners, linguists and bloggers. This is a topic I also talked about in much depth with Benny on his blog post about linguists. Here in lies the problem.

The Experience Paradox

This can be applied to many things, but this is especially applicable to language learning, as it is a very personal subjective experience. Let’s take an example here to clarify my problem:

Say I have learned Chinese by listening to Chinese TV all waking hours of my life and then after 4 months start talking fluent Mandarin, my method was a success. To me that is. Now if Joe comes to me and says, what I say is a wrong way of learning Chinese, because I should have listened to Chinese Music for 3 months, then I’d be more advanced, because this is what Joe has done, therefore my approach is invalid.

The argument is dead from the start. No-one will budge. Subjective experience becomes subjectively true.

Now, when claims are made from a linguistics objective perspective, based on research, then I hope, this is what has been missing from most polyglot blogs, is the tendency to avoid accepting defeat and or altering their “trusted” methods due to research and/or suggestions. HOWEVER, it must be added that even if the response is not given from objective point of view, then the learner must be willing to explore other methods, or at least accept that other methods might work.

That’s the whole beauty of learning languages. There is no ultimate way of doing it. I recommend reading this book/research, about success in learning languages. It covers seven different types of successful language learners. Basically, it shows just how different methods and attitudes can achieve the same goal.

The same way that some people are stubborn in their ways about many things in life, the same way polyglots are (mostly) stubborn about their methods. Having a public blog, opens this up to scrutiny. The motivation to pursue a blog becomes suspicious. It begs the question, if you are learning languages should you also not be willing to learn how to learn languages too? Meta-linguistics skills is also something that I have talked about before when asking the question about whether Chinese is a good first foreign language to learn?

Relative difficulty is a real thing

Now this is something that bothers me the most about some polyglot blogs, is the idea that there are no hard languages. Objectively yes, relatively… nope. The difference between languages becomes a hurdle in terms of acquiring that language. It is simply there. This phenomenon exists. However, tackling the idea of hard/difficult languages becomes two-fold.

I have found this many times when people respond to me when I say that I learn Chinese, “Wow, it must be tough learning the hardest language in the world!” I usually just play along, and due to social etiquette I refrain from rambling linguistic nonsense to prove my point. But the fact remains, that there is a belief that there are objectively hard languages. My dad is even a culprit of this. When he sees me writing Chinese, he goes, “Why are they still using a primitive writing system?”. We need to distill this belief and let people know that there is relative difficulty in acquiring languages. I can acquire Dutch relatively easy due to my Afrikaans background, but learning Mandarin, hell no.

But, Benny, always points out that there is no such thing as a hard language. I have read his blog and the language hacking guide and I admire the tenacity to instill this idea. It definitely works and helps people overcome the mental block. Anyone can acquire any language. But let’s not kid ourselves, some languages are going to be more difficult than others to acquire. More time needs to be invested to achieve the same results. Acceptance of this, need not be a stumbling block, but in fact a challenge and more motivation.

I predict a post from Benny that will say that Mandarin is not that hard. He has already posted this idea as a comment on his Youtube vide0.

Chinese is so logical in so many ways, and I will be writing a post later to ENCOURAGE learners who want to take it on, especially comparing it to European languages. I think it’s just so exaggerated to say a European language is easier. I can give lots of examples, and will later.

Like I said, objectively yes, relatively no, not if you’re coming from a certain language background. Benny however has the meta-linguistic experience to overcome these differences more readily than others, but the fact remains that, it is harder to learn. For more about my idea on Chinese Grammar, click here.

Time becomes a measure of success

This is found in many aspects of life, the idea that the quicker one can achieve the same goals, the better the success is. I’ve been learning Chinese now for four years. It’s been an amazing ride so far. However, I’m nowhere near the level of many others who have been studying it for four years in China. Or even have better self-discipline. Time and time again, validity of methods and success is measured in the time spent achieving a level of fluency. I absolutely deplore this and is often seen as a weak spot for someone’s language learning prowess. “Oh you only learned how to order a meal after one year!? You are obviously doing something wrong. So your argument is invalid”. Time =/= success

Success should be measured by personal growth and self-reward. Heck I was elated that I could rent my own apartment using Chinese after three and a half years. But sometimes, the reward could come from pushing yourself to achieve something within a time period. That’s why I don’t discredit people studying this way, but once again, it becomes a pride thing. It serves as a foundation for criticizing others lack of vigor, motivation and methods.

I predict I’m going to be a life long learner of Chinese. I love going into the intricacies of the language. I don’t think I’d want to skim over languages and push the envelope. But hey, each to his own.

A Theory on Beginner Chinese

Now, to Benny’s mission. He will have measured success in speaking. But not reading, that’s a whole different topic for another day. Chinese is extremely unique in that aspect and requires a whole post for itself.

John Pasden made this post some time ago. Although it compares Japanese vs Chinese, it makes an interesting point that I’d like to discuss, which might throw things off a bit, but I’d like your input. Here’s my theory:

Learning Chinese becomes more difficult as you learn more.

Ooooh. Insightful! But allow me to explain.

Chinese has 400 syllables. ONLY 400 syllables (excluding tones), with English for example having thousands of different syllables. This makes Chinese extremely homophonic. Now, concerning the question of tones, it makes the homophony a bit less daunting, but does it really?

Let’s consider a beginner Chinese learner. Tones are being learned, but due to uniqueness of the tones, its importance is underestimated due to not being used to saying words with tones. That’s what I did and is a crucial mistake when starting Chinese. But, context plays a good role aiding the learner to not completely feel helpless when using tones and conversing with Chinese. I have found this quite often. When saying a single word, to explain something, I often get weird looks. Yep tones are wrong, but when used in a sentence with other sounds, the context corrects my failure in mispronunciation of the tone. So by definition, I can converse to some extent with Chinese, without focusing on tones that much.

Until the complexity comes in and homophony kicks you in the ass for not paying attention to tones. Now, what happens when you go further with learning Chinese? You start encountering syllables with the same sounds, but different tones, which makes the meaning completely different. Now context can save you again, yes, but it becomes increasingly difficult due to being exposed to the different words. Either you understood before or not, but now if you don’t understand the word in context, a second set doubt kicks in trying hard to get those tone associations going.

Let’s take an example:

时间, which means time. A normal word learned early in Chinese.

Now look at all the other possible words for the same two syllables, but different tones:

实践

事件

世间

尸检

时艰

识见

and more. Now, the confusion sets in. That’s why I think, it’s possible to get by with beginner Chinese without focusing that much on tones. You just have to get some tones right. I know this might sound a bit controversial, but that’s why I think Benny will succeed if his tones are poor. And let’s be honest, tones take a long time to master. However, Benny is an extremely good pragmatic observer. I have seen it before in his posts. Context plays a vital role in early acquisition. He will use it to his advantage.

It must be added however that I do not know where this ceiling in beginner Chinese is. He will apparently record a spontaneous interview at the end of the three months. It will extremely interesting to see how he does. If he controls the conversation within a framework of his understanding AND have not surpassed this ceiling, he will be able to communicate. His tones will probably be wrong, but he will be understood. Unfortunately, his goal of C1 is completely misplaced. That would be comparable to between HSK 5-6, even maybe above 6, because academic Chinese is not for the faint hearted. Conversational Chinese is much more realistic, albeit still a great deal of work.

What impact is this leaving for language learners?

Motivation is a crucial crucial part of language learning. For that I give immense claim to Benny. He is excellent in that regard. I mean, who doesn’t want to do what he does. Speak from day 1! I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve read his Language Hacking Guide, and one point stood out to me, if you really want to excel in language learning change your “want” to a “need”.

Many people will achieve success in following Benny’s methods. However, with great power comes great responsibility. That’s why I feel that sometimes, starting missions like this, where you have to prove to the public your goal, you might mislead the audience into false hope and misinformation regarding languages. Like the idea above that is mentioned about relative difficulty in second language acquisition.

What will the response be to Benny’s results?

Now let’s forward till the end of Benny’s mission and imagine two scenarios:

A) He was successfull

People will respond with congratulations of course, but most people will respond with a distrust in his claims. This is because of his goal. I’m sure critique will come from many avenues. Many won’t believe him.

B) He failed

This will be a first for Benny. If he admits it, but I’m sure, lots and lots of people will respond with an “Aha told you so!”.

Both responses will lead to a negative response in my opinion and I think that’s sad. When opened to public scrutiny, especially with such a lofty goal, proving something to others becomes a nasty thing. That’s where I think an unfortunate thing occurs, when you have a product to sell and it’s your living, then you have to prove your methods work, otherwise your product fails. Benny looks like an amazing guy. I’m sure I’d love to sit with with him over a few beers and talk about the world and travelling. But sometimes, like many people, we will disagree about things. I would say that I love learning languages, but I’m a more methodological learner. I love going after the small things. Heck, why will I spend the whole day researching character encoding just ’cause I noticed a small change in a character? I’d like to become fluent in a language. He will respond that he also likes to becomes fluent in a language, but in a lot of them. I’m sure we will agree that both sides are good.

But I’ll ask him one final question, Benny, have you ever considered that if you fail in your Mandarin mission, to admit it and learn from your mistakes? Because I believe, someone in your position, can teach us a lot more about learning languages, especially if you have failed, than many other people out there. You have spent many years perfecting your technique, why not now again?

But then he’ll respond, “I might just prove you all wrong”.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the whole crux of the matter. One can go on and on about learning languages (like I have now!), but sometimes, you can, and I really believe this, achieve a lot in 3 months of learning a language. No, he doesn’t have a language gene or a natural talent, it all comes down to pure tenacity of it all. We are all skeptics, and that’s good, I’m one of them. Mandarin really is the top of languages to conquer for an English speaking person.

In the back of my mind I want Benny to fail. I know it sounds bad. But hear me out. If he fails and is willing to accept that Chinese is a tough language and works hard to conquer that failure, we as a Chinese learning community can then constructively help each others to achieve the same goals, whether it’s 3 months or 4 years. There is no magic formula to this. Sometimes we wish there was. That’s why Benny is great, ’cause he makes us believe that. But sometimes, you get hit with a language like Chinese and all previous conventions gets thrown out the window. That’s why I love it. And I hope that’s what Benny will find too.

Now, that is awesome. Here’s another one. Which is a little rude, but hey, these are for educational purposes. The one below is CaoNiMa, a combination of Grass Mud Horse  (‘草’, ‘泥’ and ‘马’), which a is pun/euphemism on “Fuck Your Mom”.

Although ligatures seldom get adopted into the language, (thank god, cause I’d hate for Chinese characters to become even more complex), there has been one character that is sometimes used in signs, 圕, which is a combination of 图书馆, meaning library. I doubt you’d see some using 圕 in a sentence, but it’s interesting nonetheless. This actually reminds me, East Asia Student‘s Logo is also a  ligature! 東 + 囗!

Now, I hear you ask? Aren’t all Chinese character actually ligatures? Well, yes and no. A ligature is not traditionally a glyph that will be commonly used, thus these examples above, although technically characters, won’t be found in dictionaries. However, if these become adopted, then there’s no stopping them from not being ligatures. Chinese Characters, are thus probably more susceptible to transfer from being ligatures into a standard glyph in the language, than say alphabetic scripts. That’s probably where most characters originated in the first place.

The TOP system is redundantly marked for tones: with colors, with capital and small letters, and with the standard Hanyu Pinyin tone marks.

So, where you would get “Nǐ huì shuō yīngwén ma?” in TOP it would be “nǐ Huì SHUŌ YĪNGwéN ma*?”

Now at first it might seem a bit messy and crazy. All over the place. BUT, I think this is clever idea to some extent. I might not be a fan of the redundancy, but the capital letters is so genius actually. In fact, you could write Pinyin without tone marks, without colors, with numbers just by capitalization!

Take that above example: ”Nǐ huì shuō yīngwén ma?”

This would be: “ni Hui SHUO YINGweN ma*? (I marked the neutral tone with a asterisk).

This is useful, because it allows conveying tone without any other additional markings/colors, but in facts takes traits of normal English/Alphabetic Orthographic behaviour and utilizes that. This means, that I could also write this using a normal keyboard or on my phone that does not support Chinese characters (or Pinyin).

Another benefit is the fact that according to the creator, capitalization creates a mnemonic effect for tones levels.

• First tone is “high”, thus all is capitalized: SHUO
• Second tone is “going up”, this the last letter is capitalized: weN
• Third tone is “low”, this nothing is capitalized: ni
• Fourth tone is “going down”, thus the first letter is capitalized: Hui

Not everyone will like this, and I’ve had my gripes with Pinyin before, but this is an interesting adaptation (I won’t say solution) to reading tones in an alphabetic script.

What do you think?

The one above is hilarious. Not only that, but it uses very clever wordplay. 奥巴马 (Obama), 米老鼠 (Mickey Mouse) and 唐老鸭 (Donal Duck) are all proper names. The guy on the left keeps asking what animal usually has four legs, like a 马 (horse) and 老鼠 (rat) and reveals a person’s name, but plays a joke by asking what 鸭子 (duck) has two legs. You expect to name a proper name, like Donald Duck, but reveals that all ducks have two legs. Clever!

Rage comics usually use very unique language, so it might be a bit of a learning curve, like a guy is usually called Derp (王尼玛) and a girl Derpina (王尼美). Swear words are common too (操, 他妈的 etc).

I’m sure these comics are not for everyone. Like I said, some of them are very crass and NSFW, but hey, if you’re looking for an alternative way to practice your Chinese reading, then why not?

I started writing this song while chilling in the hostel at nights in Shanghai. Every so often while on my travels (usually commuting) I’d continue writing it. I also remember sitting on my apartment balcony in Xiamen looking at the ocean and people below and writing away.

Shanghai Nights by Sparkyboy

In the future I’ll hopefully write some tracks with vocals… in Chinese :) You’ll be the first to hear it!

This blog has become a turning point in my dedication to learning Chinese. It’s amazing to have a community that helps you figure out the language and sharing it with them. Not only that, but I enjoy being able to share my troubles. Writing about something, like the 喝 post actually made me figure out what was happening. It was like a “real-time” detective post. While I was writing the post I was doing research on it. Same with the recent 青 troubles.

Everyday that people talk about and link my blog, I’m humbled that people enjoy my posts. I get new readers everyday (hi to the new readers!) and this makes writing about the language and sharing my learning experience so much more rewarding. When I got “noticed” on reddit when I was planning my China trip this year it felt almost surreal. People were saying that I’m a big help to them. I was flabbergasted. I knew I wanted to help people, but it never occurred to me that it could actually be done.

Thanks for the support! Next year I’m hitting the heavy stage of my thesis and I’ll share a lot more when I get my research proposal finalized. Let’s just say, I might change things up a bit in SRS research. Furthermore, I’m hitting China in 2013 to go work there for a year or two (or more!?). So there’s lots more to come.

Here’s the CC-CEDICT dictionary definition for 青:

nature’s color / green or blue / greenish black / youth / young (of people) / abbr. for Qinghai province

Now, color me impressed, that’s one versatile character. My android dictionary app, HanPing, also adds the definition “not ripe”. That’s probably where the idea for youth comes from: 青年 (not ripe years).

But, besides youth, I’m trying to figure out why this character has this multiple color reference. How do you predict which color it is actually referring to? Here are some example words with 青.

There are more, but I think I’ll just confuse you guys even further. Now what is going here. It seems that when 青 is with plants (moss, grass, vegetables) it goes for green. When weather/nature is talked about, stone and sky, it goes for blue, but there’s a weird outlier in blue veins. But oddly enough it goes for black when it talks about hair or clothes. The wiktionary page confirms this. Interestingly, the radical decomposition from an etymological view point, describes the character as a combination of 生 (grass) and 丹 (well). So grass around a well. Thus, green.

Further etymological research shows that it first appeared during the Bronze Script. The original meaning was blue according to ZDIC.

Yes, I’m just as confused as you are at this point. What the heck is going on here? There clearly doesn’t seem to be a clear cut definition or meaning behind why 青 represents all these different colors!

I’ve got my own theories though:

The NatureTheory

The definition of “nature’s color” seems to fit in the with the duality that it presents. Nature is filled with colors. It’s almost as if when 青 is used it represents the “natural” color of that item. Like Blue Sky, Green Vegetables, Black Hair etc.

The Ripening Theory

Maybe 青, being “not ripe” and being youthful is part of the process of changing colors. Fruits change from colors, ripening. Sometimes even going to far and turning black.

The Grass Well Theory

This one is closely tied to the original radical etymology. Grass around it is green, the well has blue water. As simple as that.

The Metal Theory

Now here’s a more interesting take on this. If you notice all the words that are being mentioned, there seems quite a lot that has to do with metals, like lead, tin, copper, bronze etc. Now if you look at some metals for instance, like copper, when exposed to air and it oxidizes it turns a bluish-green color. The same thing happens when you wear copper bracelets, you get this green/blue stain on your wrist.

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I asked on Weibo for help with 青. The responses range from 青 being between green and blue, and 青 referring to both colors. But heck, it’s tough for me to accept that. I haven’t found such colors before. Usually color refer to one color, not more.

Guys, help me here. If you can anything on 青, I’ll be much less confused! Maybe I’m missing something blatantly obvious, but I’m surely stumped by 青. My best bet is the nature or metal theory.

In this case it not only provides homophones, but you have to make sure you know your differences in radicals to not mix them up. Other examples vary a bit more in characters.

I find this implementation of Chinese learning extremely clever. It’s the kind of association thinking that we need in creating new and unique ways to learn languages. What can we do make things interesting? What do you enjoy doing? How can you mix that with Chinese?

Unfortunately, I’ve always find Sudoku too frustrating. No, I don’t suck at maths or puzzles :P. However, I’m sure there’s others out there that enjoy Sudoku and want to mix it up with their Chinese learning.