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Transcript

1. qǐng qǔ xiànjīn 请取现金.

Please take (your) cash.

2. jiāoyì wánchéng hòu, qǐng qǔ huí kǎ 交易完成后,请取回卡.

After (you’ve) completed your transaction, please take back (your) card.

3. qǐng qǔ huí kǎ 请取回卡.

Please take back (your) card.

The ATM says other stuff too, but this is all I personally encounter when I withdraw pinkies. If anyone has any recordings of other (non-China Construction Bank) ATMs that are different, I’m sure it would be interesting to compare. Yeah right! Who records ATMs?

• Stuff you might be hearing – Restaurants
• Colored Tones on MDBG
• Terms of Endearment
• Stating the Obvious
• Language Learning is Messy III: Learn What You Need

Here’s the editor’s purpose statement:

Frequently, readers ask us for help when new Chinese phrases or terms pop up in the press or daily conversations. In an attempt to improve the rendering of such terms in English, we have decided to introduce the weekly “Buzzwords” column starting from today (2005-10-07).

This column has three purposes: first, to provide a tentative English translation of new Chinese terms and phrases that have recently appeared in the press as a reference for our readers; second, to tell our readers what are the latest buzzwords in the local press; and third, to invite readers to help us generate better translations.

A lot of the terms seem to be internet and high tech vocabulary.

If you’re interested, they also have information on that same page about contests they hold for the best English translation of these new words.

I’ve added the RSS feed for Buzzword to the iGoogle page (in the middle column). If you’d like it to appear on your Google home page, with all the other (currently 41) feeds to pick and choose from, please get the latest version of the page by clicking this button (it’s free):

Add “Learn Chinese” to iGoogle

• “Learn Chinese” iGoogle Page 2.0
• “Learn Chinese” iGoogle Page Grand Unveiling
• How to Find Chinese Medical Terms
• Chinese Family Tree
• Field Notes

Inspirational Story

The idea for this song came from one week of class when the topic for my English major students was romance and relationships. Invariably, in every class, someone would ask me how to say àimèi 暧昧 in English. I told them just to say “unclear” because it’s easier to remember than “ambiguous.”

Apparently, an àimèi 暧昧 relationship is one where they haven’t had the DTR (Defining The Relationship) talk but it’s obvious to everyone that there’s some huàxué 化学 there. Ringing in my ears at the end of the week was one brief exchange I heard between two of the girl students. One said, “I really don’t like àimèi 暧昧,” to which the second replied with a coy smile, “I like àimèi 暧昧.” Those opposing ideas were the inspiration for the song.

Much of the rest of the vocabulary came from the same week of classes when students would ask me how to say various things in English and I would learn the Chinese in the process.

Composition Notes

Musically, I was trying to compose a sort of “happy” pop rock inspired mostly by Mayday 五月天.

Lyrically, I wanted to try the “A” rhyme scheme (as discussed here) just to see how hard that really is to do. As a result, the verses each have the following rhyme scheme:

A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A

Verdict: not really that hard, but a little bit tedious. Besides, the chorus was the first part of the song I wrote, and that didn’t follow the same pattern (AABC, DDEC for the chorus).

I hope you enjoy!

• Download the MP3
• Printer-Friendly Lyrics
• Main Song Page

More of my music…

• Why Is It So Easy to Rhyme in Mandarin?
• Watching the Sea
• Pirate This: Music of the Laowai
• Tomb Sweeping Festival
• Book Update: Proofing done. Book at Printer.

A few people have contacted me saying they wanted to write a review of Chinese 24/7 on Amazon.com but couldn’t because they didn’t have an Amazon account. I told the publisher about that problem and they told me the best alternative to writing a review on Amazon is writing one at Barnes & Nobel.

Here’s a button to write a review of your own:

Advantages of Amazon

• I think the reviews on Amazon.com are more widely read and therefore probably more prestigious.
  

Advantages of Barnes & Noble

• It’s simple to do (don’t think you’ve got to use all those little categories of stars, just an overall rating is enough).
• You can create an account and write a review without purchasing anything from their website. With Amazon you have to purchase at least one product from them before you can write a review.
• Not all Barnes & Noble stores (North America) carry Chinese 24/7 yet, and the more positive customer reviews they see on their own sight the more likely they are to carry the book on their shelves.

So all that to say: if you’ve been meaning to write a review but haven’t because of Amazon’s rules, you’ve now got a place to do it. (And if it’s really glowing we might even put it up on the special reviews compilation page.) Thanks again!

• Book in Hand
• Book Update: Proofing done. Book at Printer.
• Book Printed and for Sale on Amazon Again
• Will Amazon Sell Chinese 24/7?
• Book Update: Editing done. Proofing almost done.

wúxiàn shí shàngwǎng

She rattled off some more stats and info that was lost on me, but I had to clarify what she’d just said. I’d been thinking of wireless routers and I thought maybe they were running some sort of Mid-Autumn special for wireless (wúxiàn 无线) capability for getting online (shàngwǎng 上网).

After MANY clarifying questions I found that wúxiàn was really 无限 not 无线. She laughed and said:

mànmàn xué ba 慢慢学吧 = Learn slowly / Take your time learning

It was hard for me not to feel a little patronized especially when the words I’d gotten confused sound EXACTLY the same, and they can BOTH apply to getting online.

The one syllable I was supposed to use to help me figure out which wúxiàn she was talking about was:

wúxiàn shí shàngwǎng

That shí turns out to be shíjiān de shí 时间的时. So that phrase meant “there is no limit to the amount of time I can spend online” and NOT “getting on wireless internet.”

What a hard language.

PS: On the evening of Mid-Autumn Festival I ran into some of my students. I asked where they were going and one replied with only two syllables: “xiǎng yuè.” At first I had no idea what she meant because I’ve never heard that phrase,  but luckily I had predicted that she would say something about the moon. I ran her two syllables through the database of possible things I would have said, then deleted 2 syllables from my results and compared them to what she said. The result came up with the most likely candidate for what she’d meant being: xiǎngshòu yuèliang 享受月亮. MATCH FOUND! It was later confirmed by her. I’ve never heard those two syllables like that before. I consider it a minor miracle that I understood it at all.

What a hard language.

• Stump the Laowai: wúnài 无奈
• Language Learning is Messy V: Celebrate Your Mistakes
• Language Learning is Messy III: Learn What You Need
• Tomb Sweeping Festival
• Four Little Stars

wúnài 无奈

As you can see from the two dictionary links, wúnài 无奈 is sometimes translated as “helpless” or “without choice.” That fits with this situation in which I heard it used recently:

Story 1

I went with a student to a Guangzhou radio station. We were each supposed to record a short interview for some show about campus life or something. After I recorded my interview, the station personnel told the student that they didn’t have time for her interview that day. She’d have to come back some other day. As we were leaving I told her how sorry I was that she’d spent over an hour on the bus getting to the station, and even ditched her afternoon class but didn’t do a thing. She said:

wǒ hěn wúnài 我很无奈

I guess that should be translated as, “There’s nothing I can do about it” or maybe “I feel helpless,” right? I kind of get the feeling that it has the connotation of “Yeah, this is bad but there’s nothing I can do about it.” At least that’s how I try to connect this story with the next one:

Story 2

Some friends and I were watching the semi-finals of the Guangzhou Open (not a huge tournament on the pro circuit) a few weekends ago and some sports journalism majors from Guangzhou Sports University sat with us. They started talking to us and one of the topics of conversation (that they brought up, mind you) was the crowd of xiǎoxuéshēng 小学生, all wearing matching hats, who had been bused in for the first match. The guy told us the kids don’t know (or care) anything about tennis. The organizers just wanted the bleachers to look full for the TV cameras. I nodded in understanding and the guy said:

hěn wúnài, shì ba? 很无奈是吧?

I tried to clarify with him “What is wúnài? This situation? Your feelings? My feelings?” But, as so often happens to me, the water just got muddier and, in the end, I gave up trying to get him to explain what he meant.

I’m constantly stumped when students as me in class how to say “wúnài” in English. I usually just tell them to go with “helpless” but I don’t know if that’s the best translation, and I don’t know how it would apply to the second story. If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or guidance, please comment away.

In closing, here’s the first time I ever heard the word:

[See original post to listen to audio]

(from Bù de bú ài 不得不爱 by 潘玮柏, lyrics here)

• Unlimited Wireless Internet
• New Song: Àimèi de Guānxi 暧昧的关系
• The Curse of the Convergent Concepts
• Stump the Laowai: shànghuǒ 上火
• Beware of False Friends

In an attempt to stay topical and current in my English classes leading up to China’s liùshí zhōunián guóqìng 六十周年国庆 (and I’m talking zhōusuì 周岁, by the way), I’ve let the students discuss various related subjects in our class such as what will happen this year to celebrate the founding of the country and what changes the country has gone through in the past 60 years.

(As a side note, I was stumped, again, when a student said that part of the celebration will be yuèbīng 阅兵 and didn’t know how to say it in English. Knowing full well that Zhōngqiūjié 中秋节 will be right in the middle of this year’s Guóqìngjié 国庆节 I proudly announced that the most common translation is “moon cakes.” Never before has the class been so active. “Not yuèbǐng 月饼, we’re talking about yuèbīng 阅兵!” they shouted as I suppressed every instinct I had to launch into a rant about the tones and listening comprehension. Breathe. Yes. It’s OK.)

One of the discussion questions was:

“What do the stars on the guóqí 国旗 stand for?”

I really wanted to know. It’s my fifth year enjoying the not-really-a-whole-week-of-vacation-because-we-have-to-make-up-classes-on-the-weekends, so it’s high time I learned that little factoid.

The big star is certainly the Communist Party (Gòngchǎndǎng 共产党). But surprisingly, the students (in every class) couldn’t agree on what the four small stars stand for. So out came the shǒujī-s 手机 with their mobile internet browsers and that’s when the debate finally got rolling.

One student was adamant that the four yellow stars stand for:

1. nóngmín 农民 = farmers
2. gōngrén 工人 = workers
3. lǎoshī 老师 = teachers
4. xuésheng 学生 = students

The other students approved farmers and workers but vehemently shot down teachers and students.

That lead the first student to go online and immediately prove herself wrong by reporting that she is now equally sure that they are:

1. nóngmín 农民 = farmers
2. gōngrén 工人 = workers
3. xiǎo zīchǎn jiējí 小资产阶级 = petty bourgeois
4. mínzú zīchǎn jiējí 民族资产阶级 = national bourgeois?? ethnic bourgeois??

She probably found this baidu page, which is a sort of Yahoo-Answers-style forum in which people vote for the answer that seems the best. The above currently has 134 thumbs up (and also seems to agree with the site I borrowed that flag picture from).

I’m not super clear on what those English terms mean, but that site claims they are four social classes. Um, well, I don’t know quite how to say this but, isn’t the idea of different classes um, well, different from the whole idea of the big star? I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying I don’t understand. [insert hands-up, palms-forward emoticon here]

Later, a student staring at his phone proudly announced that he’d found the answer:

1. nóngmín 农民 = farmers
2. gōngrén 工人 = workers
3. shìbīng 士兵 = soldiers
4. zhīshí fènzi 知识分子 = intellectuals
5. qīngnián 青年 = youth

I came home and did a Google search to find where he got his info. Result number one took me to this baidu site , which has the same list.

My suspicions were immediately aroused when I saw a) there are actually five groups, and b) the “Vietnamese Communist party” made an appearance or two. Upon closer reading, I found that despite the the phrase “Chinese flag” in the header of the article, that little biadu post is actually about what each of the five points of the star on the Vietnamese (and maybe Chinese) flag stands for. Apparently my student didn’t realize that and just reported the first list he found that started with farmers and workers.

Everyone agrees on farmers and workers, but the other two stars are still up for grabs. So, I’m going to have a little contest.

The first person to explain what the 4 little stars stand for (and give an authoritative source) wins the prize.

The prize: I’ll cancel that box of moon cakes I’m planning to send you.

Friendly reminder: This is strictly a language-focused, non-political blog. Please avoid comments that will get me banned in China. Thanks!

• New Song: Àimèi de Guānxi 暧昧的关系
• Stump the Chinese: Velcro and Boombox
• Banana Shoes
• ChineseTeachers.com – My Review
• The Curse of the Convergent Concepts

Me: nǐ jǐ suì le?

Boy: shí suì bā suì.

Me: shí suì ma?

Boy: shí suì bā suì.

Me: (looking confusedly at the mother) tā jǐ suì le? bā suì háishì shí suì?

Mother: tā yǒu bā suì…(something I couldn’t understand)…shí suì.

Me: suǒyǐ…tā…um…yǒu bā suì…le…ba…de…ma…ne…qǐlái?

Ok, so I might be exaggerating with that last line, but the point is: I was grasping at straws! I was shocked that I could be so stumped by such a simple question. It’s one of the sure-fire ways to commandeer a conversation: ask a question that requires a simple number as the response. The problem was they seemed to be telling me that the boy was both 8 years old (bā suì 八岁) and 10 years old (shí suì 十岁 ).

OK, no doubt you’re all pointing at your computer screens laughing at me because you know all about the traditional Asian age reckoning system that counts a child as being one year old at birth. Well I did too. But, as so often happens in Chinese, there was yet ANOTHER way of saying it that I didn’t know, thus adding to the nightmare of listening comprehension.

The Chinese Wikipedia sorted it all out for me:

• xūsuì 虚岁 = traditional Asian age system where you’re born and you’re already one year old (Wikipedia article).
• zhōusuì 周岁 also known as shísuì 实岁 = system where you’re born at zero years old (Wikipedia article).
  

So they were saying “according to the system where you’re born at zero years old, this boy is eight years old.”

That clears it all up except for one little thing: why would they think that I, a laowai in China, would want that extra information? I guess they were just being very thorough with their answer? But the kid himself said it to me first. Is that how he and his friends talk on the playground at school?

Kid 1: How old are you?

Kid 2: Eight

Kid 1: Earth years?

Kid 2: Yeah, so?

Kid 1: Which system of age calculation?

Kid 2: Zero years old at birth?

Kid 1: Oh, OK. I’m only five, but that’s in Martian years.

Kid 2: OK, so I’ll call you gēge 哥哥.

I mean, it just seems a bit overly clear for an eight-year-old unless he’s used to dealing with both systems.

So, my questions for dàjiā 大家 (especially my two Chinese readers):

1. Which system of age calculation do you use most often?

2. When stating your age, do you also usually state whether you’re talking about xūsuì 虚岁 or zhōusuì 周岁 or is one of them tacitly understood as the default?

3. How often is the other system of age calculation used? Only in special situations? With certain generations of people?

But mostly:

4. Why would this kid (and then his mother) tell me that they were talking about shísuì 實歲.

Thanks for your help.

*BONUS* If you’ve got Quick Time installed, you can find out how old you really are on Mars.

• Happy 50th, Pinyin! Happy 102nd, Creator!
• Tomb Sweeping Festival
• Language Learning is Messy II: Talk a Lot
• bié 别 vs. bú yào 不要
• The Pinyin Wall

(names changed to protect my ego)

Me: So, are you and Jenny…you know…an “item” now?

Tommy: Oh yeah. You didn’t know that?

Me: I just heard from Edgar. How long has that been going on?

Tommy: Hmm…I guess since about May.

The moral of the story (of my life) is: I’m always the last to know.

New Tone Diagram

In keeping with the theme, I just recently saw this post from John Pasden (9 months behind everyone else is pretty good for me).

John has drawn a new tones diagram that’s supposed to be better than the standard tones diagram at showing what really happens when native Chinese speakers talk normally.

The Old Standard Diagram:

John’s New Tone Diagram:

The only thing new about this diagram is the 3rd tone but I immediately saw the sense to it.

The fact is: most of the time, native speakers just hit the bottom of the 3rd tone, exactly like this diagram shows.

This diagram is especially useful for showing what happens when tones appear in combination. And when don’t they?! I mean, how many of us have one-syllable conversations?! You’ll always be saying at least two syllables in a row, and that means two tones in a row.

Without mapping out all 25 combinations of two tones (5 x 5 because of that “neutral tone” which moves around), this diagram is good for a quick rule of thumb for where that 3rd tone is most of the time.

I’d like to post my diagrams for the 25 different combinations of two tones but since those appear in my book, I’ll have to check with my publisher to make sure I’m not violating something (although I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t sue myself).

Tones are the single biggest challenge to learning Mandarin and we laowai need better conceptual models than the traditional diagram and rules. Thanks John and Dr. Rongrong Liao of the Defense Language Institute for getting the ball rolling.

• Tone Changes
• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• Funnest Things to Say
• The Quest for “Anyway” II: Success!
• Parrot People Help My Tones

Presenting the Chinese Name Gender Guesser!

It immediately guessed that 张安平 was a boy and 李娟 was a girl. So I gave it (one name at a time) an entire class roster of 20 of my English students here at the college.

Result: 19/20 gender guessed correctly!

To protect the innocent, I’m not going to give you the name of the girl it thought was a boy. But still, I thought that was pretty good.

Just remember that whatever the first character is will be treated as the family name. So if you only know the given name of the person you’re trying to identify, just make up a family name for him/her (like 张).

I just HAD to know how it worked so I emailed Chinese-Tools. They told me it’s based on this database by Wudi.

Here’s an excerpt from the email I got back from Chinese-Tools:

There’s a database with a lot of Chinese characters, and for each of them a gender level indicator. For example 丽 is 100% female, 军 100% male, but some like 丹 can be both, maybe 65% female. Then an average of both characters of the name is calculated.

Very cool. Yet another example of how creative, open-source, free databases are making everyone’s lives better. Thanks Wudi!

• Wanted: Chinese Name Gender Reference
• He/She Mistake in the News
• Addressing strangers
• Mates
• Stump the Laowai: shànghuǒ 上火