Chipanglish

Arizona Immigration and Education

Peter — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:46:55 +0000

A blogger for the Wall Street Journal has written a post commenting on the impact the immigration law may have on education.

The new law requires police to question anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. The educational implication for this may result in the arbitrary firing of teachers with heavy accents or have less than standard English syntax or morphology.

The reasoning given behind this is, “How can you expect a student learning English to learn it properly from someone who has trouble with the language himself or herself? Whether it be through clarity of pronunciation, mixing syntax and morphology, or otherwise ‘mangling’ the language?”

The question at the core is how to deem one person more “American” than the next, using linguistics as a tool. I know many children who are US born to immigrant parents who speak with accented English and have less than perfect syntax because they learned English simultaneously as their native tongue. Others have become naturalized citizens, are hard-working professionals, who just happen to have accents as English was not their first language. Though they are US Citizens, this new law could potentially threaten the employment of Arizona teachers in these situations.

First, nobody speaks “perfect” English. We all use slang, mix tenses, leave prepositions at the end of sentences, etc. If grammar and spelling were markers for teaching employment, a large majority of teachers would find themselves with pink slips. (I was in a classroom today where the teacher had written “grammer” on the board.) Or what about the many students (and teachers) who consistently mix up “there”, “their”, and “they’re”? Or those who write, “should of” instead of “should have”? Should those individuals be interrogated too?

Second, what about regional accents? There are many accents within our nation that people from outside that geographic region find difficult to understand. Fran Drescher’s New York accent? Or what about a heavy Southern drawl? Or the nasal accent associated with “Wes-caaaahn-sin”?

While I understand why this law was passed and the intention behind it, the whole thing just seems poorly thought out. I suspect it will affect many people in ways that its writers had not previously thought.

Bilingual School

Peter — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:36:46 +0000

I recently read a news article about a school in which I have been a substitute teacher. For reasons unknown to the general public, the principal and a teacher have been removed from their positions.

This is the only fully Spanish-bilingual school in a district with a high Latino population. Several other schools have bilingual classrooms, but at White Rock, every class is bilingual. In fact, all classroom teachers are required to speak, read, and write Spanish at the fluency of a native speaker.

What bothers me most are the comments from the public that accompany the article such as, (paraphrasing) “Learn to speak English, this is America… stop wasting my tax dollars.”

First, even at the kindergarten level, most students are fluent in spoken English. The students who come from Spanish speaking households are on par with their native English speaking peers in terms of literacy. As a non-Spanish speaking teacher, I have had no linguistic troubles at the school.

Second, though the school is bilingual, many non-Spanish speaking students attend because of diversity.

Third, it is a school. The point of a school is to have a safe place where students can learn. What better place for students new to the country to learn the primary language here?

Finally, studies have shown that many minority families, particularly non-English speaking families, are apprehensive to be involved in their children’s school due to a language barrier. At White Rock, because most staff members speak Spanish, that fear is gone. Parents at White Rock are not afraid to speak to their children’s teachers and become active in education. Isn’t that what all schools strive for? Additionally, it is a powerful for students to see many of their own heritage as positive role models, instead of relying on stereotypes of what societal roles a Mexican immigrant can and cannot do.

While I do not know what is going on with the school, including rumors it may close or be repurposed as an administration building, it is a special place. The staff and students have been nothing but friendly and welcoming to all who pass through their doors.

iPhone Chinese Alphabet App

Peter — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:09:19 +0000

Good Characters, Inc has come out with a new iPhone application: Chinese Alphabet. Thankfully, the creators realize such a thing does not exist and this is for entertainment value only, to add “mystery” to your writing. Of course, everything from the Orient is mysterious…

To those gullible enough to think this will translate their writing into real Chinese, for just $1.99 you can sound like an idiot!

三內丁口了!

According to the app, it says “Enjoy”, but it actually says:
“Three inside diced meat/vegetables mouth [past tense marker]!”

On second thought, I might actually enjoy three pieces of diced meat/vegetables in my mouth. Mmm… beef stew.

Invented Languages

Peter — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:40:49 +0000

With the popularity of the film, Avatar, linguists around the world have a new invented language to expose their geekiness: Na’vi.

Poised to join the ranks of other invented languages like Esperanto, Quenya (aka High-Elvish), and Klingon, Na’vi is sure to amass a following of nerds and linguists at future nerd conventions like Comic-con.

But philosophically, it calls into a greater question. What makes a language a language? Vocabulary? Native speakers? A grammar filled with syntax, phonology, phonetics, morphology, and semantics?

Having tried to create my own fictional language, I can tell you it is a lot more sophisticated than just making up words.

Anyway, score another one for the linguistic nerds out there!

What’s in a Name? En Español!

Peter — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:47:57 +0000

I came across this article.

Hooray for more paranoia induced ignorant racism!

I suppose this means the next time I visit an tropical island-themed hotel, I should ask Larry to change his name to something more tropical. I mean, it is part of the experience, right?

Bird or Fish?

Peter — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:53:32 +0000

Two weeks ago, I read an article in the New York Times about nomenclature. The author argues that there is something inherent about the way we name things, particularly animals, that lets us separate them into categories. Brent Berlin, an ethnobiologist at the University of Georgia conducted a study asking students to listen to a pair of 50 names read aloud. Each pair contained the name of a fish and the name of a bird. To combat bias, he chose names from the Huambisa language, spoken by people of the same name in Peru.

Students were able to correctly identify the bird and the fish 58% of the time, suggesting that they subconsiously picked up on linguistic cues. Somehow, the names gave a sense of “bird-ness” or “fish-ness”.

Statistically speaking, random guessing would give a result hovering around 50%. A scaled-down version of the quiz can be found here. Interestingly, I took the quiz and was able to correctly identify the bird in 9 of the 10 questions, despite not having any exposure to the language. Maybe there is something to this idea.

This got me thinking, what about non-Latinate languages? I’ve written a mini quiz for Chinese with 10 pairs of names. Each pair contains a flower and a bird. (I couldn’t find a list of fish names with audio pronunciations. However, the study suggests that this pairing could also work, in that the two categories are distinguishable with distinct characteristics. Whereas, distinguishing the name of a tree and a bush is more difficult since the defining characteristics between the two aren’t as distinct.) Can you pick out the bird? To remove visual clues from radicals, I will only give the Pinyin and an audio pronunciation. Click on the links for audio.

1. a) wu1 dong1 1a, b) shui3 xian1 1b
2. a) chu2 ju2 2a, b) he4 2b
3. a) ge1 3a , b) mu4 jin4 3b
4. a) ying1 4a, b) shu3 kui2 4b
5. a) shao2 yao4 5a, b) fei3 5b
6. a) kong3 que4 6a, b) ying1 su4 6b
7. a) bai2 tou2 ying1 7a, b) yu3 jin4 xiang1 7b
8. a) ge1 zi3 8a, b) gong1 ren2 cao3 8b
9. a) xiang4 ri4 kui2 9a, b) guan4 9b
10. a) pu2 gong1 ying1 10a, b) jin1 si1 que4 10b

So? How’d you do? Which ones are the birds?

Answers: (highlight below to reveal answers)
The birds: 1. a; 2. b; 3. a; 4. a; 5. b; 6. a; 7. a; 8. a; 9. b; 10. b

So I’ve Been Lazy

Yvonne — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:10:06 +0000

I haven’t cracked open a non-English book in weeks, including Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook. I haven’t done any practice with my Anki decks either. The truth is, I was on the verge of language burnout, and then I had to work a billion hours to finish my dissertation. Brain fried.

And so I’ve been lazy.

Though this doesn’t mean I haven’t been getting worthy language practice, as it turns out.

My husband and I have been watching Code Geass. Japanese audio, English subtitles. Each episode is a little over 20 minutes long and we finished Episode 20 today. I’ve already noticed some improvement in my Japanese comprehension even with this small amount of semi-immersion.

And then I read How to Learn Spanish for Lazy People on Spanish Only:

5 Reasons Lazy People Are Better Language Learners

They generally don’t worry all too much.

They don’t use textbooks.

Instead, they use native materials.

They have all the time of the world to get massive amounts of input well before ever speaking a word.

When they eventually speak it’s again stress-free, aiming to get their point across (which, miracally often goes without making loads of mistakes and/or pauses).

It made me feel even better about my laziness.

Because to be honest, I hate doing SRS. I hate being glued to my dictionary. I hate being all systematic and angsty about my language progress. And trying to study three different languages every day is a good way to make your brain all ‘splody.

So I’m going to relax. Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook is going on hiatus (and frankly, I was starting to run out of the funny phrases anyways).

For Japanese and Spanish, my new goal is to watch 1000 hours of TV in each language before I attempt any more formal study. For the time being, I’ve decided that subtitles in Japanese are ok, as I’m basically starting from nothing here. If I use subtitles on the Spanish TV, they must be in Spanish.

I’ve already gotten my 1000 hours of native-speed Chinese audio, so I will start reading through the massive collection of children’s books I have. Once I get through all of those (without systematically mining them for vocabulary), I’ll re-evaluate where I am.

Here’s where I am so far, going as far back as my Spanish movie-watching week (during which I also snuck in a viewing of Spirited Away):

Japanese: 9.4/1000 hours

Spanish: 7.8/1000 hours

Chinese Etymology

Peter — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 05:36:13 +0000

I stumbled across this website while perusing one of favorite etymology websites. Growing up and attending Chinese school, we saw pictographs that eventually became the written characters today. However, after looking at some of the archaic written Chinese, I’m not convinced they weren’t written by preschoolers.

Take for example, 高 gao1, which means “tall”. Here are the historic writing samples.

Is it just me or do a lot of them look like houses?

In any case, I still fail to see the connection between many words and their associated meanings.

*The website classifies characters by time in history with “Seal” characters being the most recent (not counting modern Chinese) and “Oracle” characters as the oldest.

I, For One, Welcome Our New 魚完美 Overlords

Yvonne — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:29:59 +0000

Have you seen The Onion lately?

A screenshot for posterity’s sake:

Make sure you check out the store too.

Here are the Chinese items from the news ticker:

起來, 各位中華民族的移民子弟! 收回你的命运!
反抗時刻即將到達, 各位在位做好準備.
重要目標已選擇, 時間不久了.

Translation after the jump.

Continue reading I, For One, Welcome Our New 魚完美 Overlords (93 words) »

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Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook: Astrology

Yvonne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:00:59 +0000

“Do you believe in horoscopes?”

你相信星座嗎?
Ni3 xiang1 xin4 xing1 zuo4 ma1?

あんたは星座を信じますか。
Anata wa seiza wo shinjimasuka.

Straightforward sentence structures this week! Because you need to spend all your mental energy trying to figure out how to work this sentence into the conversation. It’s not even “What’s your sign?”

In Chinese: 你 = you, 相信 = believe, 星座 = zodiac signs (though the dictionary defines it as “constellation”), 嗎 = question marker.

In Japanese: あんた = you, は = subject marker, 星座 = zodiac signs, を = object marker, 信じます = believe, か = question marker.

Note that “Do you believe in zodiac signs?” seems to be a slightly better English translation.

People learning both Chinese and Japanese get a double bonus this week: easy sentences and the same characters in both languages!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #15: If You’re Ever On a Reality TV Show…

Yvonne — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:00:50 +0000

This week’s “essential travel phrase” is actually quite useful for those traveling, say, to a remote island or to a glorified hamster cage with the hopes of winning lots of money and becoming famous (not necessarily in that order).

“I have no regrets.”

我毫無遺憾.
Wo3 hao2 wu2 yi2 han4.

私は残念だと思いません。
Watashi wa zannen da to omoimasen.

The Chinese is easy. 我 = I, 毫無 = don’t have any (literally, “in the least, don’t have”), 遺憾 = regret. Chinese doesn’t really have a plural form.

The Japanese…confuses me. I think it’s because I hardly know any Japanese and not because the sentence is somehow wrong. 私 = I, は = subject marker. That’s the easy part. My dictionary says 残念に思う (zannen ni omou) is “to feel bad” (literally “‘hard luck!’ [adverb marker] to feel”), so I think 残念に思いません (zannen ni omoimasen) should be “to not feel bad”. But the phrasebook has 残念だと思いません (zannen da to omoimasen), and I’m not quite sure what function the だと in the middle serves.

Google Translate defines だと as “if it’s the case”. EnglishJapaneseOnlineDictionary.com gives an example sentence using だと: そうだと思います (sō dato omoimasu), “I guess so”, which I guess literally translates to “yes, if that’s the case, I feel it.” If that’s the case, then 残念だと思いません is “hard luck! If that’s the case, I don’t feel it.”

On the other hand, it might be that だ and と are supposed to be separate, and I think the audio suggests this. My dictionary defines だ as “be”, and と思う as “to regard as”. If that’s the case, then 残念だと思いません is “hard luck it be!, I don’t regard it as.”

If you know which interpretation is right (or if neither interpretation is right, or if it’s six of one, half dozen of the other), please leave a comment and let me know!

The beauty of learning through immersion is that you really don’t have to fret this much about the specifics of the grammar. Just learn the sentence (and many, many others) and your brain will figure out the patterns of correct usage.

Language / Dementia Correlation

Peter — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:40:33 +0000

A former linguistics classmate posted a link to this article from the BBC News website on her Facebook. Turns out “superior language skills” in your 20s may be an indicator against dementia.

The study looked at 38 Catholic nuns and analyzed their brains post-mortem. Analysis of sample essays written in their 20s for complex language skills and grammar was also done.

The women who had better memory in their later years scored higher in language skills.

Superior grammar skills, however, showed no correlation.

I’d be curious to see a more extensive study, given that this study was only done on a group of 38 nuns. I’m especially curious to see one that includes men, given the preconception that men are more linguistically challenged than women.

If anything you can have fun being a polyglot by asking the nursing home staff for water in eight different languages, provided you remember them.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #14: Tom Cruise

Yvonne — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:00:26 +0000

Is being compared to Tom Cruise a compliment or an insult? You might want to suss that out before trying this phrase.

“Has anyone told you that you look like Tom Cruise?”

有人跟你說過你長得像湯姆克魯斯嗎?
You3 ren2 gen1 ni3 shuo1 guo4 ni3 zhang3 de5 xiang4 tang1 mu3 ke4 lu3 si1 ma1?

タム·クルーズに似てるって言われませんか。
Tamu Kurūzu ni niterutte iwaremasen ka.

We’ve seen English-words-turned-Chinese before, but this is the first time a name is getting transliterated. And what a disaster it is! “Tom Cruise”, two syllables that roll easily off an English-speaking tongue, becomes the tongue-twisting gibberish phrase 湯姆克魯斯 (tang1 mu3 ke4 lu3 si1). It’s “Soup Mother Restraining Stupid Thus”, if you must have an attempt at a translation.

The construction of the Chinese sentence is almost as brain-twisting as Tom Cruise’s name is tongue-twisting. 有 = there are, 人 = people, 跟你說過 = told you before (literally, “with you tell past”), 你 = you, 長得像 = look like (literally, “grown to resemble”), 湯姆克魯斯 = Tom Cruise, 嗎 = question marker.

The Japanese is a relief in comparison, though it’s still not one of the easiest sentences we’ve done. タム·クルーズ = Tom Cruise, nicely spelled out phonetically in Katakana, に = adverb marker, 似てるって = resembled, 言われません = been described, か = question marker.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook, Now with Audio!

Yvonne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:17:06 +0000

I’m happy to announce that Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook now has audio! Starting next Monday, all Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook posts will contain .wav files with native speakers uttering the sentence. In the meantime, the audio has been added to the back catalogue. As usual, the Chinese is given first, then the Japanese. Enjoy!

“Are you nuts?”

你是笨蛋嗎?
Ni3 shi4 ben4 dan4 ma1?

あなたはバカですか?
Anata wa baka desu ka?
“That’s your problem.”

那是你的問題.
Na4 shi4 ni3 de5 wen4 ti2.

それはあなたの問題です。
Sore wa anata no mondai desu.
“Don’t stand on the desk!”

不要站在桌上!
Bu2 yao4 zhan4 zai4 zhuo1 shang4!

机の上に立たないでください!
Tsukue no ue ni tatanai de kudasai!
“I’m really into toy collectibles.”

我很喜歡公仔.
Wo3 hen2 xi3 huan1 gong1 zai3.

人形遊びが好きです。
Ningyō asobi ga suki desu.
“Mom just blew up at me.”

媽媽剛剛對我大發脾氣.
Ma1 ma3 gang1 gang1 dui4 wo3 da4 fa1 pi2 qi4.

さっきお母さんが私を怒ったんだ。
Sakki okāsan ga watashi wo okottanda.
“I have bulging teeth.”

我有兔寶寶門牙.
Wo2 you3 tu4 bao3 bao1 men2 ya2.

私の前歯は大きいです。
Watashi no maeba wa ōkii desu.
“My computer is rebooting on its own again!”

我的電腦又自己重新啟動了!
Wo3 de dian4 nao3 you4 zi4 ji3 chong2 xin1 qi3 dong4 le5!

コンピューターが勝手に再起動しました。
Konpyuta ga katte ni saikidō shimashita.
“All you need is an espresso maker.”

只需要一台濃縮咖啡機就夠了.
Zhi3 xu1 yao4 yi4 tai2 nong2 suo1 ka1 fei1 ji1 jiu4 gou4 le5.

エスプレッソマシーンが必要ですね。
Esupuresso mashīn ga hitsuyō desu ne.
“Don’t make a pig of yourself.”

你別吃太多啊!
Ni3 bie2 chi1 tai4 duo1 a5!

食べ過ぎないで！
Tabe suginai de!
“Let’s try walking backwards.”

試試看倒退走.
Shi4 shi4 kan4 dao4 tui4 zou3.

後ろ向きに歩いてみて。
Ushiro muki ni aruitemite.
“What a pair of fancy sandals.”

好別緻的涼鞋喔!
Hao3 bie2 zhi4 de5 liang2 xie2 wo5!

すてきなサンダルですね！
Suteki na sandaru desu ne!
“I got the flu from my roommate.”

我被室友傳染了流行性感冒.
Wo3 bei4 shi4 you3 chuan2 ran3 liu2 xing2 xing4 gan3 mao4.

ルーマメートに流感をうつされました。
Rūmamēto ni ryūkan wo utsusaremashita.
“I’ve got a mosquito bite on my face.”

我的臉被蚊子咬.
Wo3 de5 lian3 bei4 wen2 zi5 yao3.

顔を蚊に刺されました。
Kao wo ka ni sasaremashita.

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #13: Mosquito Bites

Yvonne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:00:52 +0000

“I’ve got a mosquito bite on my face.”

我的臉被蚊子咬.
Wo3 de5 lian3 bei4 wen2 zi5 yao3.

顔を蚊に刺されました。
Kao wo ka ni sasaremashita.

The 被 construction, which we first saw last week, rears its head again. Otherwise, the Chinese is about as simple as it gets. 我的 = my; 臉 = face; 被 = marker to indicate the subject of the sentence is the recipient of some action; 蚊子 = mosquito; 咬 = bite.

Note that the character for “face” looks kind of like a face!

臉
lian3

The left side of the character, 月, means moon by itself, but is often used as a radical for person-things. I’m not really sure why that is, but you can see 月-as-radical in a few of the 奇先生，妙小姐 titles.

The Japanese is also just about as simple as it gets. 顔 = face (note: not the same character as the Chinese); を = object marker; 蚊 = mosquito (note: the same character as the Chinese); に = to; 刺されました = bite, past tense.

A Compendium of Useless Spanish Phrases

Yvonne — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:06:21 +0000

In keeping with theme of my last post and Khatzumoto’s immerse-in-fun strategy, I’ve been watching some of my favorite movies with the Spanish language tracks turned on. I do want to learn how to say “launch photon torpedoes” in Japanese someday, but that will have to wait until we have some Japanese movies that aren’t Miyazaki or Kurosawa works.

In the meantime, you can probably guess what I watched today from this list:

¡Inconcebible! Sigue usando esa palabra. No creo que significa lo que cree que significa.
¡No soy zurdo! ¡No tampoco zurdo!
el Pantano de Fuego
Buenas noches, Westley, buen trabajo, probablemente te mate en la mañana.
¡Hasta la muerte! ¡No, hasta el dolor!
¿Qué tal? Mi nombre es Iñigo Montoya. Mataste a mi padre. Prepárate para morir.

I can’t quite make out what the Spanish for Rodents of Unusual Sizes is. The subtitles say Roedores de Tamaño Extraordinario, but that definitely doesn’t match the dialogue.

Chipanglish: Compiling impractical phrases in multiple languages since 2009.

Yes, I did happen to learn quite a bit of useful Spanish too, though I’m guessing the frequency of people yelling “¡Corre(n)!” in the movie world is a lot higher than in real life. “¡No comas eso!”, my personal Waterloo from months back, made an early appearance in Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban.

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #5: Cowardly Rat

Peter — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:13:43 +0000

We start a new series of short stories. Each story highlights one of the animals that make up the Chinese Zodiac. Today’s story is about the rat.

膽小如鼠
dan3 xiao3 ru2 shu3
The Cowardly Rat

According to the Zodiac, the rat is seen for his intelligence and cunning yet sensitive nature. In this story, we meet a rat prince who insists that he is brave, despite his species’ reputation to be fearful and meek. To prove his bravery on behalf of all members of the genus Rattus, he reads a fairytale and decides to go slay a fire-breathing dragon. Yeah… good luck with that.

Alas, no fire breathing dragons are to be found. But he stumbles a princess who’s been locked up in a tower. I shall call her Asian Rapunzel, given her long flowing braid in the illustration. There’s even an evil which who calls up to her, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your raven hair.” (Ok, so the last part was a slight mistranslation on my part.)

Anyhoo, the rat abandons the idea of dragon slaying and decides to rescue the princess. Upon hearing that the rat prince is there to save her, Asian Rapunzel freaks out. She whips her braid out the window, lashes it to a tree, and thrusts herself out. (In episode 111, Mythbusters. actually proved it’s possible for a rope of human hair to hold the weight of a human, allowing someone to break out of prison.) When the witch comes to check on Asian Rapunzel, the rat sees her hideous face and freaks out.

Moral of the story. Everyone has moments of brave and moments of being a nervous wreck.

Much more condensed (and in a much smaller font than the previous things I’ve read), this story is more advanced both in content and in language than the previous pieces of literature. It is full of idioms which may only be known to a native speaker. It helps the reader learn more colloquial vocabulary. Having the phonetic transliteration with each character helps the reader decipher pronunciation. The man illustrations also give the reader clues as to story elements. While still a children’s story, the themes are less cutesy with rainbows and unicorn sparkles.

It’s definitely worth reading for the idioms alone.

Up next: The story for the Ox for which the title does not have a nice translation. Even my mom got confused when she read the title.

Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!

Yvonne — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:05:13 +0000

I basically abandoned both my Chinese and Japanese texts as of this post and its sleep-inducing adventures learning Chinese at Seton Hall University.

I’m seeing the wisdom in Khatzumoto‘s principle: if it’s not something you’d voluntarily read in your L1, why bother with it in L2? Read/watch the fun stuff first; it’ll help with the boring stuff later.

I did manage to acquire a whole mess of children’s books in Chinese to supplement my reading (including the dozen 奇先生，妙小姐 books I scored yesterday), but it’s been more of a struggle to get Japanese books that aren’t so far beyond me that reading them would just be an exercise in frustration. One of the books I did eventually buy is Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!

This book is co-authored by Eric Carle (エリッカ　カール) of Very Hungry Caterpillar fame and Japanese illustrator Kazuo Iwamura (いわむら　かずお). The English story, illustrated by Carle, reads from left to right; the (almost identical) Japanese story, illustrated by Iwamura, reads from right to left the way Japanese is traditionally written. The two stories meet in the middle of the book.

I totally want the puppy in Iwamura’s illustrations. Black shiba inu, maybe?

Like most children’s picture books, the text is pretty repetitive, which is good for language learning. The Japanese text is all written in hiragana, with the phonetic pronunciation written next to each character.

This is a decent introduction to Japanese, particularly if you are just learning hiragana. However, there are a couple drawbacks to this book for people farther along on the learning curve.

The word segmentation, in some cases, makes it more difficult to look words up in the dictionary. Granted, you should be glad there’s any word segmentation at all! But seeing どこへ　いくの is a bit misleading when どこ and いく appear in the dictionary by themselves; へ and の are a preposition and a grammatical marker, respectively.

The other drawback is the lack of Kanji, which also makes it difficult to look up the meaning of the phrases. For example, what appears in the book as どこへ　いくの would normally be どこへ行くの. The lack of Kanji in this phrase isn’t so confusing, but I had a hell of a time with ともだちに　あいに, especially the あいに. There’s no dictionary entry for aini, and the only entry for ai is 愛, or love. But that doesn’t make any sense in context. Turns it’s supposed to be 会, or association, but thanks to Japanese’s multiple ways of pronouncing the same Kanji that appears in the dictionary under kai. Putting the Kanji in there would have helped resolve the phonetic ambiguity.

This is what the Japanese text in Where Are You Going? To See My Friend! would look like written in standard Japanese:

どこへ行くの？
友達に会いに！

どんな友達？
歌がうまいんだ。

歌なら私も大好き。
ニャオ　ニャオ　ニャオ [or other animal noises]
私も会いたいな。

いいとも。
僕の友達わ君の友達さ。

This repeats for a while, and then after the rabbit arrives you get this exchange:

どんな友達？
歌がうまいんだ。
ダンスも上手。
ダンスなら僕も大好き。
タッ　タッ　タッ
僕も会いたいな。

After some more animal noises, the dog introduces the girl with:

皆僕の友達だよ。

And the girl responds with:

わーい！
あなたの友達は私の友達よ。
皆歌がうまいし、ダンスも上手。
私の友達が来たよ。
さあ、歌お！
さあ、踊ろ！

Do a comparison if you own a copy of the book. It’s a big difference!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #12: Swine Flu Quarantine Edition

Yvonne — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:00:31 +0000

I’m going to hope that you don’t find this to be a useful travel phrase. Because if you ever utter this sentence while visiting China, it probably means you’re chatting with these folks in Hotel Quarantine or will be shortly.

“I got the flu from my roommate.”

我被室友傳染了流行性感冒.
Wo3 bei4 shi4 you3 chuan2 ran3 liu2 xing2 xing4 gan3 mao4.

ルーマメートに流感をうつされました。
Rūmamēto ni ryūkan wo utsusaremashita.

The grammatical structure on the Chinese sentence is pretty weird for English speakers. This is the first time we’re seeing the marker 被 on Chipanglish. 被 indicates that the subject of the sentence, in this case 我, is on the receiving end of some action. 我 = I, 室友 = roommate (literally “room friend”), 傳染 = to infect, 了 = marker to indicate an action is completed, 流行性感冒 = the flu.

But what is really interesting about this sentence comes in this long phrase for “flu”: 流行性感冒. The first two characters form the compound 流行, which means “trendy” or “popular”. 性 is an adjective marker. The last two characters for the compound 感冒, which means “common cold” and literally translates to “feel steamy”. So flu is a trendy steamy feeling. Hah! I love how Chinese can be so evocative, sometimes bizarrely so.

The grammar is pretty standard Japanese, which means it seems contorted to an English speaker—implied subject, actor, object, and finally the verb. ルーマメート = roommate, に = by, 流感 = flu, を = object marker, うつされました = infected. Now, note that the Kanji for “flu”, 流感, are plucked from the Chinese compound. You see this in Japanese a lot, where rather than borrowing a whole phrase from another language, they’ll just borrow bits of that phrase and mash it together to form a shorter compound.

Intriguing Characters

Yvonne — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:28:19 +0000

We went to Half-Price Books today to sell some books. Which, by the way, I think is a total racket, albeit one I participate in willingly. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to sell books and not spend more than their entire offer while waiting for them to process my pile.

I’d hoped to get a bunch of children’s books in Spanish, figuring that since muchos hispanohablantes viven aquí I had above-average odds of getting something good. I did walk away with a copy of Cinderella (or Cenicienta) and passed on a copy of Harry Potter 2, but the Spanish selection turned out to be pretty disappointing.

But there were some unexpected finds on the Foreign Language shelf. First, a copy of 金魚が逃げた (Hiragana: きんぎょがにげた; Romaji: Kingyo ga Nigeta; English: The Goldfish Escaped).

And then I hit the mother lode:

Is that awesome, or is that TOTALLY AWESOME? From left to right, top to bottom, we have:

Chinese Title	Chinese Pronunciation	English Title
胖嘟嘟小姐	pang4 du1 du1 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Greedy
迷糊小姐	mi2 hu2 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Scatterbrain
明星小姐	ming2 xing1 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Star
雙胞胎小姐	shuang1 bao1 tai1 xiao2 jie3	Little Miss Twins
聰明先生	cong1* ming2 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Clever
呆呆先生	dai1 dai1 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Clumsy
傷腦筋先生	shang1 nao3 jin1 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Dizzy
健忘先生	jian4 wang4 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Forgetful
匆忙先生	cong1* mang2 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Rush
雪人先生	xue3 ren2 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Snow
長腿先生	chang2 tui3 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Tall
傲慢先生	ao4 man4 xian1 sheng1	Mr. Uppity

Most of the translated titles are very close in meaning, but there are a few head-scratchers in there:

胖嘟嘟 doesn’t mean “greedy”, it means “chubby” or just plain “fat”. “Greedy” is 貪吃 (tan1 chi1). The back cover of the Taiwanese Mr. Men books lists Mr. Greedy as 貪吃先生, so I have no idea why they didn’t just go with 貪吃小姐 for Little Miss Greedy.
迷糊 is more “dazed and confused” than “scatterbrained”.
呆呆 doesn’t mean “clumsy”, it means “slow-witted”.
And 傷腦筋 most definitely doesn’t mean “dizzy”. The best translation I can come up with is “brainhurt”. Which isn’t even a legitimate English word.

They’ve also done something interesting with Mr. Tall. A direct translation to Chinese would get you 高先生, as 高 (gao1) means “tall”. Except that 高 is also a fairly common Chinese surname, mine and Peter’s surname in fact, and thus 高先生 is a pretty boring name for a whimsical character. So the translators went with 長腿先生, which means “Mr. Long Legs” (長 = long; 腿 = leg).

Even more interesting is the name of the series. What we know in English as “Mr. Men and Little Miss” is 奇先生，妙小姐 in Chinese, literally “Mr. Strange and Miss Wonderful”. 奇妙 (qi2 miao4) is a phrase that means “intriguing” and is part of the common idiom 莫名奇妙 (mo4 ming2 qi2 miao4), which means “to be baffling”.

*Pronunciation note: Despite what it looks like, cong is not actually pronounced with any kind of c sound. Instead, it sounds like tsong. Pinyin sucks that way.

Chinese Radicals: The 螞蟻 Goes Marching

Yvonne — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:52:50 +0000

I keep failing this item in my flashcard study (I use Anki) despite its relative obviousness, so I thought I’d make a post about it because you remember things best when you try to teaching them to someone else.

ant

螞蟻
ma2 yi3

Hurrah, hurrah.

Why do I say this one should be relatively obvious? Because of the two-part structure of each word. We first discussed radicals in the espresso edition of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook.

Both 螞 and 蟻 have the same radical: 虫. In simplified Chinese, this character by itself means “insect” (in traditional Chinese, three of them get stacked together to form the character for insect: 蟲). When it appears in radical form it usually is marking an insect-related term. Other examples include:

butterfly

蝴蝶
hu2 die2

honeybee

蜜蜂
mi4 feng1

So that’s the first reason why it should be relatively obvious.

The second reason has to do with the right sides of the characters: 馬 and 義. These characters, which I should already know, are pronounced ma3 and yi4.

The third reason is that I’m already pretty fluent in Chinese. “Ant” is one of those words I absolutely know how to say, if not necessarily how to write or read.

So put that all together.

螞蟻

I see a Chinese phrase with the bug radical.
I see the right sides are ma3 and yi4, respectively. So this must be an insect word that sounds like ma yi.
I know that “ant” in Chinese is pronounced ma2 yi3.

Why do I keep failing this item?

Thank Goodness for the Internet

Yvonne — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:51:05 +0000

So I’m setting up a new personal blog. I wanted it to have multilingual capabilities for my non-US family which means that I have to translate all the main navigation headings.

It then occurred to me that I have no idea how to say “blog” in Chinese. And it’s not like my mom (aka Queen Luddite) is going to be any help here.

“Blog” is not in my 英漢漢英字典, which is not all that surprising considering this edition was published in 2005.

Google Translate gives 博客 (bo2 ke4) for “blog” and Mandarin Tools concurs and gives 部落格 (bu4 luo4 ge2) and 網絡日記 (wang3 luo4 ri4 ji4)—literally, “internet diary/daily log”—as alternate translations.

What did people do before they had the internet to look up the latest vernacular?

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #11: Fancy Sandals!

Yvonne — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:00:56 +0000

Sorry for missing last week’s Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook posting; I was traveling on business. In keeping with the spirit of this series, this week’s phrase is not something I had any occasion to use while I was on the road.

“What a pair of fancy sandals.”

好別緻的涼鞋喔!
Hao3 bie2 zhi4 de5 liang2 xie2 wo5!

すてきなサンダルですね！
Suteki na sandaru desu ne!

It’s a rare week when the Japanese sentence structure is easier to explain to an English speaker than the Chinese sentence structure. The Japanese sentence structure is basically Yoda-esque.

すてき = “cute, gorgeous, swell” (Note: my book gives the hiragana, but there is Kanji. 素敵 = すてき), な = adjective marker, サンダル = “sandals”, です = “are”, ね = emphasis/exclamation word. Almost literally, “Cute sandals, they are!”

The Chinese sentence structure is a bit Yoda-esque as well, but it lacks a verb. There’s also a bit of trickiness around the character 好. Most commonly, 好 means “good” or “well”. For example, 你好嗎? means “Are you well?” (More colloquially, “How are you?”) But in this instance, it functions more like the English word “so”. For example, 好多人喔! means “so many people!”

別緻 means “delightful”, so naturally 好別緻 = “so delightful”. 的 = possessive marker, 涼鞋 = sandals, 喔 = word of exclamation. So the Chinese comes out to be, “So delightful, a property which is possessed by sandals, oh!”

Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #4: The Witch’s Determination

Peter — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 22:24:59 +0000

Sorry for the month long hiatus. I’ve been busy tap dancing and being a performer on stage.

This installment of Chinese Kid Lit returns to the story of the Old Lady Witch who turned into a bench. We rejoin her story many years later.

魔女的決心
Mo3 nu3 de5 jue2 xin1
The Witch’s Determination

At the end of the previous story, the witch had turned herself into a beautiful park bench. Now, with the passage of time, she has become a worn and weathered park bench. This does not matter to her since she meets a little girl named 小萌 Xiao3 Meng2 (Little Sprout). Little Sprout sits on the park bench every day after school and waits until her dad comes on the bus to pick her up after work. The witch learns that Little Sprout’s mother is in the hospital. Over time, she develops an affinity to Little Sprout and her family. Little Sprout’s mother has taken very ill and can no longer attend the park. Little Sprout promises the bench that she’ll come back, asking the bench to wait for her return.

One day, dark shadowy figures, come and survey the park area. They’ve been hired to replace the ugly old bench with a new one. The old one wood be turned into woodchips. The news, of course, is very unsettling and alarming to the witch. She summons all her might and turns herself back into human form.

Overjoyed at having overcome her temporary amnesia, she runs home to find everything covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. She cleans up her house with her broom, only to remember that it was her magic broom! She takes her broom out for a spin to the park in time to see Little Sprout coming. Remembering her promise to Little Sprout, she goes back to her old spot and turns herself back into a shiny new park bench.

Little Sprout sad her old bench is gone, but happy that the new one is just as good. She also brings good news. Her mother is leaving the hospital! Just then, the broom knocks itself over. Like any curious child, Little Sprout deduces that this must be a magic broom, gets on it, and flies away to oblivion. Or something like that.

The Old Lady Witch series (if you can call two books a series), is much more entertaining and enjoyable to read than that of the Little Fox with anxiety issues. They’re cute stories and sequential, which gives emerging readers something to look forward to. From an instructional standpoint, vocabulary is repeated enough throughout the book that I was able to recognize characters without looking at the phonetic spelling. There are also enough context clues to help fill in some of the gaps. I do admit, I did have to consult the dictionary and my mother for certain words and phrases. However, these resources were not used as often as when I started reading two months ago. Woo!

More books were brought back from Taiwan, so stay tuned for future installments of Chinese Kid Lit. I promise no more month-long waits between posts!

Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #10: Try Walking Backwards

Yvonne — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:00:43 +0000

In previous editions of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook we’ve seen flippant remarks, computer problems, and family angst, but we’ve yet to feature an actual travel phrase from this alleged travel phrasebook.

Until now.

Granted, I’m not sure why you’d want to travel this way, but who am I to judge?

“Let’s try walking backwards.”

試試看倒退走.
Shi4 shi4 kan4 dao4 tui4 zou3.

後ろ向きに歩いてみて。
Ushiro muki ni aruitemite.

Finding an appropriate context for this sentence might be a challenge, but at least the grammar is easy for both Chinese and Japanese.

試試看 = “try” (actually one 試 already means “try” but we Chinese like to repeat things) or “try and see what happens” (看 = “see), 倒退 = “reverse” or “go backwards”, 走 = “walk” or “move”.

What’s interesting here is that there are actually multiple ways to translate this Chinese into English. “Let’s try walking backwards” is valid, if rarely useful (if ever); “See what happens if you reverse” is also valid and more useful—say your car is stuck in a ditch or other place and you’re trying to get out. “Try retracing your steps” is still valid, I think (though I’d probably use a different phrase for “retrace your steps”), and even more useful. Context is everything when translating Chinese (and when translating, period).

The Japanese, as far as I can tell, does literally mean to walk on foot; the only definition my dictionary gives for 歩いて is “on foot”.

後ろ = “back” or “rear”, 向き = “direction”, に = adverb marker, 歩いてみて = “try walking”.

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