嘛: ma (助) 1 [used at the end of a sentence to show what precedes it is obvious]: 这样做是不对～！ Of course it was acting improperly! 孩子总是孩子～！ Children are children! 2 [used within a sentence to mark a pause]: 你～，就不用亲自去了。 As for you, I don’t think you have to go in person.

Not too long ago, I encountered this little coin purse/bag, which offers three very concise uses of our particle 嘛:

The text is as follows (broken into three lines to make it easier to discuss):

1: 钱嘛

2: 纸嘛

3: 花嘛

OK, now clearly, this is the same 嘛 particle. But what does this actually mean??

First, “钱嘛” means something like, “it’s money,” as in, “we all know what money is, and what it’s for.” This could also have been expressed more verbosely by: “是钱嘛” or even as: “不就是钱嘛” (“isn’t it just money”??).

Second, “纸嘛” quite simply means, “it’s (made out of) paper (as we all know).” Duh. “It’s just paper.” This usage is basically the same as the first.

Last, we have “花嘛,” which is slightly different because it’s a verb. Still the idea is quite similar. It’s for spending. You might translate this into English as, “so just spend it!” Another way to put it in Chinese would be, “想花就花嘛” (if you feel like spending it, just spend it).

The words on this bag strike me as a Shanghainese, female way of looking at money. But maybe that’s because the bag belonged to a girl I know…

Related Grammar Links:

• Expressing the Self-Evident with 嘛 (Chinese Grammar Wiki link)

So I broke out my trusty old Oxford dictionary (we still learned Chinese from actual books in those days), and looked up 嘛. Here’s what I found:

嘛: ma (助) 1 [used at the end of a sentence to show what precedes it is obvious]: 这样做是不对～！ Of course it was acting improperly! 孩子总是孩子～！ Children are children! 2 [used within a sentence to mark a pause]: 你～，就不用亲自去了。 As for you, I don’t think you have to go in person.

I know some people hate learning from dictionaries, and grammatical concepts especially can be difficult to learn that way, but for me this explanation was a revelation: used at the end of a sentence to show what precedes it is obvious.

I think a lot of us have personal experiences in which we acquire a new word, and the memory of those specific vocabulary acquisition experiences stay with us long after we internalize the words themselves (one of my own personal examples is my attempt to buy a bug zapper light). This is quite natural, and it’s also one of my key misgivings about SRS. The way we naturally acquire language stays with us and reinforces the entire process, tightly binding words, meaning, and real-world experience. SRS (or simple word lists in general) can’t really offer this deep of a connection.

But back to my dictionary example… How is this any different from an SRS learning method, divorced from a real-world connection? Logically, I feel like looking up a word in a dictionary isn’t much different from being presented a word electronically. Sure, there’s the tactile interaction with the book, and the effort involved in getting out the book in the first place, and the act of physically flipping to the appropriate page, then locating the appropriate headword with my finger. How much “momentum” do these behaviors actually amount to, in a learning context?

Although I can’t think of many compelling instances besides my 嘛 example, I definitely feel that there are words which I learned (and not just “learned,” but developed a strong connection to) largely due to a dictionary. This leads me to two important questions:

• How many of you out there have clear memories of really learning a word or expression through a dictionary? What was it that made it so memorable?
• How many of you out there have clear memories of really learning a word or expression through SRS? What was it that made it so memorable?

For me, I think the dictionary’s explanation struck me so poignantly because I had actually already expended a significant amount of mental energy on the use of 嘛 but I had not yet been able to express the ideas concisely, and the 嘛 entry did just that, right when I needed it.

Please share some of your own personal learning experiences in the comments. I’m very interested to hear what you have to say.

Related Grammar Links:

• Yes/No Questions with 吗 (Chinese Grammar Wiki link)
• Expressing the Self-Evident with 嘛 (Chinese Grammar Wiki link)

It’s hard to believe I’ve been working on this project for a whole year, and also thinking about it, in some form or another, ever since founding AllSet Learning. Today, I’m quite happy to finally release the AllSet Learning Grammar Wiki.

What is it? Well, in a nutshell, it’s a mini-Wikipedia devoted entirely to Chinese grammar. Think comprehensive, think interlinked, think referenced. I’ve felt for a while that Chinese grammar has needed its own champion online, and since forming AllSet Learning, I’ve finally got both the need and the means to make it happen and keep it going.

I won’t say too much here; there’s a blog post on the AllSet Learning blog introducing the features and concepts behind the Grammar Wiki. Obviously, you can also just go straight to the wiki and check it out.

There’s not yet any public forum on the AllSet Learning websites, so if you’ve got feedback, feel free to leave it in the comments here. Please do read the AllSet Learning blog post first, though, as it may answer some of your questions. I’d also like to reiterate that the Grammar Wiki is not finished, and I’m not sure it ever will be, but with 500 articles and a good juicy set of grammar points it’s now at a point where it’s clearly useful to learners, so it’s time for it to emerge from its cave and be exposed to the rest of the world.

Finally, I’d like to thank the AllSet Learning interns who, over the past year, have helped make the Chinese Grammar Wiki a reality: Lucas, Greg, Hugh, and Jonathan. You guys were an immense help. Thank you also to all bloggers and friends who help spread the word by linking to the Chinese Grammar Wiki. Please help spread the word!

That’s all for now… Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy New 一二!

At the risk of spoiling the joke, allow me to explain…

1. Pinyin “yī èr” sounds remarkably like “year.”
2. This is 2012, so the characters for “1 2″ are singularly appropriate.

Good job, Andy! You only get to use this pun once every 100 years, everybody, so get on it!

Last year, the punny wish was:

Happy Chinese New Year 兔 you!

1. Pinyin “tù” sounds nearly identical to “to.”
2. 兔子, sometimes abbreviated to 兔, is the Chinese word for “rabbit.”

This year (year of the dragon), friend and ex-co-worker Jason made the following punny wish:

Wishing you a 龍 and prosperous New Year!

1. Pinyin “lóng” sounds reasonably similar to the English word “long.”
2. 龍 (simplified: 龙) is the Chinese word for “dragon.”

Jason also added the following variation for Star Trek fans:

Live 龍 and prosper this New Year!

Finally, I’d like to give props to my dad, who always liked the following pun. It wasn’t until recent years that I could actually verify that this pun really does work in Chinese:

How Long is a Chinese name.

The pun doesn’t work so well when written. The joke is to say it in such a way that it’s perceived as a question, when in fact, it’s a statement:

郝龙 (Hao Long) is a Chinese name.

(This “joke” doesn’t work nearly as well in China, where everyone knows that Chinese names are typically 2-3 characters/syllables, and as many as 4 on rare occasion, and everyone would easily recognize 郝龙 as a Chinese name anyway.)

OK, I better shut up now before I lose all my readers.

Happy New Year!

More info on the Skritter iOS page. This is definitely an app I’ll be getting as soon as it comes out, and I’ll be reviewing it in the future.

Sinosplice’s Christmas Songs in Chinese have been popular every year around this time for a while now, and one of the most common comments let has been, “can you provide the lyrics in pinyin?” Well, it’s actually quite a lot of work to assemble all the (correct) lyrics, which is why I hadn’t done it before. This year, however, I decided to leverage some of AllSet Learning‘s resources and finally make it happen. (They may not be perfect though, as some songs were manually transcribed, and the audio was a little unclear. So if you catch any errors, please leave a comment, and we’ll update ASAP.)

So for the MP3 audio, go to the original Christmas Songs in Chinese post. For the lyrics (simplified characters and pinyin), download here:

Christmas Songs in Chinese lyrics (1.2 MB ZIP file containing PDFs)

Note: Some of these songs (especially the religious ones) do not have easy lyrics! Think twice before you try to use some of these songs as study material.

Merry Christmas!

It means “God is with you.”

The tattoo uses traditional Chinese characters:

上帝與你常在

Here’s the simplified character version (it only differs by one character):

上帝与你常在

And pinyin:

Shàngdì yǔ nǐ cháng zài

The grammar, though, seems a little strange to me. The sentence I’m used to hearing (at Catholic churches in China) is:

上帝与你同在

同在 is just a fancy way to say “to be with.” So what’s up with 常在? You’re probably used to 常 taking on the meaning of “often,” “frequent,” or “usually,” as in 常常, 经常, 通常, 平常, etc. “God is usually with you” certainly doesn’t seem like the most confidence-insiring blessing.

Here, though, 常 is used more to refer to a “normal,” unchanging, continuous state. So although neither this sentence nor the Catholic version is everyday Chinese, they both make sense.

When I asked my wife for her impressions on Nicki Minaj’s tattoo, she made the following comments:

• Those characters look like they were written by a poorly-educated elementary school student.
• She should have chosen simplified characters; less ink is less pain.
• Foreigners’ Chinese character tattoos are like our stupid English t-shirts. But at least we can take off the t-shirts whenever we want.

Units of Beer

• 1 drop = 一滴
• 1 glass/cup = 一杯
• 1 can = 一听
• 1 bottle = 一瓶
• 1 6-pack = 半打
• 1 12-pack = 一打 (same as “a dozen”)
• 1 case = 一箱 (quantity may vary)
• 1 keg = 一桶

Tone Notes:

1. Remember that for all uses of 一 above, the tone change rule changes “yī” (1st tone) to “yì” (4th tone).
2. 打 is normally read “dǎ,” but when it means “dozen,” it’s read “dá.”

The video shows a grid of factoids, where new factoids are being presented at a constant rate. Over time, the factoids begin to fade to black… the closer they get to black, the closer they are to being forgotten. However, if they’re “recharged” by being relearned, they advance up a tier (represented by the color and number of the cell). The higher the tier, the longer it takes for the factoid to be forgotten. If at any point, a factoid gets completely forgotten, it is sent back down to the lowest level.

Be sure to click on “Show more” under the video to see the full explanation.

Via @ajatt.

Each year, as many as 70,000 children are kidnapped in China. They are not held for ransom; rather, they are sold. The lucky ones are sold into new families who raise them like adopted children; others are sold into slave labor, marriage, prostitution, and lives on the street. Most children who are kidnapped will never see their parents again.

Living with Dead Hearts follows several parents whose children have been kidnapped as they struggle to track down their kids and to make sense of what has happened to them. Along the way, the film also looks at the experience of kidnapping and growing up in a strange family from the child’s perspective and examines the lives of street children.

Aside from helping get the word out about this project, I’d like to offer a few comments for students of Chinese, since many readers of this blog fall into that category. From a language learning perspective, there are some things you want to be aware of before watching even the trailer for this documentary:

1. Many of the people in the documentary speak in heavily accented Mandarin, if not full-on “dialect” (read “topolect,” which might as well be a separate language, in many cases). If you’re a learner trying to use Chinese movies as study material, this is not a film to beat yourself up about for not understanding; most Chinese native speakers will be unable to understand some of the people in this movie without the aid of subtitles.

   Dialect is sometimes used as a literary device; unfortunately, in this film it’s simply a cruel reality: the victims interviewed are often from the countryside and can do little to fight back or get help.

2. The word 拐卖 means “to abduct and sell,” the verb for what we commonly refer to as “human trafficking.” It’s not a verb you normally hear much. In the trailer below, you hear the grown-up 拐卖 victim use the term.

3. The Chinese word in the background behind the title “Living with Dead Hearts” is 躯壳. Although not an everyday term, this is one of those words that has a definite “correct” reading in the dictionary (“qūqiào”), but don’t be surprised if some of your Chinese friends read it as “qūké.”

   The meaning of the word is “body; outer form” (not including the soul). My New Age Chinese-English Dictionary provides an appropriate sample sentence:

   失去精神，就成了没有灵魂的～。 Once the spirit is lost, what is left is only the body without the soul.

The trailer is below. If you haven’t watched it yet, please do.

Related Links:

• Living with Dead Hearts (official site)
• Living with Dead Hearts (on ChinaGeeks)
• China’s Missing Children (on Foreign Policy)
• Child Trafficking and Sina Weibo (on ChinaHush)
• Child kidnapping in China: A case study (on Danwei.org)
• Child Kidnappings in Anhui, Chinese Netizen Reactions (on chinaSMACK)
• Interview with Charles Custer, director of ‘Living With Dead Hearts’ (on Lost Laowai)
• Missing children and how parenthood killed my chances of being a manly-man (on Imagethief)