Category: Science

Categories
Language Learning Science

Jīdū

Jīdū (Christ 基督) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Earlier Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus material rendered the English meaning of “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” as “Foundation · {Directing (Person)} → [Christ]”, on the supposition that the meanings of the Mandarin syllables used in “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” may have mattered in their selection for inclusion in “Jīdū (Christ 基督)”. (In contrast, “Yēsū (Jesus 耶稣 耶穌)” (Jesus) is a name, not a title like “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” is, so, like the Mandarin syllables used in other Mandarin names of Bible personages, the Mandarin syllables for “Yēsū (Jesus 耶稣 耶穌)” were obviously also chosen mainly for their sounds, with only secondary consideration given to their meanings.) Unfortunately, while it seems to make some sense, it turns out that this earlier rendering of the English meaning of “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” was a case of Trying Too Hard 😜. (Oh, well, as I once heard a cable guy say as he was preparing to make a new cable, “too much is better than not enough”.)

Now, when one looks up “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” in the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus Expressions resource, one will see a note about why the English meaning of “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” is now simply rendered as “Christ”:

(This is a transcription of “Christ”, so the syllables were chosen mainly for their sound, not their meaning. For more info, see this Language Log post by Victor Mair.)

Who Is Victor Mair and What Did He Say About This?

Victor H. Mair, who has been mentioned several times in this blog, is an American sinologist and a University of Pennsylvania Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He also inspired and helped to edit the highly regarded ABC Chinese-English Dictionary. So, we can be pretty sure he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Mandarin words. (In fact, for what it’s worth, after my several years of researching the Mandarin language, I have come to consider him the most trustworthy living scholarly authority on the Chinese languages.)

Concerning the etymology of “Jīdū (Christ 基督)”, Prof. Mair said the following in the above-mentioned Language Log blog post:

Jīdū 基督 is a short form of Jīlìsīdū 基利斯督, which is a transcription of “Christ”, from Ancient Greek Χριστός (Khristós).

So, I revised the English meaning in the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus Expressions resource entry for “Jīdū (Christ 基督)”, added the note quoted above, and am gradually revising occurrences of “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” in existing Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus material as time allows. Of course, going forward, new Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus material that includes the expression “Jīdū (Christ 基督)” will simply use “Christ” as its English meaning.

A Reminder That Speech Is Primary

This situation with “Jīdū (Christ 基督)”, in which the deciding factor in how the word is formed is how it sounds, reminds us that regardless of the Chinese cultural obsession with characters and the meanings represented by their intricate visual designs, the basic scientific principle about human languages holds true, that the primary aspect of human languages is actually speech, which represents meanings with sounds. Writing, even writing as revered as Chinese characters are with all their visual embellishments, is at best secondary.

Categories
Current Events Science

jùfēng

jùfēng (jù·fēng cyclone; hurricane; typhoon · wind → [hurricane; typhoon] 飓风 颶風) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

During the week preceding the date of this post, Hurricane Ian hit the USA. As NBC News reported on the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2022:

The death toll from Hurricane Ian rose Saturday to more than 77 as one of strongest and costliest storms to ever hit the U.S. pushed northward from the Carolinas leaving in its wake a trifecta of misery—dangerous flooding, power outages and massive destruction.

At the time of this writing, jw.org was featuring the related article “Extreme Weather—Can the Bible Help You to Cope?”. The Mandarin version of this article uses this week’s MEotW, “jùfēng (jù·fēng cyclone; hurricane; typhoon · wind → [hurricane; typhoon] 飓风 颶風)”, to translate the English word “hurricane”.

Note that while one who is familiar with the Mandarin expression “dàfēng (dà·fēng {big → [strong]} · wind [→ [fresh gale]] 大风 大風)” (literally, “big wind”) might assume that the first morpheme in “jùfēng (jù·fēng cyclone; hurricane; typhoon · wind → [hurricane; typhoon] 飓风 颶風)” is the same as the first morpheme (meaning “huge; gigantic”) in “jùdà (jù·dà huge; gigantic · big 巨大)”, actually, the first morpheme in “jùfēng (jù·fēng cyclone; hurricane; typhoon · wind → [hurricane; typhoon] 飓风 颶風)” is a different one that specifically means “cyclone; hurricane; typhoon”.

A Tropical Cyclone by Any Other Name…

The English jw.org article mentioned above also mentions hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones. The corresponding expressions used in the Mandarin version are, respectively, “jùfēng (jù·fēng hurricane · winds → [hurricanes] 飓风 颶風)”, “táifēng (tái·fēng typhoon · winds → [typhoons] 台风 颱風)”, and “qìxuán (qì·xuán air · circlings → [cyclones] 气旋 氣旋)”. What though, are the differences between hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones?

The US government’s National Ocean Service explains it like this:

The only difference between a hurricane and a typhoon is the location where the storm occurs.

…

Hurricanes and typhoons are the same weather phenomenon: tropical cyclones. A tropical cyclone is a generic term used by meteorologists to describe a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters and has closed, low-level circulation.

The weakest tropical cyclones are called tropical depressions. If a depression intensifies such that its maximum sustained winds reach 39 miles per hour, the tropical cyclone becomes a tropical storm. Once a tropical cyclone reaches maximum sustained winds of 74 miles per hour or higher, it is then classified as a hurricane, typhoon, or tropical cyclone, depending upon where the storm originates in the world. In the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific, the term hurricane is used. The same type of disturbance in the Northwest Pacific is called a typhoon. Meanwhile, in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean, the generic term tropical cyclone is used, regardless of the strength of the wind associated with the weather system.

Structure

Some might also find the following information interesting, on the structure and behaviour of tropical cyclones like hurricanes, etc.:

The main parts of a tropical cyclone are the rainbands, the eye, and the eyewall. Air spirals in toward the center in a counter-clockwise pattern in the northern hemisphere (clockwise in the southern hemisphere), and out the top in the opposite direction.

In the very center of the storm, air sinks, forming an “eye” that is mostly cloud-free.

Supercharged by Climate Change

Regarding hurricanes and similar storms, one thing that may be worthwhile to bring up in the field is that they are being made more destructive and difficult to predict by human-caused climate change.

An article on NASA’s website summarizes the situation and explains the basic mechanism:

Due to global warming, global climate models predict hurricanes will likely cause more intense rainfall and have an increased coastal flood risk due to higher storm surge caused by rising seas. Additionally, the global frequency of storms may decrease or remain unchanged, but hurricanes that form are more likely to become intense.

As surface temperatures rise, more liquid water evaporates from the land and ocean. Evaporation adds moisture to the air. How much water vapor the air can hold is based on its temperature. Warmer air temperatures can hold more water vapor. The increased moisture in the air leads to more intense rainfall, especially during extreme events.

In a hurricane, spiraling winds draw moist air toward the center, fueling the towering thunderstorms that surround it. As the air continues to warm due to climate change, hurricanes can hold more water vapor, producing more intense rainfall rates in a storm.

Moreover, …most models show that climate change brings a slight increase in hurricane wind intensity. This change is likely related to warming ocean temperatures and more moisture in the air, both of which fuel hurricanes.

Another article, on the Yale Climate Connections website, discusses a phenomenon called rapid intensification:

Rapid intensification, defined as an increase of wind speed of at least 35 mph in 24 hours, has recently garnered a lot of attention…

…human-caused warming significantly increases extreme tropical cyclone intensification rates…

Rapid intensification is one of the least well-predicted tropical cyclone processes and also one of the most dangerous, because storms that intensify quickly tend to catch people off guard.

By the way, the Mandarin expression currently used on jw.org to translate “climate change” is “qìhòu (qì·hòu {air → [weather]} · conditions → [climate] 气候 氣候) biànhuà (biàn·huà changing · transforming 变化 變化)”.

Categories
Culture History Science

kǎlā’OK

kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

The selection of this week’s MEotW, “kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK)”, was inspired by a Twitter thread of epic linguistic and etymological nerdery that I recently came across, which begins with this tweet:

Here are some of the tweets in this thread, which summarize how “kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK)” became a word in Mandarin:

Borrowed Culture

In addition to “kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK)”, another Mandarin word which borrowed from Japanese culture, which borrowed from Western culture, is “wénhuà (wén·huà {(with) writing} · transformed (system) → [culture] | {(with) writing} · transformed → [cultural] 文化)”, the Mandarin word for culture itself. As the MEotW post about that word says:

To translate the Western concept of culture, the Japanese coined the word bunka, which is written 文化 (see Liu, Zhengtan et al. 1984, s.v. wenhua). The Chinese imported this character combination from Japan and pronounced it according to the rules of their own language: wénhuà.
—“Two Steps Toward Digraphia in China”, by Xieyan Hincha

So, people going on about “pure” Chinese culture are ignorant or in denial about the reality of how other cultures have influenced Chinese culture, and about what a great, enriching thing that can be. Anyone who has been in a group or congregation with people predominantly from a single cultural background, and who has also had the pleasure of being in a group or congregation with people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, has had the opportunity to see how the atmosphere of the latter situation can be a breath of fresh air compared to the relatively narrow—and potentially narrow-minded—cultural worldview that is sometimes allowed to be present in the former situation. Some parts of the world too are starting to realize the advantages of considering various cultural inputs, compared to trying to be productive or creative in a monocultural bubble.

Indeed, the proud “not invented here” logic of Chinese cultural purists who would, for example, reject Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) because it uses letters from the Latin alphabet would also require us to reject things like European-style punctuation, Arabic numerals, and kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK) because of their foreign-to-China origins. But, Chinese culture without kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK)? How dreary! Next, they’ll be wanting us to do long division using Chinese characters—十一, 九十九, 一千八百三十六, …—instead of Arabic numbers, and they’ll be wanting us to read and decipher Chinese writings the old-fashioned way, without the “crutch” of those decadent European punctuation marks! 😱

(Of course, with kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK), as with anything that may involve worldly culture and music—which can possibly include some bad things along with the good things—Christians must be selective, exercising good spiritual judgement and following their Bible-trained consciences.)

As members of the international brotherhood of Jehovah’s people, and as ones “taught by Jehovah” himself, we need not be content with, let alone proud of, a particular way of doing things prescribed by human, worldly Chinese cultural tradition.—1 Peter 5:9; Isaiah 54:13; 1 Corinthians 1:31; 1 John 2:17; Mark 7:1–13.