Tag: Chinese Characters

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Culture History

chá

chá (tea 茶) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Long before drinking tea became a big part of English culture, it had been a big part of Chinese culture. As Wikipedia summarizes:

An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the third century AD, in a medical text written by Chinese physician Hua Tuo.[source] It was popularised as a recreational drink during the Chinese Tang dynasty [(618–907 CE)], and tea drinking subsequently spread to other East Asian countries. Portuguese priests and merchants introduced it to Europe during the 16th century.[source] During the 17th century, drinking tea became fashionable among the English, who started to plant tea on a large scale in British India.

Similarly, the English word “tea” and its doublet “chai” originally came from the words for “tea” in different Chinese languages. This week’s MEotW, “chá (tea 茶)”, is the word for “tea” in Mandarin.

“Tea” and its Doublet

Hold on, you may say, what’s a doublet? Here is a definition:

doublet

One of two (or more) words in a language that have the same etymological root but have come to the modern language through different routes.

So, how did “tea” and its doublet “chai” both end up in the English language after having come from the same root through different routes?

Linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne discussed this on their podcast Lingthusiasm:

Lauren: One of the things I always find interesting about these loanwords that come to us in batches from particular domains is how it highlights global history, and usually global histories of trade and different power dynamics that have operated over that history. One of my absolute favourite stories is the story of tea. We’ve already talked about “chai” and “chia” in Nepali, “tea” in English. The words for “tea” in many of the world’s languages appear to be related. They’ll either have some kind of /te/ or /ti/ pronunciation or some kind of /t͡ʃ/ – “chia,” “chai” pronunciation. That’s because there were two main places in China from which tea travelled to all the different markets in the world.

Gretchen: In Mandarin, which is historically more spoken towards the centre of China, the word for tea is “cha,” but in Min Nan, which is also a variety of Chinese as spoken in the coastal province of Fujian, it’s pronounced /te/. They use the same character, but they’re pronounced differently, which is very common for how Chinese gets written. The key thing here is “coastal” because people who encountered the plant and the drink tea via the sea, via Fujianese traders, learned to pronounce it /te/ or variants on /te/. In French and German, it’s /te/. In English, it used to be /te/ until the vowel shifted. Whereas people who encountered tea through Central China, through land routes like the silk road – so through Sinitic “cha” – you get Mandarin “cha,” Korean “cha,” Japanese “ocha,” but also Hindi “chai,” Persian “chai,” Arabic “shai,” Turkish “chai,” Russian “chai,” and you’re down to Swahili “chai,” all goes through that land route, and sometimes via Persia, to get from “cha” to “chai.” The great maps that people have produced where you can tell if people encountered tea through the land route where they get “cha,” which becomes “chai,” or through the sea route, which becomes “te” and variants on “te” like “tea.”

The Development of Modern Mandarin

The mention above of historical Mandarin reminds me of a book that I read a while ago, A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language, by David Moser. Here is an excerpt:

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, an urgent priority for the new Chinese government was the task of establishing a common language for a linguistically fractured China. When Mao took power in 1949, language unification continued to be of vital importance to the nation building agenda. Faced with the challenge of unifying a vast country populated with hundreds of ethnicities, languages, and dialects, these political leaders were confronted with some of the same linguistic problems and conundrums raised above: Is there such a thing as ‘the Chinese language’? Should the Chinese people share a common tongue? How should it be defined? How should pronunciation, vocabulary, and correct usage be determined? Should one standard language replace the numerous other regional variations, or should all other forms of Chinese continue to flourish? Should written Chinese continue to use the centuries-old character system, or should it be replaced with an alphabet, or some other phonetic system? And who, after all, is the final arbiter for such decisions?

In the PRC, the twentieth century quest for a solution to these problems has resulted in a version of Chinese called Putonghua. How did China arrive at this common language?

In what follows, I will present a brief historical overview of that process, and trace the trajectory of Putonghua as it moved into the twenty-first century.

The Cantonese Connection

Getting back to how historical words for “tea” in different Chinese languages ended up leading to the words “tea” and “chai” in English, here is some other information, that I found on the World Atlas of Language Structures website:

Most words for ‘tea’ found in the world’s languages are ultimately of Chinese origin, but they differ significantly in their form due to their coming via different routes. The differences begin already on Chinese soil. Most Sinitic languages have a form similar to Mandarin chá, but Min Nan Chinese, spoken e.g. in Fujian and Taiwan, has instead forms like te55 (Chaozhou). The Dutch traders, who were the main importers of tea into Europe, happened to have their main contacts in Amoy (Xiamen) in Fujian. This is why they adopted the word for ‘tea’ as thee, and in this form it then spread to large parts of Europe. The influence from Amoy is also visible in many languages spoken in the former Dutch colonies, as in Malay/Indonesian and Javanese teh. However, the first European tea importers were not the Dutch but the Portuguese, in the 16th century; their trade route went via Macao rather than via Amoy, and consequently Portuguese uses chá, derived from Cantonese cha.

Thus, as in other aspects, it seems that the first contact between the West and China when it comes to tea involved the Cantonese.

Categories
Culture Experiences History Language Learning Languages

jī‐tóng‐yā‐jiǎng

jī‐tóng‐yā‐jiǎng ((jī chicken 鸡 雞/鷄)‐(tóng {together with} 同 同/仝)‐(yā duck 鸭 鴨)‐(jiǎng speaking 讲 講) → [people not understanding each other because of speaking different languages (from Cantonese)]) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Yes, this expression comes from Cantonese, but the above Mandarin version does appear in Mandarin dictionaries, so it qualifies as a Mandarin expression!]

Recently, while out to dinner with one of the first families to serve in the local Cantonese congregation, along with the circuit overseer serving the local Chinese circuit and his wife, the subject came up of how Mandarin and Cantonese are actually different languages, not just dialects of the same language.

Chickens Talking with Ducks

The wife of the circuit overseer asked what the difference is between a language and a dialect. So, I proceeded to explain something that is emphasized by American sinologist and University of Pennsylvania Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Victor H. Mair, that a primary way accepted by most linguists to distinguish a language from a dialect is mutual intelligibility, as is discussed in this excerpt from the MEotW post on “fāngyán (fāng·yán {direction → [place]} · speech → [topolect; dialect (common but misleading translation)] 方言)”:

It has been said that “a language is a dialect with an army and navy”, but in his article Professor Mair gives us a more linguistically correct and useful way to distinguish between a language and a dialect:

Regardless of the imprecision of lay usage, we should strive for a consistent means of distinguishing between language and dialect. Otherwise we might as well use the two terms interchangeably. That way lies chaos and the collapse of rational discourse. Mutual intelligibility [emphasis added] is normally accepted by most linguists as the only plausible criterion for making the distinction between language and dialect in the vast majority of cases. Put differently, no more suitable, workable device for distinguishing these two levels of speech has yet been proposed. If there are to be exceptions to the useful principle of mutual intelligibility, there should be compelling reasons for them. Above all, exceptions should not be made the rule.

What is mutual intelligibility? Simply put, in linguistics, two or more speech varieties are said to be mutually intelligible if they are “able to be understood by one another’s speakers”. For example, if one person only knows English, and another person only knows Spanish, they can’t really understand each other if they try to talk to each other—English and Spanish are not mutually intelligible, and are suitably recognized as being different languages, not just different dialects of “European”.

Similarly, if one person only knows Mandarin, and another person only knows Cantonese, they can’t really understand each other if they try to talk to each other—Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible. So, while they may be “fāngyán (fāng·yán {direction → [place]} · {(patterns of) speech} 方言)”, linguistically, Mandarin and Cantonese should really be considered to be different languages, not just different dialects of “Chinese”.

Indeed, I have heard people use this week’s MEotW, “jī‐tóng‐yā‐jiǎng ((jī chicken 鸡 雞/鷄)‐(tóng {together with} 同 同/仝)‐(yā duck 鸭 鴨)‐(jiǎng speaking 讲 講) → [people not understanding each other because of speaking different languages (from Cantonese)])”, to specifically describe Mandarin-speakers and Cantonese-speakers trying to talk to each other, and not understanding each other. 🐓 🦆

After I explained the gist of the above, one of the daughters of the family at the dinner—who had been labouring for decades under the misconception that Mandarin and Cantonese are just dialects and that someone who knows one can easily learn the other—said, “Now I don’t feel like an idiot.”

Uncommon Knowledge?

It could be said that ones such as this family and this circuit overseer and his wife, who have all worked so hard and served for so long in the Chinese language fields, should already have known such a basic thing about the Chinese languages. However, the following things are unfortunately true:

  • Even publishers who are learning a language to serve in that language’s field generally consider such linguistic (language science) knowledge to be specialized technical knowledge that is beyond what they need to learn, and possibly beyond what they could even comprehend.
  • Western-educated publishers learning a Chinese language may unwittingly go along with the Western worldly tendency to exoticize things related to China. (John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (p. 37), calls this “Exotic East Syndrome”.) They may be content with—or even enjoy—the alluring veil of mystery and mystique surrounding certain things related to China and Chinese culture. Thus, they don’t seek to learn about and understand deeper truths about such things, that may pierce through this obscuring veil, and burst this bubble.—Compare 2 Corinthians 3:14, including the margin note.
  • The central ruling authorities of China have long actively promoted the scientifically incorrect idea that the different varieties of speech in China are just dialects of the one Chinese language. This idea is political propaganda supporting the idea that it’s good for there to be central ruling authorities in China.
  • Traditional worldly Chinese language instructors and others who are knowledgeable about Chinese languages and Chinese characters are eager to promote and perpetuate the traditional thinking about Chinese languages and characters, that they have invested so much time and effort in, and that they are so proud of.
  • Chinese-educated publishers who are already steeped in the traditional ideas about Chinese languages, Chinese characters, etc., and who are thus lauded and deferred to as experts by other publishers, may be eager to simply unquestioningly pass on the cultural knowledge and ideas that they were taught, and that they are lauded and respected for.
  • The Bible makes it clear that Satan the Devil is “a liar and the father of the lie”. It also describes him as “the great dragon…who is misleading the entire inhabited earth”. So, while we can only speculate about the details of what strings are purposely pulled in the spirit realm by Satan and his demons as opposed to what human folly they simply passively observe, we can be sure that Satan is delighted with all the ways in which people are misled in and about the Chinese culture, in which the dragon is considered a positive, revered symbol.—John 8:44; Revelation 12:9.

So, for reasons such as the above, even the basic linguistic truth that Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. actually function as different languages is unfortunately not yet common knowledge among those serving in the Chinese fields. As the saying goes, which some say is a Chinese proverb, “error will travel over half the globe, while truth is pulling on her boots”.

Jesus said, though, that true worshippers worship “with spirit and truth”, and that “the truth will set you free”. With regard to Chinese languages, Chinese characters, etc., the truth about them can even set one free from unnecessarily feeling like an “idiot”, as the sister mentioned above so eloquently put it, because of labouring under all the political propaganda, traditions, and other kinds of misinformation and wrong thinking that unfortunately surround Chinese languages, Chinese characters, etc.—John 4:23; 8:32.

Huge Worldwide Effects

In addition to being hugely freeing for individual language learners, spreading the truth about the Chinese languages, Chinese characters, etc. is also important on a larger scale, since the worldwide Mandarin field, for one, is the largest language field in the world, and probably the largest language field that has ever existed in human history. For comparison, according to Ethnologue, a resource on world languages, the worldwide Mandarin field (those worldwide whose mother tongue is Mandarin) is about twice the size of the second largest worldwide language field, the Spanish field, and it’s about two and a half times the size of the third largest worldwide language field, the English field. Allowing various untruths to continue to divert and bog down the language-learning efforts of those who come to help in the worldwide Mandarin field can have incalculable overall negative effects on the preaching work in this enormous field.

So, even as we hang on to Bible truth, let us also hang on to the linguistic truths that we learn, and let us do what we can to share them with our fellow workers in the vast worldwide Chinese fields.

Categories
Culture Current Events History Technology

rèlàng

rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Currently, many around the world are being affected by heat waves, which scientists say is part of a pattern of global warming caused by human activity. As of this writing, jw.org is featuring the article “Climate Change and Our Future—What the Bible Says”. The Mandarin version of this article uses the expression “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)”, this week’s MEotW, to translate the English expression “heat wave”.

It seems that “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)” is just a simple, straightforward exact translation of “heat wave”. While sometimes, like with “zhǐnán‐zhēn ((zhǐ·nán {(points with) finger → [points]} · south 指南)‐(zhēn needle 针 針) → [compass])” (a previous MEotW), the Mandarin expression for “compass”, East and West approached the same thing from opposite directions, other times, like with “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)” and “heat wave”, the reality referred to is so simple and the applicable metaphors are so obvious that East and West settled on the same linguistic solution.

While “rèlàng (rè·làng heat · wave 热浪 熱浪)” is definitely not a loanword (like previous MEotW “kǎlā’OK (karaoke 卡拉OK)” is), which is a word that’s adopted from one language into another language without translation, it seems possible that it’s a calque, or loan translation, which is “a word or phrase in a language formed by word-for-word or morpheme-by-morpheme translation of a word in another language”, according to one of the definitions of “calque” listed by Wordnik.

Wordnik—Chinese Field Connections

By the way, while this blog is mainly about Mandarin expressions, it’s written in English, mainly for English-speakers, and often it will compare Mandarin expressions to English expressions. Of course, it will use English words—like “loanword” and “calque”—to discuss Mandarin expressions. So, it’s good for it to have a resource to refer to like Wordnik, which claims to be “the world’s biggest online English dictionary, by number of words”. Being online, it is not constrained by the limitations imposed by the millennia-old medium of paper, as delightfully explained in this TED talk given by Erin McKean, the founder of Wordnik:

Here are a few quotes from the above video:

Why are you blaming the ham for being too big for the pan? You can’t get a smaller ham—the English language is as big as it is. So if you have a ham butt problem and you’re thinking about the ham butt problem, the conclusion that it leads you to is inexorable and counter-intuitive—paper is the enemy of words.

They’re like, “Oh my, people are going to take away my beautiful paper dictionaries?” No, there will still be paper dictionaries. When we had cars, when cars became the dominant mode of transportation, we didn’t round up all the horses and shoot them. You know, there’re still going to be paper dictionaries but it’s not going to be the dominant dictionary. The book-shaped dictionary is not going to be the only shape dictionaries come in, and it’s not going to be the prototype for the shapes dictionaries come in.

[I still use the illustration about cars and horses when talking to people who worry about what would happen to Chinese characters if Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) were ever to get widely adopted.]

Lexicography [the practice of compiling dictionaries] is not rocket science, but even if it were, rocket science is being done by dedicated amateurs these days. You know, it can’t be that hard to find some words.

This is a little-known technological fact about the Internet, but the Internet is actually made up of words and enthusiasm, and words and enthusiasm actually happen to be the recipe for lexicography. Isn’t that great?

If we get a bigger pan, then we can put all the words in. We can put in all the meanings. Doesn’t everyone want more meaning in their lives?

The web page for this TED talk says it was part of the TED2007 conference. I remember that after I saw it, it influenced my thinking as I subsequently contributed to some of the projects for Chinese-field unofficial language-learning resources. (E.g., “We can do this, whether or not it’s rocket science!” “We can transcend paper now!” “Including the meanings is good! Doesn’t everyone want more meaning in their lives?”) Many such resources, like the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus Expressions (Web) resource, the Referenced Theocratic Expressions (RTE) resource, and even, in a way, the 3-line, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus, etc. material resources can be thought of as specialized dictionaries. (In 3-line, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus, etc. material resources, you can look up Mandarin words in the order in which they appear in certain official Mandarin publications!)

Making Good Use of Bigger Pans

Years ago, there was one project that was discussed, for creating an unofficial pocket-sized paper dictionary for Chinese theocratic terms that was to be…about the size of what we now call a smartphone, except, of course, thicker. Looking back, it’s not surprising that that project never came to fruition, partly because of the limitations of paper. Those limitations would have necessitated selecting for inclusion in the proposed pocket-sized dictionary a subset of the full dictionary also being worked on (which we now have in the form of the RTE), and they also would have led to difficulties regarding formatting and printing out for such a small form factor—it was just too small a pan.

Also, note that 2007, the year that the above-mentioned TED talk was given, was also the year that the iPhone came out. The iPad followed not long after in 2010, and pretty soon, smartphones and tablets proliferated among those in the Chinese fields, along with resources like apps, websites, digital publications, etc. that were designed for such mobile devices. When entire libraries can be contained in one’s smartphone or tablet, one is probably not usually inclined to seek out paper equivalents. Indeed, to many who grew up with touchscreen mobile devices, paper publications that don’t allow things like resizing of text or looking up information on words seem broken.