Yètèluó
(Jethʹro
叶特罗
葉特羅) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”
Appendix A2 of the English New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), entitled “Features of This Revision”, discusses vocabulary changes that have been made in the current revision, words that have been translated differently than before. As noted in various entries in the excellent resource Referenced Theo. Expressions (RTE), Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) correspondingly discusses words that have been translated differently in the current revision of the Mandarin NWT Bible, compared to how they had been translated before.
Since we base what we say in Jehovah’s service on his Word the Bible, the vocabulary used in it—and the way those vocabulary words are translated—should be reflected in how we speak in our ministry, at our meetings, etc. So, it is beneficial for us Mandarin field language learners to be familiar with the latest thinking from the organization on how Bible terms should be translated into Mandarin.
Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty) mentions that one of the goals for this version was to reduce the number of hard-to-recognize, hard-to-read Chinese characters used, and to replace them with more commonly used characters. The first example it provides is that “Yètèluó
(Jethʹro (old way of writing with characters)
叶忒罗
葉忒羅)” was changed to this week’s MEotW, “Yètèluó
(Jethʹro
叶特罗
葉特羅)”.—Exodus 3:1.
While the pronunciation and the Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) were kept the same, a relatively rarely-used, hard-to-recognize character (“忒”) was replaced with a different, more common and recognizable character (“特”). As we can see, the translators who worked on the current version of the Mandarin NWT recognized that it was good to preserve the spoken pronunciation of the expression, an expression that as a whole was not changed. At the same time, they did not consider the particular character that was replaced to be sacred. This reinforces to us the basic principle of linguistics (language science) that SPEECH is primary, not writing, which shows up the traditional and ongoing Chinese cultural emphasis on characters as being fundamentally misplaced.
A Real-Life Example
The importance of avoiding unnecessarily hard-to-recognize characters was well demonstrated by the incident discussed in the tiandi.info blog post “An Avoidable Minefield of Human Tradition and Cultural Pride” (Email me if you need login information, and include information on who referred you and/or what group/cong. you are in.):
A few nights ago, my Mandarin congregation had a Memorial meeting that went well overall. However, there was a momentary hiccup that I think we Chinese field publishers can learn from.
The speaker who gave the talk is a fluent, eloquent native Mandarin speaker originally from mainland China, and he is one of the best Mandarin speakers in a city of several Mandarin congregations. In fact, he was one of the instructors in the very first official Mandarin class ever held in this country. However, while reading a scripture from his paper Bible as he was giving the Memorial talk, he, of all people, just…got…stuck…on…a…Chinese…character…. He struggled with it for what felt like quite a while, and eventually, a young brother who was serving as an attendant at the side of the stage approached and gave him a hint, and he was able to carry on.
…
While not a showstopper, this unfortunate incident was indeed an awkward showpauser, during the very meeting, out of all the meetings in the entire service year, at which the highest proportion of interested ones from the field was present—truly a nightmare scenario for anyone who gives Chinese talks!
FYI, in this case, the character that the brother couldn’t read was the “虺” in “虺蛇”, which has been replaced in the current version of the Mandarin NWT with “眼镜蛇”. (Isaiah 11:8) (While not being especially visually complex compared to some other Chinese characters, “虺” is relatively rarely used, ranking way down at #5543 on Prof. Dá Jùn
(Dá
{Tow Rope} (surname)
笪)
((Jùn
{Fine Horse}
骏
駿)
(Associate Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Media Center for Language Acquisition Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Middle Tennessee State University))’s character frequency list of Modern Chinese. “眼” is #281 on that list, and “镜” is #1251.)
Mitigations and Alternatives
In a way, though, even such fine efforts on the part of the NWT translators, working with what they have, are mere mitigations. On a more basic level, the incident mentioned above also highlights the problematic nature of the Chinese characters writing system itself, which makes it all too possible for such hard-to-recognize characters to exist, without any reasonable, consistent, and reliable system to work out their pronunciations. This makes any block of Chinese characters a potential minefield that can blow up in the face of even the most knowledgeable and experienced native speaker, because even such a one is still a mere imperfect human contending with the inhumanly complex and numerous Chinese characters, of which there are over100,000.
In contrast, Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音), with its Latin alphabet letters and four tone symbols, is a simple, elegant full writing system for Modern Standard Mandarin that is eminently learnable by mere imperfect humans. Thus, it is an eminently good thing that Jehovah, through his organization, has made official Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)available for the current version of the Mandarin NWT Bible, unlikely and uncommon though such a provision is from a worldly, human viewpoint. (Work is also ongoing to provide unofficial Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)Plus material for the current version of the Mandarin NWT, as language-learning material, not as spiritual food.)
wǔyè
(wǔ·yè
{7th of the 12 Earthly Branches → [south (placed at the midnight position of Chinese directions charts)]} · night →[midnight]
午夜) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”
[Notes:Tap/click on a Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) expression to reveal its “flashcard”; tap/click on a “flashcard”or its Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) expression to hide the“flashcard”. 📖📄 📘 icons mean 📖Reveal All, 📄Reveal Advanced, and 📘 Reveal None re all the “flashcards” in the heading, paragraph, etc. that they are placed at the beginning of.]
At the time of this writing, jw.org was featuring the article “Scientists Move the Doomsday Clock Forward—What Does the Bible Say?”. The Mandarin version of this article uses “Mòrì
(Mò·rì
End · {Sun → [Day]} → [Doomsday]
末日)Shízhōng
(Shí·zhōng
{(Particular) Times} · Clock →[Clock]
时钟
時鐘)” to translate “Doomsday Clock” (see the MEotW post on “shìjiè
(shì·jiè
{generation → [world]} · extent’s →[world’s]
世界)mòrì
(mò·rì
end · {sun → [day]}
末日)” for some info on “mòrì
(mò·rì
end · {sun → [day]} [→ [doomsday]]
末日)”), and it uses this week’s MEotW, “wǔyè
(wǔ·yè
{7th of the 12 Earthly Branches → [south (placed at the midnight position of Chinese directions charts)]} · night →[midnight]
午夜)” to translate “midnight”. Many Mandarin field language learners will be familiar with “yè
(night; evening
夜
夜/亱)”, which means “night” or “evening”, but what does “wǔ
({7th of the 12 Earthly Branches} [→ [noon | midnight | south]]
午)” mean?
Earthly Branches
As shown in the Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) Plus information for “wǔ
({7th of the 12 Earthly Branches} [→ [noon | midnight | south]]
午)”, its literal meaning is “7th of the 12 Earthly Branches”. What in the world are the “Earthly Branches”? Wikipedia summarizes for us that:
The twelve Earthly Branches or Terrestrial Branches[source] are a Chinese ordering system used throughout East Asia in various contexts
One of those contexts in which the Earthly Branches are traditionally used by the Chinese is to name the twelve two-hour periods that they divided each day into. In this system, the seventh Earthly Branch “wǔ
({7th of the 12 Earthly Branches} [→ [noon | midnight | south]]
午)” is the name of the two-hour period from 11 am to 1 pm, which has noon at its centre. Thus, “wǔ
({7th of the 12 Earthly Branches} [→ [noon | midnight | south]]
午)” is associated with “noon”, and we get expressions such as “wǔcān
(wǔ·cān
{7th of the 12 Earthly Branches → [noon]} · meal →[lunch]
午餐)”, meaning “noon meal”, or “lunch”.
Wait a minute…how did an expression that’s associated with “noon” end up getting used in an expression that means “midnight”? This apparently happened because of a different context in which the Earthly Branches are also used, that of directions. In this context, “wǔ
({7th of the 12 Earthly Branches} [→ [noon | midnight | south]]
午)” is used to mean “south”. Wait a minute…again…isn’t south at the bottom of a compass, while midnight is at the top of a clock? Well, check out this chart of the Chinese directions:
Directions used by Chinese mariners, astronomers, etc. By ancient Chinese convention, south, named “wǔ
({7th of the 12 Earthly Branches} → [south]
午)”, is placed at the top, in the midnight position. Locoluis
Indeed, the Mandarin word for “compass”, “zhǐnán zhēn
((zhǐ·nán
{(points with) finger → [points]} · south
指南)
(zhēn
needle
针
針)
→[compass])” (a past MEotW), which actually means “points south needle”, embodies that the ancient Chinese viewed north and south from the opposite viewpoint compared to modern Westerners, whose convention is that a compass needle points north. (Of course, as one end of a compass needle is pointing north, the other end is simultaneously pointing south, so both viewpoints are correct—they’re just coming from different directions.) Thus, on a compass marked with the Chinese directions, south is placed at the top, where a clock puts midnight. This, apparently, is how we get “wǔyè
(wǔ·yè
{7th of the 12 Earthly Branches → [south (placed at the midnight position of Chinese directions charts)]} · night →[midnight]
午夜)”, which means “south night” and is used to mean “midnight”.
Heavenly Stems
By the way, often used with the Earthly Branches are the Heavenly Stems. Anyone who’s been in the Mandarin field for a while will have already seen some of them, albeit probably without knowing it—if, say, a paragraph in an English Watchtower study article has more than one study question, the questions would be labelled with the ordinals “a”, “b”, “c”, etc., and the corresponding study questions in the Mandarin version would be labelled with the ordinals “Jiǎ
({1st of the 10 Heavenly Stems} →[a]
甲)”, “Yǐ
({2nd of the 10 Heavenly Stems} →[b]
乙) ”, “Bǐng
({3rd of the 10 Heavenly Stems} →[c]
丙)”, etc., which are part of the Heavenly Stems Chinese system of ordinals.
Usage Example
Here is an example of “wǔyè
(wǔ·yè
{7th of the 12 Earthly Branches → [south (placed at the midnight position of Chinese directions charts)]} · night →[midnight]
午夜)” in use, taken from the above-mentioned jw.org article:
English:
“Scientists revealed on Tuesday that the ‘Doomsday Clock’ has been moved up to 90 seconds before midnight—the closest humanity has ever been to armageddon.”—ABC News.
Mandarin:
📖📄📘
“Kēxuéjiā
(Kē·xué·jiā
{branches of study · learning → [science]} · -ists →[scientists]
科学家
科學家)zài
(on
在)Zhōu’èr
(Zhōu’·èr
{Circle → [Week(day)]} · Two →[Tuesday]
周二
周/週二)de
(’s
的)shíhou
({(particular) time}
时候
時候),
jiāng
(took
将
將)Mòrì
(Mò·rì
End · {Sun → [Day]} → [Doomsday]
末日)Shízhōng
(Shí·zhōng
{(Particular) Times} · Clock →[Clock]
时钟
時鐘)tiáokuài
(tiáo·kuài
{to be adjusted} · {to be fast(er) → [to be farther ahead]}
调快
調快)le
([indicates a change]
了),
jùlí
(jù·lí
{to be apart from} · {to be leaving from → [to be at a distance from]}
距离
距離)wǔyè
(wǔ·yè
{7th of the 12 Earthly Branches → [south (placed at the midnight position of Chinese directions charts)]} · night →[midnight]
午夜)zhǐ
(just
只
只/秖/衹/祇)shèng
({having remaining}
剩
剩/賸)
90
miǎo
(seconds
秒),
shì
((this) is
是)rénlèi
(rén·lèi
human·kind’s
人类
人類)shǐ
(history
史)shang
(upon
上)zuì
(most
最
最/㝡)jiējìn
(jiē·jìn
{coming close to} · {to be near}
接近)shìjiè
(shì·jiè
{generation → [world]} · extent’s →[world’s]
世界)mòrì
(mò·rì
end · {sun → [day]}
末日)de
(’s
的)shíkè
(shí·kè
{(particular) time} · {carving → [moment]}
时刻
時刻).”—ABC
Xīnwén
(Xīn·wén
New · {(That Which) Is Heard} →[News]
新闻
新聞)
(Yīngyǔ
(Yīng·yǔ
English · language
英语
英語))
tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”
This week’s MEotW, “tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字)”, is generally translated as “character amnesia”. Its literal meaning well describes what it’s like to experience it—you pick up your pen, pencil, brush, etc. to write a certain Chinese character and you…just…can’t…remember how to write it. This can happen with complex, rarely used characters, but it can also happen with fairly commonly used characters, and even with characters you’re sure you once knew well.
It occurs to me that while “tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字)” literally refers to forgetting a character while trying to write it by hand, and while “character amnesia” is similarly defined as forgetting how to write certain characters, people also often forget characters—and thus fail to recognize them—when they are just reading. There doesn’t seem to be a corresponding common Mandarin expression for this, though, probably because it is generally harder to write than it is to read, and so forgetting a character while engaged in the harder task of writing is generally a more significant emotional event compared to forgetting a character when reading.
It Happens to Chinese People Too
It’s also worth noting that “tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字)” is an expression that Chinese people do apply to themselves—it doesn’t just describe a problem that only other people experience while learning a language typically written with Chinese characters. Chinese people are also only human, so it is ultimately practically impossible for them too to learn and continue to remember how to write (or even “just” read) all the over 100,000 existing Chinese characters as well as the theoretically unlimited number of Chinese characters that could be invented in the future, even if they have spent, and are continuing to spend, their entire lives trying to do so.
While the government of China considers someone who can recognize “just” 2,000 characters to be literate, the truth is that even those who are considered literate by this standard can surprisingly often be unable to read or write relatively common characters that they once knew, never mind obscure characters that they never learned.
One example of even relatively highly literate native Mandarin speakers having trouble remembering how to write a not terribly uncommon character is related in David Moser’s well-known essay “Why Chinese Is So…Hard”, which has a section devoted to character amnesia:
this phonetic aspect of the language doesn’t really become very useful until you’ve learned a few hundred characters, and even when you’ve learned two thousand, the feeble phoneticity of Chinese will never provide you with the constant memory prod that the phonetic quality of English does.
Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. Period. If there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character, you’re just sunk. And you’re sunk whether your native language is Chinese or not; contrary to popular myth, Chinese people are not born with the ability to memorize arbitrary squiggles. In fact, one of the most gratifying experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker come up a complete blank when called upon to write the characters for some relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.
This is such a gratifying experience, in fact, that I have actually kept a list of characters that I have observed Chinese people forget how to write. (A sick, obsessive activity, I know.) I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like “tin can”, “knee”, “screwdriver”, “snap” (as in “to snap one’s fingers”), “elbow”, “ginger”, “cushion”, “firecracker”, and so on. And when I say “forget”, I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you imagine a well-educated native English speaker totally forgetting how to write a word like “knee” or “tin can”? Or even a rarely-seen word like “scabbard” or “ragamuffin”? I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn’t remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 “to sneeze”. I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the “Harvard of China”. Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word “sneeze”?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China.
Truly, the phenomenon of tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字) is nothing to sneeze at! (Sorry, I couldn’t help it 😜.)
Carrying on, this YouTube video from Asian Boss shows how some people on the streets of Shanghai fared when asked to write some Chinese characters. (One of the interviewees uses “tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字)” at around 7:10.)
A few nights ago, my Mandarin congregation had a Memorial meeting that went well overall. However, there was a momentary hiccup that I think we Chinese field publishers can learn from.
The speaker who gave the talk is a fluent, eloquent native Mandarin speaker originally from mainland China, and he is one of the best Mandarin speakers in a city of several Mandarin congregations. In fact, he was one of the instructors in the very first official Mandarin class ever held in this country. However, while reading a scripture from his paper Bible as he was giving the Memorial talk, he, of all people, just…got…stuck…on…a…Chinese…character…. He struggled with it for what felt like quite a while, and eventually, a young brother who was serving as an attendant at the side of the stage approached and gave him a hint, and he was able to carry on.
For Real, It’s Not You
Yes, from considering both the basic design of the Chinese characters writing system as well as real-life experiences like the ones related above, it is evident that the objective truth is that the Chinese characters writing system is by its very nature fundamentally unfit for human use. So, the blame for the all-too-real phenomenon of even relatively highly literate people surprisingly often forgetting characters while reading or writing should be squarely placed on the Chinese characters writing system, not on the imperfect humans whom it should serve, but for whom it so often causes huge problems instead.
It is thus unfortunate, not admirable, that many still cling to the problematic Chinese characters writing system because of tradition, pride, cultural inertia, apathy, inability to walk away from sunk costs, etc. Such ones simply accept tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字) as “normal” rather than recognize it as the institutionalized inhuman madness that it is, while dismissing as madness and heresy any suggestion of using a human-appropriate alphabetic writing system like Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) to read and write Mandarin.
New Technology Is Not the Problem
Of course, these days, many people hardly ever write characters by hand anymore. Indeed, many would say that’s the problem! Instead of staying in practice with their handwriting, now, to write something in Mandarin using characters, people generally type Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) with a keyboard and then select the characters they want from the ones their computer or mobile device presents to them in response to their typing. (In such settings, Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) is like the assistant who does the real work while the big boss, the characters writing system, gets all the credit and recognition, even if many individual characters don’t get recognized when they need to be!)
However, is it really fair to blame the fine new technology for people getting out of practice with the old ways? Consider that if we were to continue with this line of thinking, we could then say that pen/pencil/brush/etc. and paper should in turn be villified for making people forget how to engrave stone tablets! Really, though, people in general got so used to enjoying the advantages of writing on paper compared to having to carve into stone tablets that they didn’t consider it much of a loss that eventually few were able to do the latter. Similarly, few people now lament that with the ubiquity of cars, not many people are now able to ride horses—most people are too busy enjoying their cars to worry about that.
Indeed, rather than blaming keyboards and computing devices for the phenomenon of tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字), some feel that keyboards and computing devices have helped to alleviate the problem. This is because even if they tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(characters
字) when they are trying to type Chinese characters, they feel they can hope in and rely on the visual designs of the characters they want to help them “know them when they see them” when they pop up in response to the Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) that they type, making handwriting of characters unnecessary in most situations.
The Actual Problem, the Actual Solution
The thing is, the actual fundamental problem that leads to tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字) is that while “know it when you see it” may be how the visually oriented characters must work (when they work), that’s not the primary way that human language works. With human language overall, speech is actually primary, not writing, so it’s really more important in the grand scheme of things for us—including and especially in our preaching and teaching work—to be able to “know it when we hear it”.
While using the unnecessarily complex and inhumanly numerous visually oriented Chinese characters for this is like trying to put a spiky, sharp-edged object in a round hole, the simple and elegant phonetically oriented Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) writing system is a great fit for “know it when you hear it”. If you know how an expression should sound and you know the easy-to-learn-and-remember Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) writing system, you’re all set—no danger of tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字)!
Of course, you may still encounter occasional situations in which Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) is not an option, and you can’t avoid reading or writing characters. In such situations, all you can do is just do your best. When you can use Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音), though, don’t let pride, prejudice, etc. prevent you from making good use of it to completely sidestep the very real problem of tíbǐ
(tí·bǐ
{carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]]
提笔
提筆)‐wàng
(forget
忘)‐zì
(character
字)!