Tag: Linguistics

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

zhízhèng

zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {catch; capture → [hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政) ← 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 “Which Leader Will You Choose?—What Does the Bible Say?”, because, as the article says, “over the next few weeks, elections will be held in various countries around the world.”. The Mandarin version of this article uses what I think is an interesting expression in this context, this week’s MEotW “zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {catch; capture → [hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政)”.

Related Expressions

The “zhí (catch; capture [→ [hold [in the hand]; grasp]] [→ [persist in; stick to | carry out; implement; execute; observe | direct; manage; take charge of]] 执 執)” in “zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {catch; capture → [hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政)” has original meanings of “catch; capture”, from which are now often derived the meanings “hold [in the hand]; grasp”. It seems that these meanings in turn have led “zhí (catch; capture [→ [hold [in the hand]; grasp]] [→ [persist in; stick to | carry out; implement; execute; observe | direct; manage; take charge of]] 执 執)” to sometimes be used to effectively mean such varied things as “persist in; stick to | carry out; implement; execute; observe | direct; manage; take charge of”. Thus, “zhí (catch; capture [→ [hold [in the hand]; grasp]] [→ [persist in; stick to | carry out; implement; execute; observe | direct; manage; take charge of]] 执 執)” is a classic example of a word that has undergone what in linguistics is formally called semantic change, that is, changes in the meaning or meanings a word is used to represent.

Interestingly, in Cantonese, but apparently not in Mandarin, “zhí (catch; capture [→ [hold [in the hand]; grasp]] [→ [persist in; stick to | carry out; implement; execute; observe | direct; manage; take charge of]] 执 執)” also has a meaning of “pick up”. For example, those with Cantonese-speaking parents may have gotten used to being told to “jāp sáu méih (执手尾/執手尾)”, that is, to pick up after themselves or tidy up.

Some other Mandarin expressions that include the “zhí (catch; capture [→ [hold [in the hand]; grasp]] [→ [persist in; stick to | carry out; implement; execute; observe | direct; manage; take charge of]] 执 執)” in “zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {catch; capture → [hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政)” are:

  • zhíbǐzhě (zhí·bǐ·zhě {caught → [grasped]} · pen · person → [writer] 执笔者 執筆者)

    • Those who have been in the Mandarin field for a while may have seen this used, for example, in “Shīpiān (Shī·piān {Sacred Song} · {Piece of Writing} → [Psalm] 诗篇 詩篇) zhíbǐzhě (zhí·bǐ·zhě {caught → [grasped]} · pen · person → [writer] 执笔者 執筆者)”, which means “Psalm writer”, or “psalmist”.
  • zhíxíng (zhí·xíng {catch → [hold; grasp] → [carry out; implement; execute]} · {go; walk; travel → [do; perform; carry out]} 执行 執行)
  • zhízhǎng (zhí·zhǎng {catch; capture → [hold; grasp]} · {(have in) palm (of the hand)} → [wield; be in control of] 执掌 執掌)

    • An example of this expression in use can be found at Daniel 4:26.

A couple of Mandarin expressions that include the other morpheme in “zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {catch; capture → [hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政)” are:

  • zhèngfǔ (zhèng·fǔ political · {seat of government} → [government] 政府)
  • zhèngzhì (zhèng·zhì {politics | political} · governing [→ [politics | political]] 政治)

Usage Examples

Here are the two examples of “zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {catch; capture → [hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政)” being used in the above-mentioned article:

English:

Which Leader Will You Choose?

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Nǐ (You 你) Huì (Will 会 會) Zhīchí (Zhī·chí Support · {Hold → [Support]} 支持) Shéi (Whom 谁 誰) Zhízhèng (Zhí·zhèng {to Capture → [to Hold]} · {Government → [Political Power]} 执政 執政)?

English:

People are making important decisions about which leaders they will choose.

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Rénmen (Rén·men person · [pl] → [people] 人们 人們) jiāng ({are going to} 将 將) zuòchū (zuò·chū make · out 作出) zhòngdà (zhòng·dà weighty · big 重大) de (’s 的) juédìng (decidings → [decisions] 决定 決定): Yào ((they) must → [will] 要) xuǎn (choose 选 選) shéi (whom 谁 誰) zhízhèng (zhí·zhèng {to capture → [to hold]} · {government → [political power]} 执政 執政).

Categories
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.