May Fourth Movement Archives - Mandarin Expression of the Week

kǒngbù huódòng ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] 活动活動) → [terrorism; terrorist activities]) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Notes: Tap/click on a Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to reveal its “flashcard”; tap/click on a “flashcard” or its Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · 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.]

With what’s currently going on in the world, at the time of this writing, jw.org was featuring the article “Will Terrorism Ever End?”. Where the English version of this article uses the word “terrorism”, the Mandarin version uses this week’s MEotW, “kǒngbù huódòng ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] 活动活動) → [terrorism; terrorist activities])”. For example, the titles of the English and Mandarin versions of the article are rendered as follows:

English:

Will Terrorism Ever End?

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Kǒngbù Huódòng ((Kǒng·bù Fearing · Terror → [Terrorist] 恐怖) (Huó·dòng Living · Moving → [Activities] 活动活動) → [Terrorism]) Huì (Will 会會) Yǒu (Have 有) Zhōngzhǐ (Zhōng·zhǐ Ending · Stopping 终止終止) de (’s 的) Yì (One 一) Tiān (Sky → [Day] 天) Ma ([? ptcl for “yes/no” questions] 吗嗎)?

Morphemic Breakdown

In “kǒngbù huódòng ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] 活动活動) → [terrorism; terrorist activities])”, “kǒngbù (kǒng·bù fearing · terror | terrifying · frightening [→ [terror; horror | horrible | terrorist (adj)]] 恐怖)” is made up of morphemes that literally mean “fearing” and “terror”, and that together effectively mean “terrorist” (used as an adjective) in this context. Another expression in which “kǒngbù (kǒng·bù fearing · terror | terrifying · frightening [→ [terror; horror | horrible | terrorist (adj)]] 恐怖)” is used this way is “kǒngbù fènzǐ ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (fèn·zǐ {component; part; portion (of a whole)} · person → [member (of a class or group)] 分子) → [terrorist (person)])”, which means “terrorist”, that is, a person who is a terrorist.

As for “huódòng (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] | {to be living → [to be moving]} · {to move} 活动活動)”, its morphemes literally mean “living” and “moving”, and, in the context of “kǒngbù huódòng ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] 活动活動) → [terrorism; terrorist activities])”, together they effectively mean “activities”. On one level of literalness, then, “kǒngbù huódòng ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] 活动活動) → [terrorism; terrorist activities])” means “terrorist activities”. From there, it’s easy to see how it came to correspond with “terrorism”.

Mandarin -isms

“Terrorism” is but one of the world’s many -isms. Below are some other Mandarin expressions, besides “huódòng (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] | {to be living → [to be moving]} · {to move} 活动活動)”, used to construct the Mandarin equivalents of various English -isms, along with examples of them in use:

zhǔyì (zhǔ·yì master · meaning → [doctrine; ideology; -ism] 主义主義)
- guójiā zhǔyì ((guó·jiā nation · family → [nation] 国家國家) (zhǔ·yì master · meaning → [-ism] 主义主義) → [nationalism])
- zhǒngzú zhǔyì ((zhǒng·zú kind · race → [race] 种族種族) (zhǔ·yì master · meaning → [-ism] 主义主義) → [racism; ethnocentrism])
- chuántǒng zhǔyì ((chuán·tǒng {passed on} · {gathered together (things) → [interconnected system]} → [tradition] 传统傳統) (zhǔ·yì master · meaning → [-ism] 主义主義) → [traditionalism])
lùn (discussing → [theory; doctrine; -ism | view; opinion] 论論)
- wúshén lùn ((wú·shén no · God 无神無神) (lùn discussing → [-ism] 论論) → [atheism])
- bùkězhī lùn ((bù·kě·zhī not · can · {be known} → [[is] unknowable] 不可知) (lùn discussing → [-ism] 论論) → [agnosticism])
jīngshén (spirit [→ [mind; mental state; psycho-; -ism]] 精神)
- Ā Q jīngshén ((Ā [pref indicating familiarity] 阿) (Q) (jīngshén spirit → [-ism] 精神) → [Ah Q-ism; self-deception and rationalization as a coping mechanism, involving viewing personal and societal failures as “spiritual/moral victories” (Ā Q is the protagonist of Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn (The True Story of Ah Q), by Lǔ Xùn)])

Ah Q

To provide some background for “Ā Q jīngshén ((Ā [pref indicating familiarity] 阿) (Q) (jīngshén spirit → [-ism] 精神) → [Ah Q-ism; self-deception and rationalization as a coping mechanism, involving viewing personal and societal failures as “spiritual/moral victories” (Ā Q is the protagonist of Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn (The True Story of Ah Q), by Lǔ Xùn)])”, Ā Q ((Ā [pref indicating familiarity] 阿) (Q) → [protagonist of Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn (The True Story of Ah Q), by Lǔ Xùn]) is the protagonist of Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn ((Ā [pref indicating familiarity] 阿) (Q Q’s) (Zhèng·zhuàn Correct · Story → [True Story] 正传正傳) → [The True Story of Ah Q (novella by Lǔ Xùn; considered the first work written in Vernacular Chinese)]) (The True Story of Ah Q), a novella by Lǔ Xùn ((Lǔ Stupid; Rash (surname) 鲁魯) (Xùn Fast; Quick; Swift 迅) (pen name of Zhōu Shùrén, the greatest Chinese writer of the 20th cent. and a strong advocate of alphabetic writing)), who is considered the greatest Chinese writer of the 20th century, and who was a strong advocate of alphabetic writing for China. Regarding Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn ((Ā [pref indicating familiarity] 阿) (Q Q’s) (Zhèng·zhuàn Correct · Story → [True Story] 正传正傳) → [The True Story of Ah Q (novella by Lǔ Xùn; considered the first work written in Vernacular Chinese)]), Wikipedia provides this summary of how this literary work is viewed:

The piece is generally held to be a masterpiece of modern Chinese literature, since it is considered the first piece of work to fully utilize Vernacular Chinese after the 1919 May 4th Movement in China.^[source]

báihuà

báihuà (bái·huà {white → [colloquial; vernacular]} · speech [→ [writing based on vernacular speech]] 白话白話) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

As mentioned in last week’s MEotW on “chéngyǔ (chéng·yǔ {(sth. that) has become} · saying → [set phrase (typically of 4 characters); idiom] 成语成語)”, Literary Chinese was the standard style of writing in China for a long, long time. Since language naturally changes as time goes by, though, the way people actually talked became more and more different from Literary Chinese.

Eventually, starting about a century ago, in the early 1920s, written vernacular Chinese, or báihuà (bái·huà {white → [colloquial; vernacular]} · speech [→ [writing based on vernacular speech]] 白话白話)—this week’s MEotW—began replacing Literary Chinese in literary works, and it eventually became the standard style of writing for Modern Standard Mandarin.

A Literary Turning Point

The Wikipedia article on written vernacular Chinese provides this summary regarding this literary turning point:

Jin Shengtan, who edited several novels in vernacular Chinese in the 17th century, is widely regarded as the pioneer of literature in the vernacular style. However, it was not until after the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and the promotion by scholars and intellectuals such as pragmatist reformer Hu Shih, pioneering writer Chen Hengzhe, leftist Lu Xun, Chen Duxiu, and leftist Qian Xuantong that vernacular Chinese, or Bai hua, gained widespread importance. In particular, The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun is generally accepted as the first modern work to fully utilize the vernacular language.^[source]

The Wikipedia article on the May Fourth Movement adds the following:

In Chinese literature, the May Fourth Movement is regarded as the watershed after which the use of the vernacular language (baihua) gained currency over and eventually replaced the use of Literary Chinese in literary works. Intellectuals were driven toward expressing themselves using the spoken tongue under the slogan 我手写我口 [wǒ (my 我) shǒu (hand 手) xiě (writes 写寫) wǒ (my 我) kǒu ({mouth(’s utterances)} 口)] (‘my hand writes [what] my mouth [speaks]’), although the change was actually gradual: Hu Shih had already argued for the use of the modern vernacular language in literature in his 1917 essay “Preliminary discussion on literary reform” (文学改良刍议), while the first short story written exclusively in the vernacular language, The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun, was not published until 1921.

Punctuation! Arabic Numerals!

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on written vernacular Chinese, quoted above, goes on to make the following claim about what came along with this change to the vernacular style:

Along with the growing popularity of vernacular writing in books in this period was the acceptance of punctuation, modeled after that used in Western languages (traditional Chinese literature was almost entirely unpunctuated), and the use of Arabic numerals.

The above claim about how it came to be that we now benefit from punctuation in modern Chinese writings is repeated in the separate Wikipedia article on Chinese punctuation:

Although there was a long native tradition of textual annotation to indicate the boundaries of sentences and clauses, the concept of punctuation marks being a mandatory and integral part of the text was only adapted in the written language during the 20th century due to Western influence.

A quick web search also turned up this post on the Chinese Language Stack Exchange website, part of which says:

I have seen some old Chinese books. The words flowed from top to bottom on the page and there was no punctuation.

We can be thankful that báihuà (bái·huà {white → [colloquial; vernacular]} · speech [→ [writing based on vernacular speech]] 白话白話) (along with, apparently, punctuation and Arabic numerals) replaced Literary Chinese as the standard style of writing for Mandarin, just as I’m sure that the English-speakers among us are thankful that the standard written English of today is no longer the written English of Shakespeare or that of the King James Version of the Bible.

How About Cantonese, Shanghainese, Etc.?

Báihuà (Bái·huà {white → [colloquial; vernacular]} · speech [→ [writing based on vernacular speech]] 白话白話) not only became the standard style of writing for Modern Standard Mandarin, but due to China’s particular language and political situation, it also became the standard style of writing for speakers of Cantonese and of other Chinese languages, as Wikipedia points out:

Since the early 1920s, this modern vernacular form has been the standard style of writing for speakers of all varieties of Chinese throughout mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore

As someone who was in the Cantonese field for a long time before joining the Mandarin field, I can attest to the fact that years ago in the Cantonese field, we would use official publications that were actually in written Mandarin, with its different vocabulary, etc., because báihuà (bái·huà {white → [colloquial; vernacular]} · speech [→ [writing based on vernacular speech]] 白话白話), the standard writing style in the Chinese world, is based on Mandarin.

Recently, though, Jehovah’s organization has carried on in the direction gone in by báihuà (bái·huà {white → [colloquial; vernacular]} · speech [→ [writing based on vernacular speech]] 白话白話), of having writing reflect how people actually talk, by making available publications in which the writing is based on spoken Cantonese, in addition to the existing publications using written Mandarin. (Publications in which the writing is based on other spoken Chinese languages are also available.) This is in harmony with a basic principle regarding how God designed and created humans to use language, which, as linguists have figured out, is that speech is primary and writing is secondary.

Different kinds of written Chinese on jw.org

Publications are available on jw.org in writing based on different Chinese languages, to better match how people actually talk in those languages.

kǒngbù huódòng ((kǒng·bù fearing · terror → [terrorist] 恐怖) (huó·dòng living · moving → [activities] 活动 活動) → [terrorism; terrorist activities]) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”