Tag: Pīnyīn.info

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wēijī

wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

As of this writing, jw.org is featuring the article “Ukraine War Fuels Global Food Crisis”. The Mandarin version of this article uses “quánqiú (quán·qiú entire · globe → [global] 全球) liángshi (liáng·shi {grain → [food]} · {eating (matter) → [food]} → [food] 粮食 糧食) wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” to correspond with “global food crisis”.

The previous use on jw.org of “nànmín (nàn·mín calamity · {persons of a certain occupation} → [refugees] 难民 難民) cháo (tide → [(social) upsurge] 潮)” to correspond with “refugee crisis” (as discussed in a past MEotW post) makes for an interesting contrast—the use here of “cháo (tide → [(social) upsurge] 潮)”, literally meaning “tide”, is relatively specific, whereas “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” is more generally used to correspond with “crisis”.

The “Danger + Opportunity” Trope

“Wēijī (Wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” has unfortunately been used—or misused—by Westerners so much to refer to positive opportunity in the midst of danger that there is a whole Wikipedia article on that.

Other articles have been written on this subject as well, such as the following:

Are All Opportunities Good?

It seems that the crux of the issue is the morpheme “jī ({machine; mechanism [→ [airplane; aircraft | being organic]]} | {incipient moment; crucial point} | chance; opportunity; occasion 机 機/机)” in “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)”, and how it does or doesn’t relate to the English word “opportunity”.

The English word “opportunity” is often defined as a situation that is favourable or allowing for progress. Naturally, people love progress and things that are favourable, so many naturally want to believe that “opportunity” being a possible meaning of the “jī ({machine; mechanism [→ [airplane; aircraft | being organic]]} | {incipient moment; crucial point} | chance; opportunity; occasion 机 機/机)” in “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” means that they can find some favourable things for themselves in any crisis, because “the Chinese say so”.

It should be noted, though, that technically, an opportunity is not necessarily always a positive thing. One dictionary in fact defines an “opportunity” as “a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something”, and not all possibilities are positive—it depends on who or what a possibility is for.

Possibilities

Speaking of possibilities, both “wēi (danger | dangerous | endanger 危)” and “jī ({machine; mechanism [→ [airplane; aircraft | being organic]]} | {incipient moment; crucial point} | chance; opportunity; occasion 机 機/机)” (but especially “jī ({machine; mechanism [→ [airplane; aircraft | being organic]]} | {incipient moment; crucial point} | chance; opportunity; occasion 机 機/机)”) are polysemous, that is, having many possible related meanings—they are sort of like linguistic Schrödinger’s cats that could be in several possible states until sufficient context collapses the possibilities into one (or perhaps, still, a few).

How do the possibilities collapse when “wēi (danger | dangerous | endanger 危)” and “jī ({machine; mechanism [→ [airplane; aircraft | being organic]]} | {incipient moment; crucial point} | chance; opportunity; occasion 机 機/机)” are put together as “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” and then used in typical contexts? Since “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” is a Mandarin word, the most important context to consider is that of the Mandarin language itself.

How does “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” work as a word in the Mandarin language? For what it’s worth, my sense, influenced by decades of translating Mandarin words into English, is that “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)”, as used in Mandarin, should be understood to primarily mean an incipient moment, or even opportunity, for danger itself, not for a Western or other opportunist who tries to make the situation about himself/herself. That is to say, with a Mandarin wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機), the focus is primarily on how in the situation referred to, dangerous things could happen. As Prof. Mair says in his essay mentioned above:

If one wishes to wax philosophical about the jī of wēijī, one might elaborate upon it as the dynamic of a situation’s unfolding, when many elements are at play. In this sense, jī is neutral. This jī can either turn out for better or for worse, but — when coupled with wēi — the possibility of a highly undesirable outcome (whether in life, disease, finance, or war) is uppermost in the mind of the person who invokes this potent term.

Even the seemingly unrelated meaning for “jī ({machine; mechanism [→ [airplane; aircraft | being organic]]} | {incipient moment; crucial point} | chance; opportunity; occasion 机 機/机)” of “machine” or “mechanism” may be (somewhat, at least) connected to the concept of “opportunity”, since, as the tech lovers among us know, machines and mechanisms make possible things that were not possible before, opening up opportunities for good or bad things to happen, depending on who or what uses them, and how. Also, in an abstract way, a situation can be likened to a machine or mechanism with which certain inputs can cause certain things to happen. With “wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)”, the input of concern is danger.

Responding Well to Crises

It is true, though, that how we respond to the potential dangers of an actual wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機), an actual crisis, can determine whether we end up better off or worse off. For example, the recent daily text for June 3, 2022 discussed 2 Corinthians 12:10, in which the apostle Paul said he ‘took pleasure’ in various crises as opportunities to exercise reliance on “the power of the Christ” rather than on his own relative insignificant power. (2 Corinthians 12:9) Thus, he would become truly powerful. As shown by a cross reference in the New World Translation Study Bible, related to this is what Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13:

“For all things I have the strength through the one who gives me power.”

So, while the Mandarin expression “quánqiú (quán·qiú entire · globe → [global] 全球) liángshi (liáng·shi {grain → [food]} · {eating (matter) → [food]} → [food] 粮食 糧食) wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機)” directly refers to potential dangers relating to global food availability, a quánqiú (quán·qiú entire · globe → [global] 全球) liángshi (liáng·shi {grain → [food]} · {eating (matter) → [food]} → [food] 粮食 糧食) wēijī (wēi·jī {dangerous | endangering} · {incipient moment; crucial point | occasion} | {(for) danger} · occasion; opportunity → [crisis] 危机 危機) also provides opportunity for us to exercise reliance on Jehovah and his King, Jesus, as the apostle Paul did. Additionally, it may give us opportunities to share the good news of God’s Kingdom with people who are receptive to it, as it becomes more and more evident that only God’s Kingdom can truly bring an end to such crises.

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Culture Current Events History Language Learning Names Nations Science

Wūkèlán

Wūkèlán (Ukraine 乌克兰 烏克蘭) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

On February 24, 2022, a few days before the date of this post, Russia sent significant military forces into Ukraine, resulting in the largest scale open warfare in Europe since World War II. So, this week’s MEotW is “Wūkèlán (Ukraine 乌克兰 烏克蘭)”, the Mandarin word for “Ukraine”. Knowing this will help us in the Mandarin field as we hear about, talk about, and pray about Ukraine in the time ahead.

Note that it is apparent that “Wūkèlán (Ukraine 乌克兰 烏克蘭)” was chosen to represent “Ukraine” in Mandarin because of what it sounds like, not because of the meanings of the supposedly ideographic (representing meaning directly through visible symbols, bypassing speech) Chinese characters used to write it out (“Crow Overcomes Orchid”??? 🤷🏻).

Some Related Mandarin Expressions

Here are some other Mandarin expressions that should be useful to know regarding this situation:

  • Éluósī (Russia 俄罗斯 俄羅斯)
  • Sūlián (Sū·lián Soviet · {Uniting → [Union]} 苏联 蘇聯) – Make sure you don’t use this expression to refer to present-day Russia, since the Soviet Union no longer exists. Some say that a desire to restore the power and influence of the old Soviet Union is one of Russian president Putin’s main motivations for waging war on Ukraine.
  • Bái Éluósī ((Bái White 白) (Éluósī Russia 俄罗斯 俄羅斯) → [Belarus])
  • zhànzhēng (zhàn·zhēng war · contending → [war; warfare] 战争 戰爭)
  • hépíng (peace | {[is] peaceful} (nwtsty-CHS Appx. A2 says this term mainly refers to the absence of war or conflict) 和平)

Neutrality

As pointed out in the article “Russia Invades Ukraine” on jw.org:

There are more than 129,000 of Jehovah’s Witnesses living in Ukraine. Like the Witnesses in every other country, they imitate Jesus by remaining politically neutral and refusing to take part in war. (John 18:36)

There are also thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, who are being persecuted for their faith. We can be sure that like their Ukranian brothers and sisters, they are also remaining politically neutral and refusing to take part in war, such that none of the Russian military personnel currently attacking their neighbours (and maybe in some cases, friends and relatives) in Ukraine are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

May we keep our brothers and sisters in the affected areas in our prayers to Jehovah, the only true God and the “God of all comfort”—John 17:3, 2 Corinthians 1:3.

Categories
Culture Science Technology Theocratic

diǎnliàng

diǎnliàng (diǎn·liàng {dot → [light (v); ignite]} · {to be bright} [→ [illuminate; shine light on]] 点亮 點亮) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

This week’s MEotW, “diǎnliàng (diǎn·liàng {dot → [light (v); ignite]} · {to be bright} [→ [illuminate; shine light on]] 点亮 點亮)”, is used to good effect in lesson 02 point 5 (WOL, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus) of the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! (lffi) brochure (and of the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! (lff) book).

“Diǎnliàng” in _Enjoy Life Forever!_ br., lesson 02 point 5 (WOL CHS+Pinyin, _Pīnyīn_ Plus)

Translating the English text “The Bible’s hope can make a difference”, the Mandarin text means ‘The Bible’s hope shines a light on human life’.

What’s a Word?

Note that the Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY currently renders the morphemes “”diǎn (dots → [lights (v)] 点 點)” and “liàng ({to be bright} 亮)” as two separate words, whereas the unofficial Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resource renders them together as one word, as many past official Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) publications would likely have done. Is one of these renderings “right” and the other “wrong”? Is one better and the other worse? How much does it matter?

These seemingly simple questions turn out to actually be not that simple to answer. Especially in languages like Mandarin that have historically been written using the Chinese characters writing system—a system that probably for traditional stylistic reasons neglects to clearly and conveniently put spaces between words like alphabetic writing systems generally do—there is not always a consensus regarding the answers to the questions of “What’s a word?” and “What morphemes should be put together as words?” As the Wikipedia article on “Word” says:

There still remains no consensus among linguists about the proper definition of “word” in a spoken language that is independent of its writing system, nor about the precise distinction between it and “morpheme”.[source] This issue is particularly debated for Chinese and other languages of East Asia,[source]

Standards and Conventions

Unlike the Chinese characters writing system, the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) alphabetic writing system does clearly and conveniently put spaces between words—such word separation is in fact a big advantage of Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) compared to the Chinese characters writing system. However, the question of what constitutes a word that is to be separated from other words by spaces remains one that may be answered differently by different people.

The technical linguistic term that relates to such matters is orthography. The Wikipedia article on that provides this summary of what that means:

An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

One might wonder whether there are official rules and standards regarding Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) orthography, and indeed there are. In fact, the PRC government has an official national standard for Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) orthography, with the designation GB/T 16159-2012. (A convenient annotated web version (rendered in Simplified Chinese characters) has been made available here on the independent website Pīnyīn.info.)

What the letters “GB/T” stand for is significant. Wikipedia provides this summary:

GB stands for Guobiao (simplified Chinese: 国标; traditional Chinese: 國標; pinyin: Guóbiāo), Chinese for national standard.

Mandatory standards are prefixed “GB”. Recommended standards are prefixed “GB/T” (T from Chinese language 推荐; tuījiàn; ‘recommended’).

(The above summary is confirmed elsewhere on the web, e.g. here on legal analysis website Lexology.)

So, while the PRC’s GB/T 16159-2012 provides many basic rules regarding Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) orthography, even within China it is not a mandatory standard—the “T” in “GB/T 16159-2012” indicates that even within China, it is at most a set of recommendations.

(An interesting contrast is the mandatory PRC standard GB 18030, which relates to software support for the PRC’s Chinese characters, both simplified and traditional, and which, for example, Microsoft makes its Windows software comply with.)

Regarding standards and conventions, even officially recommended ones, for things like language and writing, views and practices vary in different places, and at different times. For example, Chinese writing in the past didn’t have punctuation, and now it has punctuation largely modeled after European punctuation. (For reference: Chinese punctuation – Wikipedia, Q&A: When were punctuation marks first used? – HistoryExtra, history – When was punctuation introduced into Chinese? – Chinese Language Stack Exchange)

Even today, within the same time frame, there are differing views and practices regarding how things should be written. For example, in English, there are differing views and practices regarding British vs. American spellings, whether or not to use the Oxford (serial) comma, how titles should be capitalized, what should be italicized/bolded/underlined, etc.

When it comes to Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), another factor to keep in mind is that due primarily to cultural prejudice, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) has simply not been used much overall, relatively speaking, especially as a full writing system on its own. So, it has not really gone through much of the process of receiving the widely agreed upon tweaks and refinements that a system typically receives as it gets tried out and put to extensive use by many people.

Verb-Complement Togetherness

Getting back to the MEotW “diǎnliàng (diǎn·liàng {dot → [light (v); ignite]} · {to be bright} [→ [illuminate; shine light on]] 点亮 點亮)”, the PRC national standard GB/T 16159-2012 recommends that, being made up of a single-syllable verb and its single-syllable complement, this expression should be written together. Recent official Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) publications such as those on the Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY often do not follow this recommendation regarding single-syllable verbs and their single-syllable complements, whereas older official Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) publications did follow this recommendation, and as do the unofficial Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resources.

On the other hand, the unofficial Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resources join the official Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) publications, old and new, in explicitly indicating tone sandhi for “bù (not 不)” and “yī (one 一)” (e.g., “búzài (bú·zài not · again; further; continuing; anymore 不再)” instead of the standard “bùzài (bù·zài not · again; further; continuing; anymore 不再)”) to make things easier for readers, even though this practice is not included in the GB/T 16159-2012 standard’s recommendations.

In the end, what matters most re how anything is written is not just what is officially recommended or what happens to be popular among changing, imperfect humans. Rather, what matters most is what really works best to accomplish the goal of writing: To communicate to readers. This is especially true when God-honouring and life-saving Bible truths need to be communicated. So, this blog and the other Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resources will continue to seek to render Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) in ways that maximize how clearly, easily, effectively, and appropriately it communicates with readers.

For convenience:

The direct link for the current generation Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resource for the Enjoy Life Forever! brochure is:

The direct link for the current generation Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resource for the Enjoy Life Forever! book is:

The short link for Chinese field language-learning links for the Enjoy Life Forever! brochure is:

The short link for Chinese field language-learning links for the Enjoy Life Forever! book is:

More Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus web material based on the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! brochure and the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! book will be made available in the above-mentioned Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus web resources as time allows.