[This is a reposting of a post that was originally posted on November 30, 2020. I took the opportunity to flesh out the original post and this repost with additional material.]
For a long, long, long time, Chinese characters were just Chinese characters. Then, in 1956, the Communist government of mainland China issued what came to be known as the First Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (a second round of Chinese character simplification was later attempted and ultimately rescinded), and official simplified Chinese characters came into the world. (Some characters had been unofficially simplified and used for various purposes, both everyday and artistic, before that.)
Name?
To distinguish these newfangled official simplified Chinese characters from the Chinese characters that had existed before, and that continue to be used by many people in many parts of the world, retronyms were coined to refer to these pre-existing Chinese characters, just as the term “acoustic guitar” was coined to refer to a regular non-electric guitar after electric guitars came along.
In the English-speaking world, the pre-official simplification characters have come to be called “traditional Chinese characters”, as opposed to the “simplified Chinese characters”. In the Chinese-speaking world, as is true of many things regarding Chinese characters, the situation is…complicated. Wikipedia summarizes the situation thusly:
Traditional Chinese characters (the standard characters) are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional Chinese: 正體字; simplified Chinese: 正体字; pinyin: zhèngtǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄓㄥˋ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ).[source] However, the same term is used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard, simplified and traditional characters from variant and idiomatic characters.[source]
In contrast, users of traditional characters outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities, and also users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters (traditional Chinese: 繁體字; simplified Chinese: 繁体字; pinyin: fántǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄈㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). Users of simplified characters sometimes informally refer to them as “old characters” (Chinese: 老字; pinyin: lǎozì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).
Users of traditional characters also sometimes call them “full Chinese characters” (traditional Chinese: 全體字; simplified Chinese: 全体字; pinyin: quántǐ zì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ) to distinguish them from simplified Chinese characters.
In my experience in the Chinese fields in Canada, I have always heard traditional Chinese characters referred to using this week’s MEotW, “fántǐ
(fán·tǐ
complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese]
繁体
繁體)‐zì
(characters
字)”. For reference, this is also the term used on jw.org when referring to Mandarin written using traditional Chinese characters:
jw.org refers to traditional Chinese characters as “fántǐ
(fán·tǐ
complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese]
繁体
繁體)” characters.
Beloved by Traditionalists and Purists, But Complicated
Many feel that traditional characters are the best characters of all, since, in their estimation, the official simplified characters have lost some of the heart and soul of characters. As a symbolic example, some point to how the simplified character for “love”, “爱”, omits the “heart” radical (“心”), which is appropriately in the traditional character for “love”, “愛”.
“爱” is the Simplified Chinese character for “love”. It’s simpler, but omits the “heart” radical (“心”), and has been “friend” (“友”)-zoned. 💔
Yes, as the above post mentions, the obvious, glaring issue with traditional characters is—aggravated by the fact that there are tens of thousands of them—their extreme, extraordinary complexity, the result of their problematically complex basic nature, along with thousands of years of accumulated occasionally arbitrary design decisions and developmental cruft. For example, note the below excerpt from p. 82 of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis:
In the case of the rendition for the huáng meaning “sturgeon” we have two variants, one written with the “yellow” phonetic and the other with the “emperor” phonetic, both combined with the semantic element for “fish”:
While etymological research might succeed in clarifying the basis for some of the variation, in many cases, as one specialist in Chinese paleography concludes, “it is simply a matter of the whim of the writer” (Barnard 1978:203).
Scribal whim goes far to explain a diversity bordering on chaos in the forms of the Chinese characters as they evolved in the Shang dynasty and during the long years of political and administrative disunity in the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1028–221 B.C.). The situation was aggravated by the fact that characters were created by writers living in different historical periods, which inevitably meant changes in sounds over the years, and speaking different dialects, which inevitably affected their choice of phonetic elements in the creation of new characters.
Their inherent extraordinary complexity, exacerbated by an accumulated millennia-long history of design decisions made on a whim, out-of-date phonetic elements, etc., causes especially the traditional characters, and even the (moderately) simplified characters, to be extremely difficult for us imperfect humans to learn and to remember. This has lead to character amnesia and the Great Wall of unfamiliar characters being real things, even among those who have been studying characters for decades. How complex can traditional characters get? Theoretically, there is no upper limit!
“Quán shìjiè zuì chědàn de yí ge Hànzì!” (“One of the world’s most nonsense Chinese characters!”)
The extreme, extraordinary complexity of traditional characters undoubtedly contributed greatly to illiteracy having been widespread in China for much of its history. Even for those who are privileged to be able to devote the extraordinary amount of time and effort needed to learn traditional characters, it’s a long, hard slog, compared to learning a comparatively simple and compact alphabetical writing system. It’s little wonder, then, that there have been serious, concerted efforts to simplify and even replace traditional Chinese characters.
“Ài” is how Pīnyīn represents “love”. It doesn’t play the games the characters play—it helps you actually say “I love you” (“Wǒ ài nǐ”). ❤️
zhǐyǐn
(zhǐ·yǐn
{(pointing with) finger → [pointing]} · guiding; leading
指引) 👈🏼 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.]
Recently, I came across a video entitled “Margarita Königer: Glad I Chose This Career”. (This Watchtower article briefly discusses Sis. Königer’s experience coming into the truth, and her service up to about 1995. The video, which has a copyright date of 2016, is more up-to-date. In the video, we learn that Sis. Königer began serving as a missionary in 1966, and that she had at that point been a missionary in the Chinese field in Budapest, Hungary for nine years.)
Because of what I have seen and experienced in the Mandarin field for over three decades, what Sis. Königer said starting at about the 5:10 mark of the video really resonates with me:
English:
If you are in the full-time service, I think it’s like you are travelling and Jehovah is directing you.
As can be seen above, this week’s MEotW, “zhǐyǐn
(zhǐ·yǐn
{(pointing with) finger → [pointing]} · guiding; leading
指引)”, is used in the Mandarin version of the above-mentioned video to correspond to the English word “directing”.
I have often felt like a fly on the wall observing Jehovah’s hand at work in the establishment and development of several Mandarin groups and congregations in my local area, and I have also seen much evidence that Jehovah has been directing things in the worldwide Mandarin field.
Photocopies and Handwriting
Specifically with regard to the development of material based on the organization’s official Chinese publications, but that includes Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) or Zhùyīn
(Zhù·yīn
{Annotating of} · Sounds →[Zhuyin]
注音
註/注音) to help Mandarin field language learners get past the imposing Great Wall of Chinese characters, I saw how things started in the 1980s or 1990s. Somewhere around that time, Chinese congregation elders on the West Coast of North America began directing teams of publishers who would make enlarged photocopies of official Chinese publications, and then painstakingly handwrite Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) or Zhùyīn
(Zhù·yīn
{Annotating of} · Sounds →[Zhuyin]
注音
註/注音)ruby text between the lines of characters. (In those days, many of the publishers involved were from Taiwan, where they were taught Zhùyīn
(Zhù·yīn
{Annotating of} · Sounds →[Zhuyin]
注音
註/注音) in school.) Photocopies would then be made of these handwritten “originals”, for distribution to hungry Mandarin field language learners at the local meetings and to be sent via snail mail, etc. to those in other places.
Photocopied and handwritten Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) material from 1997, based on the book The Secret of Family Happiness
PCs, Email, and Printers
A few years afterwards, in the early 2000s, I was serving where the need was great in the burgeoning Mandarin field in Calgary, where I was assigned by an unusually pragmatic and open-minded Chinese elder to develop similar Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing material for the local Mandarin field language learners—the brothers in Calgary at the time felt far from the West Coast, and had decided that they would be more comfortable with a local supply of such material.
Starting with a “clean sheet of paper” and using the personal computer technology that had become available and reasonably inexpensive at the time, I designed and started producing what was evidently the first material of the kind that eventually came to be commonly known as 3-line material. When the above-mentioned elder suggested adding English to the material that had up to this point only contained characters and Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音), I balked at first—it was already going to be so much work just to enter the characters and add the Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)! However, I decided to make some prototype material that included English, and when one of the local brothers who was learning Mandarin saw a printout of it, his eyes seemed to pop out of his head, and he practically grabbed the printout out of my hands to get a closer look at it! That helped me to decide that the additional time and work needed for me to add the English translations would be a worthwhile investment that would greatly benefit the multiple people who would use the material to help them learn the Mandarin they need in the Mandarin field.
Whereas the photocopied material mentioned above that was produced starting in the 1980s or 1990s was produced and distributed entirely in the paper realm, this new material was produced in the digital realm in word processing programs, and distributed as digital files (albeit ones still meant to be printed out on paper). Thus, I was able to email the files to whoever asked for them, after I emailed a few acquaintances I had in the nearby Canadian and American Mandarin fields about them.
A screenshot of early 3-line PDF material from 2001, based on the book Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?
And boy, did people start asking for them! Amazingly, people in the Mandarin field began telling their friends and fellow workers about the files, and I began to get emails from all around the world—from every continent except Antarctica—requesting them. I remember getting a bit emotional after getting an email from the UK requesting the files and telling me about the growing Chinese fields there—it felt like finding out about a part of your family that before, you had no idea existed. I also remember feeling amazed and doing a double take after seeing that I had gotten an email from someone in the Chinese group in Budapest, Hungary, where the above-mentioned Sis. Königer later served for a long time.
For those who weren’t around then, let me provide a bit more background information about the situation in the worldwide Mandarin field at the time, to help put this enthusiastic worldwide response in perspective. At the time, jw.org was still many years away from coming online and becoming a place on the web where one could just go and view or download abundant material based on official publications and containing Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音). This was also before the iPhone came out in 2007, before Android was introduced in 2008, and before the iPad came out in 2010. What many people in the worldwide Mandarin field did have at that time, though, were personal computers (PCs and Macs), email, printers, and an organizationally existentially urgent situation caused by the frustratingly complex and difficult-to-learn-and-remember Chinese characters, which can take years, even decades, for a language learner to get functionally proficient with.
Pinyin Material or Bust
Many of the Mandarin pregroups, groups, and congregations around the world at that time were quite new, with zero or very few publishers who were native Mandarin-speakers, and thus zero or very few people, especially brothers, who could function effectively in the Mandarin field with publications that contained only Chinese characters. So, they really, really needed material like that early 3-line material. Especially for many Mandarin pregroups and groups around the world at that time, getting the Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing material or not literally meant the difference between being able to conduct their Mandarin meetings or not being able to do so.
And so, email requests came pouring in from around the world for the early 3-line unofficial material that I was producing, with only a few occasional helpers, in my little rented basement suite in a territory far from the home where I grew up. That was a hard time to go through—the material, while no longer having to be painstakingly handwritten, still took a lot of time and effort to produce, week after week, and many of those around me did not understand or appreciate this highly unusual, pressure-filled, high-stakes situation that I found myself in. During that time, I learned and lived the Mandarin saying “qí
({(if one) rides}
骑
騎)‐hǔ
(tiger
虎)‐nán
({(it) is difficult}
难
難)‐xià
({to get down}
下)”. However, like Sis. Königer said, ultimately I could feel Jehovah directing things and helping me through it all.
3lines.org and Official Pinyin Resources
After about two and a half years in Calgary, difficulty in finding secular work caused me to move back to the city I grew up in, where, on reflection, the project in Calgary that produced that early 3-line material would probably never have gotten going, due to the relatively complacent—and, perhaps, proud—acceptance of the status quo among those in the local Mandarin field, which by then had become relatively well-established. (Actually, on reflection, the development and distribution of unofficial and official Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing material for the Mandarin field seems, as a whole, like what in physical warfare is known as a flanking manoeuvre, as opposed to a conventional frontal assault on the status quo of the world’s Mandarin language situation that we Mandarin field language learners must deal with, i.e., just having everyone learn Mandarin the traditional hard way.) Eventually, I was invited to work with the international team of publishers that ran the 3lines.org website, and that began producing 3-line material on an industrial scale.
Meanwhile, on the official side of things, the organization eventually started to produce official printed Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) versions of a few selected publications. These contained Simplified Chinese characters with Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) ruby text—no English. (I suppose the official team[s] involved decided that it was not worthwhile to include English translations, due to the tremendous additional ongoing investments in time, effort, and contributed funds that would be required to produce them on an ongoing basis to the quality level required of official material, which after all is primarily spiritual food, not language-learning material.)
Being printed on paper, though, these official Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) publications had to be physically printed and trucked/moved by rail/flown/literally shipped/etc. to the various Mandarin pregroups, groups, and congregations around the world that needed them. Generally these shipments would arrive in time for them to be used at the meetings in which they were scheduled to be used, but unfortunately, in spite of the best efforts of those involved, sometimes they would not—that was just the challenging nature at the time of producing and distributing paper publications on an ongoing tight schedule.
Over time, the organization got better at producing and delivering paper Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) publications on time, and it also eventually began to make digital Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing material widely available for viewing on the web and downloading. Thanks to reader SB, here is some information on when these official resources became available:
Official Pinyin Watchtower started in 2002.
Other dates: jw.org with PDFs was 2010, WOL was 2012…, WOL expanded to pre-2000 publications in 2018
(English in April, Trad. Chinese in August, Simplified in November)
and official pinyin added in 2019. Official pinyin then came
to the JW Library app in 2024.
These developments, along with the collective Brobdingnagian efforts of others on the 3lines.org team, helped a lot to provide numerous powerfully enabling resources for Mandarin field language learners. Meanwhile, there continued to be a lot of work for me to do in this regard as well.
Mobile Devices, the Web, and Linguistics
In the early-2010s, with the post-PC mobile revolution in full swing after the iPad was introduced and became “the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product” ever, I found myself working on my iPhone/iPad app Pinyin Typist, and doing deep research on Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音), Chinese characters, and writing systems and linguistics in general. After all that I had gone through trying to learn characters and trying to help others to deal with the difficulties caused by characters, when I figured out from my research that actually, Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) is a good, workable writing system on its own for Mandarin, and that characters are thus not a technical necessity, but rather, just an unusually deeply rooted cultural tradition, that was a mind-blowing moment for me.
To share the potentially game-changing things I had learned with my fellow Mandarin field language learners, I eventually wrote and posted articles including “Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)Was Plan A”, which it seems many in the Mandarin field have read and benefitted from. Also, I eventually took the learnings from my experience in the Mandarin field and from my research into linguistics and into web and mobile technologies and began producing Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) Plus material. This new generation of mobile-first, speech-first material works well on the mobile devices so prevalent now among Mandarin field language learners. Also, rather than going along with the common practice in Satan’s world of diverting Mandarin learners into the deep, dark rabbit hole that is the Chinese characters, Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) Plus material focuses on helping Mandarin field language learners to learn to speak understandably and persuasively in Mandarin so that they can reach the hearts of Mandarin-speaking people with Bible truth.—1 Corinthians 14:8–11.
After a few years, in the late 2010s, as the official Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing resources became established, the unofficial team of publishers running 3lines.org was directed by the organization to fundamentally change their unofficial operation, resulting in that website scaling down drastically. However, even though I know the organization is aware of my activities—outside of 3lines.org—producing materials for Mandarin field language learners, I have not received any similar direction from it. So, I have continued doing what I can to provide resources for Mandarin field language learners, including several Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)Plus resources based on official publications (with deeply researched and extensive disclaimers about them not being spiritual food, but rather, Mandarin field language-learning resources), and this MEotW blog that you are now reading.
“It’s Like You Are Travelling and Jehovah Is Directing You”
Looking back now in 2025, it is evident that in spite of temporarily limited technology and the ongoing traditional cultural inertia and disdainful dismissiveness of those brainwashed by a world that glamourizes and practically idolizes Chinese characters, abundant official (and unofficial) Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing resources have become widely and easily available to Mandarin field language learners around the world. Besides those already mentioned above, other significant Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing Mandarin field resources that many have found helpful include theocratic Mandarin courses, such as that included in the official JW Language app, and also the various resources mentioned on the Referenced Theo. Expressions (RTE) website, such as the phonetic WOL apps. The Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)-containing resources that are available for Mandarin field language learners help them to be able to powerfully and effectively glorify Jehovah and save lives in the vast worldwide Mandarin field, without being egregiously obstructed by burdensome unnecessary difficulties imposed by the human traditions surrounding Chinese characters.
Also, starting at about the 4:43 mark, she and others can be seen using the old printed Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音)Sing to Jehovah songbook, which included musical notation:
Yes, in view of what I have witnessed and experienced in the Mandarin field, I heartily agree with Sis. Königer’s conclusion that she states starting at about the above video’s 5:10 mark, that ultimately, Jehovah directs the work of his faithful servants:
If you are in the full-time service, I think it’s like you are travelling and Jehovah is directing you. So I don’t worry. The responsibility is with Jehovah. I mean, we have to be faithful. That is our responsibility. But, what is happening is: Jehovah knows what he lets happen. It’s OK. And I hope everybody who is young, they will do the same because they will miss something, because it’s very satisfying. And working with Jehovah, you cannot compare it to anything else.
yīnwei
(yīn·wei
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”
This week’s MEotW, “yīnwei
(yīn·wei
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”, was discussed in a podcast episode that I listened to recently. Here’s a clip from it, with the part in which this expression was discussed:
Here’s a transcript of this video clip:
David: You’re a good sport. Thank you for doing this. So you are a native speaker. This question is very important because if you pronounce a character with the wrong tone, you can be fined as much as 50 kuài
(pieces →[mw for Renminbi]
块
塊) at CCTV if you’re an announcer. So what I want you to do is just very slowly pronounce for us the word that in Chinese would be the equivalent of “because”.
Yajun:“Yīnwéi
(Yīn·wéi
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”.
David: Say again?
Yajun:“Yīnwéi
(Yīn·wéi
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”.
David: So I hear that the “wéi
(…
为
為/爲)” is second tone. Is that right?
Yajun: Yeah…
David: That’s Northern Mandarin. That’s also Běijīng
(Běi·jīng
North · {Country Capital} →[Beijing]
北京)‐huà
(speech
话
話). [With] the actual pǔtōng‐huà
((pǔ·tōng
common · {through(out) → [common]}
普通)‐(huà
speech
话
話)
→[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in China)]) citation version of that word, in 90% of the dictionaries that you will see, the second character is pronounced with fourth tone, as “yīnwèi
(yīn·wèi
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”.
Yajun: Sure…?
David: Yeah, well if you ask most Chinese, they’re very unsure about it, just like you.
Yajun: I was quite sure it’s “yīnwéi
(yīn·wéi
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”, something like that. Now I’m not so sure…and I don’t want to lose 50 kuài
(pieces →[mw for Renminbi]
块
塊).
David: Don’t worry, there are many examples like that and you are not actually wrong. This is an artificial standard that has been imposed and actually, few people, or, not everyone, actually follows it.
By the way, the David Moser speaking in the above clip is indeed the same one who wrote the relatively well-known essay “Why Chinese Is So D- Hard”, which has given many people a lot to think about regarding how Chinese characters make learning Mandarin much harder than it otherwise would be. (I’m not providing a link to this essay because the full title and an example used in the text are a bit less than family-friendly. However, for anyone who’s interested, here is a link to a family-friendly version of this essay that’s been translated into Mandarin and written in Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音).)
Getting back to “yīnwei
(yīn·wei
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”, there’s also a relatively detailed entry on this expression in the excellent Referenced Theo. Expressions resource.
Dealing With Different Right Pronunciations
The different pronunciations of “yīnwei
(yīn·wei
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)” are an example showing us that, while they have a lot of overlap, pǔtōng‐huà
((pǔ·tōng
common · {through(out) → [common]}
普通)‐(huà
speech
话
話)
→[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in China)]), Northern Mandarin and Beijing Mandarin, and, for that matter, the Guóyǔ
(Guó·yǔ
National · Language →[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in Taiwan)]
国语
國語) spoken in Taiwan are not exactly the same. (More information on how pǔtōng‐huà
((pǔ·tōng
common · {through(out) → [common]}
普通)‐(huà
speech
话
話)
→[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in China)]) has been artificially constructed from various parts and promoted to be a national standard can be found in David Moser’s book “A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language”.)
So, when we get to a word like “yīnwei
(yīn·wei
because · for | {because of} · for/{on account of} | {is because} · {is for}
因为
因為)”, which pronunciation should we say it with? Well, considering that the basic principle regarding why language groups and congregations even exist is that Bible truth best reaches a person’s heart in that person’s mother tongue, the logical conclusion is that we should try, as much as we are reasonably able to, to use whichever pronunciation is used by whomever we are talking to. The apostle Paul said “to the Jews I became as a Jew in order to gain Jews”, so we should similarly seek to become as the Mandarin-speaking people we meet in the ministry. (1 Corinthians 9:20) And since tones are an essential part of Mandarin pronunciation, that would include trying to use whichever tone is used by whomever we are talking to.
That may be relatively straightforward—although it may not be easy—when speaking to an individual, but when speaking to a large, mixed audience, perhaps at a meeting or even a convention, we will have to use good judgement to try to speak so as to be understood without distraction by the majority of the audience. It helps, then, to know the audience.
The Accents of Network News Announcers
Speaking of the audience, the clip above mentions that CCTV announcers are required to speak in a particular standard way, and that they are actually fined when they deviate from this standard. CCTV (China Central Television) is the national television broadcaster of China (which, naturally in China, is ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party), and as such, has an audience that includes all of mainland China, with all its various languages, dialects, and accents. As we can see, those calling the shots at CCTV, and indeed, in China in general, have decided to approach this situation by seeking to impose and promote a standard way of speaking, from the top down.
American network news announcers face a sort-of similar challenge—while English is understood throughout the USA, people in different parts of the USA have come to speak with different regional accents.
No matter which channel you tune into or what local broadcast you receive, news anchors share one common trait beyond professional attire and perfect hair. They tend to sound exactly the same, from their cadence to enunciation to a completely curious lack of a regional accent. How does that happen?
Broadcasters didn’t always sound so geographically neutral. In the early part of the 20th century, many radio personalities and performers adopted what was known as a Mid-Atlantic accent, or a blend of mannered British and the East Coast dialect of the United States. This polished, proper method of speaking was popular in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and on radio because it signaled some kind of upper-class education and erudition. Thanks to America’s infatuation with England, sounding even vaguely British made people sound intelligent. Pundits like William F. Buckley Jr. carried the Mid-Atlantic torch even as it fell out of favor in entertainment.
The more contemporary practice of sounding linguistically neutral is often referred to as having a General American accent—which is a bit misleading, since there’s really not much of an accent at all. Also referred to as Standard American, Broadcast English, or Network English, General American was a term first used in the 1920s and ’30s by linguists who wanted to isolate a more widespread accent than the New England or Southern dialects.
Balancing Authenticity with Avoiding Distraction
A relatively recent Business Insiderarticle points out, though, that what American people expect of their media personalities has evolved over time:
“There is something called a broadcast news type voice,” Brice told Insider. “And I really try to coach people to not have that voice. In fact, I coach routinely people to sound more like themselves. People try to emulate other anchors and reporters, and in my opinion, it gets them in trouble.”
…
“We’ve definitely evolved, just as the news industry has evolved, into a different mindset,” Cairns told Insider, adding that listeners now look for signs of authenticity from their media personalities. “With people being flooded with content, their expectations have changed. People don’t want the typical woman with the big head of hair and the perfect voice, looking a certain way.”
Instead of trying to eliminate regional accents like Fleming’s Boston pronunciations [heard in the post embedded above], Cairns told Insider, speakers who speak with accents should focus only on making sure their speech patterns aren’t distracting from what they’re trying to say.
“It’s just like your hairstyle—you have your own voice style.” Cairns told Insider. “Use it. It’s part of what identifies you. Just don’t let it distract from the message.”
Considering the above and coming back to the Mandarin field, we can see that when speaking to Mandarin-speaking people in the field, there are at least three ways of speaking that we need to mentally juggle:
The way we ouselves normally speak Mandarin
Modern Standard Mandarin/pǔtōng‐huà
((pǔ·tōng
common · {through(out) → [common]}
普通)‐(huà
speech
话
話)
→[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in China)])/Taiwanese Guóyǔ
(Guó·yǔ
National · Language →[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in Taiwan)]
国语
國語)
The kind of Mandarin best understood by whomever we are speaking to
In the Mandarin field, we want to speak authentically, sincerely, in a way that other people can tell is coming from our hearts, while avoiding speaking in a way that is so different from what others expect that it distracts from our God-honouring and life-saving message—it’s a balancing act, that may involve juggling! The standard forms of Mandarin that have been promoted by governments, widely broadcast in the media, etc. may heavily influence people’s expectations of the kind of Mandarin we speak, but different situations may require different approaches. So, we should do our best to adapt accordingly, so as to speak in the way that best helps others and glorifies, not any human entity, but rather, our great God Jehovah.
Note:Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) Plus material is aimed at and made available to the worldwide Mandarin field, and so as far as possible, it is based on how most people seem to actually speakpǔtōng‐huà
((pǔ·tōng
common · {through(out) → [common]}
普通)‐(huà
speech
话
話)
→[(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in China)]), the artificial standard mentioned in the clip at the beginning of this post, that is the standard language promoted in mainland China, where about 95% of the world’s Chinese people are. (As Mr. Moser pointed out in the clip, people don’t always follow the pronunciations found in many dictionaries. E.g., many seem to use more neutral tones than many dictionaries indicate.) Since Taiwan is also a relatively big presence in the Mandarin-speaking world, Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) Plus material also contains notes indicating when Taiwan Mandarin has different pronunciations. (Offhand, the only Mandarin dictionary mentions that I can recall that refer to Northern or Beijing pronunciations involve the “r”
({child | youth | son} →[(diminutive) non-syllabic retroflex suffix; pronunciation feature in Beijing dialect]
儿
兒) that Beijingers add to the ends of many words. Pīnyīn
(Pīn·yīn
{Piecing Together of} · Sounds →[Pinyin]
拼音) Plus material includes notes about this.)
