Tag: tiandi.info

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Technology Theocratic

hùdòng‐shì

hùdòng+ (hù·dòng mutually; {[(with)] each other} · moving → [interacting; interaction; interactive] 互动 互動) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[This post was adapted from the February 21, 2022 post on “hùdòng+ (hù·dòng mutually; {[(with)] each other} · moving → [interacting; interaction; interactive] 互动 互動).]

[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 + Symbols 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 is featuring the free Bible course that we are offering. To do so, it is using the following text:

English:

Try our interactive Bible course Enjoy Life Forever!

Mandarin:

📖 📄 ➕ Lái (come 来 來) tǐyàn+ (tǐ·yàn {bodily → [personally]} · test → [personally experience] 体验 體驗) yíxià (yí·xià one · {going down → [time]} → [a bit] 一下) xīn (newly 新) tuīchū (tuī·chū {pushed → [recommended]} · out → [introduced] 推出) de (’s 的) hùdòng+ (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì+ (type 式) Shèngjīng (Shèng·jīng Holy · Scriptures → [Bible] 圣经 聖經) kèchéng (kè·chéng lessons · {journey → [procedure]} → [course] 课程 課程) Yǒngyuǎn Xiǎngshòu Měihǎo de Shēngmìng ((Yǒng·yuǎn Eternally · {Far (in Time)} 永远 永遠) (Xiǎng·shòu Enjoy · Receive 享受) (Měi·hǎo Beautiful · Good 美好) (de ’s 的) (Shēngmìng Life 生命) → [Enjoy Life Forever!]).

Of course, besides being used above, this week’s MEotW “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” also appears in Yǒngyuǎn Xiǎngshòu Měihǎo de Shēngmìng—Hùdòng‐Shì Shèngjīng Kèchéng ((Yǒng·yuǎn Eternally · {Far (in Time)} 永远 永遠) (Xiǎng·shòu Enjoy · Receive 享受) (Měi·hǎo Beautiful · Good 美好) (de ’s 的) (Shēngmìng Life 生命)—(Hù·dòng {Each Other} · Moving → [Interactive] 互动 互動)‐(Shì (Type 式) (Shèng·jīng Holy · Scriptures → [Bible] 圣经 聖經) (Kè·chéng Lessons · Procedure → [Course] 课程 課程) → [Enjoy Life Forever!—An Interactive Bible Course (lff)]), the title of the Mandarin version of the book used in the above-mentioned course. Looking at this Mandarin title, you may have wondered: What does “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” mean?

“hùdòng shì” on _Enjoy Life Forever!_ bk. title page (jw.org CHS+Pinyin)

(The above screenshot from jw.org shows light-coloured text on a dark background because I have set jw.org’s Appearance Settings to do so. As the related JW News article says, “some users prefer this setting because the screen is less bright. This may help reduce eyestrain, especially at night or in other low-light environments.” Most Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus / Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)+ web resources (short link: tiandi.info/pyp) can also be set to dark mode.)

You may surmise that “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” corresponds with the “Interactive” in Enjoy Life Forever!—An Interactive Bible Course, and you would be right. Now, let’s take a closer look at the morphemes in “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” to see how they work in a way that makes “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” correspond as well as it does with the English word “interactive”, which means “acting upon or influencing each other”.

Morphemic Breakdown

As the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)+ information for “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” shows us, its first morpheme “hù- (mutually; {[(with)] each other} 互)” means “mutually; [(with)] each other”. It’s the “hù- (mutually; {[(with)] each other} 互)” in “hùxiāng ({each other} 互相) gǔlì (gǔ·lì {drum → [rouse]} · encourage → [encourage] 鼓励 鼓勵)”, which means “encourage one another”.

The next morpheme “dòng (move [→ [stir | arouse | change; alter]] 动 動)” basically means “move”. In some contexts, it means to move physically, as it does in “dòngwù (dòng·wù moving · thing → [animal] 动物 動物)”, which literally means “moving thing”, and is used to mean “animal”. (Interestingly, the English word “animal” is related to the word “animate”, which can mean “bring into action or movement”.) In other contexts, “dòng (move [→ [stir | arouse | change; alter]] 动 動)” means to move emotionally, as it does in “gǎndòng+ (gǎn·dòng feeling · moved | {make to feel} · move 感动 感動)”. In yet other contexts, “dòng (move [→ [stir | arouse | change; alter]] 动 動)” is used to effectively mean “change; alter”.

Breaking down “hùdòng (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì (type 式)” into its morphemes helps us to see that “hù- (mutually; {[(with)] each other} 互)” corresponds with the “inter-” part of “interactive”, and that “dòng (move [→ [stir | arouse | change; alter]] 动 動)” corresponds with the “active” (“acting [up]on”) part. As for “shì (type; style; pattern; form; formula; mode 式)”, here it means “type” or “style”.

Interactive Indeed

The English word “interactive” has a particular meaning in the world of computing, which is “responds to user activity”.

Interestingly, the Enjoy Life Forever! book even has some interactivity in its paper form, with its “Lesson completed on:” and “Goal” sections allowing room for a user to write in them with a pencil or pen. This is in addition to the limited interactivity that any paper publication offers a user, such as being able to write notes in the margins or to highlight or underline text.

The Enjoy Life Forever! book in the PDF file format—a computer file format that is conceptually rooted in the world of paper—adds the ability for a user to tap/click on links to do things like load the web pages (or the JW Library app) where the videos mentioned in the book can be played. As we move on to more computer-native formats, we find that in the Enjoy Life Forever! book material on the jw.org website and in the JW Library app, where of course links are available for playing the videos, a user can tap/click on text fields in the “Lesson completed on:” and “Goal” sections and type text into them that will be “remembered”. Also, a user can tap/click on the checkboxes in the “Goal” section, and those checkboxes will “remember” and show whether they are checked or unchecked.

As discussed in the JW Broadcasting—January 2021 program, when it comes to the more general meaning of the English word “interactive”, “acting upon or influencing each other”, the Enjoy Life Forever! book in every format is designed to engage and involve people more than past Bible study textbooks did. It indeed qualifies as “interactive”, or as we say in Mandarin, “hùdòng+ (hù·dòng {each other} · moving → [interactive] 互动 互動)‐shì+ (type 式)”.

(By the way, just as is possible on this blog, in the unofficial Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus / Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)+ material for the Enjoy Life Forever! book, users can interactively tap/click on Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expressions to show/hide, as desired, flashcards showing English meanings, Simplified character(s), Traditional character(s) (if they’re different), etc. for these expressions.)

For convenience:

The direct link for the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus / Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)+ resource for the Enjoy Life Forever! book 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)+ web material based on the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! book will be made available in the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus / Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)+ web resource as time allows.

Categories
Culture History Language Learning

Zhùyīn

Zhùyīn+ (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Lately I’ve been unusually busy with the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus material for the Learn From the Bible book that’s being covered in the Congregation Bible Study meetings, and with preparing musical notation + Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) songbook material for this year’s Mandarin conventions. So, here’s another repost, this time of one of the earliest MEotW posts. It’s probably time for a reminder about this subject anyway. 😄]

The last imperial dynasty of China was the Qing dynasty. We call it the last dynasty, though, because it ended, and it was not followed by another dynasty. Towards the end of the Qing dynasty’s rule, China was in a bad way. Wikipedia provides this summary of the situation:

The dynasty reached its high point in the late 18th century, then gradually declined in the face of challenges from abroad, internal revolts, population growth, disruption of the economy, corruption, and the reluctance of ruling elites to change their mindsets.

One of the ways in which some sought to help with the deteriorating situation in China is described by American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy:

…toward the end of the nineteenth century…The obvious disintegration of Chinese society and the inability to cope with foreign aggressors led some reformers in contact with missionaries to conceive of carrying out a reform of the writing as part of a general educational reform that would help revitalize the country and save it from extinction.1

Professor DeFrancis goes on the describe the development and naming of an early result of the efforts of these reformers:

Official resolution of these issues was effected by the decisions reached by the Conference on Unification of Pronunciation that was held under government auspices in 1913. …The majority members of the conference reached the decision to adopt a set of thirty-nine phonetic symbols derived from Chinese characters, to use them as an adjunct to the characters, and to confine their scope to representing the Mandarin pronunciation as the national standard. The symbols were initially called Zhùyīn Zìmǔ (“Phonetic Alphabet”); later they were also called Guóyīn Zìmǔ (“National Phonetic Alphabet”). The fear that they might be considered an alphabetic system of writing independent of characters led in 1930 to their being renamed Zhùyīn Fúhào (“Phonetic Symbols”).2

Bopomofo in Regular, Handwritten Regular, & Cursive formats

Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音), or Bopomofo, in regular, handwritten regular, and cursive formats

This week’s MEotW, “Zhùyīn+ (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音)”, is a commonly used name for this system. It’s also commonly called “Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ)”, after the first four symbols of the system. This is similar to how in English we use “ABCs” to refer to the alphabet, and to how the word “alphabet” itself comes from alpha and bēta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.

The Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) system continues to be used in elementary schools in Taiwan for teaching reading and writing, with the system’s symbols often appearing as ruby characters over Chinese characters in textbooks.

Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) / Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)

ㄓㄨ`ㄧㄣ? Pīnyīn?

In mainland China, Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) has largely been replaced by Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), which was adopted by the mainland Chinese government in 1958. This was possible because Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) both do the same job of representing in alphabetic writing the sounds of Mandarin speech—they just use different symbols.

Around the time that Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) was introduced, Premier of the People’s Republic of China Zhōu Ēnlái ((Zhōu {Circumference (surname)} 周 周/週) (Ēn·lái Kindness · Comes 恩来 恩來) (the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China)) wrote the following comparing the different practical effects of using these different sets of symbols:

Although [Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音)] has been in existence for forty years and was popularized in primary schools by governments in the past, it has been forgotten by most of its students. Now only a few people know the phonetic transcript. In future, we shall adopt the Latin alphabet for the Chinese phonetic alphabet. Being in wide use in scientific and technological fields and in constant day-to-day usage, it will be easily remembered.

Some Mandarin field language learners prefer not to use the Latin alphabet-based Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) system, claiming that it makes them think of English sounds rather than Mandarin sounds. Perhaps those who feel this way could instead get the benefits of a phonetic alphabet by using Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音). However, they would first have to learn and remember the rarely-used symbols of Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音), which for almost everyone these days is going to be significantly harder than remembering the familiar Latin alphabet letters of Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音).

Regarding associating language sounds with a writing system (which both Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) qualify as), once a Mandarin learner passes the very beginning stage and gets familiar with Mandarin sounds and gets used to the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) system, he or she will actually have no more problem associating Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) with Mandarin sounds than an English-speaking non-beginner student of French has associating French words with French sounds.

For more information on how Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) compares to Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) for Mandarin field language learners, please see the tiandi.info post “Pinyin and Zhuyin”. (If you need login information for the parts of tiandi.info that require it, request it by email, and include information on who referred you and/or what group/cong. you are in.)

1. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 241. ^

2. Ibid., p. 242. ^

Categories
Culture History Language Learning Science Theocratic

chuán

chuán+ (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

This week, we are revisiting “chuán (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩)”, an expression that was featured in an early Expression of the Week post on the tiandi.info blog. (If you need login information for the parts of tiandi.info that require it, request it by email, and include information on how you learned of tiandi.info and/or what group/cong. you are in.)

As shown in the image below, the first printing of the Insight book (on p. 328 of Volume 1) included a section regarding the Chinese character for “chuán+ (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩)”:

P. 328 of Vol. 1 of the first printing of the _Insight_ book (1988), with a section about “船”

However, this section on this Chinese character no longer appears in current versions of the Insight book. Why might it have been removed?

Murky Speculation

Several years after the above-mentioned tiandi.info post was originally posted, I appended the following update to it:

Note that the section about the Chinese character “船 (chuán)” that was originally in the Insight book, Vol. 1, p. 328 is not present in the more recently published Chinese version of the Insight book.

Perhaps it was eventually decided that the origins of Chinese characters, which have been used for thousands of years, are too murky to do anything more than speculate about. I myself have recently become convinced that Chinese characters in general have been over-glamourized by the world.

It’s also worth going over an interesting, well-researched comment that the tiandi.info post mentioned above received. (Thanks again, Ed!) Here are a couple of excerpts from it:

The Insight article isn’t the only place in the Slave’s writings that the reference to this Chinese character appears. It originally appeared in the article “Chinese Characters—Why Are They Written That Way?” in g84 8/8 p. 23 [Here is a link to that article. Note that in addition to mentioning “chuán+ (boat; ship; vessel 船 船/舩)”, this old article unfortunately repeats the Ideographic Myth. Also, it conflates language with writing, when actually, linguists understand that language primarily has to do with speech.—ed.], which ended with the caveat, “The similarity between the thoughts behind many of the Chinese characters and the Bible record of man’s early history is nothing less than remarkable. Although the evidence is only circumstantial, it is, nonetheless, fascinating to think that there is a possibility that the Chinese [characters contain Biblical concepts].”

The article was written in response to the book The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language, which had been published only a few years earlier. This book is full of fascinating parallels between Biblical accounts and elements that appear to comprise certain Chinese characters.

There are many resources available these days even to English speakers that contain scholarly research into the meaning and origins of Chinese characters. During the course of learning the language, I have made it a hobby to investigate some of these. I have to say that, based on what I have discovered, I disagree with the coauthors of Discovery of Genesis. In fact, there is a web site that has existed for several years for the purpose of rebutting these claims. While I don’t know the author’s motive for putting up the page, it does seem to have logical arguments.

…

For an alternative to Zhongwen.com, you could try looking up 船 at this site. (Disclosure: this web site is run by me.)

Truly right-hearted people won’t be stumbled if we share accurate knowledge from the Bible with them. But in any case, it’s best not to get too involved with matters of speculation that could be of interest to us but not have a direct bearing on God’s word of truth.

Sound vs. Meaning

The Raccoon Bend website page mentioned in the above quote contains some technical points such as the following:

A typical error made…is to analyze a semantic-phonetic compound as though it were compound-indicative (which they refer to as “ideographic”).

In other words, some mistakenly treat a character component that indicates sound as if it indicates meaning. The information at the Chinese-Characters.org link that the brother quoted above provided indicates that doing that with “船” seems to be what led to the story of “vessel + eight + mouths/persons”, when this character should actually be understood as being made up of the components “vessel + [phonetic (sound) component]”.

Stories vs. the Truth

As humans, we naturally love stories, since our minds use stories to make sense of the world around us. Also, stories add or reveal meaning or significance regarding things that these things would lack if they were not part of a story. However, not all stories are true. And while even fictional stories can help to reveal deeper truths about life, like Jesus’ parables did, false stories can take us farther away from the truth, if we let them. As the apostle Paul warned in 2 Timothy 4:3, 4:

For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the wholesome teaching, but according to their own desires, they will surround themselves with teachers to have their ears tickled. They will turn away from listening to the truth and give attention to false stories.

While Chinese characters sometimes have appealing stories attached to them, let us make sure that we don’t let mere love of a good story take us away from the truth in any way. While naive tourists may be easily misled by appealing but false stories, as literal or figurative missionaries in the Mandarin field, we have a responsibility to serve God and our Mandarin-speaking neighbours “with spirit and truth”.—John 4:23, 24.