Tag: tiandi.info

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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.

Categories
Culture Language Learning Technology Theocratic

áizhèng

áizhèng (ái·zhèng cancer · disease → [cancer] 癌症 癌症/癥) ← 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.]

The new format of the Enjoy Life Forever! book incorporates the post-paper technology of video, which enables real-life experiences to be related in an especially vivid way. For example, the video for Lesson 09, point 6 of the Enjoy Life Forever! book, entitled Prayer Helps Us to Cope, enables us to see and hear Br. Matteo Dalla-Longa and his mother relate their experiences of how prayer helped them to cope with his cancer. (A Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus transcript for the Mandarin version of this video is available here.)

The Mandarin version of this video begins with Br. Dalla-Longa saying this:

📖 📄 📘 Wǒ (I 我) zài (at 在) bā (eight 八) suì ({years (of age)} 岁 歲/嵗) de (’s 的) shíhou (shí·hou {(particular) time} · season 时候 時候) déle (dé·le got · [indicates a change] 得了) yì (one 一) zhǒng ({type of} 种 種/种) hǎnjiàn (hǎn·jiàn rarely · seen 罕见 罕見) de (’s 的) áizhèng (ái·zhèng cancer · disease → [cancer] 癌症 癌症/癥).

The expression that he concludes with above, “áizhèng (ái·zhèng cancer · disease → [cancer] 癌症 癌症/癥)”, means “cancer”, and it is this week’s MEotW.

The New, Improved Mandarin Word for “Cancer”

Interestingly, the Mandarin word for “cancer” wasn’t always “áizhèng (ái·zhèng cancer · disease → [cancer] 癌症 癌症/癥)”. Before, unfortunately, the Mandarin word for “cancer” sounded exactly like the Mandarin word for “inflammation”. One can just imagine the potentially fatal misunderstandings that could arise from this situation! This is an especially potentially harmful example of what some call Mandarin’s Homophone Problem, the unfortunate reality that modern Mandarin has many homophones, or different words that sound the same.

Many people have gotten into the cultural habit of dealing with this problem by referring to how the same-sounding words are written with different Chinese characters. However, the way that this problem involving the old Mandarin word for “cancer” was actually solved shows up the common approach of relying on characters to disambiguate (clarify) Mandarin homophones to be the crutch and band-aid solution that it really is. As explained in the article “Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Was Plan A”:

Perhaps Chinese became so full of homophones because people came to rely more and more on the characters to distinguish homophones from each other, rather than finding other ways to alleviate the problem. Those other ways could include:

  • …
  • Reducing the number of homophones by
    • …
    • Changing the pronunciations of existing syllables within homophones
      • Some examples are cited here by Zhōu Yǒuguāng (周有光, Zhou Youguang), who led the team that created Pīnyīn:
        • Changing the pronunciations while keeping the same expressions
          • “For example, ‘cancer’ (癌症) and ‘inflammation’ (炎症) were both pronounced as ‘yánzhèng’ in the past. Now in hospitals, ‘cancer’ is pronounced as ‘áizhèng’ and has the same meaning as when it was pronounced ‘yánzhèng’ in the past, but it has acquired a different pronunciation and is, thus, differentiated from ‘inflammation’ (yánzhèng).”

Better than Chinese Character Band-Aids

Yes, as the above-mentioned article goes on to explain:

So, rather than just being seen as a solution to the problem of homophones in Mandarin, perhaps (over?)reliance on characters should also be seen as part of the cause of that problem in the first place, and as a big factor in perpetuating that problem when people should really be developing other, more appropriate solutions! As Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

In this respect of seeming to offer a way to solve a problem that they helped to cause in the first place, Hànzì remind me of mobsters who demand compensation for their “protection”, which people wouldn’t need in the first place if the mobsters weren’t around!

Regarding the real root of the homophone problem, Zhōu Yǒuguāng with great insight pointed out,

Homophones are a problem of language, not “script.” The root of this problem lies in the pronunciation of the language (yǔyīn), not in the different ways of spelling the words (cíxíng).

Yes, relying on characters to differentiate Chinese homophones is at best a band-aid solution that actually makes the problem worse rather than getting at the real root of it: the pronunciations of the affected words. Yes, the best way to deal with homophones is to eliminate them by changing their pronunciations so that they are no longer homophones, just like you can eliminate your enemies by turning them into your friends, rather than continuing to pay “protection money” to certain characters who are actually helping your enemies to keep on being your enemies. While it may seem radical to thus get at the root of the problem by changing the language itself in ways such as those mentioned above, the truth is that languages are naturally changing in such ways all the time, as shown by the actual examples mentioned above. We who use a language can and should change it as necessary by using it differently. People are doing it all the time with English, and they are doing it with Chinese too.

Meanwhile, the ultimate clarifier in modern Mandarin, even with all its existing homophones, is context, not characters. Characters themselves can have multiple possible meanings and multiple possible pronunciations, so one often has to, yes, check the context of something written in characters before the meaning and/or pronunciation of certain words in it can be determined with certainty. For example, should “恶(惡)” be pronounced as “ě”, “è”, “wū”, or “wù”, with their different associated meanings? It ultimately depends on the context—the character on its own is still ambiguous, not enough to clarify things.

So, that there are so many different words in modern Mandarin that sound the same is not a good reason not to use Pīnyīn, any more than it is a good reason not to speak Mandarin. Ironically, it is actually a good long-term reason not to use characters!

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! 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) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus 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 web resource as time allows.