{"id":1514,"date":"2021-09-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/troubadourworks.com\/tiandi\/meotw\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2024-03-28T17:21:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T00:21:05","slug":"dianliang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/troubadourworks.com\/tiandi\/meotw\/2021\/09\/06\/dianliang\/","title":{"rendered":"di\u01cenli\u00e0ng"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tdi\u01cenli\u00e0ng<\/span>\n(di\u01cen\u00b7li\u00e0ng\n{dot \u2192 [light (v<\/i>); ignite]} \u00b7 {to be bright} [\u2192 [illuminate; shine light on]]<\/span>\n\u70b9\u4eae\n\u9ede\u4eae<\/span>)<\/span>\n\n \u2190 Tap\/click to show\/hide the \u201cflashcard\u201d<\/span><\/h3>\n\n

This week\u2019s MEotW, \u201cdi\u01cenli\u00e0ng<\/i><\/span>\n(di\u01cen\u00b7li\u00e0ng\n{dot \u2192 [light (v<\/i>); ignite]} \u00b7 {to be bright} [\u2192 [illuminate; shine light on]]<\/span>\n\u70b9\u4eae\n\u9ede\u4eae<\/span>)<\/span>\u201d, is used to good effect in lesson 02 point 5 (WOL<\/a>, P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> Plus<\/a>) of the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! (lffi)<\/i> brochure (and of the Mandarin Enjoy Life Forever! (lff)<\/i> book).<\/p>\n

\"\u201cDi\u01cenli\u00e0ng\u201d<\/p>\n

Translating the English text \u201cThe Bible\u2019s hope can make a difference\u201d, the Mandarin text means \u2018The Bible\u2019s hope shines a light on human life\u2019.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a Word?<\/h4>\n

Note that the Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY<\/a> currently renders the morphemes \u201c\u201ddi\u01cen<\/i><\/span>\n(dots \u2192<\/span> [lights (v<\/i>)]<\/span>\n\u70b9\n\u9ede<\/span>)<\/span>\u201d and \u201cli\u00e0ng<\/i><\/span>\n({to be bright}<\/span>\n\u4eae)<\/span>\u201d as two separate words, whereas the unofficial P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> Plus resource<\/a> renders them together as one word, as many past official P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> publications would likely have done. Is one of these renderings \u201cright\u201d and the other \u201cwrong\u201d? Is one better and the other worse? How much does it matter?<\/p>\n

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\u2014a system that probably for traditional stylistic reasons neglects to clearly and conveniently put spaces between words like alphabetic writing systems generally do\u2014there is not always a consensus regarding the answers to the questions of \u201cWhat\u2019s a word?\u201d and \u201cWhat morphemes should be put together as words?\u201d As the Wikipedia article on \u201cWord<\/a>\u201d says:<\/p>\n

\nThere 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]<\/a><\/sup> This issue is particularly debated for Chinese and other languages of East Asia,[source]<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Standards and Conventions<\/h4>\n

Unlike the Chinese characters writing system, the P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> alphabetic writing system does<\/em> clearly and conveniently put spaces between words\u2014such word separation is in fact a big advantage of P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n

The technical linguistic term that relates to such matters is orthography<\/strong>. The Wikipedia article<\/a> on that provides this summary of what that means:<\/p>\n

\nAn orthography<\/strong> is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One might wonder whether there are official rules and standards regarding P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> orthography, and indeed there are. In fact, the PRC government has an official national standard for P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> orthography, with the designation GB\/T 16159-2012<\/strong>. (A convenient annotated web version (rendered in Simplified Chinese characters) has been made available here<\/a> on the independent website P\u012bny\u012bn.info<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

What the letters \u201cGB\/T\u201d stand for is significant. Wikipedia<\/a> provides this summary:<\/p>\n

\nGB<\/i> stands for Guobiao<\/i> (simplified Chinese: \u56fd\u6807; traditional Chinese: \u570b\u6a19; pinyin: Gu\u00f3bi\u0101o<\/i>), Chinese for national standard<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Mandatory standards are prefixed “GB”. Recommended standards are prefixed “GB\/T” (T from Chinese language \u63a8\u8350; tu\u012bji\u00e0n<\/i>; ‘recommended’).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(The above summary is confirmed elsewhere on the web, e.g. here<\/a> on legal analysis website Lexology<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So, while the PRC\u2019s GB\/T 16159-2012 provides many basic rules regarding P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> orthography, even within China it is not a mandatory standard\u2014the \u201cT\u201d in \u201cGB\/T 16159-2012\u201d indicates that even within China, it is at most a set of recommendations<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(An interesting contrast is the mandatory<\/em> PRC standard GB 18030<\/strong><\/a>, which relates to software support for the PRC\u2019s Chinese characters, both simplified and traditional, and which, for example, Microsoft makes its Windows software comply with.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019t have punctuation, and now it has punctuation largely modeled after European punctuation. (For reference: Chinese punctuation – Wikipedia<\/a>, Q&A: When were punctuation marks first used? – HistoryExtra<\/a>, history – When was punctuation introduced into Chinese? – Chinese Language Stack Exchange<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

When it comes to P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span>, another factor to keep in mind is that due primarily to cultural prejudice, P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n

Verb-Complement Togetherness<\/h4>\n

Getting back to the MEotW \u201cdi\u01cenli\u00e0ng<\/i><\/span>\n(di\u01cen\u00b7li\u00e0ng\n{dot \u2192 [light (v<\/i>); ignite]} \u00b7 {to be bright} [\u2192 [illuminate; shine light on]]<\/span>\n\u70b9\u4eae\n\u9ede\u4eae<\/span>)<\/span>\u201d, 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 P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> 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 P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> publications did follow this recommendation, and as do the unofficial P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> Plus resources.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the unofficial P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> Plus resources join the official P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> publications, old and new, in explicitly indicating tone sandhi<\/a> for \u201cb\u00f9<\/i><\/span>\n(not<\/span>\n\u4e0d)<\/span>\u201d and \u201cy\u012b<\/i><\/span>\n(one<\/span>\n\u4e00)<\/span>\u201d (e.g., \u201cb\u00fa<\/strong>z\u00e0i<\/i><\/span>\n(b\u00fa\u00b7z\u00e0i\nnot \u00b7 again; further; continuing; anymore<\/span>\n\u4e0d\u518d)<\/span>\u201d instead of the standard \u201cb\u00f9<\/strong>z\u00e0i<\/i><\/span>\n(b\u00f9\u00b7z\u00e0i\nnot \u00b7 again; further; continuing; anymore<\/span>\n\u4e0d\u518d)<\/span>\u201d) to make things easier for readers, even though this practice is not included in the GB\/T 16159-2012 standard\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

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 P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> Plus resources will continue to seek to render P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> in ways that maximize how clearly, easily, effectively, and appropriately it communicates with readers.<\/p>\n

\n

For convenience:<\/p>\n

The direct link for the current generation P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n{Piecing Together of} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> Plus resource for the Enjoy Life Forever!<\/i> brochure is:<\/p>\n