Tone Deaf

As you might know, Chinese has four tones: high-flat tone, rising tone, falling-rising tone, and forceful-down tone--marked by these symbols: mā, má, mă, mà. There is also a neutral tone.

When I first started studying Chinese, I felt more than a little trepidation at the thought of having to speak in "tones." But after a short time of familiarizing myself with the sound and idea of tones, the tones became much less intimidating. Most of the time, you just memorize the tone while you're learning the word and after not too long, wrong tones sound as wrong to your ear as they do to Chinese people. It's like accents and stress in English. Context helps a lot too and most of the time, Chinese people are willing to play along when it comes to listening to our "tone deaf" Chinese.

That is NOT to say that I have in any way mastered Chinese and it's tones. I still have quite a few daily frustrations when it comes to tones.

A few of my Chinese studying woes . . .

The word for "supermarket" and the word for "humid" or "humidity" are exactly the same pronunciation, just different tones. Supermarket is chōu shì and humid is chóu shī. No matter how many times I practice, I always seem to forget which word is which. "Taxi! Yes, please take me to the humidity."

The word for "book" and the word for "tree" differ only in tones: shū and shù. I'm pretty sure Katie and I both made this mistake leaving our Chinese friends quite confused at Christmas time. Today we got out our tall Christmas book and put lights and decorations on it.

Katie and I both have trouble remembering the difference between the word "surprise" (jīng qí) and the word for "relative" (qīn qi). Hi! Guess what!! I have a relative to give you!

Another pair of words that I have trouble remembering are the verbs "to drop" something diào le and "to lose" something diū le. In many sentences, both words can apply. Hey you dropped/lost your pen! . . . so I'm lazy with those words. But that doesn't always apply: Have you seen my friends? I think I dropped them.

There are two Chinese provinces that are pronounced exactly the same with only a tonal difference: Shăn xī and Shān xī. To avoid confusion, the first province is spelled Shaanxi to differentiate without tone markings. Let's hope those two provinces' basketball teams never meet. Think of how confusing the radio broadcast would get.

Last week in our Chinese class, we were talking about Chinese Dragon Boat Festival which is coming up in a couple weeks. Dragon Boat Festival is Duān wǔ jié. Katie and I were asking our teacher which day Duān wǔ jié is this year, but we got a little confused and asked when China celebrated Dòng wǔ jié . . . which translates to "animal festival." Our teacher was confused: Animal festival?? How do you celebrate Animal Festival in America? We were confused: We don't celebrate Dragon Boat Festival (thinking we're saying Dragon Boat but still saying animal) in America. That's a Chinese holiday.

One of the first things you learn to say in any language is "I don't understand." In Chinese, "Wŏ tīng bú dŏng" or you can also just say "Wŏ bú dŏng." But change it to " Wŏ bǔ dòng." and the translation comes out as "I patch/fix holes." Now, granted, context would hopefully clarify some confusion, but the idea of how many times I said, "Sorry, I'm a foreigner. I patch holes." before I realized the difference, is so funny to me.

Oh for the day when I cease fixing holes . . .

Another Chinese Poem

After learning the poem 锄禾 (Chú Hú), my student Shine, who's taken a particular interest in helping me with my Chinese and my knowledge of Chinese history and literature, gave me another poem. This poem is from 李白 Lǐ Bái, who is one of the greatest poets in all of Chinese literary history.

静夜思 Jìng Yè Sī

床前明月光 Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng
疑是地上霜 Yí shì dì shàng shuāng
举头望明月 Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè
低头思故乡 Dī tóu sī gù xiāng


Quiet Night Thoughts

Before my bed,
There is bright-lit moonlight.
So that it seems
Like frost on the ground.

Lifting my head,
I watch the bright moon.
Lowering my head,
I dream that I am home.


Shine wanted to introduce this poem to me since I'm far from home and my family. The poem suggests the idea that no matter where you are, every one is looking up at the same moon. It made me think of Fifel the mouse singing "Somewhere Out There" in An American Tale which isn't quite of the same literary caliber, but I do like the poem and I can feel my Chinese cultural and literary horizons broadening as I figuratively gaze up at the bright moon.

Transliteration

I've always enjoyed hearing names that have been transliterated into Chinese. Generally, when trying to render an English name into Chinese, one Chinese character is assigned to each syllable in English trying to match the pronunciation as closely as possible. The result is a "Chinese-ified" sounding name which may or may not sound close enough to the English name to be recognizable, but is always Chinese enough to make you smile. This applies to names of famous people, brand names, geographical locations, foreign restaurant chains, Biblical words, and even the word Olympics among other things.

For example, one of my favorites is Arnold Schwarzenegger's name pronounced in Chinese:

阿诺德 施瓦辛格 Ānuòdé Shīwǎxīngé (ah-nuwah-duh-sh-wah-shing-guh)


Friday night I went to a piano recital on campus. Before the concert started, I flipped through the program which was all written in Chinese. As I glanced down the list of compositions that the students had selected to play, I started trying to sound out the names of the composers they were written by. I recognized probably 75% of the Chinese characters and it made for a fun game to try to see if I could get enough syllables to make a "Chinese-ified" name that I could then try to translate back into an English name.

Here are the composers' names in Chinese with the pinyin and my attempt at a phonetic transcription (which isn't meant to be accurate according to any dictionary or adhere to IPA).

The first composer I guessed was this one:

拉赫玛尼诺夫 lā hè mǎ ní nuò fū (lah-huh-mah-nee-nuwah-fooh) = Rachmaninoff

Then I figured these out:

肖邦 xiāo bāng (shee-ow bahng)

舒伯特 shū bó tè (shoo buah tuh)

贝多芬 bèi duō fēn (bay duah fen)

李斯特 lǐ sī tè (lee suh tuh)

门德尔松 mén dé ěr sōng (men duh ar sung)

So, if your "chinese-ified" decoding skills still need some development (or if you slept through Music Appreciation class in high school) here are the composers' names in English.

Chopin
Schubert
Beethoven
Listz
Mendelssohn

While I do have the necessary skills to figure out these names in Chinese, I have just discovered that I do not have the skills to spell these names in English. I had to look all of them up except Chopin.

I've had quite a few funny run-ins with transliterated names over the years. Once when I was in Beijing I tried to make up my own "Chinese-fied" rendering of the name for Schlotzsky's Deli. I completely made it up, but when I finally did find the Schlotzsky's and asked them how to say their name in Chinese, it was almost exactly what I had been saying.

I think my favorite transliteration story actually happened to Katie. The first year we taught in Yichang, Katie was teaching 7th grade students who had just begun to learn English. Katie also had just begun to learn Chinese. One day in class her students were trying to ask her about something that they didn't know how to say in English. They kept saying, "Bu shi. Bu shi. USA. We-aye-pea." Katie was baffled, as were the rest of us who had just arrived in China. We had just learned that in Chinese "bu" means "no" and "shi" is the verb "to be." Why were the students saying "am not" over and over? What did that have to do with the USA? Katie just had to tell the students she had no idea what they were talking about. Finally, after Katie told the rest of us about it, our friend Carma had a breakthrough. They weren't saying "bu shi" they were saying "Bu Shi" as in "Bush." George Bush. And "we-aye-pee" was "V.I.P."--the only way they knew to get across the idea of an important person since they didn't know the English word for "president". We laughed at the idea that Katie had told her students she didn't even know her own country's president.

A Chinese Poem

One of my more outgoing sophomore students has been trying to challenge me in my Chinese study. This week she gave me a short Chinese poem to memorize. Here it is . . . with my rough English translation.

锄禾 Chú Hé

锄禾日当午 Chú hé rì dāng wǔ

汗滴和下土 Hàn dī hé xià tǔ

谁知盘中餐 Shúi zhī pán zhōng cān

粒粒皆辛苦 Lì lì jiē xīn kǔ

Hoeing the Fields

Hoeing the fields under the afternoon sun,

Drops of sweat fall gently to the ground.

We all know where our meals come from,

Every grain of rice is the result of much toiling.

My student said that all Chinese students have to memorize this poem and others like it when they're in primary school. She says that it's the sort of thing parents like to use to remind their child to not waste food and to appreciate and be thankful for what they're given. I really am going to memorize this. I figure it will be a fun conversation starter at Chinese meals.

When I first read this poem to Katie, I asked her to translate it just based on what she thought she heard. Some of these words are not words we know or say often but the words sound like other words that we do know. Katie's translation was much more entertaining . . . something to the effect of the sun coming up, a rabbit by the river was killed (the words xià tǔ really could sound like "kill a rabbit"), and a beautiful girl worked hard to eat it for lunch, which is probably exactly what I would have thought I heard if my student hadn't helped me translate it. Oh Chinese and its tones!!

A Chinese Proverb

饭后百步走 Fàn hòu bǎi bù zǒu
活到九十九 Huó dào jiǔ shí jiǔ

Word by word translation:
Rice after one-hundred step walk
Life arrives nine ten nine.


After a meal, walk a hundred steps to live to be ninety-nine.


I've heard this proverb many times, but I have trouble remembering exactly how it went. It came up again the other night and I was sure it was "walk 99 steps to live to be 100." We finally had to ask our friend at our favorite restaurant for confirmation. Seems like it'd be better to be able to live to be 100 rather than just 99, but I think that the saying uses 99 because it rhymes in Chinese. I don't have any trouble following this saying because pretty much any Chinese food I eat is more than 100 steps from my house. I don't know if the saying applies to American food too :)