Two weeks ago I posted a guide to distinguishing Sinitic languages by ear. Here are the answers to the exercises where one guesses which language(s) are being used. But just giving the answers would be boring, so I’m adding my own commentary. Continue reading
There are many forms of Chinese, and many of them are not mutually intelligible. For many years (basically until I started studying Mandarin) I wasn’t good at distinguishing the sounds of the various forms of Chinese. It was only through exposure that I learned how to identify forms of Chinese just by hearing it, and I’m still far from perfect. In particular, because I’ve had very little exposure to Shanghainese, I’m still not good at identifying it by sound alone.
Why do I think it is good to be able to distinguish these languages? Because it is one thing to read something like ‘Hakka culture is primarily found in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia’ or ‘Cantonese is the language of the Punti people‘, and another thing to be able to recognize the languages. Though merely being able to recognize the languages doesn’t make one an expert, I think it is enough to imprint on the mind that these cultures/peoples/languages exist in a way that just reading/hearing the statement ‘these cultures/peoples/languages exist’ cannot.
(Personally, I am embarrassed that, in spite of growing up in a neighborhood with plenty of Cantonese and Mandarin speakers, I learned how to distinguish Cantonese and Mandarin at a much later age than when I learned to distinguish French/Spanish/Italian).
This blog post is a guide to learning what these five Sinitic languages sound like. This blog post is not about trying to understand these languages (which is why I ignore tones).
To start, this helpful video teaches common phrases in each of these five languages. In that video, it’s obvious that these languages are related, yet not mutually intelligible. (That video also refers to Mandarin as “guānhuà“, which is interesting). Continue reading
Language learning has been one of my major lifetime hobbies. There are many languages which I find beautiful without knowing much about them. By ‘beautiful’, I may mean that they sound beautiful, or that I find the grammar elegant, or that a combination of features of the language simply please me, even if I only can understand a few phrases in the language.
The first time I started dipping my toes into Mandarin, I did not like the language. Since at that point I was just doing it for fun – seeing which languages suited my fancy – I did not see much point in pursuing it much further.
Then I decided to move to Taiwan. And the most useful language in Taiwan – and the only one which is practical to study in the United States – is Mandarin. So, I chose to seriously learn Mandarin because of Taiwan.
Studying beginner level Mandarin was not much fun for me. I did not like the writing system, I did not like the sound of the language, I did not like the grammar, etc. My strong motivation to be able to get around Taiwan without English is what carried me through.
However, as I grew more proficient in Mandarin, I found more and more beauty in the language. For example, while I do not find the shapes of Chinese characters to be beautiful (yes, calligraphy can be beautiful, but that’s thanks to the calligraphers, not the basic shapes) as I got to know the Chinese characters better, I found quite a bit of beauty in the relationships between radicals, components, readings, and meanings. For those of you who have not studied Chinese characters, let me put it this way: Chinese characters represent multiple levels of information. The level of information which is apparent to people who are illiterate in Chinese characters – the visual shapes of the characters – is not aesthetically pleasing to me, but as I could understand more levels of information within the characters, I found levels which I find beautiful.
Another thing I came to appreciate about Mandarin – once my Mandarin vocabulary was sufficiently large – is that there are very few words of Indo-European origin. Once I got over the difficulty of learning a language without the aid of cognates, it dramatically increased the novelty value, and using an almost entirely new vocabulary base stretched my mind in ways that learning languages like French or even Japanese did not. I have written an entire blog post about this.
Speaking of novelty value … if something is phrased in English, and is also phrased in non-English which I understand, unless the English phrasing is particularly aesthetic, or the non-English phrasing particularly not, I’m going to find the non-English phrasing more beautiful. It will feel fresher to me. English is by far the language I’ve used the most in my life – thus it’s harder for something phrased in English to feel fresh to me. On the other hand, the lower my level of comprehension, the less opportunity there is for me to find beauty.
Mandarin is now in the sweet spot where I can understand lots of it at a high level, yet it still feels much fresher than English.
For example, I think rupan na prithak shunyata sunyataya na prithag rupan (a phrase I only understand through translation) has prettier sounds than 色不異空，空不異色 / (sè bù yì kòng, kòng bù yì sè). However, given that I actually understand 色不異空，空不異色 without translation, I find it overall to be more beautiful. I also think that 色不異空，空不異色 is a much more beautiful phrase than “emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness” because … well, I think in this case the Chinese phrasing really is more elegant, but even if it weren’t, it would still feel fresher to me than the English version.
I have also reached a level in Mandarin where I can tell that some phrases are more beautiful than others. For example, “Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes, write sorrow on the bosom of the earth” is more beautiful than any sentence I’ve composed in this post (note: anybody who can figure out which Shakespeare play I’m quoting without the use of a search engine / search function wins bonus points). I can also now tell that 曲曲折折的荷塘上面，彌望的是田田的葉子 is more beautiful than, say, 我看見很多荷塘上的葉子 even though they both (roughly) mean “there’s a view of many leaves on the lotus pond” (note: anybody who can figure out where this quote is from without a search engine also wins bonus points).
Finally, finding books and other media which I love in Mandarin (especially the wuxia genre)has done much to improve my esteem of the language.
I doubt I will ever become as proficient in another language as I have in Mandarin (though who knows – life can be surprising). I am glad that I have come to love the language I spent so much effort studying.
I have never tried to have a conversation about asexuality in Mandarin.
I would like to. But I don’t know how to.
The English-language asexuality community is still developing the language needed to describe our experiences in English … and most of that language is still not understood by fluent English speakers outside of the community.
I once tried to discuss asexuality in English with Taiwanese people who spoke English at a high level. They had a lot of trouble getting what I was talking about. It wasn’t because their English was lacking – it was because they simply had never encountered some of the concepts I was trying to describe.
I would currently rate my Mandarin speaking skills to be at B2. If I have trouble getting Taiwanese people who speak English at a C1 level to understand asexuality when speaking in English, I think it would be nearly impossible for me to try to communicate it with my B2 Mandarin. Especially since I don’t have the vocabulary to have a thorough discussion of sexuality in Mandarin. I can understand the basic words used to describe queerness in Mandarin (such as the word tóngxìngliàn which literally means ‘same-sex (romantic) love’ and is close to the English word ‘homosexual’), but I wouldn’t be able to follow an in-depth discussion on queer theory.
I do, however, understand a lot of the vocabulary related to romance, love, marriage, and so forth, even if I don’t always usan’t always usee it correctly (thank you, my dear Mandarin-language melodramas). And I know that these words often don’t have direct translations to English.
For example, I once asked about same-sex marriage in Mandarin. Mandarin has a number of words for ‘marry’, two of them being qǔ (娶) and jià (嫁). Qǔ is generally used as ‘he qǔ her’ and jià is generally used as ‘she jià him’. So I ask how would these words be used in same sex marriage. Some people answered that the more masculine party would qǔ the more feminine party. Some people answered that the true meaning of qǔ is the stronger party marrying a weaker party, and that the true meaning of jià is the weaker party marrying a stronger party. Thus, in situations where the woman is the stronger party she actually qǔ her husband; same-sex marriages can also have stronger and weaker parties. My favorite response, however, is that qǔ and jià are very patriarchal concepts, and that only more egalitarian words for marriage (such as hé…jiéhūn) should be used, regardless of whether or not it’s a same sex marriage.
See why I can’t really figure out how to discuss asexuality in Mandarin?
It would really help if I had contact with a Mandarin-speaking asexuality community. They could teach me how to describe asexuality in Mandarin, and would probably understand even my broken Mandarin. But I don’t know how to look for such a community.
The Notes Which Do Not Fit 