I've added some new Chinese and English vocabulary pages that are available from my Lingopath site. You can go to the pages directly using the links below, or from the Lingopath home page, click on the Chinese Language and Culture link in the middle column and scroll down to the Chinese & English Vocabulary Heading, where you will also find a number of other vocabulary links. The new Chinese Vocabulary pages are:
Literature
Computers
Topics, Opinions & Situations
Some World Leaders (already a little out of date in the 3 weeks since I put it up)
Some People in the China Connection (includes hanzi and pinyin for some modern Chinese leaders).
A lot of people studying a language are also interested in or at least exposed during their study to literature. The Literature Chinese vocabulary page that I just posted addresses vocabulary for literature in general. I am working on a separate page for Chinese Literature, that I am not ready to post yet. I have also been thinking of adding some well known names from Western Literature, perhaps as a separate page, because the first one about literature is already reasonably long.
The Computer vocabulary page is a start to a page, that I would definitely like to add more to.
I thought that having some World leaders' names in hanzi and pinyin might help us if we attempt to read international news in Chinese. A number of modern Chinese political leaders' names are in included in hanzi and pinyin on the Some People in the China Connection page, though there are a number of names there of Non-Chinese that are not shown in any real or attempted Chinese form. I do intend at some point to address the issue of characters that are most commonly used to transcribe or gloss non=Chinese names. I have included a lot of Wikipedia links on the World Leader and the China Connection pages. I would like to add a lot of names on the scholarly side to the China Connection page..
Monday, June 14, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Some Tools and Tricks to help you learn to Read and Write Hanzi
Rev 3/8/10 -- One of the most frustrating things about learning Chinese (or Japanese, or traditionally written Korean, for that matter) is not only the mind-boggling number of characters (or variants, see previous post on dealing with both simplified and traditional characters), but the time and energy consuming difficulty of trying to look up something when you don't know the pronunciation. It gets worse if you find you have difficulty identifying which of the components of a character is the classificatory radical, ones principal traditional recourse for a non-phonetic look up! Maybe the character was in the section for that radical, but you missed it amidst the forest of other small printed characters, or perhaps you were looking in the wrong subsection, because you miscounted the remaining number of strokes to complete the character after the radical. Aargh!! What can you do?
You have a lot more courses of action if the material you are trying to read is online or already on your computer in some form. You can just copy and paste the expression into an online dictionary or annotator, among other choices. But more on this in a moment.
Before returning to online and other computer or electronic dictionary tools, let me just say that recently I have been trying to read some pages from a novel translated into Chinese. I have been trying to do this intensively (that means looking up almost every word of which I am not 100% sure of the meaning or pronunciation, including tone!--and to keep a computer vocabulary log too), rather than extensively (that means reading to cover much more ground, getting the general gist, but definitely not every word or pronunciation).
It has been a challenging and exhausting trip, but most helpful, not only for learning vocabulary and grammar in context, but also for discovering and rediscovering how to manage. It brought back memories of similar efforts and frustrations while trying to expand my knowledge of written Japanese over a number of year (but not recently) and briefly of traditionally written Korean while in graduate school. The experience reminded me of the value of having a number of strategies ready, depending on what tools you have available, but also so you have something else to try, if the first methods you use do not bring you success.
WHAT DID I DO FOR PRINT MATERIALS:
Can you make a guess at the pronunciation?
I found I could often guess one or two likely pronunciations because classifier/"phonetic" (phono-semantic compound characters, 形声字 xing2 sheng1 zi4) are by far the most common type of Chinese character. (See Wikipedia Chinese Character Classification.) Unfortuanately, there are several pitfalls in this method. Even originally, the so-called phonetic components of such compounds were often only suggestive of a similarity in sound, called a "rime" (or rhyme). Over the many centuries from then to modern Mandarin there have been major phonetic (and phonemic) changes. Some of the newly substituted phonetic components of some simplified characters may be a somewhat less risky basis for a guess at general pronunciation, although none of these helps you with tone.
What if you know or can guess the meaning, even if you don't know the pronunciation?
Sometimes you can find the word with its pronunciation by looking up what you think the meaning is in English.
Is the word is a compound beginning with a character you know?
If so, you can look in a character-based dictionary for compounds beginning with that character. A traditional character dictionary would show the next character based on the number of strokes, which would probably be a bit easier than one in which placement is determined by the character by character pronunciation. The latter would still be manageable in most cases, but you might have to scan a larger number of candidates, increasing the risk of overlooking the correct one. A letter by letter pinyin phonetic based dictionary, such as the Pocket Langenscheidt, that I prefer for fast lookup for words I hear, would not be a good choice here, because it does not lump words beginning with the same character together.
What if the word is or starts with a character you don't know?
I already mentioned the traditional classificatory radical plus remaining stroke count method. Even most phonetically based dictionaries have a radical index, followed by and index of characters beginning with each radical. Many simply give a page or character reference number for the main entry, but I generally prefer an index that gives the pronunciation of the character right there. A further cautionary note, the radical lists found in traditional character dictionaries and simplified character dictionaries differ somewhat, so you have to be careful. Also, several radicals have a full stroked version and a somewhat abbreviated version (with fewer strokes and altered appearance). On some radical lists, you may have to look in the section for the full number of strokes to find the abbreviated version also.
Two other alternatives for when you don't know the first character can be tried using the print version of the dictionary Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary 中文字谱. This dictionary groups characters' main entries not by the traditional classifactory radical, but by some other component of the character, if there is one. Given the prominence of phono-semantic characters, this would principally be the so-called phonetic component. So if you know another character that shares that (traditional) component (because this dictionary is traditional character based), you should be able to find the unknown character near the main entry of the known one, and near its place on the "genealogical" tree located near the entries. This dictionary is obviously a tremendous tool for students who can benefit from seeing characters grouped together that have annoyingly similar appearances and perhaps pronunciations, but differing meanings and usages.
This same dictionary has one other outstanding feature, that few others do. Though character based dictionaries put words together that begin with the same character, almost none give more than perhaps an example or two of words in which the character is NOT the first character. This dictionary (and one excellent one I had for Japanese [to be listed] ) list a number of words in which the character is not first, along with a reference number (or furigana phonetics for the Japanese dictionary) to help you find the main entries for those words.
What if you already know Japanese or Korean and can read the Chinese characters used in each, called kanji and hanja (=hanzi), respectively?
The Sino-Japanese (on-yomi) or Sino-Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters (as opposed to the native Japanese [kun-yomi] or native Korean readings) can also provide a rather rough basis for a guess at pronunciation and/or a relatively decent basis for a guess at meaning. Some other tools may available. I don't really have a good Japanese-Chinese dictionary, though that might be helpful. However, I do have an old version of the Modern Chinese-Japanese Dictionary 現代中日辞典 （増訂版） put out by Kooseikan 光生館 that has an appendix that allows me to look up Chinese pronunciations of a number of characters from the Sino-Japanese pronunciation and from some native Japanese pronunciations. Also the same Japanese Kanji (character) dictionary that allows me to find compounds that start with another character, also lists a Chinese pronunciation for each character contained (other than ones unique to Japan), shows historic kana (which are indicative of past phonetic changes), and also indicates which of a couple of historic periods the Sino-Japanese reading belong to. There may be similar resources available to those with a knowledge of traditional written Korean.
WHAT IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO ONLINE DICTIONARIES, ANNOTATORS, OR ELECTRONIC DICTIONARIES?
Online dictionaries such as MDBG or Yellow Bridge, some electronic dictionaries, and computer Chinese input methods IME's allow some additional alternative strategies.
MDBG or Yellow Bridge, Mandarin Tools downloadable Dim Sum Chinese Tools, and some PDA electronic dictionaries, such as that of PLECO allow you to draw the character in a grid with you mouse or a stylus. Software recognition of what you write is not bad but not perfect.
In these same sources, you can also try to do a search for compounds that contain (or begin or end with) a particular character or sound you know.
Another method is that if you have a Chinese input method set up on your computer, you can try to enter a pronunciation guess, particularly in combination with another character you know (which should greatly limit the possibilities), and see if the character comes up. Although you may still want to copy it into an online dictionary for meaning and tone information, it may still be faster than a more open search or manually looking in a print dictionary.
As additional practice along the same lines, I have even tried to retype several pages in verbatim, from something I was reading in a print version. This has the additional benefit of allowing me to do some things I could with text online or in a computer file. For example, I could paste some of the content into an annotator (see the section on Annotators in my previous posting on Dealing with both Simplified & Traditional Characters), or I could try pasting it into a translator (though I have words of caution to give about that, that will come in another entry.)
To summarize, I recommend having a number of tricks or strategies at the ready, depending partly on which tools you have at hand, which ones you are the best or fastest at using, and whether some methods have failed you, and so you still need something else!
You have a lot more courses of action if the material you are trying to read is online or already on your computer in some form. You can just copy and paste the expression into an online dictionary or annotator, among other choices. But more on this in a moment.
Before returning to online and other computer or electronic dictionary tools, let me just say that recently I have been trying to read some pages from a novel translated into Chinese. I have been trying to do this intensively (that means looking up almost every word of which I am not 100% sure of the meaning or pronunciation, including tone!--and to keep a computer vocabulary log too), rather than extensively (that means reading to cover much more ground, getting the general gist, but definitely not every word or pronunciation).
It has been a challenging and exhausting trip, but most helpful, not only for learning vocabulary and grammar in context, but also for discovering and rediscovering how to manage. It brought back memories of similar efforts and frustrations while trying to expand my knowledge of written Japanese over a number of year (but not recently) and briefly of traditionally written Korean while in graduate school. The experience reminded me of the value of having a number of strategies ready, depending on what tools you have available, but also so you have something else to try, if the first methods you use do not bring you success.
WHAT DID I DO FOR PRINT MATERIALS:
Can you make a guess at the pronunciation?
I found I could often guess one or two likely pronunciations because classifier/"phonetic" (phono-semantic compound characters, 形声字 xing2 sheng1 zi4) are by far the most common type of Chinese character. (See Wikipedia Chinese Character Classification.) Unfortuanately, there are several pitfalls in this method. Even originally, the so-called phonetic components of such compounds were often only suggestive of a similarity in sound, called a "rime" (or rhyme). Over the many centuries from then to modern Mandarin there have been major phonetic (and phonemic) changes. Some of the newly substituted phonetic components of some simplified characters may be a somewhat less risky basis for a guess at general pronunciation, although none of these helps you with tone.
What if you know or can guess the meaning, even if you don't know the pronunciation?
Sometimes you can find the word with its pronunciation by looking up what you think the meaning is in English.
Is the word is a compound beginning with a character you know?
If so, you can look in a character-based dictionary for compounds beginning with that character. A traditional character dictionary would show the next character based on the number of strokes, which would probably be a bit easier than one in which placement is determined by the character by character pronunciation. The latter would still be manageable in most cases, but you might have to scan a larger number of candidates, increasing the risk of overlooking the correct one. A letter by letter pinyin phonetic based dictionary, such as the Pocket Langenscheidt, that I prefer for fast lookup for words I hear, would not be a good choice here, because it does not lump words beginning with the same character together.
What if the word is or starts with a character you don't know?
I already mentioned the traditional classificatory radical plus remaining stroke count method. Even most phonetically based dictionaries have a radical index, followed by and index of characters beginning with each radical. Many simply give a page or character reference number for the main entry, but I generally prefer an index that gives the pronunciation of the character right there. A further cautionary note, the radical lists found in traditional character dictionaries and simplified character dictionaries differ somewhat, so you have to be careful. Also, several radicals have a full stroked version and a somewhat abbreviated version (with fewer strokes and altered appearance). On some radical lists, you may have to look in the section for the full number of strokes to find the abbreviated version also.
Two other alternatives for when you don't know the first character can be tried using the print version of the dictionary Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary 中文字谱. This dictionary groups characters' main entries not by the traditional classifactory radical, but by some other component of the character, if there is one. Given the prominence of phono-semantic characters, this would principally be the so-called phonetic component. So if you know another character that shares that (traditional) component (because this dictionary is traditional character based), you should be able to find the unknown character near the main entry of the known one, and near its place on the "genealogical" tree located near the entries. This dictionary is obviously a tremendous tool for students who can benefit from seeing characters grouped together that have annoyingly similar appearances and perhaps pronunciations, but differing meanings and usages.
This same dictionary has one other outstanding feature, that few others do. Though character based dictionaries put words together that begin with the same character, almost none give more than perhaps an example or two of words in which the character is NOT the first character. This dictionary (and one excellent one I had for Japanese [to be listed] ) list a number of words in which the character is not first, along with a reference number (or furigana phonetics for the Japanese dictionary) to help you find the main entries for those words.
What if you already know Japanese or Korean and can read the Chinese characters used in each, called kanji and hanja (=hanzi), respectively?
The Sino-Japanese (on-yomi) or Sino-Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters (as opposed to the native Japanese [kun-yomi] or native Korean readings) can also provide a rather rough basis for a guess at pronunciation and/or a relatively decent basis for a guess at meaning. Some other tools may available. I don't really have a good Japanese-Chinese dictionary, though that might be helpful. However, I do have an old version of the Modern Chinese-Japanese Dictionary 現代中日辞典 （増訂版） put out by Kooseikan 光生館 that has an appendix that allows me to look up Chinese pronunciations of a number of characters from the Sino-Japanese pronunciation and from some native Japanese pronunciations. Also the same Japanese Kanji (character) dictionary that allows me to find compounds that start with another character, also lists a Chinese pronunciation for each character contained (other than ones unique to Japan), shows historic kana (which are indicative of past phonetic changes), and also indicates which of a couple of historic periods the Sino-Japanese reading belong to. There may be similar resources available to those with a knowledge of traditional written Korean.
WHAT IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO ONLINE DICTIONARIES, ANNOTATORS, OR ELECTRONIC DICTIONARIES?
Online dictionaries such as MDBG or Yellow Bridge, some electronic dictionaries, and computer Chinese input methods IME's allow some additional alternative strategies.
MDBG or Yellow Bridge, Mandarin Tools downloadable Dim Sum Chinese Tools, and some PDA electronic dictionaries, such as that of PLECO allow you to draw the character in a grid with you mouse or a stylus. Software recognition of what you write is not bad but not perfect.
In these same sources, you can also try to do a search for compounds that contain (or begin or end with) a particular character or sound you know.
Another method is that if you have a Chinese input method set up on your computer, you can try to enter a pronunciation guess, particularly in combination with another character you know (which should greatly limit the possibilities), and see if the character comes up. Although you may still want to copy it into an online dictionary for meaning and tone information, it may still be faster than a more open search or manually looking in a print dictionary.
As additional practice along the same lines, I have even tried to retype several pages in verbatim, from something I was reading in a print version. This has the additional benefit of allowing me to do some things I could with text online or in a computer file. For example, I could paste some of the content into an annotator (see the section on Annotators in my previous posting on Dealing with both Simplified & Traditional Characters), or I could try pasting it into a translator (though I have words of caution to give about that, that will come in another entry.)
To summarize, I recommend having a number of tricks or strategies at the ready, depending partly on which tools you have at hand, which ones you are the best or fastest at using, and whether some methods have failed you, and so you still need something else!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Some Help for Moving between Simplified & Traditional Characters
(in Progress) My purpose is to offer a few practical suggestions to those who must learn to deal with both simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters (as if having to learn one form weren't difficult enough). I am not going enter into the debate between proponents and opponents of such changes (see Wikipedia article on the debate for one view on some pros and cons; more Wikipedia references to other related areas below).
Background
Variant forms of characters have actually existed for nearly as long as the characters themselves, not only in calligraphic styles (also reflected in some modern fonts), but also among everyday users of the written Chinese language. I am concerned here with the simplified characters officially adopted in the PRC, Singapore, and Malaysia on the one hand and the forms of traditional characters used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and by many overseas Chinese, on the other hand. Those who deal with materials from both communities, read older or historical materials, or even just read articles in Wikipedia (many are not in simplified characters) must find some ways to learn the different forms and make the connections between the two. By the way, those moving between the study of Chinese and Japanese face a similar problem, because although modern Japanese has also undergone some simplification on a smaller scale, the characters simplified were not all ones simplified in the PRC, nor were they all simplified in the same way.
According to the Wikipedia artilce on simplified characters, simplified characters as used in the PRC today follow a 1986 restatement with very minor changes of so-called first-round changes made in 1956 and 1964. Second-round changes promulgated during the Cultural Revolution were officially abandoned in the 1986 announcement. There are about 350 characters changed in ways with no implications for other characters and 132 characters and 14 simplified radicals (components of characters) with changes that can be generalized to even more than the 1750+ illustrative characters listed in the 1986 government announcement.
Nature of the Changes
A number of methods of simplification were used, including merger of some more complicated characters with simpler ones, substitution of a new phonetic component for the old, replacement of more complicated elements with simpler forms, elimination of whole components of more complex characters, replacement of some characters with characters newly created from existing or simplified components, and the systematic and consistent replacement of some commonly recurring components or radicals.
Some Examples of correspondence of Simplified and Traditional Characters
1. Examples of methods of simplification in English Wikipedia article on simplified characters.
2. Even more examples of methods of simplification in the (traditional character) Chinese Wikipedia article on simplified characters.
3. For a list of what characters were merged with what others see the Wikipedia article on Simplified characters associatied with more than one traditional character.
4. Some examples of simplified radicals (coming soon).
5. Examples of common characters having different forms (produced by interpolating Jun Da's simplified character frequency list with a downloaded CEDICT file) (coming soon).
Helpful Print Media & Reference Materials
Unfortunately, few Chinese-English printed reference materials show both forms of characters. Some dictionaries that do, only show both forms for the main entry of a character only, but not for character combinations or examples.
The Oxford Concise C-E/E-C Dictionary is a notable exception, showing the traditional form ( in brackets) for most simplified characters that do not just have a simplified radical or are not otherwise easily recognizable. The 3rd edition is issued jointly with the Commercial Press (商务印书馆). Commercial Press also puts out The Pocket English-Chinese (Pinyin) Dictionary, which, though I wish were a little bigger in scope, offers similar support.
Some textbooks appear in separate editions with simplified or traditional characters (just one or the other), but this just caters to two separate markets, not helping one to learn both. Others, such as The New Chinese Practial Reader Series list the main dialogs or readings (but not all exercises) in traditional characters in an appendix. This is a step in a helpful direction, but having the texts nearer each other could be more helpful to those trying to make a connection between the two.
fortunately. there are some other printed resources, such as Claudia Ross' Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide, which is filled with examples in both forms right next to each other.
Online Resources offer more in the way of help.
Online dictionaries: MDBG (based on CEDICT) displays both traditional and simplified for both word and character lookups. In Yellow Bridge (at least in the free version) search results are displayed only in one or the other at your choice, although once you select a single word or character, you will see both forms for the main entry, but not, for example, in the list of words starting or ending with the same characters as the word or character selected.
Annotators: Yellow Bridge's annotator (explanation) which allows you see pop-up translations and pronunciation shows both versions of the expression highlighed, regardless of which form you start with. MDBG's annotator is now available directly from the word dictionary page by clicking on the Look up all Chinese Words in a Text option. Among the options available, pop-up does not display both forms, but both the word-by-word translation option and the vocabulary list option do display both, again regardless of which form you start with. There are also downloadable versions of MDBG's and Yellow Bridge's Readers (for cost).
Popup Chinese does annotations of some news articles and other things, and both forms show (either in the annotation itself or the other form if there is one shows in the annotation). Mandarin Tool's downloadable Dim Sum annotator (and dictionary) [look for the Chinese software section in the left panel), annotations can be done of either form, but the alternative form is not displayed. On the other hand, any text copied into Dim Sum can be converted from one form to the other (though such conversions for any automatic device are much more likely to be accurate going into simplified rather than the other way around due to a number of mergers of two or more traditional characters into one simplified character [see my examples list]). Chinese-Tools also has an annotator. Several other commercial Chinese annotators/word processors are also available (Clavis Sinica, NJ Star, Twinbridge, Wenlin) and some have been commonly used in connection with some college Chinese programs, though I have not used any of them. You can also Google a phrase such as Chinese annotation tool.
For Character and Vocabulary Practice in both forms
Yellow Bridge's Language Center gateway allows access to memory game and flashcard practice for vocabulary from a large number of texts as well as to HSK vocabulary and Chinese characters by frequency, in either (but not both simultaneously in the free version). Still, this is a fabulous resource for practice in both.
Background
Variant forms of characters have actually existed for nearly as long as the characters themselves, not only in calligraphic styles (also reflected in some modern fonts), but also among everyday users of the written Chinese language. I am concerned here with the simplified characters officially adopted in the PRC, Singapore, and Malaysia on the one hand and the forms of traditional characters used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and by many overseas Chinese, on the other hand. Those who deal with materials from both communities, read older or historical materials, or even just read articles in Wikipedia (many are not in simplified characters) must find some ways to learn the different forms and make the connections between the two. By the way, those moving between the study of Chinese and Japanese face a similar problem, because although modern Japanese has also undergone some simplification on a smaller scale, the characters simplified were not all ones simplified in the PRC, nor were they all simplified in the same way.
According to the Wikipedia artilce on simplified characters, simplified characters as used in the PRC today follow a 1986 restatement with very minor changes of so-called first-round changes made in 1956 and 1964. Second-round changes promulgated during the Cultural Revolution were officially abandoned in the 1986 announcement. There are about 350 characters changed in ways with no implications for other characters and 132 characters and 14 simplified radicals (components of characters) with changes that can be generalized to even more than the 1750+ illustrative characters listed in the 1986 government announcement.
Nature of the Changes
A number of methods of simplification were used, including merger of some more complicated characters with simpler ones, substitution of a new phonetic component for the old, replacement of more complicated elements with simpler forms, elimination of whole components of more complex characters, replacement of some characters with characters newly created from existing or simplified components, and the systematic and consistent replacement of some commonly recurring components or radicals.
Some Examples of correspondence of Simplified and Traditional Characters
1. Examples of methods of simplification in English Wikipedia article on simplified characters.
2. Even more examples of methods of simplification in the (traditional character) Chinese Wikipedia article on simplified characters.
3. For a list of what characters were merged with what others see the Wikipedia article on Simplified characters associatied with more than one traditional character.
4. Some examples of simplified radicals (coming soon).
5. Examples of common characters having different forms (produced by interpolating Jun Da's simplified character frequency list with a downloaded CEDICT file) (coming soon).
Helpful Print Media & Reference Materials
Unfortunately, few Chinese-English printed reference materials show both forms of characters. Some dictionaries that do, only show both forms for the main entry of a character only, but not for character combinations or examples.
The Oxford Concise C-E/E-C Dictionary is a notable exception, showing the traditional form ( in brackets) for most simplified characters that do not just have a simplified radical or are not otherwise easily recognizable. The 3rd edition is issued jointly with the Commercial Press (商务印书馆). Commercial Press also puts out The Pocket English-Chinese (Pinyin) Dictionary, which, though I wish were a little bigger in scope, offers similar support.
Some textbooks appear in separate editions with simplified or traditional characters (just one or the other), but this just caters to two separate markets, not helping one to learn both. Others, such as The New Chinese Practial Reader Series list the main dialogs or readings (but not all exercises) in traditional characters in an appendix. This is a step in a helpful direction, but having the texts nearer each other could be more helpful to those trying to make a connection between the two.
fortunately. there are some other printed resources, such as Claudia Ross' Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide, which is filled with examples in both forms right next to each other.
Online Resources offer more in the way of help.
Online dictionaries: MDBG (based on CEDICT) displays both traditional and simplified for both word and character lookups. In Yellow Bridge (at least in the free version) search results are displayed only in one or the other at your choice, although once you select a single word or character, you will see both forms for the main entry, but not, for example, in the list of words starting or ending with the same characters as the word or character selected.
Annotators: Yellow Bridge's annotator (explanation) which allows you see pop-up translations and pronunciation shows both versions of the expression highlighed, regardless of which form you start with. MDBG's annotator is now available directly from the word dictionary page by clicking on the Look up all Chinese Words in a Text option. Among the options available, pop-up does not display both forms, but both the word-by-word translation option and the vocabulary list option do display both, again regardless of which form you start with. There are also downloadable versions of MDBG's and Yellow Bridge's Readers (for cost).
Popup Chinese does annotations of some news articles and other things, and both forms show (either in the annotation itself or the other form if there is one shows in the annotation). Mandarin Tool's downloadable Dim Sum annotator (and dictionary) [look for the Chinese software section in the left panel), annotations can be done of either form, but the alternative form is not displayed. On the other hand, any text copied into Dim Sum can be converted from one form to the other (though such conversions for any automatic device are much more likely to be accurate going into simplified rather than the other way around due to a number of mergers of two or more traditional characters into one simplified character [see my examples list]). Chinese-Tools also has an annotator. Several other commercial Chinese annotators/word processors are also available (Clavis Sinica, NJ Star, Twinbridge, Wenlin) and some have been commonly used in connection with some college Chinese programs, though I have not used any of them. You can also Google a phrase such as Chinese annotation tool.
For Character and Vocabulary Practice in both forms
Yellow Bridge's Language Center gateway allows access to memory game and flashcard practice for vocabulary from a large number of texts as well as to HSK vocabulary and Chinese characters by frequency, in either (but not both simultaneously in the free version). Still, this is a fabulous resource for practice in both.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Some Political Concepts--政治的概念
Here is a link to a list of some vocabulary relating to Political Concepts that further expands the political vocabulary area I opened with my previous post around the time of the US presidential election. I anticipate adding more terminology in this area, particularly relating more specifically to China. I added a few more terms on 3/1/09.
Vocabulary about the Environment--环境
Here is a link to a recent vocabulary list I put together with a number of terms relating to the environment and environmental protection. As I mentioned in the previous post, I am starting to put some newer vocabulary lists for Chinese into spreadsheet format at my Lingopath website. The greater width makes it easier to include traditional characters in addition to simplified, and I can also line up data types in columns in a way that may make access to data easier for learners. My intention is to offer open access on a basis like that of CEDICT.
Like all heavily industrialized countries, China also has to find ways to deal effectively with increasing pollution (污染 wu1 ran3) and the related problem of global warming (全球变暖 quan2 qiu2 bian4 nuan3). A certain amount of media attention has been focused on China's reaching a rate of current air pollution that surpasses that of the US. While any and all such problems require the most serious efforts towards viable solutions on the part of all parties, there is also something rather disingenuous in finger pointing at China by people in the developed countries of the West, and particularly by people in the US.
The West and the US have been the world's largest polluters at least since the beginning of the industrial age, so our cumulative "contribution" (that sounds too positive, doesn't it) must be utterly monumental compared to the newcomers on the block. The economic resources and research capabilities of the West have also been huge by comparison. How come we're not further along in the process to finding solutions. We pat ourselves on the back for certain standards that were set only at a point when our standard of living was well above that of today's China and other developing nations. Nevertheless, since the population of China is several times that of the US, the per person contribution of the US to pollution and global warming must still be several times that of China. And this is despite the fact that we in the West have "exported" much of our pollution to developing nations by means of the global economy. We reap the benefits of the products produced elsewhere, but we get to blame them for producing the pollution related to those products, while not having to breathe it etc. ourselves (locally, at least).
A much, much larger share of our contribution to pollution in the West relates to individual consumption and standard of living, things that are even more difficult to control politically and otherwise than the industrial area. Are we capable of addressing these issues in a country where recent government officials were in denial about the reality of global warming and the causal role played by people and pollution? All the world hopes for a higher standard of living, but the small fraction of the world's population that have achieved higher standards of living have already been the major force in driving the world to the brink of ecodisaster. All of us in the world need to be working very hard together to help each other arrive at solutions to these problems without just pointing fingers, as if that absolves us of our own collective and individual responsibility.
Like all heavily industrialized countries, China also has to find ways to deal effectively with increasing pollution (污染 wu1 ran3) and the related problem of global warming (全球变暖 quan2 qiu2 bian4 nuan3). A certain amount of media attention has been focused on China's reaching a rate of current air pollution that surpasses that of the US. While any and all such problems require the most serious efforts towards viable solutions on the part of all parties, there is also something rather disingenuous in finger pointing at China by people in the developed countries of the West, and particularly by people in the US.
The West and the US have been the world's largest polluters at least since the beginning of the industrial age, so our cumulative "contribution" (that sounds too positive, doesn't it) must be utterly monumental compared to the newcomers on the block. The economic resources and research capabilities of the West have also been huge by comparison. How come we're not further along in the process to finding solutions. We pat ourselves on the back for certain standards that were set only at a point when our standard of living was well above that of today's China and other developing nations. Nevertheless, since the population of China is several times that of the US, the per person contribution of the US to pollution and global warming must still be several times that of China. And this is despite the fact that we in the West have "exported" much of our pollution to developing nations by means of the global economy. We reap the benefits of the products produced elsewhere, but we get to blame them for producing the pollution related to those products, while not having to breathe it etc. ourselves (locally, at least).
A much, much larger share of our contribution to pollution in the West relates to individual consumption and standard of living, things that are even more difficult to control politically and otherwise than the industrial area. Are we capable of addressing these issues in a country where recent government officials were in denial about the reality of global warming and the causal role played by people and pollution? All the world hopes for a higher standard of living, but the small fraction of the world's population that have achieved higher standards of living have already been the major force in driving the world to the brink of ecodisaster. All of us in the world need to be working very hard together to help each other arrive at solutions to these problems without just pointing fingers, as if that absolves us of our own collective and individual responsibility.
Lingopath site & Chinese Language & Culture Page
I have recently set up a Lingopath website which will feature a number of pages of content and links. There is a Chinese Language & Culture Page, that will contain links to my most recent Chinese Study Links page (now hosted at the site), an index of my Chinese blog topics, and various other things. I am experimenting with posting new vocabulary lists for Chinese there in spreadsheet column format, with links and commentary here, for example.
Although I am particularly interested in producing new pages for Chinese at whatever pace I can manage, the site also has or will have various other Language & Culture Link pages, multilingual/international news and information links, and some additional types of content.
Although I am particularly interested in producing new pages for Chinese at whatever pace I can manage, the site also has or will have various other Language & Culture Link pages, multilingual/international news and information links, and some additional types of content.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Politics and the US Election
Here is some vocabulary relating to the US election and some words about Politics in general. Some vocabulary for Chinese politics will have to be in another entry or perhaps several.
Obama 奥巴马 Ao4 ba1 ma3
Biden 拜登 Bai4deng1
McCain 麦凯恩 Mai4 kai3 en1
Bush 布什 Bu4shi2
Clinton 克林顿 Ke4 lin2 dun4
Hillary 希拉里 Xi1 la1 li3
Rice (Condoleeza) 赖斯 Lai4si1
Powell (Colin) 鲍威尔 Bao4 wei1 er3
Gore 戈尔 Ge1er3
Reagan 里根 Li3gen1
Johnson 约翰逊 Yue1 han4 xun4
Kennedy 肯尼迪 Ken3 ni2 di2
President 总统 zong3tong3
White House 白宫 Bai2gong1
Vice-President 副总统 fu4 zong3tong3
Senate 参议院 can1yi4 yuan4
Senator 参议员 can1yi4 yuan2
House of Representatives (USA) 众议院 zhong4 yi4 yuan4
Member of the House of Rep's 众议员 zhong4 yi4 yuan2
Cabinet (govt) 内阁 nei4ge2
Dept. of State 美国国务院 Mei3guo2 Guo2wu4 yuan4
Secretary of State 国务卿 guo2wu4 qing1
Government 政府 zheng4fu3
Democracy 民主主义 min2zhu3 zhu3yi4
Republic 共和国 gong4he2guo2
Policy 政策 zheng4ce4
Foreign Policy 对外政策 dui4wai4 zheng4ce4
Diplomacy, Foreign Affairs 外交 wai4jiao1
International relations 国际关系 guo2ji4 guan1xi4
Civil Rights 公民权利 gong1min2 quan2li4
Election 选举 xuan3ju3
Right to vote 投票权 tou2piao4 quan2
Vote 投票 tou2piao4
Voting machine 投票机器 tou2piao4 ji1qi4
Political party 政党 zheng4dang3
Democratic party 民主党 min2zhu3 dang3
Republican party 共和党 gong4he2 dang3
Economy 经济 jing1ji4
Financial Crisis 金融危機 jin1rong2 wei1ji1
Environment 环境 huan2jing4
Global Warming 全球变暖 quan2qiu2 bian4nuan3
Iraq War 伊拉克战争 Yi1la1ke4 zhan4zheng1
Soldiers 军人 jun1ren2
Withdraw troops 撤军 che4jun1
Withdraw troops 撤兵 che4bing1
War on Terrorism 反恐战争 fan3kong3 zhan4zheng1
Terrorism 恐怖主义 kong3bu4 zhu3yi4
Terrorist 恐怖主义者 kong3bu4 zhu3yi4 zhe3
Terrorist 恐怖分子 kong3bu4 fen4zi5
Terrorist organization 恐怖组织 kong3bu4 zu3zhi1
Terrorist organization 恐怖机构 kong3bu4 ji1gou4
Al Qaeda 基地组织 ji1di4 zu3zhi1
Ben Laden 本拉登 Ben3 La1deng1
Sadam Hussein 萨达姆侯赛因 sa4da2mu3 hou4sai4yin1
Weapons of Mass Destruction 大规模杀伤性武器 da4gui1mo2 sha1shang1xing4 wu3qi4
Disarmament 裁军 cai2jun1
Obama 奥巴马 Ao4 ba1 ma3
Biden 拜登 Bai4deng1
McCain 麦凯恩 Mai4 kai3 en1
Bush 布什 Bu4shi2
Clinton 克林顿 Ke4 lin2 dun4
Hillary 希拉里 Xi1 la1 li3
Rice (Condoleeza) 赖斯 Lai4si1
Powell (Colin) 鲍威尔 Bao4 wei1 er3
Gore 戈尔 Ge1er3
Reagan 里根 Li3gen1
Johnson 约翰逊 Yue1 han4 xun4
Kennedy 肯尼迪 Ken3 ni2 di2
President 总统 zong3tong3
White House 白宫 Bai2gong1
Vice-President 副总统 fu4 zong3tong3
Senate 参议院 can1yi4 yuan4
Senator 参议员 can1yi4 yuan2
House of Representatives (USA) 众议院 zhong4 yi4 yuan4
Member of the House of Rep's 众议员 zhong4 yi4 yuan2
Cabinet (govt) 内阁 nei4ge2
Dept. of State 美国国务院 Mei3guo2 Guo2wu4 yuan4
Secretary of State 国务卿 guo2wu4 qing1
Government 政府 zheng4fu3
Democracy 民主主义 min2zhu3 zhu3yi4
Republic 共和国 gong4he2guo2
Policy 政策 zheng4ce4
Foreign Policy 对外政策 dui4wai4 zheng4ce4
Diplomacy, Foreign Affairs 外交 wai4jiao1
International relations 国际关系 guo2ji4 guan1xi4
Civil Rights 公民权利 gong1min2 quan2li4
Election 选举 xuan3ju3
Right to vote 投票权 tou2piao4 quan2
Vote 投票 tou2piao4
Voting machine 投票机器 tou2piao4 ji1qi4
Political party 政党 zheng4dang3
Democratic party 民主党 min2zhu3 dang3
Republican party 共和党 gong4he2 dang3
Economy 经济 jing1ji4
Financial Crisis 金融危機 jin1rong2 wei1ji1
Environment 环境 huan2jing4
Global Warming 全球变暖 quan2qiu2 bian4nuan3
Iraq War 伊拉克战争 Yi1la1ke4 zhan4zheng1
Soldiers 军人 jun1ren2
Withdraw troops 撤军 che4jun1
Withdraw troops 撤兵 che4bing1
War on Terrorism 反恐战争 fan3kong3 zhan4zheng1
Terrorism 恐怖主义 kong3bu4 zhu3yi4
Terrorist 恐怖主义者 kong3bu4 zhu3yi4 zhe3
Terrorist 恐怖分子 kong3bu4 fen4zi5
Terrorist organization 恐怖组织 kong3bu4 zu3zhi1
Terrorist organization 恐怖机构 kong3bu4 ji1gou4
Al Qaeda 基地组织 ji1di4 zu3zhi1
Ben Laden 本拉登 Ben3 La1deng1
Sadam Hussein 萨达姆侯赛因 sa4da2mu3 hou4sai4yin1
Weapons of Mass Destruction 大规模杀伤性武器 da4gui1mo2 sha1shang1xing4 wu3qi4
Disarmament 裁军 cai2jun1
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
World Financial Crisis--世界金融危机
The US financial crisis has had repercussions all over the globe and is well reported in the Chinese press. Here are some vocabulary items:
Economy 经济 jing1ji4
World/Global economy 世界经济 shi4jie4 jing1ji4
International trade 国际贸易 guo2ji4 mao4yi4
Economics 经济学 jing1ji4xue2
Economist 经济学家 jing1ji4 xue2jia1
Economic crisis 经济危机 jing1ji4 wei1ji1
Financial crisis 金融危机 jin1rong2 wei1ji1
Financial crisis/storm 金融风暴 jin1rong2 feng1bao4
Monetary crisis 货币危机 huo4bi4 wei1ji1
The Great Depression 大萧条 da4xiao1tiao2
Recession/slump 不景气 bu4jing3qi4
Finance 金融 jin1rong2
Financial rescue (bailout) plan 金融救援计划 jin1rong2 jiu4yuan2 ji4hua4
Government Financial rescue (bailout) proposal/bill
政府金融救援方案 zheng4fu3 jin1rong2 jiu4yuan2 fang1an4
Bank 银行 yin2hang2
Home loan bank 房贷银行 fang2dai4 yin2hang2
Federal Reserve Bank 美国联邦储备 Mei3guo2 lian2bang1 chu3bei4
Federal Reserve Bank 美联储 Mei3lian2chu3
Investment bank/ing 投资银行 tou2zi1 yin2hang2
Financial institution 金融机构 jin1rong2 ji1gou4
Insurance company 保险公司 bao3xian3 gong1si1
Insurance policy 保险单 bao3xian3dan1
Wall Street 华尔街 Hua2er3jie1
Stock market 股票市场 gu3piao4 shi4chang3
Stock market 股市 gu3shi4
Stock/securities market 证券交易所 Zheng4quan4 Jiao1yi4suo3
Stock broker 证券经纪人 zheng4quan4 jing1ji4ren2
Stocks/shares 股票 gu3piao4
Stock price 股价 gu3jia4
Securities 证券 Zheng4quan4
Bonds 债券 zhai4quan4
Government bond 公债 gong1zhai4
Treasury bond 国库券 guo2ku4quan4
Investment 投资 tou2zi1
Foreign investment 外资 wai4zi1
Pension 退休金 tui4xiu1jin1
Social security 社会服务 she4hui4 fu2wu4
Credit 信用 xin4yong4
Credit Card 信用卡 xin4yong4ka3
Mortgage loan 抵押贷款 di3ya1 dai4kuan3
Loan 借款 jie4kuan3
US dollars 美元 mei3yuan2
US Government 美国政府 mei3guo2 zheng4fu3
US Congress 美国国会 Mei3guo2 guo2hui4
US Senate 美国参议院 Mei3guo2 can1yi4yuan4
US House of Representatives 美国众议院 Mei3guo2 Zhong4yi4yuan4
Capital 资本 zi1ben3
Foreign capital 外国资本 wai4guo2 zi1ben3
Capitalism 资本主义 zi1ben3 zhu3yi4
Capitalist 资本家 zi1ben3jia1
Unemployment 失业 shi1ye4
Unemployment rate 失业率 shi1ye4lü4
Unemployed person 失业者 shi1ye4zhe3
Risk losing one's job 冒失去工作的危险 mao4 shi1qu4 gong1zuo4 de5 wei1xian3
Look for a job 就业 jiu4ye4
Look for a job 求职 qiu2zhi2
Job applicant求职者 qiu2zhi2zhe3
Employment agency 职业 介绍所 zhi2ye4 jie4shao4suo3
Employment agency 荐头店 jian4tou5dian4
Employment (being employed) 雇用 gu4yong4
Full employment 充分就业 chong1fen4 jiu4ye4
Employ 雇用 gu4yong4
Employer 雇主 gu4zhu3
Employee 雇员 gu4yuan2
Full-time job 全职 quan2zhi2
Self-employed 自由职业 zi4you2 zhi2ye4
Job, occupation, profession, employment 职业 zhi2ye4
Job title 职称 zhi2cheng1
Job duties 职务 zhi2wu4
Occupational safety 职业安全 zhi2ye4 an1quan2
Occupational disease 职业病 zhi2ye4bing4
Relations between labor & employer 劳雇关系 lao2gu4 guan1xi4
Labor union 工会 gong1hui4
International Labor Organization ILO 国际劳工组织 guo2ji4 lao2gong1 zu3zhi1
Labor force, manpower 劳动力 lao2dong4li4
Labor contract 劳动合同 lao2dong4 he2tong5
Economy 经济 jing1ji4
World/Global economy 世界经济 shi4jie4 jing1ji4
International trade 国际贸易 guo2ji4 mao4yi4
Economics 经济学 jing1ji4xue2
Economist 经济学家 jing1ji4 xue2jia1
Economic crisis 经济危机 jing1ji4 wei1ji1
Financial crisis 金融危机 jin1rong2 wei1ji1
Financial crisis/storm 金融风暴 jin1rong2 feng1bao4
Monetary crisis 货币危机 huo4bi4 wei1ji1
The Great Depression 大萧条 da4xiao1tiao2
Recession/slump 不景气 bu4jing3qi4
Finance 金融 jin1rong2
Financial rescue (bailout) plan 金融救援计划 jin1rong2 jiu4yuan2 ji4hua4
Government Financial rescue (bailout) proposal/bill
政府金融救援方案 zheng4fu3 jin1rong2 jiu4yuan2 fang1an4
Bank 银行 yin2hang2
Home loan bank 房贷银行 fang2dai4 yin2hang2
Federal Reserve Bank 美国联邦储备 Mei3guo2 lian2bang1 chu3bei4
Federal Reserve Bank 美联储 Mei3lian2chu3
Investment bank/ing 投资银行 tou2zi1 yin2hang2
Financial institution 金融机构 jin1rong2 ji1gou4
Insurance company 保险公司 bao3xian3 gong1si1
Insurance policy 保险单 bao3xian3dan1
Wall Street 华尔街 Hua2er3jie1
Stock market 股票市场 gu3piao4 shi4chang3
Stock market 股市 gu3shi4
Stock/securities market 证券交易所 Zheng4quan4 Jiao1yi4suo3
Stock broker 证券经纪人 zheng4quan4 jing1ji4ren2
Stocks/shares 股票 gu3piao4
Stock price 股价 gu3jia4
Securities 证券 Zheng4quan4
Bonds 债券 zhai4quan4
Government bond 公债 gong1zhai4
Treasury bond 国库券 guo2ku4quan4
Investment 投资 tou2zi1
Foreign investment 外资 wai4zi1
Pension 退休金 tui4xiu1jin1
Social security 社会服务 she4hui4 fu2wu4
Credit 信用 xin4yong4
Credit Card 信用卡 xin4yong4ka3
Mortgage loan 抵押贷款 di3ya1 dai4kuan3
Loan 借款 jie4kuan3
US dollars 美元 mei3yuan2
US Government 美国政府 mei3guo2 zheng4fu3
US Congress 美国国会 Mei3guo2 guo2hui4
US Senate 美国参议院 Mei3guo2 can1yi4yuan4
US House of Representatives 美国众议院 Mei3guo2 Zhong4yi4yuan4
Capital 资本 zi1ben3
Foreign capital 外国资本 wai4guo2 zi1ben3
Capitalism 资本主义 zi1ben3 zhu3yi4
Capitalist 资本家 zi1ben3jia1
Unemployment 失业 shi1ye4
Unemployment rate 失业率 shi1ye4lü4
Unemployed person 失业者 shi1ye4zhe3
Risk losing one's job 冒失去工作的危险 mao4 shi1qu4 gong1zuo4 de5 wei1xian3
Look for a job 就业 jiu4ye4
Look for a job 求职 qiu2zhi2
Job applicant求职者 qiu2zhi2zhe3
Employment agency 职业 介绍所 zhi2ye4 jie4shao4suo3
Employment agency 荐头店 jian4tou5dian4
Employment (being employed) 雇用 gu4yong4
Full employment 充分就业 chong1fen4 jiu4ye4
Employ 雇用 gu4yong4
Employer 雇主 gu4zhu3
Employee 雇员 gu4yuan2
Full-time job 全职 quan2zhi2
Self-employed 自由职业 zi4you2 zhi2ye4
Job, occupation, profession, employment 职业 zhi2ye4
Job title 职称 zhi2cheng1
Job duties 职务 zhi2wu4
Occupational safety 职业安全 zhi2ye4 an1quan2
Occupational disease 职业病 zhi2ye4bing4
Relations between labor & employer 劳雇关系 lao2gu4 guan1xi4
Labor union 工会 gong1hui4
International Labor Organization ILO 国际劳工组织 guo2ji4 lao2gong1 zu3zhi1
Labor force, manpower 劳动力 lao2dong4li4
Labor contract 劳动合同 lao2dong4 he2tong5
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
China in Space
Rev. 6/14/10--During the last few days, all China was watching China's third manned space mission as three Chinese astronauts (taikonauts) circled the globe for a few days, and one of them undertook the first ever space walk for China. Millions of eyes were glued to coverage on CCTV, China's national TV network. They returned safely to earth over the weekend, but there continues to be coverage of the space flight, post mission congratulations, and even footage with commentary on various other factual and fictional space missions (even Clint Eastwood and aging companions in "Space Cowboys," also known as "The Ripe Stuff"). Clearly, space fever has gotten hold of the national consciousness.
I have an extra interest in space missions myself, not only from an enduring childhood interest in this kind of thing, but also because Ron Garan, Jr., one of the two US astronauts doing extended walks in space this spring is the nephew of my wife's childhood best friend.
Here are some relevant links:
CCTV-Home in Chinese, CCTV-home in English.
CCTV-HD viewer with buttons for different channels, including in English, French, and Spanish
(The site will ask you to install something for the viewer--I think quality is excellent for PC viewing, though I don't actually have an HD screen).
Chinese National Space Agency-CNSAEng
Xinhua Chinese News Agency-Xinhua in Eng
Here is some relevant vocabulary for space exploration in general. (The PRC and Taiwan don't use the same words for everything, and some words used to describe foreign space missions may be different from those used for their own missions. The words below may fit into all of these categories.):
Space 太空 tai4 kong1 (this is the word that the taikonaut word for astronaut comes from)
Universe, space 宇宙 yu3 zhou4
Orbit 轨道 gui3 dao4
Space flight 航天 hang2tian1
Spaceship 宇宙飞船 yu3zhou4 fei1chuan2
Space Shuttle 航天飞机 hang2tian1 fei1ji1
International space station 国际空间站 guo2ji4 kong1jian1 zhan4
Hubble Space Telescope 哈伯太空望远镜 ha1bo2 tai4kong1 wang4yuan3jing4
Satellite 卫星 wei4xing1
Space Probe 空间探测 kong1jian1 tan4ce4
Space exploration 太空探索tai4kong1 tan4 suo3
Space program 太空计划 tai4kong1 ji4hua4
Space Race 太空竞赛 tai4kong1 jing4sai4
The Chinese spacecraft that just went up
Shenzhou 7 神舟七号 shen2zhou1 qi1hao4
Shenzhou 7 神七 shen2qi1
Astronaut 航天员 hang2tian1yuan2
Astronaut 航天乘员 hang2tian1 cheng2yuan2
The three astronauts (taikonauts) who just went up
Zhai Zhigang 翟志刚 Zhai2 Zhi4gang1
Liu Boming 刘伯明 Liu2 Bo2ming2
Jing Haipeng 景海鹏 Jing3 Hai3peng2
Launch/Lift off 发射 fa1she4
Landing/touch down 着陆 zhuo2lu4
Space walk 太空漫步 tai4kong1 man4bu4 (sounds like space mambo)
EVA-extra-vehicular activity 舱外活动 cang1wai4 huo2dong4
Chinese National Space Administration 国家航天局 guo2jia1 hang2tian1ju2
(US) NASA 美国宇航局 mei3guo2 yu3hang2ju2
European Space Agency 欧洲航天局 Ou1zhou1 hang2tian1ju2
Astronomy 天文学 tian1 wen2 xue2
Galaxy 银河系 yin2he2xi4
Milky Way Galaxy 银河 yin2he2
Solar system 太阳系 tai4yang2xi4
Sun 太阳 tai4yang2
Planet 惑星 huo4 xing1
Earth 地球 di4qiu2
Moon 月亮 yue4 liang5
Mercury 水星 shui3xing1
Venus 金星 jin1xing1
Mars 火星 huo3xing1
Jupiter 木星 mu4xing1
Saturn 土星 tu3xing1
Uranus 天王星 tian1wang2xing1
Neptune 海王星 hai3 wang2 xing1
Pluto 冥王星 ming2wang2xing1
Asteroid belt 小行星带 xiao3xing2xing1 dai4
Gravity 重力 zhong4li4
Weightlessness 失重 shi1 zhong4
Black hole 黑洞 hei1dong4
Cosmic ray 宇宙射线 yu3zhou4 she4xian4
UFO 幽浮 you1fu2
Extra-terrestrial/alien 外星人 wai4xing1ren2
(in progress)
I have an extra interest in space missions myself, not only from an enduring childhood interest in this kind of thing, but also because Ron Garan, Jr., one of the two US astronauts doing extended walks in space this spring is the nephew of my wife's childhood best friend.
Here are some relevant links:
CCTV-Home in Chinese, CCTV-home in English.
CCTV-HD viewer with buttons for different channels, including in English, French, and Spanish
(The site will ask you to install something for the viewer--I think quality is excellent for PC viewing, though I don't actually have an HD screen).
Chinese National Space Agency-CNSAEng
Xinhua Chinese News Agency-Xinhua in Eng
Here is some relevant vocabulary for space exploration in general. (The PRC and Taiwan don't use the same words for everything, and some words used to describe foreign space missions may be different from those used for their own missions. The words below may fit into all of these categories.):
Space 太空 tai4 kong1 (this is the word that the taikonaut word for astronaut comes from)
Universe, space 宇宙 yu3 zhou4
Orbit 轨道 gui3 dao4
Space flight 航天 hang2tian1
Spaceship 宇宙飞船 yu3zhou4 fei1chuan2
Space Shuttle 航天飞机 hang2tian1 fei1ji1
International space station 国际空间站 guo2ji4 kong1jian1 zhan4
Hubble Space Telescope 哈伯太空望远镜 ha1bo2 tai4kong1 wang4yuan3jing4
Satellite 卫星 wei4xing1
Space Probe 空间探测 kong1jian1 tan4ce4
Space exploration 太空探索tai4kong1 tan4 suo3
Space program 太空计划 tai4kong1 ji4hua4
Space Race 太空竞赛 tai4kong1 jing4sai4
The Chinese spacecraft that just went up
Shenzhou 7 神舟七号 shen2zhou1 qi1hao4
Shenzhou 7 神七 shen2qi1
Astronaut 航天员 hang2tian1yuan2
Astronaut 航天乘员 hang2tian1 cheng2yuan2
The three astronauts (taikonauts) who just went up
Zhai Zhigang 翟志刚 Zhai2 Zhi4gang1
Liu Boming 刘伯明 Liu2 Bo2ming2
Jing Haipeng 景海鹏 Jing3 Hai3peng2
Launch/Lift off 发射 fa1she4
Landing/touch down 着陆 zhuo2lu4
Space walk 太空漫步 tai4kong1 man4bu4 (sounds like space mambo)
EVA-extra-vehicular activity 舱外活动 cang1wai4 huo2dong4
Chinese National Space Administration 国家航天局 guo2jia1 hang2tian1ju2
(US) NASA 美国宇航局 mei3guo2 yu3hang2ju2
European Space Agency 欧洲航天局 Ou1zhou1 hang2tian1ju2
Astronomy 天文学 tian1 wen2 xue2
Galaxy 银河系 yin2he2xi4
Milky Way Galaxy 银河 yin2he2
Solar system 太阳系 tai4yang2xi4
Sun 太阳 tai4yang2
Planet 惑星 huo4 xing1
Earth 地球 di4qiu2
Moon 月亮 yue4 liang5
Mercury 水星 shui3xing1
Venus 金星 jin1xing1
Mars 火星 huo3xing1
Jupiter 木星 mu4xing1
Saturn 土星 tu3xing1
Uranus 天王星 tian1wang2xing1
Neptune 海王星 hai3 wang2 xing1
Pluto 冥王星 ming2wang2xing1
Asteroid belt 小行星带 xiao3xing2xing1 dai4
Gravity 重力 zhong4li4
Weightlessness 失重 shi1 zhong4
Black hole 黑洞 hei1dong4
Cosmic ray 宇宙射线 yu3zhou4 she4xian4
UFO 幽浮 you1fu2
Extra-terrestrial/alien 外星人 wai4xing1ren2
(in progress)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
What things are difficult or easy about Chinese?
Some opening Q & A
In this day of rising interest in China, interest in the language is also exploding.
Can Chinese (standard Mandarin) be learned by English speakers?
Yes, but expect it to take more time to learn to any particular level of proficiency than the commonly studied European languages.
How much longer?
The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (http://www.dliflc.edu/) has grouped languages into three groups in terms of time it takes English speakers to learn them. Chinese is in the third, or most difficult/time-consuming, group, along with Japanese, Korean, & Arabic. Their estimate is that languages in this group take about two and a half to three times as long to learn to certain benchmark levels. This is also reflected in the length of time that each language is studied in their programs. Also keep in mind that their students are already preselected for high presumed ability and likelihood to succeed. They also spend huge numbers of hours a week studying, and are therefore less likely to forget things between lessons. Believe it or not, this is actually intended as an encouragement. In other words, don't be discouraged if you find that studying Chinese by less rigorous methods and schedules is taking you even more than 3 times as long as it took you to learn a less challenging language. On the other hand, this might motivate you to maximize progress and minimize forgeting by daily practice and reinforcement. In addition, I believe that understanding the nature of what it is that you must learn can also help provide you with greater focus.
Outline of some difficulties
Very briefly, for English speakers, what are some of the more difficult aspects of Chinese to learn?
Basically, in outline, this includes all aspects that are significantly different from English, including:
Writing & Reading: How to write & read several thousand Chinese characters. This includes the formidable question of how to associate those thousands of characters with their pronunciation and with the appropriate tone.
Pronunciation: How to differentiate (both in listening and in speaking) the tones of Chinese and certain sounds or distinctions that we don't have, such as two kinds of "sh" (pinyin sh & x), two kinds of "ch" (pinyin ch & q), or the rather buzzy initial "r" sound, among others. Added to this is the problem of understanding significant numbers of Chinese speakers of Mandarin who are actually native speakers of other varieties of Chinese, and who therefore do not themselves pronounce words in strictly standard fashion.
Vocabulary: Except a small number of loan words, Chinese words bear no relationship to English, and even the loan words can be difficult to recognize without some training.
Grammar: The grammatical difficulties of Chinese lie in areas other than the areas of conjugation and case, that give us some much trouble in European languages.
A few General Observations
In language learning, as in learning in general, it is more difficult to learn things that are different from things one already knows. Similarities with things one already knows, on the other hand, usually make learning (at least initial learning) easier, although when learning two or more similar languages, learning to differentiate a large number of similar but not identical items can also be difficult. Because there are many aspects to languages, a language that is difficult in certain respects may not be so difficult in others. For English speakers, for example, learning the cognate vocabulary component of many European languages may be much easier than learning non-cognate vocabulary, verb conjugations, case endings, or when to use the subjunctive, etc.
Furthermore, both on an aspect for aspect basis and in general, for any language pair, the difficulties faced by speakers of language A trying to learn language B are not necessarily the same or of equivalent degree as those of speakers of language B learning A. Clearly English speakers face a massively more formidable challenge learning how to write and read several thousand characters of Chinese, than is the case in reverse. If, in a very rough kind of way, we can visualize languages (and each constituent aspect) in terms of Venn diagrams, we should ask not only what parts are similar (overlap), but also what is the amount or nature of the parts of the target language that are not like that (/those) already known.
Knowledge of additional languages, can help in at least two or three ways also. First, it can provide a larger repertory of familiar items to drawn upon when learning the new language and a sense of at least a few of the ways in which languages can be different. Secondly, most people who have already studied another language have acquired a better of the formal terms in which languages are usually described (parts of speech, terms for grammatical functions, gender, etc.). In addition, such people also have some prior experience of some methods that may help in learning another language.
Other factors can also enter into the equation, such as motivation, learning styles, attitudes, degree of success in previous language learning, or simple ability to stick with something that cannot be learned in a short amount of time. How a language is taught and or studied can also produce significant differences.
Some Specifics for learners of Chinese
Writing System: Not just the volume ( 3 to 5 thousand characters-汉字 han4zi4), but also learning to visually discriminate so many characters, and the extra problem of learning how to write them! To be sure, this large number of characters has been built up from a much smaller number of constituent parts, including but not limited to the 214 radicals (部首 bu4shou3) by which all characters are classified in traditional dictionaries. In such dictionaries, characters are grouped together with others that share the same classificatory radical (部首 bu4shou3). These radicals themselves have a traditional order in which they occur in dictionaries, based on the nuber of strokes in each (although some radicals have variant forms with different numbers of strokes.
The vast majority of modern characters have at least two, three, or more components, although have been eliminated or otherwise simplified in simplified characters (简体汉字 jian3ti3 han4zi4). So learning to write or recognize these compound characters is not a question of learning several thousand totally different characters, but of remembering which combinations of more or less familiar components they contain. Furthermore, certain components or combinations of components tend to come in particular locations in compound characters, so this also helps one learn. The classificatory radicals mentioned above, tend mostly to come at the top or at the left hand side of compound characters.
A further difficulty is that the characters are not "spelled" phonetically. Although many do contain a component or combination of components that points to some (sometimes quite vague) kind of phonetic similarity (sometimes referred to as "rime"). Unfortunately, the writing reflects similarities in the pronunciation of Chinese of more than a thousand years ago, often very different from that of modern Mandarin, and the similarities may not have been that precise to start with!
It can be very helpful for the learner of Chinese (and also of Japanese or traditional Korean, written with Chinese characters) to see characters that share the same rime components grouped together, because they may be easily confused, sharing one or more components in their appearance and often having a similar sound, though not infrequently with a different tone. Rick Harbaugh's character based dictionary (Zhong1wen2 Zi4pu3 中文字譜, Chinese Characters: A Geneology and Dictionary) does exactly this, but it contains a formidable number of characters, and is, partly of necessity, tradtional character based, because some of the rime components have been lost or changed in simplification.
The online version at Zhongwen.com is definitely easier even for non-beginners to navigate and to move back and forth between traditional and simplified characters. The online dictionary Yellow Bridge, gives a breakdown of the components of each character looked up individually when you click on the etymology tab. If there is a phonectic component, it will be indicated as such. In addition, on the left-hand side of the etymology tab page, there external links that include one directly to the full character in the just cited Zhongwen.com. Once in Zhonwen.com, on the right-hand side of your screen, you will see that character on a "genealogical" tree (or at least a componential compnent tree) placed on a branch under its phonetic rime component along with other characters that also share the same component. If the phonetic component is itself a compound of components, it will also be linked to a node of one of its components, not necessarily phonetically related.
Knowledge of Chinese characters as used in Japanese or Korean can also be somewhat helpful.
Pronunciation:
(to be continued)
In this day of rising interest in China, interest in the language is also exploding.
Can Chinese (standard Mandarin) be learned by English speakers?
Yes, but expect it to take more time to learn to any particular level of proficiency than the commonly studied European languages.
How much longer?
The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (http://www.dliflc.edu/) has grouped languages into three groups in terms of time it takes English speakers to learn them. Chinese is in the third, or most difficult/time-consuming, group, along with Japanese, Korean, & Arabic. Their estimate is that languages in this group take about two and a half to three times as long to learn to certain benchmark levels. This is also reflected in the length of time that each language is studied in their programs. Also keep in mind that their students are already preselected for high presumed ability and likelihood to succeed. They also spend huge numbers of hours a week studying, and are therefore less likely to forget things between lessons. Believe it or not, this is actually intended as an encouragement. In other words, don't be discouraged if you find that studying Chinese by less rigorous methods and schedules is taking you even more than 3 times as long as it took you to learn a less challenging language. On the other hand, this might motivate you to maximize progress and minimize forgeting by daily practice and reinforcement. In addition, I believe that understanding the nature of what it is that you must learn can also help provide you with greater focus.
Outline of some difficulties
Very briefly, for English speakers, what are some of the more difficult aspects of Chinese to learn?
Basically, in outline, this includes all aspects that are significantly different from English, including:
Writing & Reading: How to write & read several thousand Chinese characters. This includes the formidable question of how to associate those thousands of characters with their pronunciation and with the appropriate tone.
Pronunciation: How to differentiate (both in listening and in speaking) the tones of Chinese and certain sounds or distinctions that we don't have, such as two kinds of "sh" (pinyin sh & x), two kinds of "ch" (pinyin ch & q), or the rather buzzy initial "r" sound, among others. Added to this is the problem of understanding significant numbers of Chinese speakers of Mandarin who are actually native speakers of other varieties of Chinese, and who therefore do not themselves pronounce words in strictly standard fashion.
Vocabulary: Except a small number of loan words, Chinese words bear no relationship to English, and even the loan words can be difficult to recognize without some training.
Grammar: The grammatical difficulties of Chinese lie in areas other than the areas of conjugation and case, that give us some much trouble in European languages.
A few General Observations
In language learning, as in learning in general, it is more difficult to learn things that are different from things one already knows. Similarities with things one already knows, on the other hand, usually make learning (at least initial learning) easier, although when learning two or more similar languages, learning to differentiate a large number of similar but not identical items can also be difficult. Because there are many aspects to languages, a language that is difficult in certain respects may not be so difficult in others. For English speakers, for example, learning the cognate vocabulary component of many European languages may be much easier than learning non-cognate vocabulary, verb conjugations, case endings, or when to use the subjunctive, etc.
Furthermore, both on an aspect for aspect basis and in general, for any language pair, the difficulties faced by speakers of language A trying to learn language B are not necessarily the same or of equivalent degree as those of speakers of language B learning A. Clearly English speakers face a massively more formidable challenge learning how to write and read several thousand characters of Chinese, than is the case in reverse. If, in a very rough kind of way, we can visualize languages (and each constituent aspect) in terms of Venn diagrams, we should ask not only what parts are similar (overlap), but also what is the amount or nature of the parts of the target language that are not like that (/those) already known.
Knowledge of additional languages, can help in at least two or three ways also. First, it can provide a larger repertory of familiar items to drawn upon when learning the new language and a sense of at least a few of the ways in which languages can be different. Secondly, most people who have already studied another language have acquired a better of the formal terms in which languages are usually described (parts of speech, terms for grammatical functions, gender, etc.). In addition, such people also have some prior experience of some methods that may help in learning another language.
Other factors can also enter into the equation, such as motivation, learning styles, attitudes, degree of success in previous language learning, or simple ability to stick with something that cannot be learned in a short amount of time. How a language is taught and or studied can also produce significant differences.
Some Specifics for learners of Chinese
Writing System: Not just the volume ( 3 to 5 thousand characters-汉字 han4zi4), but also learning to visually discriminate so many characters, and the extra problem of learning how to write them! To be sure, this large number of characters has been built up from a much smaller number of constituent parts, including but not limited to the 214 radicals (部首 bu4shou3) by which all characters are classified in traditional dictionaries. In such dictionaries, characters are grouped together with others that share the same classificatory radical (部首 bu4shou3). These radicals themselves have a traditional order in which they occur in dictionaries, based on the nuber of strokes in each (although some radicals have variant forms with different numbers of strokes.
The vast majority of modern characters have at least two, three, or more components, although have been eliminated or otherwise simplified in simplified characters (简体汉字 jian3ti3 han4zi4). So learning to write or recognize these compound characters is not a question of learning several thousand totally different characters, but of remembering which combinations of more or less familiar components they contain. Furthermore, certain components or combinations of components tend to come in particular locations in compound characters, so this also helps one learn. The classificatory radicals mentioned above, tend mostly to come at the top or at the left hand side of compound characters.
A further difficulty is that the characters are not "spelled" phonetically. Although many do contain a component or combination of components that points to some (sometimes quite vague) kind of phonetic similarity (sometimes referred to as "rime"). Unfortunately, the writing reflects similarities in the pronunciation of Chinese of more than a thousand years ago, often very different from that of modern Mandarin, and the similarities may not have been that precise to start with!
It can be very helpful for the learner of Chinese (and also of Japanese or traditional Korean, written with Chinese characters) to see characters that share the same rime components grouped together, because they may be easily confused, sharing one or more components in their appearance and often having a similar sound, though not infrequently with a different tone. Rick Harbaugh's character based dictionary (Zhong1wen2 Zi4pu3 中文字譜, Chinese Characters: A Geneology and Dictionary) does exactly this, but it contains a formidable number of characters, and is, partly of necessity, tradtional character based, because some of the rime components have been lost or changed in simplification.
The online version at Zhongwen.com is definitely easier even for non-beginners to navigate and to move back and forth between traditional and simplified characters. The online dictionary Yellow Bridge, gives a breakdown of the components of each character looked up individually when you click on the etymology tab. If there is a phonectic component, it will be indicated as such. In addition, on the left-hand side of the etymology tab page, there external links that include one directly to the full character in the just cited Zhongwen.com. Once in Zhonwen.com, on the right-hand side of your screen, you will see that character on a "genealogical" tree (or at least a componential compnent tree) placed on a branch under its phonetic rime component along with other characters that also share the same component. If the phonetic component is itself a compound of components, it will also be linked to a node of one of its components, not necessarily phonetically related.
Knowledge of Chinese characters as used in Japanese or Korean can also be somewhat helpful.
Pronunciation:
(to be continued)
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The Beijing Olympics and Sports--some vocabulary
Rev 6/14/10--In traditional Chinese society, the number eight is regarded as a propitious number. It is undoubtedly with this in mind that the official opening date of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics is 8/8/08. The Chinese official website in Chinese is
http://www.beijing2008.cn/ and the English version is http://en.beijing2008.cn/. Comparing these. US coverage is available at NBCOlympics.com. CEDICT and Wikipedia (various articles inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics) are some good sources of vocabulary, as is a comparison of the Chinese & English versions of the official Chinese site. An English venue map is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Beijing_2008_olympic_venue.svg. The official Chinese site for the Paralympics (which run from Sept. 6-17, 2008) is http://paralympic.beijing2008.cn/index.shtml. The English version is at http://paralympic.beijing2008.cn/index.shtml
Yellow Bridge Flashcards has some sports terms: under the heading of Themed Word Lists, select Topical Vocabulary, then select sports. And if you happen to have the Longman Chinese-English Visual Dictionary of Chinese Culture (汉英中华文化图解词典), there are about 20 pages of line drawing illustrations and associated vocabulary about sports (not all of them Olympic sports), starting on p. 252 with vocabulary for topic #151. It's a great dictionary, but there is no pinyin. Here is some vocabulary for the games and about sports in general (not only Olympic Events).
Olympic games--奥林匹克运动会--Ao4lin2pi3ke4 yun4dong4hui4
Olympic games (shorter)--奥运会--Ao4yun4hui4
Paralympics--残奥会--Can2ao4hui4
International Olympic Committee--国际奥委会
--guo2ji4 ao4wei3hui4
International Olympic Committee (shorter)--国奥会--guo2ao4hui4
Olympic spirit--奥林匹克精神--Ao4lin2pi3ke4 jing1shen2
One World, One Dream (motto)--同一个世界，同一个梦想
--tong2yi1 ge shi4jie4, tong2yi1 ge meng4xiang3
Five Rings (Olympic Logo)--五环--wu3huan2
Olympic flame (lit., sacred fire)--圣火--sheng4huo3
Gold medal (金牌 jin1pai2)
Silver medal (银牌 yin2pai2)
Bronze medal (铜牌 tong2pai2)
National Anthem (国歌 guo2ge1)
Opening ceremony--开幕式--kai1mu4shi4
Closing Cermony--闭幕式--bi4mu4shi4
Olympic Village--奥运村--Ao4 yun4 cun1
Beijing National Stadium--北京国家体育场
--Bei3jing1 Guo2jia1 Ti3yu4chang3
gymnasium--体育馆--ti3yu4guan3
the track--跑道--pao3dao4
lane--分道--fen1dao4
starting block--起跑器--qi3pao3qi4
starting line--起跑线--qi3pao3xian4
finish line--终点线--zhong1dian3xian4
swimming pool--游泳池--you2 yong3 chi2
Sports-运动-yun4dong4
Sports meet--运动会-yun4dong4hui4
Match, competition--比赛--bi3sai4
Team competition--团体比赛--tuan2ti3 bi3sai4
Individual single event--个人单项--ge4ren2 dan1xiang4
Individual all-around--个人全能--ge4ren2 quan2neng2
Athlete--运动员--yun4dong4yuan2
Athlete, competitor--选手--xuan3shou3
Team--团体--tuan2ti3
spectator, audience--观众--guan1zhong4
spectator's grandstand--看台--kan4tai2
(soccer) fan--足球迷--(zu2qiu2) mi2
Track and field events--田径运动--tian2jing4 yun4dong4
田径 is also called "athletics" at the Beijing Olympics site.
track events--竞赛--jing4 sai4
(foot)race--赛跑--sai4pao3
sprint, dash--短跑--duan3pao3
middle distance race--中跑--zhong1pao3
long distance race--长跑--chang2pao3
relay--接力赛跑--jie1li4sai4(pao3)
hurdles (race)--跨栏赛(跑)--kua4lan2sai4(pao3)
hurdle--跨栏--kua4lan2
steeple chase--障碍赛跑--zhang4ai4 sai4pao3
cross country--越野赛跑--yue4ye3 sai4pao3
marathon--马拉松--ma3la1song1
field events--田赛--tian2sai4
long jump--跳远--tiao4yuan3
triple jump--三级跳远--san1ji2 tiao4yuan3
high jump--跳高--tiao4gao1
pole vault--撑杆跳高--cheng1gan1 tiao4gao1
shot put--推铅球--tui1qian1qiu2
shot--铅球--qian1qiu2
discus throw--掷铁饼--zhi4tie3bing3
discus--铁饼--tie3bing3
hammer throw--掷链球--zhi4lian4qiu2
hammer--链球--lian4qiu2
javelin throw--掷标枪--zhi4biao1qiang1
javelin--标枪--biao1qiang1
decathlon--十项(全能)--shi2xiang4 (quan2neng2)
pentathlon--五项(全能)--wu3xiang4 (quan2neng2)
modern pentathlon--现代五项--xian4dai4 wu3xiang4
Gymnastics--体操--ti3cao1
weightlifting--举重-ju3zhong4
Martial Arts--武术--wu3shu4
Karate--空手(道)--kong1shou3(dao4)
Judo--柔道--rou2dao4
Taekwondo--跆拳道--tai2quan2dao4
Taichi--太极拳--tai4ji2quan2
shooting--射击--she4ji1
fencing--击剑--ji1jian4
Swimming--游泳--you2yong3
freestyle swimming--自由泳--zi4you2yong3
butterfly--蝶泳--die2yong3
breaststroke--蛙泳--wa1yong3
backstroke--仰泳--yang3yong3
synchronized swimming--花样游泳--hua1yang4 you2yong3
diving--跳水--tiao4shui3
springboard--跳板--tiao4ban3
high platform diving--高台跳水--gao1tai2 tiao4shui3
diving platform--跳台--tiao4tai2
water polo--水球--shui3qiu2
Ball games
play ball--打球--da3qiu2
soccer--足球--zu2qiu2
soccer field--足球场--zu2qiu2chang3
basketball--篮球--lan2 qiu2
tennis--网球--wang3 qiu2
table tennis --桌球--zhuo1qiu2
ping pong--乒乓球--ping1pang1qiu2
ping pong table--乒乓球台--ping1pang1qiu2tai2
baseball--棒球--bang4 qiu2
volleyball--排球--pai2qiu2
beach volleyball--沙滩排球--sha1tan1 pai2qiu2
(I may still add a few things.)
http://www.beijing2008.cn/ and the English version is http://en.beijing2008.cn/. Comparing these. US coverage is available at NBCOlympics.com. CEDICT and Wikipedia (various articles inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics) are some good sources of vocabulary, as is a comparison of the Chinese & English versions of the official Chinese site. An English venue map is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Beijing_2008_olympic_venue.svg. The official Chinese site for the Paralympics (which run from Sept. 6-17, 2008) is http://paralympic.beijing2008.cn/index.shtml. The English version is at http://paralympic.beijing2008.cn/index.shtml
Yellow Bridge Flashcards has some sports terms: under the heading of Themed Word Lists, select Topical Vocabulary, then select sports. And if you happen to have the Longman Chinese-English Visual Dictionary of Chinese Culture (汉英中华文化图解词典), there are about 20 pages of line drawing illustrations and associated vocabulary about sports (not all of them Olympic sports), starting on p. 252 with vocabulary for topic #151. It's a great dictionary, but there is no pinyin. Here is some vocabulary for the games and about sports in general (not only Olympic Events).
Olympic games--奥林匹克运动会--Ao4lin2pi3ke4 yun4dong4hui4
Olympic games (shorter)--奥运会--Ao4yun4hui4
Paralympics--残奥会--Can2ao4hui4
International Olympic Committee--国际奥委会
--guo2ji4 ao4wei3hui4
International Olympic Committee (shorter)--国奥会--guo2ao4hui4
Olympic spirit--奥林匹克精神--Ao4lin2pi3ke4 jing1shen2
One World, One Dream (motto)--同一个世界，同一个梦想
--tong2yi1 ge shi4jie4, tong2yi1 ge meng4xiang3
Five Rings (Olympic Logo)--五环--wu3huan2
Olympic flame (lit., sacred fire)--圣火--sheng4huo3
Gold medal (金牌 jin1pai2)
Silver medal (银牌 yin2pai2)
Bronze medal (铜牌 tong2pai2)
National Anthem (国歌 guo2ge1)
Opening ceremony--开幕式--kai1mu4shi4
Closing Cermony--闭幕式--bi4mu4shi4
Olympic Village--奥运村--Ao4 yun4 cun1
Beijing National Stadium--北京国家体育场
--Bei3jing1 Guo2jia1 Ti3yu4chang3
gymnasium--体育馆--ti3yu4guan3
the track--跑道--pao3dao4
lane--分道--fen1dao4
starting block--起跑器--qi3pao3qi4
starting line--起跑线--qi3pao3xian4
finish line--终点线--zhong1dian3xian4
swimming pool--游泳池--you2 yong3 chi2
Sports-运动-yun4dong4
Sports meet--运动会-yun4dong4hui4
Match, competition--比赛--bi3sai4
Team competition--团体比赛--tuan2ti3 bi3sai4
Individual single event--个人单项--ge4ren2 dan1xiang4
Individual all-around--个人全能--ge4ren2 quan2neng2
Athlete--运动员--yun4dong4yuan2
Athlete, competitor--选手--xuan3shou3
Team--团体--tuan2ti3
spectator, audience--观众--guan1zhong4
spectator's grandstand--看台--kan4tai2
(soccer) fan--足球迷--(zu2qiu2) mi2
Track and field events--田径运动--tian2jing4 yun4dong4
田径 is also called "athletics" at the Beijing Olympics site.
track events--竞赛--jing4 sai4
(foot)race--赛跑--sai4pao3
sprint, dash--短跑--duan3pao3
middle distance race--中跑--zhong1pao3
long distance race--长跑--chang2pao3
relay--接力赛跑--jie1li4sai4(pao3)
hurdles (race)--跨栏赛(跑)--kua4lan2sai4(pao3)
hurdle--跨栏--kua4lan2
steeple chase--障碍赛跑--zhang4ai4 sai4pao3
cross country--越野赛跑--yue4ye3 sai4pao3
marathon--马拉松--ma3la1song1
field events--田赛--tian2sai4
long jump--跳远--tiao4yuan3
triple jump--三级跳远--san1ji2 tiao4yuan3
high jump--跳高--tiao4gao1
pole vault--撑杆跳高--cheng1gan1 tiao4gao1
shot put--推铅球--tui1qian1qiu2
shot--铅球--qian1qiu2
discus throw--掷铁饼--zhi4tie3bing3
discus--铁饼--tie3bing3
hammer throw--掷链球--zhi4lian4qiu2
hammer--链球--lian4qiu2
javelin throw--掷标枪--zhi4biao1qiang1
javelin--标枪--biao1qiang1
decathlon--十项(全能)--shi2xiang4 (quan2neng2)
pentathlon--五项(全能)--wu3xiang4 (quan2neng2)
modern pentathlon--现代五项--xian4dai4 wu3xiang4
Gymnastics--体操--ti3cao1
weightlifting--举重-ju3zhong4
Martial Arts--武术--wu3shu4
Karate--空手(道)--kong1shou3(dao4)
Judo--柔道--rou2dao4
Taekwondo--跆拳道--tai2quan2dao4
Taichi--太极拳--tai4ji2quan2
shooting--射击--she4ji1
fencing--击剑--ji1jian4
Swimming--游泳--you2yong3
freestyle swimming--自由泳--zi4you2yong3
butterfly--蝶泳--die2yong3
breaststroke--蛙泳--wa1yong3
backstroke--仰泳--yang3yong3
synchronized swimming--花样游泳--hua1yang4 you2yong3
diving--跳水--tiao4shui3
springboard--跳板--tiao4ban3
high platform diving--高台跳水--gao1tai2 tiao4shui3
diving platform--跳台--tiao4tai2
water polo--水球--shui3qiu2
Ball games
play ball--打球--da3qiu2
soccer--足球--zu2qiu2
soccer field--足球场--zu2qiu2chang3
basketball--篮球--lan2 qiu2
tennis--网球--wang3 qiu2
table tennis --桌球--zhuo1qiu2
ping pong--乒乓球--ping1pang1qiu2
ping pong table--乒乓球台--ping1pang1qiu2tai2
baseball--棒球--bang4 qiu2
volleyball--排球--pai2qiu2
beach volleyball--沙滩排球--sha1tan1 pai2qiu2
(I may still add a few things.)
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Varieties of Chinese & Standard Chinese
Language Family and "Dialects"
The Chinese language is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family (han4zang4 yu3xi4 汉藏语系) and may be referred to in Mandarin by any of several terms, including zhong1wen2 中文, zhong1yu3 中语, zhong1guo2hua4 中国话, han4yu3 汉语, hua2yu3 华语, or hua2wen2 华文. Chinese includes a range of mutually incomprehensible geographical varieties, which therefore from a purely linguistic standpoint could all be called different languages, but due to emphasis on the cultural and historical unity of China are usually referred to as dialects (fang1yan2 方言). To choose middle ground between the terms "language" and "dialect," DeFrancis and Mair have chosen to translate fang1yan2 方言 as regionalect and topolect, respectively. However, going in the other direction, fang1yan2 方言 is the standard translation for "dialect." Furthermore, linguists often note that even as used in Europe, the terms language and dialect often do not reflect mutual comprehensibility as much as feelings with regard to historical, cultural, or ethnic unity or independence. The principal difference is that in Europe the main tendency has been to call linguistically similar varieties "languages" if they belong to groups asserting their political or ethnic differences, whereas in China, the emphasis on unity has been to call linguistically rather different varieties merely "dialects." In both arenas, socio-political reality and implications are significant factors. Indeed a commonly cited definition often attributed to Max Weinreich, is that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." At any rate, suffice it to say that the major geographical varieties of Chinese are at least as different as major languages of Europe.
Major Geographic Varieties of Chinese
Some of the major geographical varieties of Chinese include Mandarin (in the sense of dialect group with about 850 million speakers, called Bei3fang3hua4 北方話 or guan1hua4 官话--this of course includes Beijing dialect, Bei3jing1hua4 北京话), Wu (Wu2yu3 吴语,which includes Shanghainese Shang4hai3hua4 上海话), Cantonese (Yue4yu3 粤语, more specifically for Canton itself, Guang3dong1hua4 广东话), Hakka (Ke4jia1yu3 客家语, Xiang (Xiang1 湘), Min (Min3yu3 闽语which includes Taiwanese, Tai2wan1hua4 台湾话), and Gan (Gan4 赣). Maps of regional dialect groupings with further links can be found at Wikipedia's articles entitled Chinese Language and Spoken Chinese, and an outline of their place in the broader picture at Sino-Tibetan language family. According to the numbers in the Wikipedia article on Chinese language, Mandarin, with about 850 million speakers is by far the largest dialect group, followed by Wu, with about 90 million, Cantonese, with about 80 million, Min at 50 million, Xiang and Hakka at 35 million each, and Gan at 20 million.
Some Historical Varieties of Chinese
Broad historic phases of Chinese are referred by the terms Old Chinese (shang4gu3 han4yu3 上古汉语) stretching from the Shang Dynasty (shang1chao2 商潮) to the Former Han (qian2han4 前汉 or Western Han xi1han4 西汉), Middle Chinese (zhong1gu3 han4yu3 中古汉语), and Modern Chinese (xian4dai4 han4yu3 汉语). The term classical Chinese (gu3wen2 古文 or gu3dian3 han4yu3 古典汉语) is used to refer to Chinese writing from the Zhou Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty. The term literary Chinese (wen2yan2wen2 文言文 or simply wen2yan2 文言) is used to refer to the linguistically conservative form, or register, of written Chinese used from the end of the Han Dynasty until early modern times when it gave way to vernacular Chinese (bai2hua4 白话), based largely on the modern spoken language. The largely logographic nature of the writing system, which did not have to be pronounced in the same way to be understood, and the classical literary education of all civil servants ensured by the civil service examination system helped to keep literary Chinese around for a long time, but in the meanwhile the differences between Chinese dialects were growing, as was the difference between the written and the spoken language. It should also be noted, that despite the large geographic differences in Chinese, it was principally only the standard language, used and spread throughout the country by civil servants, or officials also known to us as Mandarins, that was committed to writing.
Mandarin as a Dialect Group & as Standard Chinese
Mandarin is a term that has at least two different meanings. On the one hand, Mandarin (see Mandarin Linguistics and Mandarin Dialects) refers to the largest dialect group of Chinese, and on the other hand it is often used to refer to Standard Chinese. As a dialect group, Mandarin is spoken over vast stretches of China, in most of the north and the west, by about 850 million people and is by far the largest dialect group. While some of this scale may include somewhat more recently sinicized regions of China, which may therefore have somewhat less linguistic diversity than the sheer scale suggests, there is still room for very considerable variation from the Standard Mandarin that we study. This variation is most likely not just limited to phonology, but could include items of lexicon, grammar, and sociolinguistic factors.
A Couple of Mandarin Dialect Group Differences from other Chinese Dialect Groups
One of the most notable phonological characteristics of the Mandarin dialect group is its historical loss of syllable final consonants other than "n" or "ng." Other final consonants, such as "p," "t," "k," or "m," are present not only in other Chinese dialect groups, but also in modern day pronunciations of words in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese based on the pronunciations of Chinese characters of in many cases, more than a thousand years ago. A look at romanized signs in almost any Chinatown will show many such final consonants, reflecting as they so often do, Cantonese or other non-Mandarin dialects.
The loss of most final consonants in Mandarin has had a major effect also on the lexicon, that has further differentiated Mandarin from other dialect groups. Older forms of Chinese and other dialects are noted for a high frequency of single syllable words. The loss or merger of final consonants that used help to distinguish many formerly single syllable words in Mandarin has produced large numbers of homophones instead. Among modern Chinese dialects, Mandarin therefore has the largest number of words of at least two syllables. Some are produced by combining two characters of similar or complementary meaning and some others by the addition of an element such as "zi" (子, a simple noun suffix).
Some Mandarin Dialect Group Internal Variability
Not all varieties of Mandarin are readily mutually comprehensible. Phonologically, vowel and consonant values may vary. Diphthongs such as "ai," "ei," "ao," "ou," may be pronounced as single vowels (monopthongs), without the vowel glide. Speakers of some Mandarin dialects (and some non-Mandarin dialects) lack the retroflex initials "zh," "ch," "sh," & "r," (pinyin values) replacing the first three with "z," "c," "s," and values such as "z" or "w" for "r." See the Wikipedia articles cited for more.
Middle Chinese had 4 tones (ping 平 "even," shang 上 "rising," qu 去"departing," ru 入 "entering"), as do most regional subdialects of modern Mandarin (yin1ping2 阴平, yang2ping2 阳平, shang4 上, qu4 去, that we usually just call tones one to four) . The relationship between the two is more complex than either the mutual existence of four tones or the similarity in the Chinese names for the tones might suggest. Tables in the Wikipedia article on Mandarin Dialects indicate that an interaction between the Middle Chinese (MC) tones and the type of MC initial consonant produced the Modern Mandarin tone categories. The first three MC tones split and regrouped somewhat depending on MC initial. The final MC tone was redistributed to the other tone categories in different ways in different regional dialects of Mandarin, although it was actually preserved as a fifth tone (ru 入) principally in the Jianghuai regional dialect.
Just because most Mandarin dialects have four tone categories, by no means indicates that the tonal contour of each of the categories is universally that of the idealized Standard Mandarin tonal contours we have studied. In the same way there is regional variation in the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, an additional table in Mandarin Dialects article gives a sobering idea of just how different those contours can be in different parts of the Mandarin dialect group area.
Mandarin as Standard Chinese--Modern Standard Mandarin, MSM
Mandarin as a standard language is referred to differently in different places. In the People's Republic of China, it is called pu3tong1hua4 普通话 or "common speech", in Taiwan it is called guo2yu3 国语 (written 國語 in Taiwan) or "national language," and Singapore has adopted more neutral hua2yu3 华语 or "Chinese (lit., language of the Chinese people)." The term guan1hua4 官话 or "language of the officials (mandarins)" reflects the historical role of the Mandarins, or civil servant bureaucracy, in spreading and establishing a more or less standard form of Chinese. Geographically, Modern standard Chinese is based largely on the educated Chinese of Beijing, although Nanjing and other historical capitals of China have also played a role in the development of the modern standard.
The term "Parisian French" suggests the important role that a capital can play in defining a national language standard, but the existence of Cockney in the middle of London is a reminder that socioeconomic and educational factors, among others, also play a role. The media also play an increasingly important and evolving role in defining language standards, in addition to literature and education. The standard German of Germany, though largely based on northern dialects, is not identical with that of any particular place and is said to owe a lot to the language of the stage (Bühnensprache). For the UK, the prestigious Received Pronunciation (RP), is sometimes called the Queen's English and sometimes BBC English, although these days at any rate, accents on the BBC exhibit more diversity. The central and regional media of the PRC and of Taiwan undoubtedly provide models of Standard Mandarin which one can compare with the supposedly standard Mandarin one is supposed to be taught in school or which one may have been told others spoke locally.
Differences in Standard Mandarin occur in many forms. For writing, mainland China uses simplified characters (jian3ti3zi4 简体字), whereas Taiwan uses traditional characters (fan2ti3zi4 繁体字, or officially in Taiwan zheng4ti3zi4 正体字). In terms of the spoken language, although some use of final vocalic "r" (er2hua4 儿化) is found in the media and the HSK vocabulary tests, the extensive use of this feature found in Beijing is thought be a feature of local Beijing dialect. Other regional phonological and vocabulary influences may flavor people's attempts to speak Standard Mandarin. For some examples for Taiwan, see the references in the sociolinguistics section of the Wikipedia article on Taiwanese Linguistics and in the pronunciation section of the Wikipedia article on Taiwanese Mandarin.
A number of differences in vocabulary between the mainland and Taiwan are reported in the Taiwanese Mandarin article, in a few pages at the back of the Langenscheidt Concise Chinese-English Dictionary, and a small number in a list at Yellow Bridge (http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/mandarin-differences.php).
The Chinese language is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family (han4zang4 yu3xi4 汉藏语系) and may be referred to in Mandarin by any of several terms, including zhong1wen2 中文, zhong1yu3 中语, zhong1guo2hua4 中国话, han4yu3 汉语, hua2yu3 华语, or hua2wen2 华文. Chinese includes a range of mutually incomprehensible geographical varieties, which therefore from a purely linguistic standpoint could all be called different languages, but due to emphasis on the cultural and historical unity of China are usually referred to as dialects (fang1yan2 方言). To choose middle ground between the terms "language" and "dialect," DeFrancis and Mair have chosen to translate fang1yan2 方言 as regionalect and topolect, respectively. However, going in the other direction, fang1yan2 方言 is the standard translation for "dialect." Furthermore, linguists often note that even as used in Europe, the terms language and dialect often do not reflect mutual comprehensibility as much as feelings with regard to historical, cultural, or ethnic unity or independence. The principal difference is that in Europe the main tendency has been to call linguistically similar varieties "languages" if they belong to groups asserting their political or ethnic differences, whereas in China, the emphasis on unity has been to call linguistically rather different varieties merely "dialects." In both arenas, socio-political reality and implications are significant factors. Indeed a commonly cited definition often attributed to Max Weinreich, is that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." At any rate, suffice it to say that the major geographical varieties of Chinese are at least as different as major languages of Europe.
Major Geographic Varieties of Chinese
Some of the major geographical varieties of Chinese include Mandarin (in the sense of dialect group with about 850 million speakers, called Bei3fang3hua4 北方話 or guan1hua4 官话--this of course includes Beijing dialect, Bei3jing1hua4 北京话), Wu (Wu2yu3 吴语,which includes Shanghainese Shang4hai3hua4 上海话), Cantonese (Yue4yu3 粤语, more specifically for Canton itself, Guang3dong1hua4 广东话), Hakka (Ke4jia1yu3 客家语, Xiang (Xiang1 湘), Min (Min3yu3 闽语which includes Taiwanese, Tai2wan1hua4 台湾话), and Gan (Gan4 赣). Maps of regional dialect groupings with further links can be found at Wikipedia's articles entitled Chinese Language and Spoken Chinese, and an outline of their place in the broader picture at Sino-Tibetan language family. According to the numbers in the Wikipedia article on Chinese language, Mandarin, with about 850 million speakers is by far the largest dialect group, followed by Wu, with about 90 million, Cantonese, with about 80 million, Min at 50 million, Xiang and Hakka at 35 million each, and Gan at 20 million.
Some Historical Varieties of Chinese
Broad historic phases of Chinese are referred by the terms Old Chinese (shang4gu3 han4yu3 上古汉语) stretching from the Shang Dynasty (shang1chao2 商潮) to the Former Han (qian2han4 前汉 or Western Han xi1han4 西汉), Middle Chinese (zhong1gu3 han4yu3 中古汉语), and Modern Chinese (xian4dai4 han4yu3 汉语). The term classical Chinese (gu3wen2 古文 or gu3dian3 han4yu3 古典汉语) is used to refer to Chinese writing from the Zhou Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty. The term literary Chinese (wen2yan2wen2 文言文 or simply wen2yan2 文言) is used to refer to the linguistically conservative form, or register, of written Chinese used from the end of the Han Dynasty until early modern times when it gave way to vernacular Chinese (bai2hua4 白话), based largely on the modern spoken language. The largely logographic nature of the writing system, which did not have to be pronounced in the same way to be understood, and the classical literary education of all civil servants ensured by the civil service examination system helped to keep literary Chinese around for a long time, but in the meanwhile the differences between Chinese dialects were growing, as was the difference between the written and the spoken language. It should also be noted, that despite the large geographic differences in Chinese, it was principally only the standard language, used and spread throughout the country by civil servants, or officials also known to us as Mandarins, that was committed to writing.
Mandarin as a Dialect Group & as Standard Chinese
Mandarin is a term that has at least two different meanings. On the one hand, Mandarin (see Mandarin Linguistics and Mandarin Dialects) refers to the largest dialect group of Chinese, and on the other hand it is often used to refer to Standard Chinese. As a dialect group, Mandarin is spoken over vast stretches of China, in most of the north and the west, by about 850 million people and is by far the largest dialect group. While some of this scale may include somewhat more recently sinicized regions of China, which may therefore have somewhat less linguistic diversity than the sheer scale suggests, there is still room for very considerable variation from the Standard Mandarin that we study. This variation is most likely not just limited to phonology, but could include items of lexicon, grammar, and sociolinguistic factors.
A Couple of Mandarin Dialect Group Differences from other Chinese Dialect Groups
One of the most notable phonological characteristics of the Mandarin dialect group is its historical loss of syllable final consonants other than "n" or "ng." Other final consonants, such as "p," "t," "k," or "m," are present not only in other Chinese dialect groups, but also in modern day pronunciations of words in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese based on the pronunciations of Chinese characters of in many cases, more than a thousand years ago. A look at romanized signs in almost any Chinatown will show many such final consonants, reflecting as they so often do, Cantonese or other non-Mandarin dialects.
The loss of most final consonants in Mandarin has had a major effect also on the lexicon, that has further differentiated Mandarin from other dialect groups. Older forms of Chinese and other dialects are noted for a high frequency of single syllable words. The loss or merger of final consonants that used help to distinguish many formerly single syllable words in Mandarin has produced large numbers of homophones instead. Among modern Chinese dialects, Mandarin therefore has the largest number of words of at least two syllables. Some are produced by combining two characters of similar or complementary meaning and some others by the addition of an element such as "zi" (子, a simple noun suffix).
Some Mandarin Dialect Group Internal Variability
Not all varieties of Mandarin are readily mutually comprehensible. Phonologically, vowel and consonant values may vary. Diphthongs such as "ai," "ei," "ao," "ou," may be pronounced as single vowels (monopthongs), without the vowel glide. Speakers of some Mandarin dialects (and some non-Mandarin dialects) lack the retroflex initials "zh," "ch," "sh," & "r," (pinyin values) replacing the first three with "z," "c," "s," and values such as "z" or "w" for "r." See the Wikipedia articles cited for more.
Middle Chinese had 4 tones (ping 平 "even," shang 上 "rising," qu 去"departing," ru 入 "entering"), as do most regional subdialects of modern Mandarin (yin1ping2 阴平, yang2ping2 阳平, shang4 上, qu4 去, that we usually just call tones one to four) . The relationship between the two is more complex than either the mutual existence of four tones or the similarity in the Chinese names for the tones might suggest. Tables in the Wikipedia article on Mandarin Dialects indicate that an interaction between the Middle Chinese (MC) tones and the type of MC initial consonant produced the Modern Mandarin tone categories. The first three MC tones split and regrouped somewhat depending on MC initial. The final MC tone was redistributed to the other tone categories in different ways in different regional dialects of Mandarin, although it was actually preserved as a fifth tone (ru 入) principally in the Jianghuai regional dialect.
Just because most Mandarin dialects have four tone categories, by no means indicates that the tonal contour of each of the categories is universally that of the idealized Standard Mandarin tonal contours we have studied. In the same way there is regional variation in the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, an additional table in Mandarin Dialects article gives a sobering idea of just how different those contours can be in different parts of the Mandarin dialect group area.
Mandarin as Standard Chinese--Modern Standard Mandarin, MSM
Mandarin as a standard language is referred to differently in different places. In the People's Republic of China, it is called pu3tong1hua4 普通话 or "common speech", in Taiwan it is called guo2yu3 国语 (written 國語 in Taiwan) or "national language," and Singapore has adopted more neutral hua2yu3 华语 or "Chinese (lit., language of the Chinese people)." The term guan1hua4 官话 or "language of the officials (mandarins)" reflects the historical role of the Mandarins, or civil servant bureaucracy, in spreading and establishing a more or less standard form of Chinese. Geographically, Modern standard Chinese is based largely on the educated Chinese of Beijing, although Nanjing and other historical capitals of China have also played a role in the development of the modern standard.
The term "Parisian French" suggests the important role that a capital can play in defining a national language standard, but the existence of Cockney in the middle of London is a reminder that socioeconomic and educational factors, among others, also play a role. The media also play an increasingly important and evolving role in defining language standards, in addition to literature and education. The standard German of Germany, though largely based on northern dialects, is not identical with that of any particular place and is said to owe a lot to the language of the stage (Bühnensprache). For the UK, the prestigious Received Pronunciation (RP), is sometimes called the Queen's English and sometimes BBC English, although these days at any rate, accents on the BBC exhibit more diversity. The central and regional media of the PRC and of Taiwan undoubtedly provide models of Standard Mandarin which one can compare with the supposedly standard Mandarin one is supposed to be taught in school or which one may have been told others spoke locally.
Differences in Standard Mandarin occur in many forms. For writing, mainland China uses simplified characters (jian3ti3zi4 简体字), whereas Taiwan uses traditional characters (fan2ti3zi4 繁体字, or officially in Taiwan zheng4ti3zi4 正体字). In terms of the spoken language, although some use of final vocalic "r" (er2hua4 儿化) is found in the media and the HSK vocabulary tests, the extensive use of this feature found in Beijing is thought be a feature of local Beijing dialect. Other regional phonological and vocabulary influences may flavor people's attempts to speak Standard Mandarin. For some examples for Taiwan, see the references in the sociolinguistics section of the Wikipedia article on Taiwanese Linguistics and in the pronunciation section of the Wikipedia article on Taiwanese Mandarin.
A number of differences in vocabulary between the mainland and Taiwan are reported in the Taiwanese Mandarin article, in a few pages at the back of the Langenscheidt Concise Chinese-English Dictionary, and a small number in a list at Yellow Bridge (http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/mandarin-differences.php).
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Some Chinese Study Links & other additions
Since my last posting, I have done a couple of things. I have added more to my Aug. 15 Self-intro and added a variety of Chinese Study Links which I have at least for the present put at my teacher website (click on "other pages" if you take this route), where I also have pages with links for the study of a few other languages and cultures. These links and some others have been added to right-hand margin of the blog for convenience.
One of the other links in this area is for the Westchester Language Club. The club meets weekly on Wednesday evenings from 7PM, for supper and conversation at Casaletto (formerly Tony La Stazione) a restaurant in on Route 9A just south of 119 in Elmsford, NY with weekly language tables for French, Italian, Spanish, and German, monthly for Chinese (usually on the third Wednesday--attended by myself and a few members and friends of our Adult Ed Chinese class at Westchester Community College. Other languages are also spoken by members and sometimes have their own tables, such as Hebrew (recently started again and meeting every other week) and Russian (not active recently). Check their site for directions and other details.
One of the other links in this area is for the Westchester Language Club. The club meets weekly on Wednesday evenings from 7PM, for supper and conversation at Casaletto (formerly Tony La Stazione) a restaurant in on Route 9A just south of 119 in Elmsford, NY with weekly language tables for French, Italian, Spanish, and German, monthly for Chinese (usually on the third Wednesday--attended by myself and a few members and friends of our Adult Ed Chinese class at Westchester Community College. Other languages are also spoken by members and sometimes have their own tables, such as Hebrew (recently started again and meeting every other week) and Russian (not active recently). Check their site for directions and other details.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Some Good Online Chinese Dictionaries
Modifed 4/30/08--
Frustration with looking up character by trying to figure out the radical (bu4shou3 部首) led a couple of my classmates to an excellent dictionary for PDA's from Pleco that allows them to search by drawing the character on the screen.
Online dictionaries, some with many additional tools are another invaluable resource. If one is trying to read something online, it is possible to copy and paste into the dictionary. Online dictionaries can also give you both the simplified and the traditional forms of a character. Most paper dictionaries, with the exception of Oxford, do not do that!
Here are some good Online Dictionaries:
Frustration with looking up character by trying to figure out the radical (bu4shou3 部首) led a couple of my classmates to an excellent dictionary for PDA's from Pleco that allows them to search by drawing the character on the screen.
Online dictionaries, some with many additional tools are another invaluable resource. If one is trying to read something online, it is possible to copy and paste into the dictionary. Online dictionaries can also give you both the simplified and the traditional forms of a character. Most paper dictionaries, with the exception of Oxford, do not do that!
Here are some good Online Dictionaries:
- Yellow Bridge -- An absolutely top-notch dictionary loaded with features. I like accessing it through its Chinese Language Center page, that gives clearer visual access not only to the word and character dictionary, but also among other things, flashcards and memory games to help you remember Chinese characters key to a large variety of textbooks, HSK Level, frequency, etc. The dictionary for both compounds and single characters lists a few other compounds beginning or ending with the same character. Single characters have additional tabs for etymology, stroke order (not all), and "detail," which includes Japanese, Korean, & Cantonese pronunciations, character statistics, computer character encoding, texting input methods, and characters with similar structure and phonetics
- MDGB Dictionary from Xue Zhongwen.net -- Has a variety of features and possible entry screens. Also has hanzi flashcards and hanzi quiz, both accessible under "practice." You can also copy whole sentences and get either character by character breakdown, or two more word and sentence structure-based breakdowns, one of which is called annotated.
- Mandarin Tools.com -- has a huge variety of additional tools available, including hanzi flashcards, for online or download.
- Zhongwen.com -- Online version of the popular Zhongwen Zipu (中文字谱) paper dictionary that groups characters "genealogically" into families that share components called radicals other than their semantic radicals (that characters are usually grouped by in traditional character dictionaries). In many characters, these parts are sometimes indicative of a vague, historical similarity in pronunciation, sometimes referred to as rhyme/rime, that can both help and confuse. This dictionary allows one to see characters side by side that one could very easily confuse in terms of meaning, tones, or variant pronunciations, making it a very good learning tool, particularly for the intermediate and advanced learner. Character simplification has sometimes obscured these relationships, because some of the shared components used to group characters here have been changed or replaced with another, historically distinct radical and some not. This dictionary is therefore more traditional character based.
- ChineseLanguage.org -- Provides an English-Chinese Dictionary, a Chinese Character Dictionary (with access to Chinese characters via Pinyin, Cantonese, Hakka, & Japanese, Korean pronunciations), and a Hakka Dictionary.
These are some other sites that offer help (in the form of pop-up "training wheels") for those trying to read Chinese Characters:
- Popjisyo -- gives a pop-up window showing pronunciation and meaning for at least some sites not only in Chinese but also in Japanese or Korean.
- News in Chinese from Adso Trans gives pop-up windows showing pronunciation and meaning for a variety of articles and levels. Goes out of service every so often for a while--presumably for updating. --Back in service as of 4/30/08.
- Clavis Sinica -- is the maker of Software that will produce pop-ups for any texts. There are some online services available too though.
Chinese Dictionaries--中文的词典--Remarks
Modifed 1/18/08-- Dictionaries are important when learning any language, but they are of monumental importance for learning Chinese. Consider the following:
- Chinese students are taught about 5,000 characters, or han4zi4 汉字, just to be able to read newspapers.
- The characters are not phonetic, although part of many characters may hint at some degree of similarity with the pronunciation of other characters containing that part. Their pronunciation is not easily accesible to the uninitiated. This renders most dictionaries for natives barely usable by non-Chinese. Even when the pronunciation is shown for the headword, any examples are almost always left untransliterated.
- While some dictionaries are arranged more or less in phonetic order, more are arranged by a traditional system based on part of the character called the the radical (bu4shou3 部首) which is used to classify characters plus the number of additional or total strokes to write the character. Even most of those that appear to be phonetic in order, alphabetize by the pronunciation of one character at a time, usually listing all those having a particular pronunciation and the first tone before those of the same pronunciation and the second (3rd, 4th, or neutral) tone. The traditional system puts puts all words beginning with a particular character together, but these character by character phonetic systems can place words beginning with the same character but having a different tone or different pronunciation altogether in different parts of the dictionary. While total or partial grouping together by beginning character is helpful for learning related words, it makes rapid lookup of words very difficult. For rapid lookup I therefore prefer the strictly alphabetical order of the Langenscheidt Chinese-English Dictionary or another version of it put out by Berlitz. While the glossaries at the back of most phrasebooks are also strictly alphabetical, many lack Chinese characters, and the number of items tends to be quite limited. You have to know the range of "quirks" of the dictionaries you use. Each has it advantages or disadvantages for certain tasks.
- Trying to figure out in a traditionally organized dictionary which part of a character is the radical (bu4shou3 部首) used to classify the character you don't even know the pronunciation of, never mind the meaning, can be extremely frustrating. Usually the classifying radical is on the top, the left, or partially or totally surrounds the rest.
- The majority of Chinese characters today fall into the category of semantic-phonetic logical aggregates, combining a radical, or component, that provides a general semantic category for the word with a radical that provides a clue to the general pronunciation of the characater. Traditional dictionaries classify these characters under the semantic component, but Zhong1wen2 Zi4pu3 中文字譜 (Chinese Characters: A Geneology and Dictionary) by Rick Harbaugh classifies characters according to the phonetic component, putting together that share this component and generally, but not always have a similar or somewhat similar pronunciation. Students of Chinese often find that it is very easy to confuse such characters, and it can therefore be extremely helpful to see these characters grouped together.
- Particularly good dictionaries may also refer you not only to alternate pronunciations of a character, but also to words containing but not beginning with the word. Software and online dictionaries are particularly good at this, and a hot link may save the tedium of a second round of looking up.
- Another point of difficulty is whether a dictionary's main entries and example phrases are shown just in traditional characters still used in Taiwan and many places outside China or in the simplified forms used for many but not all characters in the People's Republic, or both. Because I like to see both, I prefer dictionaries like the Oxford Concise CE-EC Dictionary. However I must point out that Japan has also simplified characters, though not so many as in China, and more importantly, not always in the same or even in a similar way! Modern Korean has largely eliminated the use of Chinese Characters (hanja) in favor of a native phonetic system (hangeul), but traditional Korean is written in a combination of Chinese characters and phonetically written inflections and particles, in a manner very similar to that still used to write Japanese.
- Students learning more than one East Asian language must learn not only the different written forms of characters used in each language, but also the different pronunciations. In Mandarin Chinese, each character typically has only one pronuciation (though some do have alternate tones or pronunciations). In Japanese and Korean, each character typically has at least two types of pronunciation, first a Sino-Japanese or Sino-Korean pronunciation related historically to a Chinese pronunciation associated with the character at one or more times when uses of the character were brought to each country from China, and secondly one or more native pronunciations of words or morphemes whose meanings are linked with that/those of the character.
- Beyond this, although when I refer to Chinese here I am mostly referring to Mandarin, known as pu3tong1hua4 普通话 in the PRC and as guo2yu3 国语 in Taiwan, Chinese is not just one language, but a family of languages at least as different as those of Europe, though usually referred to as dialects. Words and the pronunciation of characters may therefore differ considerably in each "dialect." Mandarin has for example has lost all final consonants expcept for "n" and "ng," but this is not true of many of the dialects, nor is it true of Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, or Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations of characters and words. The preservation of many such older features in these has been of great value to scholars in the reconstruction of older forms of Chinese, as have the phonetic or "rime" components of characters.
Dictionaries' ease of use can make or break the language learning experience for any language, but particularly for Chinese.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Self-Intro Ziji Jieshao 自己介绍
Having done a blog in Spanish for a class up in New Paltz in July, http://lingopath.blogspot.com/ , I decided, with more than a little trepidation, to do one for Chinese study. Following the Lingopath name (which is also my alter ego name at gmail.com) I've decided to call it Yuyan Kuangren (语言狂人): http://yuyankuangren.blogspot.com/ . Seeing that a blog or wangluo riji 网络日记 is called an internet diary in Chinese, the blog name suggests the title of a Chinese classic, "The Diary of a Madman" (狂人日记) by Lu Xun 鲁迅.
I see that my profile in Spanish written for the other blog comes up here too, which I did not anticipate, but so be it. I hope to share some of the things that I learn along this long journey of trying to learn Chinese, as well as try to make some feeble attempts at writing some things of my own in Chinese.
Although born in the US and raised in a monolingual home, I acquired a strong interest in other languages and cultures from my home environment and from an extensive 11-week international trip taken with other students while still in secondary school. I am currently teaching middle school Spanish and sometimes French, but previously taught German & ESL, as well as Japanese & East Asian studies at the college level, and worked for a dozen years in a Japanese company in Manhattan. I lived in Europe for a half a year and in Japan for five and a half.
Majoring in German as an undergrad, I completed a master's degree at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan in anthropology (mostly linguistics--all classes in Japanese), then another master's degree and all but my dissertation for a Ph. D. at Yale University in cultural and linguistic anthropology (with geographic emphasis on East Asia), and a third master's degree in education at Manhattanville College for NYS certification in ESL and foreign language.
I have had a variety of language learning experiences, but the major portion of my learning a number of languages after German has been on my own. I started my study of Chinese while living in Japan in the 1970s. I listened to a few Japanese TV programs for beginning students of Chinese and acquiring a feeling for the sound system of Chinese. Then, still in Japan, I bought a couple Chinese textbooks put out by the Chinese Foreign Language Press and worked my way through more than the first book on my own.
Although I was able to avoid forgetting everything due to my strong knowledge of the Japanese use of Chinese characters and some study of Korean on my own and at Yale, my study of Chinese went no further than a very infrequent glance at one of my books or a dictionary until about 2 and 1/2 years ago. At that time a few people from an adult ed Chinese class at Westchester Community College began to come once a month to the Westchester Language Club (more at posting for Sept. 18, 2007), in which I had been a member since 1991. Although I was unable to join the actual class until January this year due to my singing in a choral group on the evening of the class, I found that my knowledge was compatible with members of the class, and began to meet with them when I could for some summer study sessions, as well as at language club.
Since beginning to teach foreign language at the middle school level only five years ago, I have had to spend a lot of time preparing lessons and materials, as well as trying to take some classes for more credits, still trying to squeeze in singing with two or three groups, language club, and the on again off again study of Russian on my own. So, I dropped the Russian in favor of Chinese, and more recently dropped a singing group, making it possible to join the class, but I still wish I had more time to study Chinese. The class, which I believe is beginning its 6th year this fall, has been relabled from intermediate to advanced, although as busy adults in a non-credit evening class, I think we need more work to be worthy of the label, despite the herculean efforts of our teacher. As a former teacher of college Japanese, I know only too well the problem of how difficult it can be to help students to move from a basic or intermediate level of knowedge to a more advanced level, particularly when the students have only a limited amount of time to devote to it and are not living in a culture where the language is widely spoken.
After having spent a month this summer at SUNY New Paltz in immersion classes of Spanish, where I started a blog in Spanish, I felt that a blog for Chinese could help me focus more, so I could build up momentum, as well as allow me to share my efforts and things I have learned.
I see that my profile in Spanish written for the other blog comes up here too, which I did not anticipate, but so be it. I hope to share some of the things that I learn along this long journey of trying to learn Chinese, as well as try to make some feeble attempts at writing some things of my own in Chinese.
Although born in the US and raised in a monolingual home, I acquired a strong interest in other languages and cultures from my home environment and from an extensive 11-week international trip taken with other students while still in secondary school. I am currently teaching middle school Spanish and sometimes French, but previously taught German & ESL, as well as Japanese & East Asian studies at the college level, and worked for a dozen years in a Japanese company in Manhattan. I lived in Europe for a half a year and in Japan for five and a half.
Majoring in German as an undergrad, I completed a master's degree at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan in anthropology (mostly linguistics--all classes in Japanese), then another master's degree and all but my dissertation for a Ph. D. at Yale University in cultural and linguistic anthropology (with geographic emphasis on East Asia), and a third master's degree in education at Manhattanville College for NYS certification in ESL and foreign language.
I have had a variety of language learning experiences, but the major portion of my learning a number of languages after German has been on my own. I started my study of Chinese while living in Japan in the 1970s. I listened to a few Japanese TV programs for beginning students of Chinese and acquiring a feeling for the sound system of Chinese. Then, still in Japan, I bought a couple Chinese textbooks put out by the Chinese Foreign Language Press and worked my way through more than the first book on my own.
Although I was able to avoid forgetting everything due to my strong knowledge of the Japanese use of Chinese characters and some study of Korean on my own and at Yale, my study of Chinese went no further than a very infrequent glance at one of my books or a dictionary until about 2 and 1/2 years ago. At that time a few people from an adult ed Chinese class at Westchester Community College began to come once a month to the Westchester Language Club (more at posting for Sept. 18, 2007), in which I had been a member since 1991. Although I was unable to join the actual class until January this year due to my singing in a choral group on the evening of the class, I found that my knowledge was compatible with members of the class, and began to meet with them when I could for some summer study sessions, as well as at language club.
Since beginning to teach foreign language at the middle school level only five years ago, I have had to spend a lot of time preparing lessons and materials, as well as trying to take some classes for more credits, still trying to squeeze in singing with two or three groups, language club, and the on again off again study of Russian on my own. So, I dropped the Russian in favor of Chinese, and more recently dropped a singing group, making it possible to join the class, but I still wish I had more time to study Chinese. The class, which I believe is beginning its 6th year this fall, has been relabled from intermediate to advanced, although as busy adults in a non-credit evening class, I think we need more work to be worthy of the label, despite the herculean efforts of our teacher. As a former teacher of college Japanese, I know only too well the problem of how difficult it can be to help students to move from a basic or intermediate level of knowedge to a more advanced level, particularly when the students have only a limited amount of time to devote to it and are not living in a culture where the language is widely spoken.
After having spent a month this summer at SUNY New Paltz in immersion classes of Spanish, where I started a blog in Spanish, I felt that a blog for Chinese could help me focus more, so I could build up momentum, as well as allow me to share my efforts and things I have learned.
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